Everyone has that occasional moment of feeling somewhat unreal. To put it simply, it is normal because it is like a brain "hiccup." You usually are not aware of what brought that moment on, but usually there was some outside stimulus that is unconscious to you. Like the feeling of deja vu, it is a burp, just a bit of a disruption in how the brain perceives what is actually going on, and it just lasts for a minute.
Deja vu (the "I've been here before") feeling, by the way, is also easily explained. Let me address that because when it happens some people get all paranoid about its "meaning." Rather than a "burp" or a "hiccup" like unreal or alienated feelings, deja vu is a momentary case of misidentification by the brain. You know how you get a glimpse of someone in a crowd and think you know who it is, but then realize it is not he or she? Well, the reason humans have such superior intellect and brain capacity (compared to animals) is that human brains are built for speed, to do very rapid processing, and brains are wired to do very rapid "pattern matching." Thus one can see an automobile and not each and every time go, "Hmm, what is that object? It has wheels and an ignition and a passenger cab. Ah, it must be a car!" Imagine if you had to think all that through every time you saw an auto! Instead, your brain rapidly "pattern matches." Your brain has pictures stored within it of things you already know, and when you see something it quickly compares what you are seeing to what it has in storage. When it sees a match it assumes, but tells you with certainty, that it is what it is. Deja vu happens when something that you see, or are feeling, or experiencing matches very closely, but incorrectly, something in your brain's picture gallery and memory bank. So you have a "deja vu" feeling that you have been there before, but that is because your brain jumped to a conclusion of familiarity because it found a weak match with a portion of something you have already seen before, or felt, but would not at all think they are alike if someone asked you. Your brain-all brains-once in a while make mistakes. So that's the deja vu problem. Let's get back to the main topic of feelings of unreality or alienation.
Before I explain how the "burp" or "hiccup" occurs, let's start with a clean table of understanding how things work normally when one is a living being, in a state of being alive within a real world. As I've mentioned in my recent blog about addictions, you gain a lot of information and solid grounding in wisdom when you remember that humans and animals share common biology. Animals and humans both have to breathe, eat, ingest fluids, have bodies that are composed of hard and soft tissue, internal organs, a way to reproduce, a way to move and so forth. Humans are basically animals with really big brains and a body that promote agility. (By that I mean, imagine a really smart dinosaur; even if he was really smart, without clever little fingers etc I doubt he could ever build a computer microchip! :-)
So you have to observe animals to understand humans, yourself, since it is like looking in a mirror. Do animals ever doubt their reality? No, they do not; they never doubt their reality. Ha, I can hear you saying, "You can't prove that!" Yes I can. Time for that time honored but forgotten and abused talent called logic and reasoning.
If a living being doubts their reality, this causes confusion in their state of being, obviously, since the person, for that moment, is not even sure if he or she "is real" or is "really part of this world." When one has that "burp," one usually stops what one is doing and mulls it over. The normal response is to realize that while creepy and unpleasant, it is just a burp and move on. The goofy and all too common response is to get whack job cultish, and get together with other paranoid people and worry "what if we are all really movies being shown on a projector," or "what if I'm imagining this," or "I must be remembering a 'past life' or a 'spirit being'" blah blah blah. It's like if you burped or hiccup you run out to find other people to see if they ever burp or hiccup, and when you find out they do, you go "Ah ha! Gosh! I knew it meant something." Then instead of researching how the lungs work and why burps happen you assume that little invisible aliens must be squeezing you with their cute webbed hands, "trying to get your attention." Ah, if only I was really joking, but sadly I am not.
So if animals had feelings of unreality, how would they cope with the sudden and harsh reality of life in nature, which, as we know, "is red in tooth and claw?" OK, now you are watching a nature show, such as one that shows African wildlife. You know that a scene of a lion stalking prey, such as a small wildebeest, is de rigour for such shows. How many times do you see the following?
Scene one: Lion sneaks up on potential prey, a grazing wildebeest.
Scene two: Lion makes a noise and gives away its presence, or it makes its move and leaps and runs toward the wildebeest. Either way the wildebeest is now aware of the lion.
Scene three: The wildebeest has a moment of "alienation" and "unreality," and wonders if it is real and/or if the lion is real (even though it is smelling, hearing and seeing lion with big teeth and claws in a dead run at it).
You don't have to "know" what an animal is "really" "thinking," because with animals all you need to do is observe what they do. Modern humans (not even traditional humans) are the only ones who think the obvious over and wonder about it. Why is this? Because it is what we call a "survival trait" not to think things over, but to quickly act to preserve life, while it is an anti-survival trait to think about whether or not the lion is real that is bearing down upon you and about to rip you apart. What human stands in the middle of a road and wonders if the bus that is about to run him or her over is "real," or if he or she is "really there." The answer is usually, "No one except the mentally ill or someone ingesting or abusing a substance." Mental illness, substance abuse, and some of the effects of a highly unreal media diet are the primary reasons for chronic, over analyzed and misunderstood feelings of "alienation" or "being unreal."
There is no species of animal that would last for the hundreds of thousands (and often tens of millions) of years that they have lasted as a species if any or all of them had "feelings of alienation and unreality." Any species that had such feelings would quickly die out if they were at all prevalent. First of all, animals have nothing to compare reality to in the first place, since animals have no conception of unreality. Animals do not understand that something is "made up" and thus "not real." Animals are entirely rooted in reality. But just so you understand, let's suppose that one wildebeest with too big a brain or who watched too much TV did have a feeling of "unreality" or "alienation." So he wonders if that lion that is leaping upon him is "real," or if he is "real." Yeppers, you guessed it. That wildebeest would become lunch for the lion and would never pass his overly clever but stupid genes onto future wildebeests. Any anti-survival trait is stomped on by the reality of nature, whether individually or as a species. Once an animal does anything that is not one hundred percent in response to reality, it is a goner and so are its potential offspring. So we can see from thousands of years of intelligent observation of animals by humans that animals are entirely reality based. Thus the cure, the detox, for people who have persistent self induced feelings of unreality are to reconnect with reality and get over yourself.
Why do I say "get over yourself?" Because almost always, unless the person is truly mentally ill, they have a grandiose feeling of having stumbled onto some great hidden "truth" when they have these "mysterious" "feelings." The answer, of course, is to let the moment of the brain burp or hiccup pass and simply reconnect with reality. People do try to self heal, and so the instinct to reconnect with reality is there, even in the nuttiest of people who deliberately cultivate their moments like this (again, I'm not speaking of the genuinely mentally ill who need to be understood in their confusion and treated with great kindness and appropriate medicine).
So the correct thing to do is to reconnect with normal reality. The incorrect thing to do is connect with an overstimulated and equal artificial "reality."
