Prayers or doctors...

There is a saying - "Belief kills and belief cures."

Basically, if you believe in the power of prayer, it can help you - if you don't, it won't. Praying for the winning lottery ticket won't work (I speak from experience there) but in other, more personal matters, it can and does. It is simplistic to write off the power of prayer if you don't believe. Confidence is very powerful and the body reacts positively to it. If you are ill and you have confidence that you will recover, a huge portion of that battle has already been won. Prayer has played a huge role in Fab's recovery to date but that in no way lessens the importance of medicine and its' practitioners.

largehat wrote:

Copper Dragon wrote:Praying only makes the person that is doing the praying feel better.

Yeah, that's why Muamba's fiance has said that Muamba has felt all other people's prayers.

Looks like he's found a new career, if he can't kick a football about again that is.

wanderlust wrote:Stick with the facts.
Fans, players and others around the world prayed for Fabrice and he seems to be on the road to recovery.
I had a mate who had a heart attack but very few people knew about it and therefore few prayers were said. He died.
Top notch statistical evidence clearly proving that prayer works.

Good one. I presume that is a joke.
Anecdotal evidence is great isn't it.
It reminds me of the Homoeopathy man who claimed that he didn't like scientific tests of Homoeopathy because "it never works"!
Millions of people prayed when Diana crashed and she didn't survive.
My brother cracked his head open and had part of his brain removed. Coma for over a week. We didn't pray. He lived. Proof that prayer does not work by your logic.

Keegan wrote:There is a saying - "Belief kills and belief cures."

Basically, if you believe in the power of prayer, it can help you - if you don't, it won't. Praying for the winning lottery ticket won't work (I speak from experience there) but in other, more personal matters, it can and does. It is simplistic to write off the power of prayer if you don't believe. Confidence is very powerful and the body reacts positively to it. If you are ill and you have confidence that you will recover, a huge portion of that battle has already been won. Prayer has played a huge role in Fab's recovery to date but that in no way lessens the importance of medicine and its' practitioners.

I have a couple of things to say to that. What about the believers who do pray every day, and the a tsunami hits, they prey some more and then die anyway. And then me, who doesn't pray. Doesn't die.

Secondly, to your second point. " If you are ill and you have confidence that you will recover, a huge portion of that battle has already been won." - That is called self help. Or positive thinking. It has nothing to do with the intervention of God. Just to clarify, my OP was about the intervention of a god through prayer.

largehat wrote:

Copper Dragon wrote:Praying only makes the person that is doing the praying feel better.

Yeah, that's why Muamba's fiance has said that Muamba has felt all other people's prayers.

Oh well it must be true then if he could "feel" them. I stand corrected.

jayjay23 wrote:I have a couple of things to say to that. What about the believers who do pray every day, and the a tsunami hits, they prey some more and then die anyway. And then me, who doesn't pray. Doesn't die.

Secondly, to your second point. " If you are ill and you have confidence that you will recover, a huge portion of that battle has already been won." - That is called self help. Or positive thinking. It has nothing to do with the intervention of God. Just to clarify, my OP was about the intervention of a god through prayer.

Believing in God doesn't mean that he will do as you ask simply because you pray, you are here to do His will. If He chooses to do something, He will.

You think prayer accomplishes nothing - that's fine, but what I was trying to get across to you is that even if God doesn't exist, the idea that he does can cause self help or positive thinking that facilitates a better environment for achievement.

Therefore, if thinking that God exists and is a tangible force capable of making us better than we are, is a positive thing - how does it profit you to think otherwise? I've shown how I benefit from believing in God - how do you benefit from not believing?

Angry Dad wrote:Who created the doctors?

Their parents by having sex - who createdx their parents, well their parents dis and so on and so on.



We evolved from apes, which evolved from something else which evolved from something else.. which we all came from primordial soup which was mixture of chemicals due to originally the explosion of an old sun etc etc etc





In other words, no God or other supreme being.... It was the doctors that help save Muamba!

Where did that old sun come from?

If you actually just sit and think about "the big bang" it actually starts to hurt your brain.

