You can read entire blog … “Pope urges prayer, action to comfort AIDS patients” and the ensuing comments, at: http://thegreatone22.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/pope-urges-prayer-action-to-comfort-aids-patients/#comment-178
Some small excerpts from TGO’s Blog directed at me:
“…In response to GhostRider’s commentary. No, the reason I do not believe in prayer is not a result of praying for something and not receiving it. I don’t believe in prayer because I do not believe that there is a God, much less a God who “listens” to our wishes. If there was a God it would be quite clear to the objective observer that he/she/it could care less about humans on this small rock we call Earth; not when one considers the suffering mankind has endured since the beginning of time. This is certainly something which an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful Being could no doubt have prevented…
…as to the “energy” or “force” that supposedly helped GhostRider recover from his near-fatal (not fatal since he’s obviously alive) accident…
…During difficult times, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll take my chances with people; family, friends, doctors, etc., and leave God and invisible “forces” to others…”
TGO, beloved yet naïve, friend of mine. You know very well that Webster and I had a fallout decades ago and we are rarely on the same page when it comes to definitions, but when writing, “fatal accident”, I was using my poetic license. I did experience “clinical death” – Check with Webster on what that is since you and Webster are like married or something – and that’s as fatal as I would have wanted it to be. Obviously, I am alive as you point out and if I chose the scientifically correct description of my experience, instead of the dramatic, “fatal accident”, I would have written that I had a near death experience – defined as a phenomenon in which a person clinically dies or comes very close to death only to be revived and then can recall in great detail stories of spiritual worlds and other supernatural events (since you are a stickler for using the definitions as chosen by the “flock”).
As you stated about, “…taking my chances with people; family, friends, etc. during difficult times…”, and as I recall, that’s exactly what I did – not a hard choice to make, or not a conscious choice at all being that I was in a coma – and as I also recall, it was those very people, the ones that you state you would, during difficult times take your chances with, the friends, family members, that were doing all the “praying”. I myself was not doing any praying, unless you would construe the mantra that was repeating deep inside me, “I’ve got to get the hell out of this freakin place”, a prayer in and of itself – which it was – and as far as I’m concerned, being that I am not a religious person, I myself was not directing that “prayer” at God. BTW, I find it funny how you group God in with things like, microwaves, gamma radiation, the wind, and even love and hate, when you state, “I’ll leave God and invisible forces to others”. As for the prayers of family and friends and where they were being directed to, is insignificant and not of my concern. For all I care, they could have been praying to, “the man on the moon”, the results were that I did come back to life and recovered and I appreciate and love them dearly for having prayed and creating some sort of “energy” that was not only experienced as reality by me but kept sustaining my struggle during that entire time and I suspect, that even you TGO, being the friend that you are, and against your radicalized atheistic nature, in some sub-conscious way that went undetected by your “self”, prayed for me too.
TGO, I understand that to a radical atheist as yourself, just as to many others, anything with the word prayer in it, is of a religious context and I’d like to point out that my interest in “prayer” does not lie in the religious or spiritual realms but in our actual and concrete reality. If we want to examine what prayer might be, we have to turn to an unlikely ally. No, not to God, or The Bible, not to the spiritual, not to any religion nor to anything in the supernatural or metaphysical realms, but to one of our own sciences: quantum physics. TGO, since I have known you, you have always thrown the supernatural, the metaphysical, and anything that you cannot grasp or comprehend, into a group with “ghosts”, “goblins”, etc. or just labeled it “Mumbo-Jumbo”. Let me take a quick moment for definitions here. BTW, these are not definitions according to me. There are as defined by the “flock”.
Metaphysics: A division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology… Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science… It is abstract philosophical studies: a study of what is outside objective experience… The philosophical study of being and knowing.
Supernatural: Of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially: of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil… Attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit).
Quantum physics: The study of matter and energy at the deepest and most subtle levels possible… The branch of physics based on quantum theory which is a theoretical basis of modern physics – it’s been with us since the late 1800’s and in 1900, physicist Max Planck presented his quantum theory to the German Physical Society – that explains the nature and behavior of matter and energy on the atomic and subatomic level.