Stupid approach: "I have these feelings of unreality! I think I was a space angel! Or maybe I am not really here! Or maybe you are not really here! So I guess if I jump off a cliff I will find out!" *Splat*
Correct approach: Do something that you know is when you are least likely to have these feelings. If you cannot do it at the moment, then recall it in your mind or with a friend in conversation. Here's a perfect example. People rarely have inflated feelings of "alienation" or "unreality" when they are waiting in a long, slow line for something they either really want (a new release of a video game, etc) or are really dreading (motor vehicle bureau, inland revenue office, etc.). Notice you and your pals do not feel "unreal" when you are eagerly waiting for something that is a real treat, like that new video game or concert tickets. Equally you do not feel "unreal" when you are dreading with each step what the auditor is going to say to you about your taxes when it is your turn at the head of the line.
See, humans, up until the last one hundred years, like animals, could not escape mundane reality and thus never doubted it. When you have to go and hoe the crops by hand every day or your family will starve to death (really), you are so "connected with the earth" and "reality" that people simply never had those weird burps or hiccups. Again, one does not feel "unreal" unless someone has something to compare it to. Before there were movies, TV, radio, books, the printing press, etc, people did not have an "unreal" to think that they may be part of in the first place! People (and their brains) were always totally in reality since that is all that was offered to them. Again, going back to animals. A giraffe does not have a moment when he imagines he is "not really there" or is "maybe a carp instead" because he does not have the experience of what being something else, or of something being "real" or "imaginary" is like! I mean, duh! It's only when humans started to 1) isolate themselves from reality, since they no longer had to toil each day, unless one is still in those "less developed" "regions," in reality, to prevent the very reality of one's family starving to death and 2) started being exposed, through books (such as fiction, which are lies in print, LOL) and later electronic media to things that are totally imaginary and unreal.
By the way, most of you probably know without realizing it that one of the first things one does to someone he or she is torturing is to disrupt their connection with reality.
So to reconnect with reality one should really study animals as they are, and observe how they are entirely real and of the real world. Then remember that humans are still biologically like animals and hence are very connected to reality too (I doubt many people thought that they were imagining being swept away in the Asian tsunami). The third thing to do, then, is to accept the occasional brain "burps," but don't over analyze it as if you are something special (the tsunami swept away "smart" and "dumb" people alike). That "I am special" is a real problem to good mental health and logical living. So the fourth thing is to work on one's humility. The fifth thing to do is not to ingest substance that inflates one's ego or further disrupts one's connection with reality. As I pointed out in the addictions post, you don't see animals seeking medications; they are one hundred percent reality based. Not only don't animals seek mind altering medications, but they do not seek out physical medications, such as when they are wounded. Why is that? Because animals are entirely reality based and so they learn reality coping mechanisms. For example, if afflicted by flies or other insect pests, animals might roll in the mud, in the sand or immerse in water. They respond reality-to-reality (pest reality-barrier to pest reality). They don't wait around to get bitten and then seek out a pain medication. Animals are evolved to endure the reality and to have coping and survival mechanisms.
So humans have to be very careful in modern times to not become so disconnected from reality, and then worse, be a paranoid carrier of inflated beliefs about "alienation" and "unreality" so that others self reinforce, because society and life choices are increasingly disconnected, yet reality never goes away. Reality is reality because it is real, LOL. I mean, duh. So you can imagine and feel all unreal and alienated until you do get caught in a tsunami, or the bills aren't paid so your satellite TV is disconnected and you can't imagine that the series "Stargate" "might be real," because now your real family and your real rear end is about to be kicked out of your real house because your real mortgage did not get paid to the real banker with the real outstretched hand because your real boss really did fire you from your real job!
I hope this helped. Really.
;-)
Showing posts with label physicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label physicians. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Why all mind altering drugs so dangerous
I've blogged about this before, but a complicated and urgent topic like this benefits from discussion that approaches it from several angles, so you better understand it. I've had this angle of explanation on my mind for a while so here is a quick sketch of the problem with mind altering drugs. This is a problem whether it is illegal drugs or abuse of prescription drugs, and whether it is so called "mild" drugs like supposedly marijuana is believed to be by many (wrongly) or the extreme drugs such as crack cocaine.
First, think about what it is like to be a normal human in a normal human body. From the faith side we know that humans are created in God's image and thus have a high ideal that is within their reach... they need not debase themselves. From the reasoning point of view humans can observe that putting aside their being in God's image, they share biology with animals. In other words, all the same basic principles of biology (how the body, limbs, organs, blood, nerves, brain etc work) are shared between humans and animals. One need not even get into the old evolution argument to understand that humans and animals operate according to the same biological principles and chemistry.
Humans, and animals, achieved their current form because they have adapted to the environment in which they live. They gather and eat the food and drink the water that they can find and that they need, they tolerate the weather, temperatures and other external conditions, and they tend to maximize their success at forming relationships and having offspring.
So, using this logic, you need to understand that you can learn a great deal about what is genuinely healthy and authentic for human minds and bodies by observing animals, since they both succeed on the same principles.
I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you where I am headed with this logical development. The problem with mind altering drugs is that they overstimulate activity within the human mind and body. I am not talking about the immediate effect of ingesting a drug, whether it makes a person stimulated or lethargic. I am speaking about the basic nature of drugs, which is to emphasize continual reactivity. Reactivity, as in being in a constant state of action and reaction, is the word I will use, but you can think of being overstimulated as a handy slang word for what I am trying to convey.
Let's start with a simple analogy. Suppose that a human for some reason spends a day being immersed in water (bathing, swimming, whatever) while at the same time drinking lots of beverages. What is the effect of being within an extraordinary amount of water? You get moist, LOL. Water's nature is to make something wet. You become "wet" both on the outside, as you splash around in water droplets, and on the inside, where you are highly hydrated and have to go and pee alot. The nature of water is to make something moist.
The nature of drugs-all drugs-is to cause a reaction, to change the status quo. I mean, that is obvious, no? If you have a headache, you want to change the status quo, so you take an aspirin. The "job," the "nature" of a drug, therefore, is to go to work at changing your body in some way. How does this change occur? The drug causes an action and a reaction. Suppose someone throws water in your face. That is an action as the water attaches itself to you. You then flinch, close your eyes, turn aside, maybe shake your head, and grab a towel. Those are all reactions. Drugs work the same way. Once they are ingested, like the aspirin, they go into the bloodstream (the action) and then cause the body to react to its presence.
So let's personalize these inanimate objects. The nature and job of water is to make something "moist." The nature and job of a drug is to cause a cycle of action and reaction.
Humans are not meant to be in a state of constant action and reaction. It's not coincidence that animals spend a lot of their time basically doing nothing, with then spurts of energy when necessary to chase food (or run from being food), to find water, to dig for food or shelter, and to produce young and feed them. Humans, being based on the same biology as animals, have evolved and adapted so that they are not optimally intended to be in a constant state of action and reaction.
