"Why won't God heal amputees?"

Discussion in 'Politics' started by lkh, Jun 9, 2006.

  1. lkh

    lkh

    God is imaginary.

    In the following pages i will post 50 different pieces of evidence that God is imaginary and religion is nothing more than organized superstition. All i ask is that if you are a believer just read and think about what you believe. Does it really stand up to a logical examination?

    Proof #1.


    What would happen if we get down on our knees and pray to God in this way:

    Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. We pray in faith, knowing you will bless us as you describe in Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19 and James 5:15-16. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
    We pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways.
    Will anything happen? No. And the fact that nothing happens proves to us that God is imaginary. Here's why: Jesus makes specific promises in the Bible about how prayer is supposed to work. Jesus says in many different places that he and God will answer your prayers. The fact that those promises are untrue tells us that God is imaginary.

    For example, in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:

    Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
    In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says:
    For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
    In Matthew 21:21:
    I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
    The message is reiterated Mark 11:24:
    Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
    In John chapter 14, verses 12 through 14, Jesus tells all of us just how easy prayer can be:
    "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
    In Matthew 18:19 Jesus says it again:
    Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
    In James 5:15-16 the Bible says:
    And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
    In Mark 9:23:
    All things are possible to him who believes.
    In Luke 1:37:
    For with God nothing will be impossible.
    Nothing could be simpler or clearer than Jesus' promises about prayer in the Bible. Yet, when we pray to eliminate cancer, nothing happens.
    And keep in mind that this is Jesus talking here. These are not the words of human beings. These are not the words of "inspired" human beings. These are supposedly the words of God himself, incarnated in a human body. Jesus is supposed to be a perfect, sinless being. And yet, it is obvious that Jesus is lying. What Jesus says is clearly incorrect.

    Jesus is supposed to be God. God is supposed to be perfect.
    When Jesus speaks, he should speak the truth.
    Yet when we look at what Jesus says about prayer,
    he is clearly lying.

    If you would like additional proof, gather a million faithful believers together into a giant prayer circle. Have them all pray together in Jesus' name that God cures every case of cancer on the planet tomorrow. Pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. Now, we certainly have two or more people gathered together, and they have asked in Jesus' name, and we have not one but a million faithful believers who, by definition, have faith and believe. We have fulfilled every one of Jesus' requirements.

    Will Jesus answer the prayer now? Of course not. Your prayer will go unanswered, in direct defiance to Jesus' promises in the Bible. In fact, if you pray for anything that is impossible, your prayer will always go unanswered. This happens because God is imaginary.

    Understanding the Rationalizations
    A favorite Christian rationalization for why God does not answer our prayer to eliminate cancer is because "it would take away free will." The logic: If you pray and God answers your prayer, then God would have revealed himself to you, and you would know that God exists. That would take away your free will to believe in him. Of course, if this is true, then by default all of Jesus' statements about prayer in the Bible are false. It means that God cannot answer any prayer. Also, why is a God who must remain hidden like this incarnating himself and writing the Bible?

    If Jesus is God, and if God is perfect, why aren't all of Jesus's verses about prayer true? Was Jesus exagerating? Was he fibbing? If Jesus is perfect, why wouldn't he speak the truth? Why doesn't a prayer to cure cancer worldwide tomorrow work?

    Believers have many different ways to explain why all these verses in the Bible do not work, even if you are praying sincerely, unselfishly and non-materialistically, and even if the answer to your prayer would help millions of people and glorify God in the process. They will say things like this:

    "You need to understand what Jesus was saying in the context the first century civilization in which he was speaking..."
    or:
    "When Jesus talked about 'moving a mountain', he was speaking metaphorically. When someone says, 'it is raining cats and dogs,' no one takes him literally. Jesus was using a figure of speech rather than speaking literally..."
    or:
    God is not a thing. He is a being. He has a will. He has desires. He relates to people. He has personality traits. Prayer is a fancy word for talking to God. God, who knows everything, even before we say it, knows the difference between our thoughts and wishes, and when we are actually addressing him. He hears our prayers and responds. His responses are based on his personal decisions. We cannot predict how he will respond to our prayers... [ref]
    The problem is, all of these rationalizations miss two important points:
    God is supposed to be an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect being.

    The statement, "Nothing will be impossible for you", along with the other Bible verses quoted above, are false. The fact is, lots of things are impossible for you.
    If a perfect being is going to make statements about how prayer works in the Bible, then three things are certain: 1) He would speak clearly, 2) he would say what he means, and 3) he would speak the truth. That is what "being perfect" is all about. A perfect, all-knowing God would know that people would be reading the Bible 2,000 years later, and therefore he would not use first-century idioms (he would say what he means). He would know that normal people will be reading the Bible and interpreting it in normal ways, so he would speak in such a way as to avoid mis-interpretation (he would speak clearly). He would know that when you say, "Nothing will be impossible for you", that what it means is, "Nothing will be impossible for you" and he would make sure that the statement "Nothing will be impossible for you" is accurate (he would speak the truth). If God says it, it should be true -- otherwise he is not perfect.
    Unfortunately, the fact is that thousands of things are impossible for you no matter how much you pray, and no one (including Jesus) has ever moved a mountain.

