God: No magic required

[max-greece]

Certitude is poison.

Human consciousness is simply organized bioelectrical energy, contained in a mass of mush the size of a loaf of bread. The universe is mostly dark energy and dark matter. String theory posits 11 dimensions, of which we can perceive only 4. Our own universe may be simply one in a trillion (or infinite) number of universes in the multiverse. Other universes may have different physical laws, with different physical constants, not allowing the formation of matter, but allowing for the formation of exotic forms of energy.

If the bioelectric energy of the human brain can organize itself into consciousness, then how can we be certain that the dark energy of our universe and/or the exotic energy of other universes cannot do so, also? Imagine the power of the energy (dark or otherwise) of an entire universe, organized into sentience. It's staggering.

Why think in this way? Good peer review medical research shows that spiritual and religious people are happier and actually live longer than atheists -- an average of two years longer, which would be the population effect of curing all forms of cancer.

How could prayer work, assuming, just for sake of argument, that a universal sentience (let's call it "God") really does exist? Pretty simple; you've seen the MRI images of the human brain, when it is thinking different types of thoughts. One day, I'm sure that we'll have a machine which can translate MRI (and externally monitored EEG and who knows what other sorts of imaging) signals into language. A sentient dark energy, permeating every atom of the universe, would have no trouble doing far more.

Does "God" answer prayers? The evidence is, of course, inconclusive. God may not grant world peace or even cure medical illnesses (much less help Olympic athletes win medals), but virtually every believer has enough personal evidence to convince said believer that "God" helps in the areas of personal courage, comfort, resilience, conviction, morality, and so on.

Religion, like a 9 mm semi-automatic firearm or an SUV or even an iPad can certainly be misused. But a "good" religion, properly "applied" is an unambiguous blessing to those so blessed. This need have nothing at all to do with the Bible, heaven, hell, Satan, Mary, Muhammed, or Jesus. Religion basically comes down to rejecting smug certitude in favor of personal curiosity and finding, for oneself, whether it's possible to believe in God and to find a way to communicate with God, which is meaningful to the individual in question.

- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Well enough people have already requested citations for me to ignore the need for them.

In the meantime there are a few missing links in your arguments - actually rather a lot.

"Imagine the power of the energy (dark or otherwise) of an entire universe, organized into sentience."

Well, yes, but we have no evidence that this is the case, we are just imagining aren't we....

Then, even if it were demonstrably, the case, you would have to ask what possible interest such a sentience would have in us, at any level, let alone at a personal, prayer answering one?

What indications are there that we would ever be able to interpret MRI's into thoughts? Where did you get that from?

The effectiveness of prayer? Well, the research that I have found shows no link but YMMV. In the meantime it might be worth looking up the effectiveness of the Placebo as that, as opposed to prayer, has definitively been shown to have a positive effect.

That prayer doesn't even appear to be able to manage that level of positive result doesn't augur well.

"Good religion." Yeah right, and there's so much of it about.

What you are saying is that ALL religion can be good. Wonderful - but that does mean that every religion is wrong when it tells you that all the other religions are wrong (their's is correct of course).

The follower of any religion is atheist in terms of all other religions.

Atheism, therefore, equals theism-1.

And that's a bad thing?