The more a person takes drugs of any kind, the more their body is in an unconscious expectation to be in cycles of action and reaction. Just as if you were always wet on your skin, and then your skin gets all wrinkly and prune textured on the outside, if you take drugs of any kind, beneficial or harmful, on your "inside" your body starts to expect to be in a constant state of action, reaction, action, reaction, etc.
You can see that following this logic and understanding that a person who occasionally takes several or many different kinds of medicines or drugs has the same risk of this type of change as the person who "only" takes one drug frequently. Remember, I am not speaking of the type of "trip" or reactions that the person has to the drug. I am speaking of the body being trained to not feel "normal" unless is it being constantly urged by a foreign ingested internal substance to act, react, act, react.
So a law abiding normal person who takes an occasional pain reliever, some medicine for other conditions, a number of so called "health supplements," and maybe something "special" for, let's say, erectile dysfunction has the same problem that someone who doesn't take any drug except they huff on dope all the time. Remember, I'm not speaking of the purpose and thus the results of the medicine or drug. I am speaking of the expectation that is created in the body of each person that some substance is going to be given to it, causing an action and a reaction, in a cycle. Both bodies, the normal person and the illegal drug user, now have bodies that "expect" action and reaction.
This then is the great problem with mind altering drugs. Not only the body but now the mind also becomes changed away from its basic natural nature (humans and animals who take no medicine or drugs), to a body that stops functioning the way it should because now it factors in that it expects to be frequently active and reactive in its chemistry.
Caution! I am not saying taking medicine is bad and please do not make any changes in your medication without consulting with a genuine and rational physician! I do not hesitate to take aspirin, for example, when I have an occasional headache or muscle ache. And also one of the great blessings of medicine is to treat conditions such as diabetes.
But there is a difference between, for example, medication that makes up for a natural body deficiency, and one that introduces a new function. For example, many people died of diabetes before insulin was discovered, a natural product of the body, and manufactured, for those who could not make enough of their own insulin. This is an example of medicine that is given to make up for a lack of that function in the body, but it is a function that the body has evolved to know and to expect to have.
Medicine that is a foreign substance (not what the body naturally produces) stimulates the action and reaction response, and that is the whole point, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that. The whole field of chemistry is the study of actions and reactions. Substances that do not react are called "inert," by the way. So a medicine causes an action on the area that you or your physician is trying to change (like relieve pain) and then there is a reaction.
So here is what I am saying. Even if you are taking a drug that causes you to be lazy, sleepy or low functioning, on the "inside" your body is busier than it ever was. This is because it is active inside within a state of action/reaction as the drug does its work, since that is its nature. The reason you are sleepy on the outside is that the drug and your internal organs are "busy" inside. So regardless if the drug is stimulating or depressing of functions, on the "inside" your brain and your body are accelerated in their level of activity. The mind and the body start to "adapt," just as it would adapt if you were constantly doused with water, where the mind and body now start to "expect" an increased and eventually a continual state of action/reaction, even if you are not ingesting a drug at the time. The body and the mind now start a pressure and a "countdown" to when it will next be stimulated and "busy," internally. That is the trap of the addict, and this is what I mean in previous blog postings when I explain that eventually the drug's "personality" has taken over the addict's, even if the addict is not high.
This is because whether medicine or illegal drug, once the body and mind have experienced the drug's action/reaction, it prepares and anticipates the next cycle of that action/reaction. We know an innocent example of this when people become "used to" their medications and the medicine is not as effective as it used to be. We know the not so innocent example of this when people, even when they do not realize it, are "counting down" inside, no matter what activity they are engaged in, waiting for the next cigarette, the next hit, or the next dosing. It's not just the craving that I am describing. I am explaining that the body and mind now expect to "get to work" in that special way it has learned, which is action/reaction.
Think of your inner mind and body like a perfect factory that used to leisurely produce on the assembly line a nice normal average day. One one starts ingesting drugs, it is like the assembly line now retools because it learned that sometimes half of the supplies it needs are missing, but it gets double the supplies that it needs in another part of the assembly line. So instead of having a normal day of let's say A+B+C, A+B+C, A+B+C, where you have just the right amount of A's and B's and C's to put together predictable and successful chains of A+B+C, your body now gets a whole bunch of C's sent to it, before the A and the B's arrive, and when they do arrive they are out of order. The body and mind are cleaver, though, and they learn how to cope with being thrown a lot of C's so that you can use them up, A+B+C+C+C, A+B+C, A+B+C+C+C, etc.... and you can also get used to missing some of the A's or B's.... so your body may go C+C, A+B+C, C+C+C, B+C+C......
But what if A is restfulness and peace of mind? What if B is proper nutrition? And what if C is stimulation? Your body retools to deal with whatever it is dealt, and even develops a sort of glee at how great it can handle it. (That is because under stress adrenaline is released, so even when something bad internally is going on, if you "handle it" you feel a kind of superior rush and glee). That is the horrible problem of becoming accustomed to internal chemical action/reaction and thus overstimulation, even though the drug you take may be a depressant on the outside.
Look at the speculation about what happened to Michael Jackson. He, like everyone else, is born with a body and a mind that expects A+B+C. But somehow, let's say due to his accident, or due to his false beliefs, he has trauma that results in a physical ailment, such as insomnia. If A in our example is peace of mind, somewhere along the line his A was disrupted. (No jokes about "A" please! Let's pretend we are all more mature than twelve year olds.) So due to a trauma or bad lifestyle choices, his A+B+C is disrupted. He then takes increasingly stronger drugs to help him sleep or whatever, which then throws a ton of "C" into his body. His already stressed A of peace of mind is now totally neglected because by using the drugs he has given up on treating the core problem and restoring A+B+C. His body now becomes used to, and at times gleeful, to doing "without" A. He may be sad on the outside and in his heart, but his body chemistry, since the body is a wonderful thing, becomes inflated, superior feeling and gleeful at "handling" all that C and just doing without enough A (peace of mind), which is what got him in the problem in the first place.
Do you see what I mean? The very talent that the body has at dealing with, for example a bite of food that has gone bad can also very quickly get used to an unnatural overstimulation of expectation of action/reaction.
This is particularly ruinous when it is mind altering drugs that is being ingested, even, as you now understand "small" amounts of "only weed." In a very quick time after even only one or two exposures, your body retools to expect the unpredictable, which is anything but A+B+C. Here we have the problem where A may represent reality rather than peace of mind. If a normal human or animal gets through the day thinking A(reality) + B (more information) + C (a decision whether to act or not), mind altering drugs train the body and the mind to ignore or be used to "shortages" of A (reality) to the point of even being gleeful that one is creating "one's own reality." Addicts start viewing the world as C+C+B+C+c+C+bbb+ C, stumble over an A, impose on it C+B+C+C, even if they are not under the influence at the time!
