Guess which group held which opinion…

I suggested to him that the choices were God-Inspired. I like hearing his laugh.

There have been, and continue to be, many studies done on the efficacy of intercessory prayer, and so far they’ve come up with, you guessed it, zilch.  No, wait- that Columbia University study showed positive results.  Too bad it was a fraud.

If I recall correctly, some recent “studies” actually concluded that prayer had a reverse effect. Shall we call it, the Mrs. Brown effect?
  The problem with these studies is that they are attempting to measure a divine response with human measures. If God is who He says He is, the prayer may in fact be answered:
a) Much later in the life of the praying person
b) In heaven
  God also claims to know our deepest desires, so His answer to prayer may not line up exactly with the praying person’s request. For example, I pray for healing, but God takes me home instead. Once I’m in heaven, I am in fact healed in a complete and final way. His timing may seem confusing here on Earth, but the faith is willing to reserve judgment until we have our eternal perspective.
  It keeps coming down to a trust issue. Do we, or do we not trust God, despite His often confusing ways?
  If one demands objective, scientific evidence here on Earth, I wouldn’t expect anyone to come to Faith. I guess, meanwhile, both sides, like your description above, can only present their respective stacks of evidence - neither of which can be proven.
  Oops, time for church. Happy of Pentecost Sunday y’all! May the Spirit move.

My wife has Lymphoma and even though I know it doesn’t do shit, I still pray for her.
If nothing else it make me feel better, and that’s one of the (good)jobs of religion
AWJ

Moses:
Being this is the day of Pentecost, I thought it was a particularly good time for prayer. Myself and 3 kids just prayed that Jesus, through the power of His Holy Spirit, would bring miraculous healing to your wife. Let us know how she fares.
Tom

Maybe prayer does work? http://www.hado.net/index.html

Personally, I thought this was hella cool.  It’s a possible theory to why people “worry themselves sick” and whatnot. 

I dunno, just tossing something else into the fray to make people think.

L4T, I can’t help but to read your posts and it reminds me of people who are being abused in a relationship but make every excuse to justify why they need to stay in it and how it is benificial and not harming.  *shrugs*  That’s just me though.

Moses- whatever makes you, and your wife, feel better, is good.  I wish you both the very best.

(Subhopping): L4T, I can’t help but to read your posts and it reminds me of people who are being abused in a relationship but make every excuse to justify why they need to stay in it and how it is beneficial and not harming.

I was thinking this very thing earlier today. It’s as though believers can’t elevate their god unless they significantly reduce their own worths. And like the battered wife who believes she deserves every unkind word or painful punch, they feel pride for being able to survive such intense judgment.

Feeling guilt for doing something that harms another is understandable; feeling guilt for merely existing isn’t.

tell LuckyJohn that if his dad wants to find out about Constantine go to my beb site http://www.god-101.com and write me in the contact section, I’ll send him a free copy of the book which might clear it up a bit.
Allan

Subhopping sez: Maybe prayer does work?

http://www.hado.net/index.html
Personally, I thought this was hella cool.  It’s a possible theory to why people “worry themselves sick�? and whatnot.

“Dr.“ Masuro Emoto is a quack.  All of his silly pictures of “water molecules” aren’t even of water at all - according to REAL chemists who have looked at the pics. 

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/clusqk.html#EMOTO

I dunno, just tossing something else into the fray to make people think.

Personally, I think people who believe in this sort of silly horseshit stopped thinking a long time ago. 

They should be asking smarter questions, such as “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?“

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

In answer to prayer, God sometimes says ‘yes,’

What I do not understand is ‘Why?‘.  Why would God change his mind. Changing your mind implies that you believe the second course of action is better.  The only reason to do this is gaining new understanding or information.  But as God is omniscient, he already understands all the possible outcomes, and all the things that lead up to that.  What can a human say to make God change his mind?  What in the prayer changes Outcome ‘A’ from being the best, to outcome ‘B’.  What exactly is God looking for from prayer?

Sorry- that last one was me- bit of a mistype

I personally believe that we pray in oder to acknowledge that God is the only answer.  Yes…he’s omniscient…but sometimes we have to speak it out loud…be proactive thru prayer. Prayer is a practice in faith.  Without faith what’s the point?  Without faith why would we even bother debating Godly issues?  Our prayer may not change the outcome of a certain situation…but…at least it allows us to feel connected in some way to the process.
  Yes..if he wanted…God could go around reading everyones minds and solving all of our problems..but…how boring would that be???!!

Beau Tochs, the Bible has every backdoor you can imagine. I think it’s… MAtthew? 4:7? About not testing for God.

In short, Science is all we have atm, and God doesn’t fit that. Whether you want to believe in it or not is up to you at that point.

