The Workermonkey

Sunday, October 24, 2004

I am NOT restarting the God arguements here 

# posted by DJ Booze Piñata @ 10/24/2004 11:44:00 AM

Saw an interesting lil' tv special, figured i'd share (cuz if i type it down, i'll prolly remember it better).
You hear about how religion helps people with this kind of physio-phycho healing response, si? Like those articles that say people who pray often manage to come out of illnesses quicker. I guess it's to the extent of getting rid of the stress that negatively affects things.
In an interview with this doc (i forget which...he worked w/ the dhali lama for decades. the one documenting monks who heat thier body temps.) the doc said that it's not religion itself that triggers the relaxation response of prayer, but 2 things:

- the repetition of a word, phrase, sound, or movement (rosary, buddhist chants, etc (3rd century christian nomads around Egypt curled into fetal position and rocked back and forth on thier feet chanting Jesus. bwa haha))

- the disregarding of distracting thoughts as they come in so you keep some kind of purity of focus.

So the healing power of prayer can be boiled down not to the God or spirituality itself, but to the concentration on a single idea for a period of time - positive thinking. Every single culture in the documented history of the world has something like this. Every fucking one. So there must be some merit, even if there is no God.

Hail Warcraft III, full of grace. My thoughts are with thee.

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