In other words, addicts and even casual drug users train their internal body and mind to expect first and foremost action, action, action, action, some information, action, action, action, some information, oops trips over reality, denies reality, replaces with more action, action, action.
This is why it's a very small step from casual drug use to being an inflated ego maniac who thinks he or she is "in on" the "truth" and is "called" to a "mission" to "fix" and do "good deeds" that "repair" the unseen "disruptions" in "the balance." There's a disruption in the balance alright, but it ain't because of aliens, spirits, social injustice, etc. It's the disruption in A+B+C in both the body and the mind's reality and their expectations.
This is why addicts, even when not delusional or using, are absolutely positively convinced of unreal things and just will not let go of the un-reality. This is because drugs have retrained their internal assembly line to do without genuine reality and to, instead, produce and continual stream of "product" based on "action" and "reaction." Addicts stir up trouble everywhere, in their own minds and in their deeds, because they are using up all that C, that "action" that they have started producing in their minds and bodies. They then end up chasing their own tails as they take more and more substance to compensate for the lack of A, whether it is reality or peace of mind.
Simple observation shows that animals do not self medicate. If they did they would have evolved in a way where animals seek out food that medicates, but does not interfere with A, which is the reality of survival (a stoned out gnu will quickly be eaten by a clean lion). So animals do some basic things to enhance jeopardized health, such as roll in mud for a wound, or eat from certain bark that relieves pain or has antiseptic, but they are not evolved to be action before reality oriented. This is how through simple observation we as humans know that we too are not evolved to be action before reality.
We all know people, such as the elderly, with genuine infirmities who take legitimate medicine, yet are still unhappy. There are many reasons of course, but the one that we are discussing today is that medicine gives a false sense of C, of taking real action, and when results are partial or imperfect, and the condition remains, though it is eased, humans start to devalue their A of peace of mind and reality. Even good medicine, when given in pill or drug form, stimulates over expectations and diminishing of peace of mind with reality. Imagine how much more so is the danger and the change as a result of taking mind altering drugs!
I hope that you have found this helpful. Do not stop taking legitimate medication, but be aware of how it gives unreal expectations and also the need for medicine that is not simply ingesting substance, but enhancing reality based peace of mind. And definitely do not take any mind altering drugs, ever, at all, not even "a little" and not even "to experiment." All you are experimenting with is ruining what your mind and body has been honed to do by both God and by its adapted for survival and thriving true nature.
First, think about what it is like to be a normal human in a normal human body. From the faith side we know that humans are created in God's image and thus have a high ideal that is within their reach... they need not debase themselves. From the reasoning point of view humans can observe that putting aside their being in God's image, they share biology with animals. In other words, all the same basic principles of biology (how the body, limbs, organs, blood, nerves, brain etc work) are shared between humans and animals. One need not even get into the old evolution argument to understand that humans and animals operate according to the same biological principles and chemistry.
Humans, and animals, achieved their current form because they have adapted to the environment in which they live. They gather and eat the food and drink the water that they can find and that they need, they tolerate the weather, temperatures and other external conditions, and they tend to maximize their success at forming relationships and having offspring.
So, using this logic, you need to understand that you can learn a great deal about what is genuinely healthy and authentic for human minds and bodies by observing animals, since they both succeed on the same principles.
I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you where I am headed with this logical development. The problem with mind altering drugs is that they overstimulate activity within the human mind and body. I am not talking about the immediate effect of ingesting a drug, whether it makes a person stimulated or lethargic. I am speaking about the basic nature of drugs, which is to emphasize continual reactivity. Reactivity, as in being in a constant state of action and reaction, is the word I will use, but you can think of being overstimulated as a handy slang word for what I am trying to convey.
Let's start with a simple analogy. Suppose that a human for some reason spends a day being immersed in water (bathing, swimming, whatever) while at the same time drinking lots of beverages. What is the effect of being within an extraordinary amount of water? You get moist, LOL. Water's nature is to make something wet. You become "wet" both on the outside, as you splash around in water droplets, and on the inside, where you are highly hydrated and have to go and pee alot. The nature of water is to make something moist.
The nature of drugs-all drugs-is to cause a reaction, to change the status quo. I mean, that is obvious, no? If you have a headache, you want to change the status quo, so you take an aspirin. The "job," the "nature" of a drug, therefore, is to go to work at changing your body in some way. How does this change occur? The drug causes an action and a reaction. Suppose someone throws water in your face. That is an action as the water attaches itself to you. You then flinch, close your eyes, turn aside, maybe shake your head, and grab a towel. Those are all reactions. Drugs work the same way. Once they are ingested, like the aspirin, they go into the bloodstream (the action) and then cause the body to react to its presence.
So let's personalize these inanimate objects. The nature and job of water is to make something "moist." The nature and job of a drug is to cause a cycle of action and reaction.
Humans are not meant to be in a state of constant action and reaction. It's not coincidence that animals spend a lot of their time basically doing nothing, with then spurts of energy when necessary to chase food (or run from being food), to find water, to dig for food or shelter, and to produce young and feed them. Humans, being based on the same biology as animals, have evolved and adapted so that they are not optimally intended to be in a constant state of action and reaction.
The more a person takes drugs of any kind, the more their body is in an unconscious expectation to be in cycles of action and reaction. Just as if you were always wet on your skin, and then your skin gets all wrinkly and prune textured on the outside, if you take drugs of any kind, beneficial or harmful, on your "inside" your body starts to expect to be in a constant state of action, reaction, action, reaction, etc.
You can see that following this logic and understanding that a person who occasionally takes several or many different kinds of medicines or drugs has the same risk of this type of change as the person who "only" takes one drug frequently. Remember, I am not speaking of the type of "trip" or reactions that the person has to the drug. I am speaking of the body being trained to not feel "normal" unless is it being constantly urged by a foreign ingested internal substance to act, react, act, react.
So a law abiding normal person who takes an occasional pain reliever, some medicine for other conditions, a number of so called "health supplements," and maybe something "special" for, let's say, erectile dysfunction has the same problem that someone who doesn't take any drug except they huff on dope all the time. Remember, I'm not speaking of the purpose and thus the results of the medicine or drug. I am speaking of the expectation that is created in the body of each person that some substance is going to be given to it, causing an action and a reaction, in a cycle. Both bodies, the normal person and the illegal drug user, now have bodies that "expect" action and reaction.
This then is the great problem with mind altering drugs. Not only the body but now the mind also becomes changed away from its basic natural nature (humans and animals who take no medicine or drugs), to a body that stops functioning the way it should because now it factors in that it expects to be frequently active and reactive in its chemistry.