    In order to see the truth, you need to accept the fact that all of the above verses are wrong. The fact is, God does not answer prayers. The reason why God does not answer your prayers is simple: God is imaginary.
     
    #311     Aug 11, 2006
  2. lkh

    lkh

    Proof #2 - Statistically analyze prayer
    The fact is, God never answers any prayers. The entire idea that "God answers prayers" is an illusion created by human imagination.
    How do we know that "answered prayers" are illusions? We simply perform scientific experiments. We ask a group of believers to pray for something and then we watch what happens. What we find, whenever we test the efficacy of prayer scientifically, is that prayer has zero effect. It does not matter who prays. It does not matter if we pray to God, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, Ra or any other human god. It does not matter what we pray about. If we perform scientific, double-blind tests on prayer, and if the prayers involve something concrete and measurable (for example, healing people with cancer), we know that there is zero effect from prayer. Every single "answered prayer" is nothing more than a coincidence. Both scientific experiments and your everyday observations of the world show this to be the case every single time.
    For example, this article says:

    One of the most scientifically rigorous studies yet, published earlier this month, found that the prayers of a distant congregation did not reduce the major complications or death rate in patients hospitalized for heart treatments.
    And:
    A review of 17 past studies of ''distant healing," published in 2003 by a British researcher, found no significant effect for prayer or other healing methods.
    This CNN article from March, 2006 discusses the fact that the same conclusion was reached in another study:

    In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.
    A peer-reviewed scientific study published in 2001 did indicate that prayer works. According to this article:
    "On October 2, 2001, the New York Times reported that researchers at prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had discovered something quite extraordinary. Using virtually foolproof scientific methods the researchers had demonstrated that infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them. The study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. Even the researchers were shocked. The study's results could only be described as miraculous."
    This study was later proven to be completely fraudulent. However, everyone who cut out the original article in the NYTimes and posted it on their refrigerators still has that article as "proof" that prayer works.
    This article entitled A prayer before dying uncovers another case where a "scientific study" of prayer is unmasked as fraudulent.

    It's not just prayer that is ineffective. Not even a hopeful attitude helps. According to this article:

    A positive attitude does not improve the chances of surviving cancer and doctors who encourage patients to keep up hope may be burdening them, according to the results of research released Monday.
    The dictionary defines the word "superstition" in this way:

    An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome. [ref]
    The belief in prayer is a superstition. When a prayer appears to be answered, it is a coincidence. Quite simply, prayer has absolutely no effect on the outcome of any event. The "power of prayer" is actually "the power of coincidence."
    Prayer does not work because God is completely imaginary.

    Understanding the Rationalizations
    You can find many believers who will say, "The reason why scientific experiments fail to detect God is because God must remain hidden. He does not answer prayers if he knows that he will be detected."

    In order to see the truth, you need to accept that this explanation is silly. If God must remain hidden, then he cannot answer any prayers. Any "answered prayer" would expose God.

    The whole notion that "God" must remain "hidden" is a total cross-threading of religious doctrine. On the one hand, believers will say that "God wrote the Bible, God incarnated himself and died on the cross for us, and God answers millions of prayers on earth every day." Then in the next breath they will say, "God must remain hidden." God obviously cannot "remain hidden" and "incarnate himself." These two items are mutually exclusive. Therefore, the explanation that "God must remain hidden" is impossible. As soon as you accept how impossible it is, you can begin to see see that God is imaginary.

    In order to see the truth, you need to accept the fact that the scientific evidence is accurate and irrefutable. We have scientifically proven that God does not answer any prayers on earth. Every single "answered prayer" is nothing more than a coincidence.

    We can see reality by looking at a simple example. Imagine that the rate of remission for some particularly nasty type of cancer is 5%. That means that if 20 people get this type of cancer, it is almost always fatal. Only one in twenty of the people who get the disease will survive. Knowing this, you can see what happens if we actually analyze prayer:

    20 believers contract the disease
    All of them have read James 5:15, so all of them pray.
    19 of them die
    The one who lives proclaims, "I prayed to the Lord and the Lord answered my prayers! My disease is cured! It is a miracle! I KNEW God would answer my prayers!"
    You never hear about the 19 who died. No one ever writes about them in a magazine. "Person prays, then dies" is not a great headline. And since they are dead, you will never hear from any of these people.
    Therefore, if you don't look at all the facts around the "answered prayer," and you only hear about the one out of twenty prayers that succeed, it appears that prayer is successful.
    The fact is, believers who pray die from this disease at exactly the same rate as people who do not.
    We can see the reality of this situation simply by opening our eyes and looking at the data. But we do have to open our eyes -- We have to look at both the successes AND the failures of prayer to see the reality of our world. When we take a scientific approach and we do look at both sides, we see what is really happening. God does not answer any prayers because God is imaginary.
     
    #312     Aug 14, 2006
  3. bsmeter

    bsmeter



    Definitely not!

    Look closely at your physical reality

    What is it made up of? An amalgamation of Quarks, leptons and mesons? No, break matter down further? eventually you reach a sub-sub-atomic level whose boundary lies between physical existence and non-existence.

