touchy subject i know...

[loopylou6]

but what does everyone think about what the dream pyschic has to say about madeleines dissapearance?

I actually think prayer is a hideous concept. HOw is it supposed to work? God sees two sick children, one is prayed for and one is not, so he picks the one with the most religious mates to live, and condemns the other to die? He lets you find a parking space and stops someone else getting it?

If God is a power inside us, then what are people 'worshipping' and praying to?

i meant a world without any religion

Shrinkinglily, love your post. I agree

People are totally at liberty to go through life without any "beliefs" if that is what they wish and what feels right. It won't change what happens to them when "all of this" (this "life thing" that we tend to think of as the be-all and end-all but is, in fact, very probably only the tinest aspect of "all that is" and all that we will experience and participate in) is over. None of us are any more "holier" than each other.. even the Pope! We are all whole. And we are all the same. And we are all part of one collective. (More God-like than Borg-like I would hope ). But we are all here to experience different things and follow different paths, or completely abandon our "chosen paths" if we choose!. Some of us are not here to concern ourselves with the spiritual aspects of "all that is", at least not this time. So we turn on backs on it and concern ourselves with other, more earthly matters. There is nothing "wrong" with this. The main thing we are "here" to do is relate to each other anyway. That's what this realm of the relative is for. That's why we are individualised.

Ho hum.. back to my essay.

I wish god would smite those parked in our allocated parking spaces with vaginal warts, even if they do not possess a vagina.

yes maybe god could infuse the p's of said P&T's with common sense.

Aloha, the way I see it, people worship because they want to. Not because God requires it. If it helps them to express their joy of life and living then so be it. (As long as they're not hurting anyone; which of course some of them do in the name of religion.)

People may pray to God as "something outside themselves" but if God is "all that is" then He is something "without and within". A divine source than everything and everyone is a part of and that can be drawn on and "added to" what we already are.

If you consider each and every person's "life path" as part of a divine plan (even the dreadful and evil) that we have chosen for ourselves to experience and to evolve from (and for those that are affected by it to also evolve from, like ripples in a pond) that the concept of "one child living while one child dies" becomes a bit more understandable. Although if you resist the idea completely this will never make any sense.

Some people choose to see it all as describing pebbles on a beach. The beach is "God"; we are the pebbles. We are "here" to shine as brightly as we can and the more we shine the more beautfiful the beach (the collective) will become.

The beach IS beautiful but we haven't got the hang of all shining together, so it's nowhere near as beautful or as wonderful as it could be.

If you drive into the car park BELIEVING (not hoping, or yearning or even praying!) that there WILL be a space.. BELIEVE IT, KNOW it... there will BE one! It works for me. When I remember to do it!

I heard this at "motivation conference" thing I went to years ago. Nowt to do with religion. It was called Believing in the Parking God.

But without evidence, you can claim anything. You can claim that walking widdershins five times round a church will help you get pregnant. You can claim that not using certain drugs, but rather aspects of crystal "healing" and "hands-on" stuff will help people to get over illnesses. That's where it crosses over from ridiculous into actually dangerous.

There is n one, nebulous thing called "science". It's not a belief system, it's a word which encapsulates a number of doctrines, all of which fllow a strict evidence-based, peer-reviewed methodology. Science doesn't make people "do" things - as Aloha says, it's a way of questioning aspects of what we see around us. Religion, by contrast, seems to want to stunt this urge and make people happy to have easy "answers".

intergral to religeon is faith.

one can't have faithin something which can't be proven - if it can be

oh and BTW god has smited the car parking space thieves. they all have vaginal warts.

is that proof enough?

Again (probably 3rd or 4th time on here), I like to see overwhelming evidence, not proof.

I agree that beliefs held in faith can't be "proven", insofar as nothing can be proven totally 100%. This is obviously very convenient for believers, as they are free to spout any old nonsense without it eeding to be objectively supported and assessed.

But what you can do is provide evidence. A balance of more than 50% in favour would do me. Even if it wasn't in controlled conditions, it would be a good start for a proper debate. I never even get that.

What if you had a spiritual experience yourself UQD? Would you just assume you'd lost the plot?

Tell me what you might mean by "a spiritual experience" and I will try to answer.

UQD: Ok. Say you were sitting alone in the countryside and you suddenly become incredibly "aware" of everything; like somebody had turned up your "awareness thermostat" by about ten notches! All the colours looked brighter, you could hear sounds that insects were making all around; everything felt difference and "more".

Or..

A loved one who has passed away appeared to you. Very clearly. You KNOW it was not yout imagination.

Or..

You kept dreaming, night after night, of someone wo has passed away but who kept telling you the same thing; giving you an instruction of some kind. And you did it. And it changed everything for the better.

(I can provide more examples if you want.. )

You're probably going to say "well none of that has ever happened to me.. and I seriously doubt it ever would so it's irrelevant!".. but these things.. and others DO happen to perfectly ordinary people, and people without any "religious" or even spiritual leanings as well. There are books FULL of this stuff.

Are you suggesting that it ALL fabricated? That these people are ALL either liars or ALL delusional?

I used to walk along a beautiful piece of coast every day thinking and praying. On one occasion I was doing my walk and trying to make sense of things and it was sunny but also raining. When I turned round the corner I saw a huge double rainbow but it wasn't just the rainbow, it was two full huge circles of colour and all I could think was WOW and realised, as if I was being told, that even that was not the whole picture.
I don't know how that happened, something to do with the sea, sky, rain and sun but it was a spiritual experience for me.

Yup. I had something similar to number 1.

Seriously.

That's when I first discovered that I have a mild form of (cryptogenic focal) epilepsy. It's now controlled by medication and I have had nothing since.

Number 2 has never happened. I might assume it was a dream.

As for Number 3 - well, we dream about all sorts of things, people, situations. Dreams are the manifestations of the subconscious mind - you won't find too many scientists arguing about that. I think such things need to be set against the number of times you dream and don't act on things.

It's like coincidences. Oooh, what are the chances of meeting someone you know from home on holiday? Well, pretty high, actually. Given the number of people you know, it would be more extraordinary if this never happened.

The night before George Harrison died, I had a dream about George Harrison dying. But so what? He's a famous guy. He's often in the news. I may have been listening to the Beatles the week before. With 6 billion people on the planet and only 365 days in the year, it would be staggeringly UNLIKELY that, on any given day, nobody in the world had a dream about George Harrison. And equally unlikely that nobody would have a dream about a famous person dying. I've also had dreams about Scarlett Johannson dying, but last time I looked she was in the best of health. I don't intend to email her people and worry her about it.

As for the rest - who knows? My point is not that it is impossible to ascribe supernatural explanations to things if you wish to do so. You always can. My point is that the overwhelming balance of evidence is that such things do not exist. Given a choice between a supernatural explanation and a scientifically-plausible one, I will always go for the latter.

I've not killed it with that, have I?

No, its just moved onto a different plane......

Oh well, maybe the psychics can tell me how it's all going to end anyway. Save us the trouble.

You make me laugh

I'm glad I serve a purpose!