Caution! I am not saying taking medicine is bad and please do not make any changes in your medication without consulting with a genuine and rational physician! I do not hesitate to take aspirin, for example, when I have an occasional headache or muscle ache. And also one of the great blessings of medicine is to treat conditions such as diabetes.
But there is a difference between, for example, medication that makes up for a natural body deficiency, and one that introduces a new function. For example, many people died of diabetes before insulin was discovered, a natural product of the body, and manufactured, for those who could not make enough of their own insulin. This is an example of medicine that is given to make up for a lack of that function in the body, but it is a function that the body has evolved to know and to expect to have.
Medicine that is a foreign substance (not what the body naturally produces) stimulates the action and reaction response, and that is the whole point, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that. The whole field of chemistry is the study of actions and reactions. Substances that do not react are called "inert," by the way. So a medicine causes an action on the area that you or your physician is trying to change (like relieve pain) and then there is a reaction.
So here is what I am saying. Even if you are taking a drug that causes you to be lazy, sleepy or low functioning, on the "inside" your body is busier than it ever was. This is because it is active inside within a state of action/reaction as the drug does its work, since that is its nature. The reason you are sleepy on the outside is that the drug and your internal organs are "busy" inside. So regardless if the drug is stimulating or depressing of functions, on the "inside" your brain and your body are accelerated in their level of activity. The mind and the body start to "adapt," just as it would adapt if you were constantly doused with water, where the mind and body now start to "expect" an increased and eventually a continual state of action/reaction, even if you are not ingesting a drug at the time. The body and the mind now start a pressure and a "countdown" to when it will next be stimulated and "busy," internally. That is the trap of the addict, and this is what I mean in previous blog postings when I explain that eventually the drug's "personality" has taken over the addict's, even if the addict is not high.
This is because whether medicine or illegal drug, once the body and mind have experienced the drug's action/reaction, it prepares and anticipates the next cycle of that action/reaction. We know an innocent example of this when people become "used to" their medications and the medicine is not as effective as it used to be. We know the not so innocent example of this when people, even when they do not realize it, are "counting down" inside, no matter what activity they are engaged in, waiting for the next cigarette, the next hit, or the next dosing. It's not just the craving that I am describing. I am explaining that the body and mind now expect to "get to work" in that special way it has learned, which is action/reaction.
Think of your inner mind and body like a perfect factory that used to leisurely produce on the assembly line a nice normal average day. One one starts ingesting drugs, it is like the assembly line now retools because it learned that sometimes half of the supplies it needs are missing, but it gets double the supplies that it needs in another part of the assembly line. So instead of having a normal day of let's say A+B+C, A+B+C, A+B+C, where you have just the right amount of A's and B's and C's to put together predictable and successful chains of A+B+C, your body now gets a whole bunch of C's sent to it, before the A and the B's arrive, and when they do arrive they are out of order. The body and mind are cleaver, though, and they learn how to cope with being thrown a lot of C's so that you can use them up, A+B+C+C+C, A+B+C, A+B+C+C+C, etc.... and you can also get used to missing some of the A's or B's.... so your body may go C+C, A+B+C, C+C+C, B+C+C......
But what if A is restfulness and peace of mind? What if B is proper nutrition? And what if C is stimulation? Your body retools to deal with whatever it is dealt, and even develops a sort of glee at how great it can handle it. (That is because under stress adrenaline is released, so even when something bad internally is going on, if you "handle it" you feel a kind of superior rush and glee). That is the horrible problem of becoming accustomed to internal chemical action/reaction and thus overstimulation, even though the drug you take may be a depressant on the outside.
Look at the speculation about what happened to Michael Jackson. He, like everyone else, is born with a body and a mind that expects A+B+C. But somehow, let's say due to his accident, or due to his false beliefs, he has trauma that results in a physical ailment, such as insomnia. If A in our example is peace of mind, somewhere along the line his A was disrupted. (No jokes about "A" please! Let's pretend we are all more mature than twelve year olds.) So due to a trauma or bad lifestyle choices, his A+B+C is disrupted. He then takes increasingly stronger drugs to help him sleep or whatever, which then throws a ton of "C" into his body. His already stressed A of peace of mind is now totally neglected because by using the drugs he has given up on treating the core problem and restoring A+B+C. His body now becomes used to, and at times gleeful, to doing "without" A. He may be sad on the outside and in his heart, but his body chemistry, since the body is a wonderful thing, becomes inflated, superior feeling and gleeful at "handling" all that C and just doing without enough A (peace of mind), which is what got him in the problem in the first place.
Do you see what I mean? The very talent that the body has at dealing with, for example a bite of food that has gone bad can also very quickly get used to an unnatural overstimulation of expectation of action/reaction.
This is particularly ruinous when it is mind altering drugs that is being ingested, even, as you now understand "small" amounts of "only weed." In a very quick time after even only one or two exposures, your body retools to expect the unpredictable, which is anything but A+B+C. Here we have the problem where A may represent reality rather than peace of mind. If a normal human or animal gets through the day thinking A(reality) + B (more information) + C (a decision whether to act or not), mind altering drugs train the body and the mind to ignore or be used to "shortages" of A (reality) to the point of even being gleeful that one is creating "one's own reality." Addicts start viewing the world as C+C+B+C+c+C+bbb+ C, stumble over an A, impose on it C+B+C+C, even if they are not under the influence at the time!
In other words, addicts and even casual drug users train their internal body and mind to expect first and foremost action, action, action, action, some information, action, action, action, some information, oops trips over reality, denies reality, replaces with more action, action, action.
This is why it's a very small step from casual drug use to being an inflated ego maniac who thinks he or she is "in on" the "truth" and is "called" to a "mission" to "fix" and do "good deeds" that "repair" the unseen "disruptions" in "the balance." There's a disruption in the balance alright, but it ain't because of aliens, spirits, social injustice, etc. It's the disruption in A+B+C in both the body and the mind's reality and their expectations.
This is why addicts, even when not delusional or using, are absolutely positively convinced of unreal things and just will not let go of the un-reality. This is because drugs have retrained their internal assembly line to do without genuine reality and to, instead, produce and continual stream of "product" based on "action" and "reaction." Addicts stir up trouble everywhere, in their own minds and in their deeds, because they are using up all that C, that "action" that they have started producing in their minds and bodies. They then end up chasing their own tails as they take more and more substance to compensate for the lack of A, whether it is reality or peace of mind.
Simple observation shows that animals do not self medicate. If they did they would have evolved in a way where animals seek out food that medicates, but does not interfere with A, which is the reality of survival (a stoned out gnu will quickly be eaten by a clean lion). So animals do some basic things to enhance jeopardized health, such as roll in mud for a wound, or eat from certain bark that relieves pain or has antiseptic, but they are not evolved to be action before reality oriented. This is how through simple observation we as humans know that we too are not evolved to be action before reality.