    When you put a thick card board between 2 magnets, the magnets will still stick together or repel each other depending on the polarity. What's magnetic force? does a magnetic field have a physical reality? no not really. The RESULT of the magnetic field manifests into an observable physical reality.

    Once you grasp the above 2 concepts. I will provide a third concept.

    How does you will manifest itself into physical reality? example you're hungry. Does the food fly straight into your blood stream? No. There is a process in how the will manifests into reality. In the case of the example dealing with hunger. there is the 1) subconscious reality - I am hungry, then 2) the Will takes over 3) you get up from your chair and walk over to the kitchen and make yourself a snack, which you proceed to eat and digest and then absorb into your blood stream.

    So, the third concept is the most important concept to grasp.

    In the process of being Hungry and the act of eating , the process began with a conscious THOUGHT - Hey I'm hungry!. This thought manifested itself into your WILL to get up and use your physical reality to satisfy your conscious thought.

    ie conscious Energy ---> Thought ----> Manifested Will
    ----> Physical reality

    Then the question becomes:

    What is conscious THOUGHT? what is it made up of? does it have a physical boundary? And the answer is, No it does not have a physical boundary. Like the magnetic field, its existence manifests itself by re-orienting the physical reality around it!!!! Humans are NOT inherently physical entities, but conscious THOUGHT manifested and limited by the physical reality it can manipulate.


    So That is the essence of God!! GOD IS ALL PERMEATING INFINITE supra-conciousnes ENERGY who manifests Himself in the physical form as a living universe. When God says He created man in his image, fools think God looks like a human, when what He really means is that He created man as consciousness ENERGY ( similar to Himself) manifested in the 3D human body.

    Most people get confused by the concept that God can be everywhere!! Simultaneously!! It's because they extrapolate their own limited physical reality backwards into their consciousness. Therefore their conscious energy becomes limited by their physical boundary.

    ie Physical reality ----> Manifested Will ----> Thought
    ---> conscious Energy


    The reason you can not grasp this concept of God is because you are LIMITED by your belief system which is limited by your narrow physical construct. Your reality of touch goes only as far as the tips of your finger, when in fact if you eliminate the physical limitation, your reality of touch would scale up to be infinite!! Therefore it is absurd to use your limited belief system to measure the infinite.

    How do you measure a living conscious magnetic field that encompasses, permeates and creates every single physical manifestation of the entire universe?


    Of all the religious texts, the Hindu Upanishads state it best and most eloquently:


    Eye cannot see him, nor words reveal him;
    by the senses, austerity, or works he is not known.
    When the mind is cleansed by the grace of wisdom,
    he is seen by contemplation--the One without parts.

    Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.8
     
    #313     Aug 14, 2006
  4. bsmeter

    bsmeter


    Another blatant falsehood.

    Once you understand the concept of a Living Conciousness you'll begin to understand the above statement.

    You've lead yourself into a dark abyss which keeps on getting darker because you're looking for answers following the wrong path.

    Try prayer, it really does help. Prayer is a focused projection of your own conciousness into the infinite supra-conciousness from which all matter is manifested from. If sent along the correct pathway, the supra-conciousness will guide your own conciousness to manifest the reality you want. In your case I suspect you're praying for ( or at ) the wrong thing.
     
    #314     Aug 14, 2006
  5. so god is nature and nature is god. of course christians would say that their god will burn you in hell for believing such a thing.
     
    #315     Aug 14, 2006
  6. bsmeter

    bsmeter


    God is not nature. You're stuck with a physical analogy because that is what your perception and therefore the construct of you logic derives from. He is the Supra-Concious energy construct which permeates nature and out of which the physical reality of nature is manifested. His existence can only be known by observing that which He creates.

    Your analogy is like saying the energy field between two magnets is made up of electrons (nature) when in fact the energy field is not the electrons, it's just that we know there is a field by observing and measuring the action of the field on the physical reality, ie the measurement of current lets us know that the electrons have been manipulated by the magnetic field.
     
    #316     Aug 14, 2006
  7. hcour

    hcour Guest

    At last! Genuinely inspirational words in this thread from a truly enlightened and spiritual person!

     
    #317     Aug 14, 2006
  8. bsmeter

    bsmeter





    If you understand the concept of a living Concious energy, we might as well delve into the very construct of the living conciousness.

    It is constructed of 3 parts

    Light Dark Light


    In our limited physical reality it is all too easy to get lost in the darkness when we do a little bit too much hard drinking!! :D
     
    #318     Aug 14, 2006
  9. you guys are funny. you claim we are all too limited to know if god really exists. we are to just take the word of enlightened people such as yourself.

    you are describing superstition: su·per·sti·tion (sû'pər-stĭsh'ən)
    n.
    An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.

    A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance.
     
    #319     Aug 14, 2006
  10. stu

    stu

    In-between "existence and non-existence" what is that exactly ? Something either exists or does not.
    When you try to describe something as "in-between existence and non-existence", it is rather obvious it would exist there , so it could not be "in-between".
    Were god to exist, god would have existence and would depend on existence. There is no "in-between".
     
    #320     Aug 14, 2006