(January 16, 2014 at 9:20 am)(╯°◊°）╯︵ ══╬ Wrote: So, might as well not, then.
It's not that you lose anything if you do. In any case it's more about being able to endure hardship through faith rather than gain some kind of ticket to instant and great worldly success it doesn't work that way. What you get is a spiritual nourishment.
Quote:Or I must have read Revelation.
All life in the world/the universe will come to an end at some point you know. Not necessarily literally as Revelation described it but that's the subject it's dealing with. From an atheistic viewpoint this would be a disaster from a theistic viewpoint it's just the end of an era. I perhaps you could compare Revelation to Ragnorok in the Norse Eddas it's a similar kind of story. From the destruction a new world is reborn. It's possible the Norse Eddas were influenced by Christianity seeing as a Christian wrote them.
Quote:You implied that the placebo effect has an actual effect on aiding the healing the body, physically. It doesn't.
Yes it does, even if it just relieves symptoms/pain that would aid the body in recovery.
Quote:As the final emphasis noted, the placebo effect cannot cure people or make them live substantially longer.
It most certainly can make the difference between life and death, the mind a powerful thing as is the application of positive thinking. Though there is reasonable limit to what you can do this capability, you can't replace conventional medical treatment with it. Alternative medicine such as homeopathy probably helps people to utilize this aspect of mind over the material as apparently it does seem to work even though it shouldn't. You can stand to be a little less cynical about this.
Quote: It does, sometimes, make people feel better, which is great, but it has little demonstrable effect in terms of actually making people better.
It improves recovery time and survival rates studies have been done on this. We know it does work we don't really understand it in the materialist sense. If conscious is the byproduct of the material body then it probably shouldn't work.
Come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant.