Moses: tell LuckyJohn that if his dad wants to find out about Constantine go to my web site

That’s a very generous offer, mate. I’ll take you up on that.
As for praying -

If nothing else it make me feel better

It can’t hurt, can it?
Sometimes I can morph into my crystal-powered alter-ego and he would say:
During your meditation imagine a golden light going from you (or any other thing you may find powerful) straight to your wife, accompanied by the expectation to at least help her to be comfortable.
Again, it may do nothing more than help you feel more comfortable; I don’t know any one who really Knows (as opposed to Believes) the truth of it all.
It’s what I did when my mother was dying about 10 years ago.
She died fearlessly and, comfortably.
Best wishes.

SubH: L4T, I can’t help but to read your posts and it reminds me of people who are being abused in a relationship but make every excuse to justify why they need to stay in it and how it is benificial and not harming.  *shrugs* That’s just me though.

Good one.

SBug: I personally believe that we pray in order to acknowledge that God is the only answer.

I disagree or bullshit – pick ya poison.

SBug: Without faith why would we even bother debating Godly issues?

Coz it’s amusing at the very least and/or asks us to think about our mortality and raison d’être at best.

LH: Sorry- that last one was me- bit of a mistype

You’ve ruined it for me.
I enjoyed god’s words, immensely.
Just like fuckin Santa - YOU DON"T EXIST!
You bastard.

John-
I’ve learnt never to share a terminal with a deity- they just don’t leave things as they found them. 

Mind you I did say to Elvis the other day ‘you’d feel better if you didn’t stay in my spare room all day. Why don’t you and Salman go for a quick walk.‘

PS is Les screwing with the anti-bot word dictionary- I just got ‘evidence’.  Or maybe Jesus is trying to get me…

I enjoyed god’s words, immensely.

Thanks for that.  I might be tempted to do a minor miracle, like turning Castlemain and Fosters into beer

Brock:

It’s as though believers can’t elevate their god unless they significantly reduce their own worths.

Nah, my worth doesn’t change at all. Just an acknowledgement of our worth compared to God’s. Just imagine: if you believed in a God that made everything around you, (and you), in all it’s complexity, would you be tooting your own horn?
  Of course, I can understand how one would have to see this as grovelling unless they really did believe such a God existed. Even if one is awed by nature, if you just consider it all to be random happenstance, even the world’s biggest dolt would gain more of your respect than some impersonal process.

Beau Tochs told me

“Dr.�? Masuro Emoto is a quack.  All of his silly pictures of “water molecules�? aren’t even of water at all - according to REAL chemists who have looked at the pics. 

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/clusqk.html#EMOTO

No, you see, that site is mearly there to test your faith!  Now that the water knows your faith wavers, it will never heal you properly!  However, if you send your thoughts over to it and apologize sincerely (actually, you can fake it too), it will accept you into it’s guiding waves. 

Btw, and by thinking it’s hella cool… I still do.  *chuckles*  My imagination goes nuts with stuff like that and I’m sure it could be turned into an awesome story*. 

*Cult following of said story optional

What I do not understand is ‘Why?’.  Why would God change his mind. Changing your mind implies that you believe the second course of action is better.  The only reason to do this is gaining new understanding or information.  But as God is omniscient, he already understands all the possible outcomes, and all the things that lead up to that.  What can a human say to make God change his mind?  What in the prayer changes Outcome ‘A’ from being the best, to outcome ‘B’.  What exactly is God looking for from prayer?

Maybe God caused Outcome ‘A’ simply to give the praying person a chance to get to know Him better, and His character, might, and wisdom. Once again, I’d recommend the book of Job.
More to Brock:

I feel compelled to point out that you quote or allude to the Bible often in order to prove something, but to those who lack belief in the Bible as divinely inspired, this ploy means nothing.

Try presenting information we can falsify or accept as valid without having to depend on faith to get us there. An outdated War and Peace-like novel won’t accomplish this.

But the Bible itself is what we’re discussing. If we decided to evaluate “War and Peace” for its ring of truth, and thus the author’s take on things, would we not have to examine its pages? Sure, we would then compare the wisdom in those pages with what we observe in the world, but we can’t critique the book without referring to it.
  I’ve got nothing personal to offer this bunch. That’s not any reflection of low self-esteem, but simple acknowledgement that my own words of wisdom are probably no better/worse than yours.
  From where I stand, I’m trying to share the wisdom of one that created us all, so therefore runs circles around any of our thoughts. One might be impressed by the computer that beats the world’s best human chess-player, but wouldn’t do be better to consider the programmer?
  I think (can’t assume with you yet) that you don’t believe there is a programmer, and I respect that. However, by quoting scripture, I’m just saying: “Check out this program. Who could have wrote this thing?“
  Zilch, in an above post, acknowledged that there is no firm conclusion as to where we got our “accepted” version of the Bible, so my focus is more concerned with it’s internal validity and it’s ring of truth in our lives.
  One of the events that preceded my coming to faith involved a particular sin. Without getting in to details, the world responded to my sin exactly as the Bible suggests it would, even though I didn’t think the world would react that way. Indeed, I thought my actions were justified, and if people really knew my situation, they would excuse, or even celebrate, what I’d done. Wrong.
  Faced with this, I had to admit that, divinely inspired or not, those dudes that wrote the Bible sure did have a good warning system. I started trying to remember what other kinds of words of wisdom the “good book” had, and thus was on my way.
  Here I am, years later, with many other reasons to believe. But, for me, it all started with comparing the Bible’s words with “how I found life to be.“ I may be crazy, but I believe anyone will come to the same conclusion - that the Word offers wisdom beyond human understanding.

