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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (252776)	6/14/2014 9:01:26 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 540820

<<"Unfortunately, people often read about things like the Inquisition, conflicts during the Protestant Reformation, or a scandal involving a church leader and take that as evidence against the existence of God." That's ridiculous. You don't need evidence for the non-existence of God. What you need is proof, any proof, that he, she or it exists. Proof is sorely lacking- so you've got something called "belief". Please don't confuse that with facts... Well said. You have that one down pat-lol!

To: epicure who wrote (252776)	6/15/2014 8:02:32 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 540820

Many important workings of the cosmos are categorized as "natural phenomenon" or "forces of nature". Gravity, for example, is invisible and not really defined. We know what we know about it by inference. An apple breaks free and falls to the ground. We see the effect of gravity even though we can't see gravity itself. The same is true of electromagnetism. Defined as another "class of physical phenomenon" which isn't much of a definition in and of itself and kind of has a supernatural ring to it. Our proof of electromagnetism is in the things mankind has managed to do with it. It was the harnessing of it that led the creation of the first motors. Man did not create electromagnetism itself. Man created things that use it. Electric charges and magnetism are just always there, parts of the physical world waiting to be found and used. Many people, inc. myself, see God as a force in nature, ready to be found and used. And people do just that. They make the transcendent connection and use the power they get back to create things. They create better versions of themselves. They create organizations such as the Salvation Army or the huge network of Catholic Charities. For me, this is proof enough, although I agree it is very different from a lab experiment. Scientifically speaking, there's no way thus far to prove or disprove God. I'm confused that invisibility seems to somehow disprove God. I can't see why that's a deal-breaker considering most of the cosmos is invisible to the naked eye, but so be it. Getting back to the idea that the existence of something can be known inferentially, there are plenty of statistics concerning the behavior of people who are serious about religion and active in church work. But there are also some things in the fields of biology and psychiatry that are thought provoking. In the realm of scientific evidence, here's a link to a recent study. Actually, I'm going to quickly post that link and another in subsequent posts. I seem to have forgotten how to navigate SI or it's Windows 8 or my old brain. If I leave what I'm writing to go fetch a link, I lose the post.

To: epicure who wrote (252776)	6/15/2014 8:08:47 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540820

sciencedaily.com Prayer/meditation changes brain structure.

To: epicure who wrote (252776)	6/15/2014 8:22:40 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540820

I'm pretty sure that almost all religous groups recommend fasting. In our family, we fast once and month and give the money we would have spent on food, to a church welfare fund. The whole church fasts on the same day. But we also fast when asking for spiritual insight, a common practice to other religions, too. So this article is huge to me, and we're already planning to try it as a family next month. We'll be visiting the home of a daughter who has had chemo. medicalnewstoday.com