We all know people, such as the elderly, with genuine infirmities who take legitimate medicine, yet are still unhappy. There are many reasons of course, but the one that we are discussing today is that medicine gives a false sense of C, of taking real action, and when results are partial or imperfect, and the condition remains, though it is eased, humans start to devalue their A of peace of mind and reality. Even good medicine, when given in pill or drug form, stimulates over expectations and diminishing of peace of mind with reality. Imagine how much more so is the danger and the change as a result of taking mind altering drugs!
I hope that you have found this helpful. Do not stop taking legitimate medication, but be aware of how it gives unreal expectations and also the need for medicine that is not simply ingesting substance, but enhancing reality based peace of mind. And definitely do not take any mind altering drugs, ever, at all, not even "a little" and not even "to experiment." All you are experimenting with is ruining what your mind and body has been honed to do by both God and by its adapted for survival and thriving true nature.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Dude should have gone to church instead
Sorry to be so blunt, but really, this is too far out to resist.
www.examiner.com
*snip*
A Livingston County doctor was beaten to death after soliciting two prostitutes in Detroit. Police said that Dr.Gary Ceresnie, 54, of Brighton picked up Teanna Keens,32 and Stephanie Cross,19 in his car and drove them to a home Sunday.
Darrell Harris and Kamico Jackson , both 24 are being accused of robbing and beating Dr. Ceresnie. Police said the doctor left the home on foot, he managed to get to a restaurant where he later died from his injuries.
All four suspects are being held and charged with open murder and armed robbery.
They're all being held in Wayne County Jail without bond. Detroit police spokesman John Roach said he didn't know if any of the four suspects had lawyers.
***
Dude, it's Sunday. Why not go to church instead and then go home and read the Bible or something?
You are supposed to worship Christ on the Cross, not a prostitute named "Cross."
Another paper reports they went to "St John Street." Isn't fact really much more interesting and stranger than fiction, as the old saying goes, I mean, really.... taking two prostitutes, one named Cross, on a Sunday to St. John Street. Anyone see anything good coming out of THAT scenario?
I'm not even touching the "Jackson" name in this one.
It's sad that he's dead but duh, "The wages of sin are death." Often it is both death of the body and of the soul. Think about it.
www.examiner.com
*snip*
A Livingston County doctor was beaten to death after soliciting two prostitutes in Detroit. Police said that Dr.Gary Ceresnie, 54, of Brighton picked up Teanna Keens,32 and Stephanie Cross,19 in his car and drove them to a home Sunday.
Darrell Harris and Kamico Jackson , both 24 are being accused of robbing and beating Dr. Ceresnie. Police said the doctor left the home on foot, he managed to get to a restaurant where he later died from his injuries.
All four suspects are being held and charged with open murder and armed robbery.
They're all being held in Wayne County Jail without bond. Detroit police spokesman John Roach said he didn't know if any of the four suspects had lawyers.
***
Dude, it's Sunday. Why not go to church instead and then go home and read the Bible or something?
You are supposed to worship Christ on the Cross, not a prostitute named "Cross."
Another paper reports they went to "St John Street." Isn't fact really much more interesting and stranger than fiction, as the old saying goes, I mean, really.... taking two prostitutes, one named Cross, on a Sunday to St. John Street. Anyone see anything good coming out of THAT scenario?
I'm not even touching the "Jackson" name in this one.
It's sad that he's dead but duh, "The wages of sin are death." Often it is both death of the body and of the soul. Think about it.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Bible Reading: Sirach 38:9-15
My son, when you are ill, delay not, but pray to God, who will heal you: Flee wickedness; let your hands be just, cleanse your heart of every sin; offer your sweet-smelling oblation and petition, a rich offering according to your means.
Then give the doctor his place lest he leave; for you need him too. There are times that give him an advantage, and he too beseeches God that his diagnosis may be correct and his treatment bring about a cure.
He who is a sinner toward his Maker will be defiant toward the doctor.
Friday, November 21, 2008
When doctors go bad they leave money trail
This is an essential article for everyone to read. Congratulations to Senator Grassley for his fine work, diligence and ethics. This is not just a matter of many, MANY doctors across the USA taking money on the sly from drug companies to peddle their goods. That's bad enough, but at the point that these bloated doctors get accustomed to million dollar lifestyles, they stop prescribing the correct remedies to people who suffer from mental disorders and other illnesses or diseases.
No wonder it seems that every doctor has become a mindless drug pusher, even plying children with dangerous drugs. I've wondered why this is, and in part I blamed the insurance companies who prefer to reimburse for a drug, let's say, rather than a treatment, such as AA or other "talking cure." Also, valid, cheap traditional drugs, who were once marvelous discoveries have been pushed aside and no longer prescribed so that the more expensive and extreme new drugs can be pushed. So now the picture has become, sad to see but necessary, clearer.
I realized, painfully, years ago that the doctor is not the patient's friend, or even the benevolent provider of what is best for the patient. Now it's time for the rest of the country to realize this. Hopefully even the idiots who have enabled greed to replace ethics and good diagnosis will realize that they and their own families are also suffering from the stinking decay of medical practice and ethics. What goes around comes around, and these same creeps are misdiagnosing your own families and loved ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/health/22radio.html?hp
snip
The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drug makers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa.
snip
In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, Dr. Goodwin warned that children with bipolar disorder who are left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view. “But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin reassured his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”
That very day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. Indeed, Glaxo paid Dr. Goodwin more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given Congressional investigators show.
snip
Mr. Grassley is systematically asking some of the nation’s leading researchers and doctors to provide their conflict-of-interest disclosures, and Mr. Grassley is comparing those documents with records of actual payments from drug companies. The records often conflict, sometimes starkly.
In October, Mr. Grassley revealed that Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, one of the nation’s most influential psychiatric researchers, earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules. As a result, the National Institutes of Health suspended a $9.3 million research grant to Emory and placed restrictions on other grants, and Dr. Nemeroff relinquished his chairmanship of Emory’s psychiatry department.
In June, the senator revealed that Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Biederman, whose work has fueled an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children, had earned at least $1.6 million from drug makers between 2000 and 2007, failed to report most of this income to his university, and may have violated federal and university research rules.
No wonder it seems that every doctor has become a mindless drug pusher, even plying children with dangerous drugs. I've wondered why this is, and in part I blamed the insurance companies who prefer to reimburse for a drug, let's say, rather than a treatment, such as AA or other "talking cure." Also, valid, cheap traditional drugs, who were once marvelous discoveries have been pushed aside and no longer prescribed so that the more expensive and extreme new drugs can be pushed. So now the picture has become, sad to see but necessary, clearer.