As you can see, Quantum physics is not related to, nor has anything to do with the metaphysical or the supernatural. It isn’t Mumbo Jumbo although for a man as my own father and many from his generation and educational background, it might as well be. Is it spooky? I guess you could say it is. It freaked the hell out of one of the most brilliant minds to have ever existed: Albert Einstein. As brilliant as he was, I suspect Einstein was a bit of a skeptic. (At least in the way my Doctor describes a skeptic. In the field of medicine she sees a skeptic being, “A doctor who looks at the data – what is – and doesn’t believe it.” ). But to his credit he continued “tinkering” with these sciences and till his death, kept trying to discover what was missing that would unify, not disregard, quantum and classical physics. I am sure when the existence of a round instead of flat world was discovered, it was spooky as hell thinking you’d fall off when you rotated and were facing “down”.
First of all, prayer has to be one of the oldest pursuits of mankind. We can only assume that it has been with us as long as humans have been around. Prayer, even before language existed, was probably right on the tip of the tongue of the first caveman who heard thunder or saw lightning strike a tree.
I am not going to get into neither the metaphysical nor the supernatural realms to examine what prayer might be, nor does my interest in prayer lie in any of man’s religions. We will turn to quantum physics, one of the most rigorous and challenging sciences in existence. In the last twenty years, this science has been shaken to its very foundation by a series of startling discoveries.
Quantum physicists keep finding that certain kinds of feelings affect their own experiments. It is of course, known and accepted by quantum physicists that the observer of the experiment affects the experiment. This is a basic law of Quantum Mechanics. Researchers in microbiology have found, for example, that human feeling either tightens or loosens the stranding of human DNA on a microscopic slide outside the body. In other words, researchers would be looking through a microscope at DNA, and the quality of the feeling in the room, the observers’ feelings, would wind that DNA tighter, or would unwind it to a looser state.
Quantum science is beginning to bear out, through study and experimentation, this relationship between human emotion and feelings and the outer world. For example, recent research says the magnetic nature of human emotion is directly linked to weather patterns and the barometric pressure.
TGO, the material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, and, hey, there is nothing in my tiny, feeble, broken up and informal academic background preparing me for these kinds of relationships, on the other hand, they are showing up and are being recorded in our world today. Examples like the studies by Roger D. Nelson at Princeton Universe in his paper called, “Wishing for Good Weather: A Natural Experiment in Group Consciousness,” and also Lauri J. Robinson’s work at Franklin Pierce College, showing that human interaction with cloud formation/dissipation indicated results that were “significantly greater” than those predicted by chance.
Quantum physics seem very esoteric, as when a scientist explains how, on a subatomic level, it’s possible for a particle to be in two places at the same time, or to disappear into or appear from what could be an infinity of invisible dimensions. Or how, according to certain aspects of quantum physics, there’s really no reason why we shouldn’t be able to envision the future just as easily as we remember the past, since the past, present and future are all part of the same continuum.
According to Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specializes in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. “Maybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realize the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions,” he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.
Somewhat easier to grasp is the scientists’ consensus that the observable world is a kind of “matrix of energy,” in which our consciousness is a powerful force, and what we see internally is as “real” as what we view externally, and capable of altering that outer reality. So, maybe that is where the dynamics of prayer take place.
If Quantum physics shows us that we change the basic nature of matter just by thinking about it, maybe it’s the human mind that releases some sort of energy radiation that is capable of interacting directly with matter. And maybe, just maybe, “prayer” releases that energy that emanates from the human mind that has a direct effect on the environment.
Dr. Bryd, a cardiologist with San Francisco General Medical Center completed a research study involving 393 patients between August 1982 and May 1983. He divided the group into 192 patients who were prayed for, and 201 who were not prayed for. He reported that among other things, the people who were prayed for were five times less likely to develop pulmonary edema, pneumonia, or other post-surgical complications. They also died five times less often than the patients in the control group. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj1.html
Maybe that energy comes directly from our own “heart and soul” and is filtered through various parts of the mind. Or maybe that energy is what some call the, “divine creative force”.
TGO, if you want to be narrow minded, so be it. It really won’t make a difference or change reality. This whole area that we discuss periodically is not simply based on “beliefs” to me. I have lived it. Experienced it firsthand. It is as much reality as the reality of your experience reading this, or having spoken to me earlier today. I have been in that a kind of “matrix of energy”. Bathed in it. Soaked it in.
And ever since, I can’t shake a “feeling” that life here on Earth is a gift, not a test. It has purpose and meaning unique to each of us. We each have a “mission” to bring a sort of energy that is unique in each of us, to life. And we each chose to experience this human life in order to grow, evolve, and expand who we really are.
Happy Holidays to All
GhostRider / OneLove
GhostRider & Friends - architects of consciousness 