Depersonalization Support Forum banner

Discussion with God (Taken from bddcentral forum)

7K views 39 replies 8 participants last post by  CECIL 
#1 ·
God: Hello You called me.
I, Me, Myself: Called you? No. who is this?

G: This is God I heard your prayers. So I thought I will chat with you

IMM: sure, I pray. Just makes me feel good. Actually,am busy now. In the
midst of something, you now.

G: What are you busy with? Ants are busy too.

IMM: Don't know. But i can't find free time. Life has become hectic. It's
rush hour all the time.

G: sure activity gets you busy, productivity gets you results. Activity
consumes time. Productivity frees it.

IMM: But I still can't figure it out. By the way, I was not expecting YOU
to buzz me on instant messaging chat

G: Well. I wanted to help you resolve your fight for time by giving you
some clarity. I wanted to teach you through the medium you are comfortable with.

IMM: Tell me. why has life become so complicated?

G: Stop analysing life. Just live it. Analysis is what makes it
complicated.

IMM: Why are we then constantly unhappy?

G: Your today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday. You are
worrying because the act if worrying has become a habit. That's why you are not
happy.

IMM: But how can we not worry when there is so much uncertainty

G: Uncertainty is inevitable, but worrying is optional.

IMM: but then, there is so much pain due to uncertainty.

G: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

IMM: If suffering is optional, why do good people always suffer?

G: Diamonds cannot be polished without friction. Gold cannot be purified
without fire. Good people go through trials. With that experience their life
becomes better,not bitter.

IMM: You mean to say such experience is useful?

G: Yes. Experience is a hard teacher, though. She gives the test first and
the lessons afterwards.

IMM: But still, why should we go through such tests? Why can't we be free
from problems?

G: problems are purposeful roadblocks offering beneficial lessons to
enhance Mental Strength. Inner strength comes from struggle and endurance, not
when you are free from problems.

IMM: Frankly in the midst of so many problems, we don't know where we are
heading.

G: If you look outside you will not know where you are heading. Look
inside. Looking outside, you scream. Looking inside, you awaken. Eyes
provide sight, Heart provides insight.

IMM: Sometimes not succeeding fast seems to hurt more than moving in the
right direction.

G:Success is relative, quantified by others .Satisfaction is absolute,
quantified by you. Knowing the road ahead is more satisfying than knowing you
rode ahead.

IMM: Some times I ask, who am I, why am I here? I don't know the answers.

G: Seek not to find who you are, but to determine who you want to be. Stop
looking for a purpose as to why you are here. create it. Life is not a proccess
of discovery but a process of creation.

IMM: How can I get the best out of life?

G: Face your past without regret and live your present with confidence.
Prepare for the future without fear.

IMM: sometimes my prayers are not answered.

G: There are no unanswered prayers. At times the answer is NO.

IMM: Thank you for this wonderful chat. I'll try to be less fearful.

G: Keep the faith and drop the fear. Life is a mystery to solve, not a
problem to resolve. Life is wonderful if you know how to live.
 
