How GOD Changes Your Mind
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I was wondering if anybody here ever read or listen to Andrew Newberg,M.D. , he's a leading neuroscientist, from the University of Pennsylvania, anyway he claims that 'Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.' - 'Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love.' - ' Fundamentalism, in and of itself, can be personally beneficial, but the predjudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.' - 'Intense prayer and meditation lastingly change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality.', and by the time that I was on chapter 2, I had had enough of this clown, he seems blind to all of the harm in irrational thinking, tell me if I'm missing something here ?
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I don't believe he has real evidence for most of those claims. Meditation - not necessarily spiritual or religious - has been associated with reduction in stress. But the "just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process" is - as far as I am aware - totally unfounded. Reduction in stress may or may not contribute to reduction in illness and/or aging, but some stress is necessary for good health as well. Something about not being a slug - or words to that effect in some article I read.
Thanks for the review. I'll be sure to skip checking out a copy.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I may never heard of him (and apparently I did not miss anything), but what I think in 'real' terms he meant was that you are relaxed, calm and substantially "good" you have less problems, even physically. If you let yourself be dominated by anger and stress you body will feel it, expacially your heart.
Yes, security, compassion and love may be there, depending on the personality. But that's not all.
There should be a study somewhere how contemplating an illogical dogma shuts down the rationally thinking neocortex in people's brain, making people brainwashed. Furthermore, listening to a charismatic and assertive speaksman (typically a preacher, but it works universally) does pretty much the same thing, it again shuts down our frontal rational brain, in favor of the more primitive emotional brain. Usually the mild hypnosis wears off when we get home, but if believers get this brain massage regularly.... god help them.
The real question is, how much are these feelings belief-exclusive, i.e. how much remains of them when it comes to daily life around non-believers.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
MAY slow down the aging process? So it also may not. In other words he is saying something meaningless. There are two many factors involved in aging and you cannot isolate such a thing. When he gets it down to 5 minutes a day for mediation and can prove it WILL stop the aging process then let me know. I am a busy guy and don't have 12 minutes to spare on a "may be".
Some form of meditation just feels better like a walk in nature, etc. I don't need any promises around it.
You got to do a whole lot of ignoring reality to only imagine only a loving god, even santa claus can get pissed at you. It is yin and yang. A loving god gives rise to an angry god. No god solves the whole issue.
Sounds like a big contradiction to me. What is the personal benefit? You can be a dick to others and tell them they are going to hell if they don't believe like you do? That self-righteous feeling is a benefit? Shit, I guess my brain is permanently damage because I spent too many years at that well. My dain is sooooo bramaged.
Your review leads me to believe this doctor wants to say nothing, prove nothing, walk the line not to offend anyone and sell some books.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
May slow down that aging process? Jumping on the train here, that is fairly complete twaddle. Relatively modern twaddle at that.
Look, 150 years ago, not too many people were interested in not becoming old. Rather the opposite was the case. Things like not dying young from infectious disease or accidents was where it was at. At least in the developed world, the effort has paid off about as well as can be expected. Today, the average life span is about twice what it used to be. At the cost of getting old.
Hell but if anyone really knows anything about slowing down the aging process, then there should be some statistical group of fairly old people who are as healthy as people half their age. If there are, then they must be hiding from the rest of us. Certainly, my doctor is a fairly old man.
Mind you, the whole meditation thing does have some merit to it if you can pull it off safely. Life is clearly better for those of us who can go for a long walk in the woods or whatever else turns you on. But so too can be the effect of leading an exciting life with all of the risks attendant to that. You can get hurt really badly doing exciting stuff but it is damned fun.
That and the whole being a fundy can lead to brain damage thing sounds suspect as well. Part of me wants to say “Well yes, obviously” but another part of me wants to know “OK, which fundies are signing up to hop in an fMRI machine to prove the matter?”
Sure, being a fundy leads to lose a quarter of Sunday mornings and can cause you to lose 10% of your income. On the face of matters, you would have to have some serious problems to be involved with that but that does not automatically mean testable brain damage. I think that more likely, the good doctor is into a mild for of religion and he scratched his head at the more extreme aspects just like the rest of us. Except that Doctor Newberg actually has access to the facilities to do those studies if he is all that interested.
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Well, when I saw that he was "a leading Neuroscientist" from the University of Pennsylvanian, I thought that he would be good source for information that I was looking for, anyhow, when I read the first chapter, I thought "how can this so called scientist ignore so much other evidence that contradicts his hypothesis" what a clown, and also living so close to the University of Pennsylvanian, I was hoping that a local man does good for society, nope ! this clown should be exposed as a fraud and runned out of town, yeah he turned out to be just another Deepak Chopra.
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"God" doesn't do shit to my head except agitate me somewhat... namely from idiots who replace every other word in their speech with "the lord" and "baby jesus".
Unless of course it's Clint Eastwood doing the proselytizing. Then it's merely entertaining.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)