Posts by behemot

wednesday, 2 december 2009. five people who stared at the sun in the hope they might be witnessing religious apparitions are being treated for serious eye damage, a top eye surgeon has revealed.. .

reports of pilgrims to knock seeing the sun dance in the sky and changing colour indicate serious eye damage.. .

Knock 'miracle' - I could see, now I am blind

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

Five people who stared at the sun in the hope they might be witnessing religious apparitions are being treated for serious eye damage, a top eye surgeon has revealed.

Reports of pilgrims to Knock seeing the sun dance in the sky and changing colour indicate serious eye damage.

And a number of people who attended the recent religious gathering at the Catholic shrine are reporting symptoms of damaged retinas, said Dr Eamonn O'Donoghue, of University College Hospital in Galway.

Dr O'Donoghue revealed he is treating five patients for serious eye injuries caused by staring at the sun at recent gatherings at Knock organised by Dublin "spiritual healers" Joe Coleman and Keith Henderson.

And he has warned those planning to attend a similar gathering this Saturday that they risk damaging their eyes if they stare at the sun for any length of time.

Dr O'Donoghue's patients were part of the 10,000-strong crowd that visited the Marian Shrine in October in the hope of seeing an apparition.

They have since suffered a serious condition called solar retinopathy, caused by the sun's rays burning into the central part of the eye's retina.

Victims have suffered 50pc vision loss which seriously impairs basic abilities such as reading and driving.

Dr O'Donoghue said that it was "monstrous" to mislead people into thinking that altered vision and effects, such as seeing the sun dance, were a religious apparition when they were classic symptoms of solar retinopathy.

"If it did not have such monstrous effects you could describe it as a cheap circus trick," he said.

Dr O'Donoghue, a renowned opthalmic surgeon who also lectures in NUI Galway and works on vision-aid schemes in developing countries, warned that many others could have suffered similar damage to their eyes. And he fears that children attending the next event will suffer loss of vision as they are particularly vulnerable to sun damage. He warned pilgrims that they could accumulate further problems if they repeated the practice of staring at the sun at the next gathering.

"Any person who has any sort of eye problem would be well advised to give this a very wide berth," he said.

While some of those who have damaged their vision may recover some of their sight in the short term, the damage this has done could cause serious sight problems as they age, Dr O'Donoghue said.

He warned that people would be doing "grievous bodily harm" to themselves if they insisted on staring at the sun in the hope of seeing visions.

Although the Catholic Church warned against attending, some 10,000 pilgrims attended a gathering at Knock on October 31 in the hope of seeing a vision of the Blessed Virgin -- the mother of God according to Catholic doctrine.

Mr Coleman, of Ballyfermot, Dublin, has again predicted an apparition for this week.

The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, and the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, have both appealed to Catholics to stay away from the event.

Mr Coleman was unavailable for comment last night.

source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/knock-miracle--i-could-see-now-i-am-blind-14582942.html#ixzz0YhhSa3Tg

Let Us Make God in Our Image

by behemot in

jw
friends

a study by researchers from chicago university and monash university in melbourne, published in the current issue of pnas (proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the usa) shows that believers tend to assume that god thinks what they themselves think: neuroimaging studies demonstrate that reasoning about their god's beliefs activates the same brain areas associated with self-referential thinking.

see abstract of the essay here:.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/01/0908374106.

behemot

A study by researchers from Chicago University and Monash University in Melbourne, published in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA) shows that believers tend to assume that God thinks what they themselves think: neuroimaging studies demonstrate that reasoning about their God's beliefs activates the same brain areas associated with self-referential thinking. See abstract of the essay here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/01/0908374106

49

Are there any atheists that experienced demons atacks?

by outofthebox in

jw
friends

well?

.

behemot

I never experienced anything that could not be rationally explained one way or the other.

Even when I was a JW elder I never really believed the demons' stuff. I remember at times being called over in bro/sis houses who thought they were harassed by the demons and, while having to go through the search for "demonized" objects, feeling stupid and secretly wondering "what the f*** I am doing in here?"

Behe

56

Who believes in the POWER OF PRAYER?????

by whereami in

jw
friends

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lms2au476os.

behemot

"Look at all these votive gifts," Diagoras the atheist was told in the sanctuary of Samothrace, which houses the great gods who were famous for saving people from the dangers at sea. "There would be many more votives," the atheist unflinchingly retorted, "if all those who were actually drowned at sea had had the chance to set up monuments." - quoted in Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1996, page 141 (source: Diogenes Laertius, Life of the Philosophers, VI, 59)

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. - Steve Allen, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996

56

Who believes in the POWER OF PRAYER?????

by whereami in

jw
friends

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lms2au476os.

behemot

I don't. Good and bad things just happen to us no matter whether we pray or not. The belief that prayers are answered is just a delusion. From a statistical standpoint, given a large enough sample of prayers, even the improbable is bound to happen occasionally. And, given the existence of confirmation Bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) in our perception, we will notice these coincidences, yet fail to notice and count up the vastly larger number of unanswered prayers.

Behe

35

Ladies, How important is it for you to have a VERY clean home?

by asilentone in

jw
friends

.

behemot

asilentone,

Behemot, is your house a mess?

no, it's not ... I like tidiness actually ... but I clean to live, not live to clean.

Behe

3

36 Arguments for the Existence of God (and why they fail)

by behemot in

jw
friends

from the novel 36 arguments for the existence ofgod, the work of atheist philosopher and novelist rebecca newberger goldstein.. scroll down a bit (after chapter 1) and read the (non fictional) appendix where the 36 arguments are set out and sistematically debunked:.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein09/goldstein09_index.html.

(long but worth reading).

behemot

From the novel 36 Arguments for the Existence ofGod, the work of atheist philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

Scroll down a bit (after Chapter 1) and read the (non fictional) Appendix where the 36 arguments are set out and sistematically debunked:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein09/goldstein09_index.html

(long but worth reading)