See less See more
#28 ·
I have a couple of problems with this reliance on studies. First of all, any study with the acronym of MANTRA begs for its seriousness to be questioned. But I digress. I first of all have never heard of this study, cant find if it was funded by an NIH grant, cant find the institution it was done for in the body of the article, and lastly, didnt realize that there were any flaws in the Harvard NIH study done several years ago. Setting all of this aside, lets just take for granted that it IS a well-researched, above-board study. Its findings were still not ambiguous. Notice at the bottom that those given intense prayer had a lower rate of morbidity. But lets even discount that. Lets say that this well-researched study found absolutely no link to an improvement of health. Lets say it even found that prayer is bad for you, and increases your chance of living a shorter life (it in fact says the opposite of religious faith in its headline, but I'm playing devil's advocate). And lets say that it was just not one study which negated the findings of previous ones, which it is, but lets say that for every study which said prayer made you healthier, there was one saying it killed you, or increased your cardiovascular complications. Then , finally, prayer would be the equivalent of taking Vitamin E. Its a natural substance. Our bodies need it. But like any drug, every six months a contradictory study is published. One of the most hotly contested is its usefulness for people with cardiovascular disease. There have been so many contradictory studies, I dont think the vitamin companies even know what to think. But at least its a great antioxidant, right? Well, they just compiled a list of people who took the drug for eight years or more, and found they lived shorter lives than those in their age bracket who didnt. Darn. So does this mean that our bodies dont need vitamin E? No. Does it mean that until we have definitive "proof" ( and I beleive for some people, this sort of proof means never a having a conflicting study or a doubt ) before it can be used medicinally? The answer is emphatically no. Fertility doctors give high doses of it, along with Vitamin C, to improve sperm counts. Liver doctors use it to treat fatty liver. Some doctors will use it to thin blood. Prayer is just like this, except at this point, there seem to be NO studies which show it shortens your life, and quite a few which say the opposite. No matter how you slice this, indirect links to God's existence such as an improved quality of life for those with faith, and even longer life spans, is quite a ***** in the armor of atheism. And it gels with the long held idea that while we'll have to have faith since overwhelming direct proof wont be given, the benefits of faith in one's life will be tangible. Like vitamin E, we'll never know how prayer works, or who exactly it will work for. We just know its therapeutic - and has less side effects than vitamins.

Peace
Homeskooled
 
#29 ·
Regardless of what monkey dust said about faith, I did indeed say that it could be healthy. I think prayer can help in sickness and there have been some studies that have shown this. Once again I don't care about the ancillary health effects of prayer. This shows that positive thinking and hope can affect ones health. This is no way shows that a prayer is being answered by a god, gods, or force. To say that this is a ***** in the armor of atheism is ridiculous. We all know that positive thinking whether that take the form of prayer, positive self-talk, etc can at times help us.

Physical explanations make the most sense to me. I wasn't setting up a straw man when I was talking about the place that religion once had. I was simply saying that religion developed in order to give supernatural explanations to physical phenomena. That was its function, in a time where we lacked knowledge to explain how the world operated. Now we have science, we have a more accurate method of gaining knowledge and we are beginning to see that the world is based on purely physical phenomena where it was once thought to be based on religious or spiritual phenomena.

The only thing that the theist has is his or her subjective experience, or "indirect links", which are tenuous themselves, to the existence of God. I don't need to know about half-truths, maybe's, or conjecture. I rely on scientific fact and evidence. The cosmological argument may provide a reasoned justification for the existence of God, but does not move us any farther to showing us that God actually exists. If you want to say that the existence of God is something that cannot be seen by the scientific mind, then say so and at least we'll come to the conclusion that God is completely divorced from the physical world and has left no evidence to show us that he is or was ever here. He is in our minds, and as such is completely irrelevant to my experience of the world. I have alot of fantasies, notions, ideas that run through my head, but I would never dedicate my life to them.
 
#30 ·
No, scattered, thats the interesting thing, and the ***** in the armor. Positive thinking does not have anywhere near the same health effects as prayer. I'll look up some studies later. But look at this one. The MIT, massage new-age light-whatever, helped reduce stress before operations. Did heavy doses of MIT reduce morbidity?Now look to the bottom of the article - did heavy doses of prayer? Now look at other studies done. Whether or not a person prayed, prayer increased one's chances of health. When you were prayed for by someone else, your chances of complications decreased. Maybe you could interpret that as someone sending you positive thoughts, but to be honest, if prayer is the Vitamin E of medicine, then positive thought is the placebo - which is, in fact, how a placebo works.