I realized, painfully, years ago that the doctor is not the patient's friend, or even the benevolent provider of what is best for the patient. Now it's time for the rest of the country to realize this. Hopefully even the idiots who have enabled greed to replace ethics and good diagnosis will realize that they and their own families are also suffering from the stinking decay of medical practice and ethics. What goes around comes around, and these same creeps are misdiagnosing your own families and loved ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/health/22radio.html?hp
snip
The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drug makers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa.
snip
In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, Dr. Goodwin warned that children with bipolar disorder who are left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view. “But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin reassured his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”
That very day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. Indeed, Glaxo paid Dr. Goodwin more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given Congressional investigators show.
snip
Mr. Grassley is systematically asking some of the nation’s leading researchers and doctors to provide their conflict-of-interest disclosures, and Mr. Grassley is comparing those documents with records of actual payments from drug companies. The records often conflict, sometimes starkly.
In October, Mr. Grassley revealed that Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, one of the nation’s most influential psychiatric researchers, earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules. As a result, the National Institutes of Health suspended a $9.3 million research grant to Emory and placed restrictions on other grants, and Dr. Nemeroff relinquished his chairmanship of Emory’s psychiatry department.
In June, the senator revealed that Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Biederman, whose work has fueled an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children, had earned at least $1.6 million from drug makers between 2000 and 2007, failed to report most of this income to his university, and may have violated federal and university research rules.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
It is the worst when doctors go bad
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Two_doctors_held_for_committing_fraud/articleshow/3471179.cms
LUCKNOW: Two doctors were arrested for allegedly committing fraud by failing to inform a father that his child had died during treatment, police said on Thursday.
Dr Mirza Waqar Beg and Dr Satish Kumar on Wednesday taken into the custody after complainant Shahid Pervez alleged that the doctors kept the body of his dead son in their private hospital for non-payment of dues, they said.
He also alleged in his report lodged on April l7 in Kaiserbagh police station that doctors committed fraud from him by not disclosing that his son, who was admitted to the neonatal ward of the hospital, had died during the treatment.
Pervez alleged that the doctors had kept the infant, who died at midnight, on a ventilator till the morning. Later, postmortem report revealed timing of death.
The arrests were made after preliminary enquiry suggested alleged involvement of doctors in the fraud, police added.
var RN = new String (Math.random());
var RNS = RN.substring (2,11);
b2 = ' ';
if (doweshowbellyad==1)
bellyad.innerHTML = b2;
(When God is judging them they will wish they had been poor and in the morgue instead of the poor baby and tormented father, because God will assuredly thrust them in hell for all eternity, unrepentant).
LUCKNOW: Two doctors were arrested for allegedly committing fraud by failing to inform a father that his child had died during treatment, police said on Thursday.
Dr Mirza Waqar Beg and Dr Satish Kumar on Wednesday taken into the custody after complainant Shahid Pervez alleged that the doctors kept the body of his dead son in their private hospital for non-payment of dues, they said.
He also alleged in his report lodged on April l7 in Kaiserbagh police station that doctors committed fraud from him by not disclosing that his son, who was admitted to the neonatal ward of the hospital, had died during the treatment.
Pervez alleged that the doctors had kept the infant, who died at midnight, on a ventilator till the morning. Later, postmortem report revealed timing of death.
The arrests were made after preliminary enquiry suggested alleged involvement of doctors in the fraud, police added.
var RN = new String (Math.random());
var RNS = RN.substring (2,11);
b2 = ' ';
if (doweshowbellyad==1)
bellyad.innerHTML = b2;
(When God is judging them they will wish they had been poor and in the morgue instead of the poor baby and tormented father, because God will assuredly thrust them in hell for all eternity, unrepentant).
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Feel I must comment about Christian Science
The current head of the Christian Science church died suddenly. Since an event like this highlights a topic for at least one news cycle, I think I need to blog my thoughts about Christian Science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
***
I am not a fan. How a woman (Mary Eddy) (or a man for that matter) who, no matter how devout she is, decides to "found a church" just because she prayed and an injury was healed is absolutely beyond me. I mean, duh, recovery after prayer is not the discovery of the century. Further, how she thought she was now able to decide what parts of the Bible are real and which are "symbolic," and to decide she "knows" what God is like is just incredible. Usually I am more charitable toward Christian sects and denominations if they are manifest with love of Jesus. But you cannot love Jesus and identity steal him and minimize who he is and who God is. That's not love, that's arrogance. So I'm not going to bother to critique every error and heresy because it's on such a inflated foundation of error that there's no point. What human nature it is through the centuries though, for some people, who are so inflated they decide they have the "true answers" and break away from the Church just because some itch of theirs got scratched.
However, I thought about a way to help people who are as scandalized, as I am, at the cases where lives have been lost, especially children, due to refusing all medical treatment. In fact, those of you of the institutional Christian church, do not be shy about evangelizing to Christian Scientists if you have a charitable opportunity and any chance of them listening. I know that's not a politically correct thing to say, but there's a real need for truth about God, especially when it impacts the health of children.
Whether you believe in the Bible literally or as these people "symbolically," you cannot miss that there is only one time that God commands the sacrifice of a child. In Genesis 22 you can read how God tested the faith and obedience of Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. Just as Abraham was about to obey the angel of the Lord stayed his hand and halted Abraham before Isaac was harmed. As a result of Abraham passing that extreme test, the angel of the Lord, speaking for God, told him:
Genesis 22:16-18
..."I swear by myself, says the Lord, since you have done this and have not withheld your only son, I will indeed bless you, and will surely multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, as the sands on the seashore. Your descendants shall possess the gates of their enemies. In your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
Because Abraham was willing to sacrifice the very beloved son that God himself had given to him and Sara in their old age, Abraham became the father of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths through his descendants.
If there was ever to be a hint that allowing a child to actually be mortally harmed, either through human activity or illness, this event would have transpired differently. Abraham would have stabbed his son, and God "would have miraculously heal him." But that is not God's nature. God does not want a single child to ever suffer or be harmed, as Jesus made very plain in the scriptures. So if there had been any truth to a belief that God would put Jesus "in charge of curing the faithful who pray to them rather than seek medical treatment," I mean think about it, duh, there would have been at least a "symbolic" story in the Bible relating that.
So I have always shared the outrage that the healing ministry of Jesus when he lived, and prayer to Jesus and God since then, have been twisted by some to put the onus on Jesus for a child dying or not. Think about it. Is that not the ultimate cop out? You say, "Oh well, Jesus didn't cure my child; guess our faith was not strong enough or God wanted the child in heaven!" So here is a faith that makes it Jesus' option or fault if a child is miraculously cured or not. What is a miracle is so many kids grew up healthy without medical care in general! (I'm being a tad sarcastic there). I'm not speaking hypothetically, I grew up with Christian Science neighbors. People, it really is not cool. It's a theological nightmare, but it's also absolutely totally not cool to try to "force Jesus" to "intervene" and "decide" if a child who is totally deprived of medical care is going to live or not. I thought they were freaks when I was five years old, for that very reason.