Les: Zog, I never got hired by Best Buy. They interviewed me and decided I was over-qualified for the job even thought I tried to point out that, after 10 and 1/2 months of being unemployed I would be eternally grateful to be working at all.

I got that in 2001 when I was unemp’d for about 9 months.  I was willing to sling coffee for Barnes & Noble as holiday help, and all I got was the “why are you applying here?“ crap.  Maybe they’re just afraid that having a very competent person doing the job will just make it worse when that person leaves, and they’re back to the applicants who aren’t as qualified.  Or they were afraid you’d get promoted over them.  Me, I thought they’d be happy to have someone who didn’t need their hand held to do simple tasks. 

Gawd: Thanks for that. I might be tempted to do a minor miracle, like turning Castlemaine and Fosters into beer

Don’t bother, mate. No-one is Oz drinks it.
Well, Castlemaine is drunk in Queensland, but if they had their way they’d be a republic ... they call anyone south of the border, a Mexican.
Castlemaine makes a brand called four-x or XXXX. We (Mexicans) think they call it that coz they can’t spell PISS.
As for Fosters - I’ve only ever met one bloke who drank it. He was a Pommy bloke - Yorkshire I think - in Melbourne over 30 years ago.

L4T: Even if one is awed by nature

Why would anyone be AWED by natcha?
It’s just stuff, mate ... just stuff ... some of it is even nice to look at but, it’s still just ‘stuff’.

L4T: If we decided to evaluate “War and Peace�?

I read it once - it’s about Russia. (Woody Allen)

L4T: “Check out this program. Who could have wrote this thing?�?

Fools, deluded by grandeur, but, still MEN.

L4T: ... as to where we got our “accepted�? version of the Bible

Constantine fixed it in 353CE or there about and the Holy Roman Catholic Church carried it on in the form of the Vulgate which was then was fucked around with by Henry VIII and some other kings.
Try to remember (is there a song like that?) that it was originally written in Latin/Greek/Fucking old English/Newer English and then Modern-ish English and, EVERY time it was re-interpreted.
Shit I wish Nunyabiz was here. He knew all about this stuff.
He even set forth that the whole of the bible was nothing more than Astrological story and sounded much more convincing that any preacher.
Your bible has an interesting (and comedic) history - that’s why it’s fascinating, even to non-believers.

L4T: that the Word offers wisdom beyond human understanding.

Ha-ha. Personally I think it’s sentimental history and speculation with zero philosophy.
Moses is gonna send Dad a book explaining his theory &/or research on how the bible came into being. I’m looking forward to reading it after when he’s finished it.

Ragman: Or they were afraid you’d get promoted over them.

I reckon you nailed it.

The OT is a guide for desert survival in the stone age.
The NT is a primitive form of communism with some banal observations on morality
Just MHO

One might be impressed by the computer that beats the world’s best human chess-player, but wouldn’t do be better to consider the programmer?

Yes, and no, L4t.  As much as I respect the hard work that went into the program, I seriously doubt that Feng-hsiung Hsu, or anyone else on the team that wrote Deep Blue, could have beaten Garry Kasparov.  No human being could implement that program by hand to beat anyone, even me, in a game of chess, before we were all long since in our graves.  The computer has a great advantage over the human in raw speed of processing, which is indispensible to the realtime application of such programs, so the computer and the software must be considered together.  And no, Deep Blue is not intelligent in the way we humans are intelligent, but it’s a step along the way.  When machines become as intelligent as humans, will they be saved by Jesus too?  Or perhaps rather by Turing?

I think (can’t assume with you yet) that you don’t believe there is a programmer, and I respect that.

Life is obviously the result of a lot of very expensive R&D, immeasurably more so than Deep Blue.  It’s natural to ask, where, or who, is the Designer, or Programmer?  The naturalistic answer is: Nature itself, in the form of eddies in the flow of energy, which teach themselves to survive and compete successfully to create ever more complex whirlpools of local entropy reversal.  The Designer is not in one place or time, but is distributed over unimaginably vast areas and aeons.  We are the Designer.  And so is the Sun, the rocks, the grasses, the rivers, the stars.

However, by quoting scripture, I’m just saying: “Check out this program. Who could have wrote this thing?�?

Who has written anything (so far)?  People wrote it, of course.  Just as people wrote the Koran, and the Zendavesta, and Dianetics, and Moby Dick.

Faced with this, I had to admit that, divinely inspired or not, those dudes that wrote the Bible sure did have a good warning system.

Of course they did.  Christianity, like all the old religions, is the result of many centuries of trial and error, and contemplation, which have produced nuggets of hard-won wisdom which hold people together into workable societies.  Religions are the largely unconsciously evolved social contracts which have gotten us, for good and ill, to where we are today.