Peace
Homeskooled
 
#32 ·
What are you basing this on homeskooled, give me a link to the studies. I'm willing to bet that an extremely positive person, who is positive in the face of overwhelmingly negative circumstances, will be as healthy as the most devout theist. The mind affects the body, this is no big deal. Furthermore I doubt there is anyway that such a study can truly be done correctly. I'm sure those who pray are healthier than those who don't pray but how are we studying this? Are we saying that those who pray are healthier than depressed atheists or are healthier than average atheists or near manic motivational speakers?

There are plenty of depressed catholics, christians, muslims, jews, etc. There are plenty of depressed atheists, agnostics, etc. The only difference I can see is that regardless of faith or lack of faith, some people have a positive outlook on life and some don't. Those who have a more positive outlook on life are able to derive health benefits. I've seen no reason so far to believe that prayer, above all else, has a distinct benefit.

EDIT: I didn't properly address your supposition. I looked over the sfgate article. The article said,
those who received both MIT therapy and the "high-dose" prayer may have been slightly less likely to die in the following six months.
The key words here are both and less. Morbidity was decreased only when MIT and prayer were combined. Even when they were combined the morbidity rate was only "slightly less." The researchers went on to state the obvious, that given the nature of the study it was impossible to make any firm conclusions.

Once again, mere conjecture.
 
#33 ·
Well, it actually said that those findings were going to lead to more studies. And those findings will lead to more. Its the nature of science.

The difference between positive thinking and the findings of prayers studies is this : They arent studying whether those who pray feel any better- that could just be the power of suggestion, or as you call it, positive thinking. Rather, they are studying whether those who are prayed FOR have an increase or a decrease in health. I'll give you a link to the Harvard study later. Have to find it online.

Peace
Homeskooled[/code]
 
#34 ·
I found this just now, and it appears that at least this study showed no benefit to the prayed-for:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Surgery/Gen ... ry/tb/1362

Personally, I don't know that any study will ever be able to show that "prayer works," and I would find that such a study would once again bring up an issue that Scattered and I danced around the other day. That issue is: Does an "answer" to prayer mean only that we get what we ask for, or does God indeed say "No" to our prayers (or to others' prayers for us) for reasons that we already know but refuse to accept?

In fact, the entire approach of this "study" is flawed in that it presupposes a very simplistic view of what prayer actually is. Prayer is not about getting God to do our bidding. Prayer is our asking God to strengthen us so that we can do his will. Prayer is about asking God to show us how to do HIS bidding, not the reverse.

In many cases, it is God's will that a person not recover from an illness, but that's not the same as saying God abandons the person. If death means union with God, death is better than life, ultimately. Not that it should be chosen *over* life while we live, but that "life on earth" is not the ultimate good.

I suppose that I think that scientific study of the effects of prayer are kind of silly in that they presuppose that an "answer" to prayer necessarily means the person recovers, when in the long term, what's really the absolute best for that person's happiness is union with God -- the truly good "end" that is desired by all believers.

Can 30 believers change God's mind about when a person dies? There are some who would argue that is indeed true, but I am not one of them.

Prayer is about transforming US, not about us transforming God.
 
#35 ·
Dear Sojourner,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your position on prayer. The Church is very clear that while one can ask for God to strengthen us, prayer is not just an exercise which is good for the soul and our moral fortitude, even if we are saying that we should pray for god to give us the grace of that fortitude. It is safer to argue a stance such as that, because when a prayer is "unanswered" it gives a believer a safe exit from the argument, but praying is all about storming heaven to persuade God. When a saint is canonized in the Catholic Church, the saint in question must have two medical miracles verified by outside institutions, and done through that saint's intercession. In this case, those who pray for the sick are asking the saint to intercede to God on their behalf. But more than that, it is a Catholic beleif based in very biblical foundations. Do you remember Christ's parable of the old woman and the judge? Eventhough he despised the woman and cared nothing for the problem she had, she was so persistent in asking the judge to rule in her favor that he finally relented "because of her persistence". This is how we are to pray to God as well - relentlessly, and with the hope that he hears and will answer it with a yes. That wont always be the case, but I believe a great deal of situations are morally neutral, and Divine Providence can use many different outcomes in a situation to the same beautiful end.