Now I'm not trying to demonize them or promote hate. But they sure have had a lot of free pass press over the decades about the "strength of their faith" that just is not right, for the two reasons I give above. So I'm hoping that people who might have bought into this bogus belief will read this and understand the clarity with which I am speaking. Reason one: If God intended that dire medical peril should be allowed to come to children just so Jesus can decide who to cure and who to not cure, there would have been even "symbolic" reinforcement of this somewhere in the Bible, and in fact, the opposite is true. Not only are children and adults to receive medical care in addition to prayer, but one of the Gospels is written by a physician, St. Luke. St. Luke would certainly have written, "Oh, and guess what we learned! We doctors are not supposed to give medical care anymore because Jesus will decide based on prayer whether they live or die." Reason two: God told Adam and Eve and has repeated the message that humans must "toil" and they have free will. Toiling includes medicine. How do we know that? Just one example is found in Tobias when the angel Rafael teaches the son how to find a substance in a fish that cures his father's blindness. There is a biblical example of where a medical treatment is taught to a human by an angel as a reward for the lifetime of faith of the father, not because the father refused medical treatment when he went blind and prayed instead. The Bible is not subtle. The point would have been made if humans were not to practice medicine and poor Jesus would have to 'pick and choose' who of the untreated lived and died. That is so outrageous that not a lot of Biblical scholarship is needed to refute it, as I have here quite thoroughly.
Anyway, you should have seen how I've ranted when famous cases of untreated children have hit the news waves over the past decades. But like I said, I also knew from close up and not friendly personal experience with childhood neighbors.
I hope those of you who have pondered this "belief" system find this helpful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
***
I am not a fan. How a woman (Mary Eddy) (or a man for that matter) who, no matter how devout she is, decides to "found a church" just because she prayed and an injury was healed is absolutely beyond me. I mean, duh, recovery after prayer is not the discovery of the century. Further, how she thought she was now able to decide what parts of the Bible are real and which are "symbolic," and to decide she "knows" what God is like is just incredible. Usually I am more charitable toward Christian sects and denominations if they are manifest with love of Jesus. But you cannot love Jesus and identity steal him and minimize who he is and who God is. That's not love, that's arrogance. So I'm not going to bother to critique every error and heresy because it's on such a inflated foundation of error that there's no point. What human nature it is through the centuries though, for some people, who are so inflated they decide they have the "true answers" and break away from the Church just because some itch of theirs got scratched.
However, I thought about a way to help people who are as scandalized, as I am, at the cases where lives have been lost, especially children, due to refusing all medical treatment. In fact, those of you of the institutional Christian church, do not be shy about evangelizing to Christian Scientists if you have a charitable opportunity and any chance of them listening. I know that's not a politically correct thing to say, but there's a real need for truth about God, especially when it impacts the health of children.
Whether you believe in the Bible literally or as these people "symbolically," you cannot miss that there is only one time that God commands the sacrifice of a child. In Genesis 22 you can read how God tested the faith and obedience of Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. Just as Abraham was about to obey the angel of the Lord stayed his hand and halted Abraham before Isaac was harmed. As a result of Abraham passing that extreme test, the angel of the Lord, speaking for God, told him:
Genesis 22:16-18
..."I swear by myself, says the Lord, since you have done this and have not withheld your only son, I will indeed bless you, and will surely multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, as the sands on the seashore. Your descendants shall possess the gates of their enemies. In your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
Because Abraham was willing to sacrifice the very beloved son that God himself had given to him and Sara in their old age, Abraham became the father of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths through his descendants.
If there was ever to be a hint that allowing a child to actually be mortally harmed, either through human activity or illness, this event would have transpired differently. Abraham would have stabbed his son, and God "would have miraculously heal him." But that is not God's nature. God does not want a single child to ever suffer or be harmed, as Jesus made very plain in the scriptures. So if there had been any truth to a belief that God would put Jesus "in charge of curing the faithful who pray to them rather than seek medical treatment," I mean think about it, duh, there would have been at least a "symbolic" story in the Bible relating that.
So I have always shared the outrage that the healing ministry of Jesus when he lived, and prayer to Jesus and God since then, have been twisted by some to put the onus on Jesus for a child dying or not. Think about it. Is that not the ultimate cop out? You say, "Oh well, Jesus didn't cure my child; guess our faith was not strong enough or God wanted the child in heaven!" So here is a faith that makes it Jesus' option or fault if a child is miraculously cured or not. What is a miracle is so many kids grew up healthy without medical care in general! (I'm being a tad sarcastic there). I'm not speaking hypothetically, I grew up with Christian Science neighbors. People, it really is not cool. It's a theological nightmare, but it's also absolutely totally not cool to try to "force Jesus" to "intervene" and "decide" if a child who is totally deprived of medical care is going to live or not. I thought they were freaks when I was five years old, for that very reason.
Now I'm not trying to demonize them or promote hate. But they sure have had a lot of free pass press over the decades about the "strength of their faith" that just is not right, for the two reasons I give above. So I'm hoping that people who might have bought into this bogus belief will read this and understand the clarity with which I am speaking. Reason one: If God intended that dire medical peril should be allowed to come to children just so Jesus can decide who to cure and who to not cure, there would have been even "symbolic" reinforcement of this somewhere in the Bible, and in fact, the opposite is true. Not only are children and adults to receive medical care in addition to prayer, but one of the Gospels is written by a physician, St. Luke. St. Luke would certainly have written, "Oh, and guess what we learned! We doctors are not supposed to give medical care anymore because Jesus will decide based on prayer whether they live or die." Reason two: God told Adam and Eve and has repeated the message that humans must "toil" and they have free will. Toiling includes medicine. How do we know that? Just one example is found in Tobias when the angel Rafael teaches the son how to find a substance in a fish that cures his father's blindness. There is a biblical example of where a medical treatment is taught to a human by an angel as a reward for the lifetime of faith of the father, not because the father refused medical treatment when he went blind and prayed instead. The Bible is not subtle. The point would have been made if humans were not to practice medicine and poor Jesus would have to 'pick and choose' who of the untreated lived and died. That is so outrageous that not a lot of Biblical scholarship is needed to refute it, as I have here quite thoroughly.
Anyway, you should have seen how I've ranted when famous cases of untreated children have hit the news waves over the past decades. But like I said, I also knew from close up and not friendly personal experience with childhood neighbors.
I hope those of you who have pondered this "belief" system find this helpful.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Great interview with pro life UK woman doctor
I admire this lady! And everyone who takes a similar, compassionate stand. I hope even more join her. Do read this, it's some bright news when everything else, at least on this subject, is pretty bleak.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1033895/Pro-life-GP-says-patients-regretted-having-child.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1033895/Pro-life-GP-says-patients-regretted-having-child.html
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