Science doesn't have all the answers, but to just say "god did it" when we all know the "where did god come from" question will obviously be posed is extremely narrow minded IMO.

Evolution enhanced by science. It's the new religion. One hundred years from now people who believe that Jesus fed thousands of people with a basket of stale bread and a few anchovies, will be terminated in the womb.

The universe is endlessly fascinating, i can read about the solar system for ages without getting bored, it's amazing.

to just say "god did it" about something so wondrous is so elementary.

Charles Darwin was probably nearer the mark than Derek Acorah, Doris Stokes or David Icke.

''In effect he was dead in that time,'' Dr Tobin said. ''Fabrice was in a type of cardiac arrest where the heart is showing lots of electrical activity but no muscular activity.

''It's something that often responds to drugs and shocks. Now heaven knows why, but Fabrice had, in total, 15 shocks. He had a further 12 shocks in the ambulance.''

And this...

The feelings were just as acute when Muamba grasped Tobin's hand for the first time. Indeed, the Zaire-born player's entire recovery has been described as ''miraculous'' by Dr Andrew Deaner, the cardiologist and Tottenham fan who leapt from his seat in the crowd and rushed onto the pitch to help.

''If you're going to use the term miraculous, I guess it could be used here,'' he said.

This doesn't sound like the medical practitioners who actually worked on Fabrice have ruled God out of the picture as you guys have, but I'm not here to preach. The bits in bold are just to make it absolutely clear that with all the medical knowledge and experience that both man have, they are unable to explain through science, why Fabrice is alive today.

I just thank God that help was at hand in the person of Dr. Andrew Deaner who coincidentally was in the stands and near enough to get unto the pitch to help, and that Muamba is improving. You say science alone, the Doctors both say science and miracle. I side with the Doctors on this one.

Full story here.

There are two definitions to the word miraculous.

one, the spiritual one, and this

Highly improbable and extraordinary and bringing very welcome consequences.

I'll take a wild stab at which one i think the doctors meant.

but as always everyone is very welcome to draw their own conclusions to every day events, whether they want to thank god, or something else so be it.

There are three meanings to the word 'heaven' - one meaning a spiritual realm and the other simply means the sky. It is also a great song by Bryan Adams, but I'll leave it to you to determine what the Medic meant there as well.

It's a turn of phrase bud.

i say God knows and Jesus all the time, but i'm not religious in the slightest.

But if you're happy to think that a doctor using words of this ilk is somehow proof of the divine thats fantastic.

I suspect you misunderstand me. My point is that they cannot explain Fab still being alive purely through science. The thread title speaks to "Prayer or Doctors". If it is not purely down to Doctors, that leaves room for another explanation. That's all I'm saying - I don't think this thread will change any opinion or belief that is previously held by anyone that reads it.

I don't read it that way personally but fair do's.

for me, I'm not arrogant enough to say, "I'm certain," about the cosmos etc etc i just go with the evidence thats there.

If evidence of a divine creator is available to me i'd love to explore it, but right now it isn't. So for the time being i'll side with the science.

Keegan wrote:There are three meanings to the word 'heaven' - one meaning a spiritual realm and the other simply means the sky. It is also a great song by Bryan Adams, but I'll leave it to you to determine what the Medic meant there as well.

WTF.

By Keegan
...if thinking that God exists and is a tangible force capable of making us better than we are, is a positive thing - how does it profit you to think otherwise? I've shown how I benefit from believing in God - how do you benefit from not believing?

That is a good question Keegan.
I don't claim that I do benefit from not believing it or that anyone else doesn't benefit from believing. Just making that clear. People are welcome to believe what they like - so long as it does not affect me adversely.
I will now contradict myself a little.
When God believers claim their belief they are not doing so from a philosophical standpoint that they are happy to be better people due to a positive ignorance - they are claiming that a true god really exists and normally that he is a good god. Now this leads me to another point where I struggle to believe in a good god based on the horrific things we see every day. Believeing in such a deity I think could lead me to be a worse person. Perversely. However I am not ignorant enough to deny that I could be wrong nor do I claim to know the origin of the universe etc. I think my brain is getting muddled. It's late and there are too many things in my brain.