The Medpage Today study you pulled up was also the Mantra II study which Scattered quoted earlier. As Scattered pointed out, only high dose prayer along with relaxation techniques seemed to lower morbidity. The Harvard study which I have been prattling on about for some time was formed by a rogue Harvard doctor named Dr. Benson. He practices there, and was first thought in the 1990's to be quite eccentric when he took up studies on prayer. His studies have been so thought provoking and well-organized, however, that he is readily granted funds by the NIH. His most recent study, the 800 pound gorilla of prayer studies, was wrapped last year. I believe it used something like 900 patients, and doesnt have the tabulation problems that previous studies did. Other famous studies, such as the San Francisco AIDS/Prayer study, used markers of wellness such as psychological well-being of those being prayed for. Most of the medical communtiy would like to see only objectively measurable standards of health used, because of the skepticism surrounding religious/medical studies. Its a double standard, however, as all medical trials and studies use psychological markers of well-being, from pharmaceutical trials to anorexia studies. Preliminary data has been published in medical journals , but none of it seems to have appeared online yet. The results are a mixed bag, but the preliminary studies seem to be highly favorable. I'm very excited about it, actually. If anyone can Google the results online, please let me know. There was however, a study done at Columbia, I beleive last year as well, where one of the researchers was jailed for fraud in some other circumstance. The study has not been withdrawn, as its findings have not been proven invalid, but it does give it a bad taste. Alright, thats about it from me right now. I'm pulling this all from memory, so google these if you want more detailed info!

Peace
Homeskooled
 
#36 ·
Homeskooled said:
Dear Sojourner,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your position on prayer. The Church is very clear that while one can ask for God to strengthen us, prayer is not just an exercise which is good for the soul and our moral fortitude, even if we are saying that we should pray for god to give us the grace of that fortitude. It is safer to argue a stance such as that, because when a prayer is "unanswered" it gives a believer a safe exit from the argument, but praying is all about storming heaven to persuade God. When a saint is canonized in the Catholic Church, the saint in question must have two medical miracles verified by outside institutions, and done through that saint's intercession. In this case, those who pray for the sick are asking the saint to intercede to God on their behalf. But more than that, it is a Catholic beleif based in very biblical foundations. Do you remember Christ's parable of the old woman and the judge? Eventhough he despised the woman and cared nothing for the problem she had, she was so persistent in asking the judge to rule in her favor that he finally relented "because of her persistence". This is how we are to pray to God as well - relentlessly, and with the hope that he hears and will answer it with a yes. That wont always be the case, but I believe a great deal of situations are morally neutral, and Divine Providence can use many different outcomes in a situation to the same beautiful end.
OK, Homeskooled, I defer to you, because I am but a convert of some 23 or so years. Yes, I even thought of the scripture of the old woman and the judge when I was writing my post, and yet still made the error! I suppose I am not clear on where the two aspects of prayer meet or where they diverge.

Thanks for the correction. However, as you know, there are further problems with this that someone like me might have, such as "Does God answer my persistent prayer, but not yours?" "What of the poor person with no one praying for them?" So in my silliness, I resolved all those issues by pretending there was no reality of bombarding Heaven with prayer, even though I know that's Church teaching. I can't explain it, but all I can say is that your post is no surprise to me -- and I am very grateful that you took the time to respond. I'm sure you know what I mean when I say that I did think of that very scripture and of the admonition to "pray constantly" and managed -- probably because I was too full of myself -- to pretend that I was blissfully oblivious to the fact that I was sweeping what didn't agree with my theory under the rug. I hope you will call me on this type of thing if you ever spot me doing it again. Thanks a million, Homeskooled for writing!

Homeskooled said:
The Medpage Today study you pulled up was also the Mantra II study which Scattered quoted earlier. As Scattered pointed out, only high dose prayer along with relaxation techniques seemed to lower morbidity. The Harvard study which I have been prattling on about for some time was formed by a rogue Harvard doctor named Dr. Benson.
Rogue? Aren't you talking about the "Relaxation Response" guy, who runs the Mind-Body place at Beth Israel?

Homeskooled said:
He practices there, and was first thought in the 1990's to be quite eccentric when he took up studies on prayer. His studies have been so thought provoking and well-organized, however, that he is readily granted funds by the NIH. His most recent study, the 800 pound gorilla of prayer studies, was wrapped last year. I believe it used something like 900 patients, and doesnt have the tabulation problems that previous studies did. Other famous studies, such as the San Francisco AIDS/Prayer study, used markers of wellness such as psychological well-being of those being prayed for. Most of the medical communtiy would like to see only objectively measurable standards of health used, because of the skepticism surrounding religious/medical studies. Its a double standard, however, as all medical trials and studies use psychological markers of well-being, from pharmaceutical trials to anorexia studies. Preliminary data has been published in medical journals , but none of it seems to have appeared online yet. The results are a mixed bag, but the preliminary studies seem to be highly favorable. I'm very excited about it, actually. If anyone can Google the results online, please let me know.
I'd be happy to Google, but I need more particulars about these studies.
 
#37 ·
Here's a spanner in the works. I have a science degree and I love science, so don't get me wrong, but science is in no way complete. In fact, its made itself as dogmatic as religions do, which means that in its current form it cannot advance in what I would feel is a beneficial way.

Renee DeCarte, the man largely responsible for modern science, thought up the idea of science after an angel came down from heaven and told him to. I'm serious - this guy claims to have had a vision of an angel and then goes on to make science.

The point being that even the inception of science itself came from a non-logical place (inspiration, in this case in the form of a symbolic representation of the voice of god).

If you want signs of god's existance, you need to believe it first. Seeing is not believing - believing is seeing. However, don't be fooled into looking for god in religions, because that is not god, that is humans using god to control other humans and to amass power. Look within yourself, trust your intuition. Pay attention to synchronicities in your life (those with DP have a head start in this, because we are already questioning our reality. Coincidence?).
 
#38 ·
More food for thought:

Anyone every heard of the placebo effect? This is a medical term used to judge the efficacy of a medical treatment on a patient. Basically the idea is that in any given medical treatment, for any given disease, a certain percentage of people will get better if they believe they will. So in other words, if you give 100 people with, say, pneumonia a sugar pill and say "Here, take this, it will make you better", then maybe 50 of them will get better, while the other 50 will die.

In scientific tests they try to eliminate the placebo effect by not allowing the patients to know what treatment they are recieving and always having a control group that recieves a placebo.

Now here is where the problem lies. People get better because they believe they will get better. To me this does not demonstrate a random coincidence but instead the power of belief. If you believe something is true, it is. That is why all of your opinions are valid - your reality is 100% true for you.

However, the nature of belief is that its variable. You can change your beliefs and as you do this your reality changes too.
 
#39 ·
Very interesting posts. I wanna quote one of those articles that says prayer doesn't work : "A growing body of evidence has found that religious people tend to be healthier than average, and that people who pray when they are ill are likely to fare better than those who do not."

Isn't that a sign that prayer is beneficial? Certainly is.
 
#40 ·
Yes and you could certainly argue that it means a higher power has protected those people from illness.

Or, on the other hand and following on from what I was saying about the placebo effect, it may demonstrate their own personal power (belief) creating a positive effect on their bodies.

It's no secret that feeling healthy makes you healthy. There are scientific justification for this (increased serotonin levels, increased antibody production and so forth), but I've never been satisfied with a purely biological explanation. Changed do happen in the body, yes, but I believe there's an underlying cause for it. Body reflects mind reflects "Soul", its all connected ;)
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top