REFUTATION of atheism..by GENOME_CODE SCIENTIST: Dr. Frances Collins

How do you interpret this echboom?

“An amusing, if rather pathetic, case study in miracles is the Great Prayer Experiment: does praying for patients help them recover? Prayers are commonly offered for sick people, both privately and in formal places of worship. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton was the first to analyse scientifically whether praying for people is efficacious. He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn't they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us, who are prayed for only by our nearest and dearest? Galton looked into it, and found no statistical difference. His intention may, in any case, have been satirical, as also when he prayed over randomized plots of land to see if the plants would grow any faster (they didn't).
Valiantly shouldering aside all mockery, the team of researchers [from the Templeton Foundation] soldiered on, spending $2.4 million of Templeton money under the leadership of Dr Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. [...] Dr Benson and his team monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals, all of whom received coronary bypass surgery. [...] Prayers were delivered by the congregations of three churches, one in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts and one in Missouri. [...] The results, reported in the American Heart Journal of April 2006, were clear-cut.”

"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins, p61-63

The patients were divided into 3 (double-blind) groups:

Group 1: Received prayers, but were not told about them. This tests if prayers helped them recover more than normal patients. Their recovery was average.

Group 2: Received no prayers, and were not told so. This tested if there was something about the experiment that was affecting the results. Their recovery was also average.

Group 3: Received prayers and were told so. This tested the psychosomatic effects of knowing that one is being prayed for. This group "suffered significantly more complications".

What amazing results! Prof. Dawkins continues:

“Was God doing a bit of smiting, to show his disapproval of the whole barmy enterprise? It seems more probable that those patients who knew they were being prayed for suffered additional stress in consequence: [...] Dr Charles Bethea, one of the researchers, said, 'It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?' In today's litigious society [will they] put together a class action lawsuit against the Templeton Foundation?”
"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins

TALKING TO NON-MUSLIMS ABOUT ISLAM

TALKING TO NON-MUSLIMS ABOUT ISLAM

Now that you are Muslim you have a responsibility to tell others
about Islam. In Arabic this is called "Da'wah." Below are some resources which
will assist you in this task.

GENERAL GUIDLINES

Presenting Islam to People of
Other Faiths(Excellent!)

Individual Da'wah

Another Article Called
Individual Da'wah

The

Fundamentals of Da`wah

Da`wah - An Obligation

The Necessity of Putting Fundamentals
in Order

A Nice Dawah Page

Dawah

The requirements of Iman
for the Carrier of the Call

Da`wah Priorities in the Qur'aan

Da`wah Priorities in the Sunnah

Inviting
Christ ians

Inviting Jews

Illuminating the Way - Priorities in
Calling to the Message

Dawah:Getting It Right

One Hour a Day

Presenting
Islam In Public Schools

PRINCIPLES OF MAKING DA'WA

Conveying Islam In Schools
and Colleges

Inviting to Allaah and the
Qualities of a Preacher

Some Good Dawah Advice Here

Obligat ion of
a Muslim Towards a Disbeliever

Patience

Compassion

Ambition

Style and Content

DA’WAH ACTIVITIES IN THE UNITED
STATES PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS

Dawah: Getting It Right

Many Good Articles Here About Making Dawah

TALKING TO CHRISTIANS

Answering
Christia nity(100's of articles)

The Dawa Page

BRIDGEBUILDING BETWEEN
CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM

About Propagating Islam to Interested
People

Reflections on Christianity, Islam &
Ismailism

Talking to Christians about Islam (Shabir
Ally's Site)

Comparitive Religion Page

Islam and Mormonism a
Comparison

CHRISTIAN SOURCES

Bible Gateway Search Engine

Old Testament of The Bible(KJV)

New Testament of The Bible(KJV)

GENERAL

Concept of
God in Major Religions - I

Concept of God in Major
Religions - II

Concept of God in Sikhism,
Zoroastrianism and Judaism - III

TALKING TO BAHIAS

Answering
Bahaullah

TALKING TO HINDUS

Prophet
(Pbuh) Foretold in Indian Scriptures- Part I

Prophet (Pbuh) Foretold in
Indian Scriptures- Part II

Prophet (Pbuh) Foretold
in Indian Scriptures- Part III

ANOTHER ARTICLE ON PROPHET MUHAMMAD
IN HINDU SCRIPTURES

A Hindu Professor
verifies prophet Muhammad was foretold in Hindi scriptures

Hinduism and Islam

Hindu woman and
the Muslim woman

Experiences of a
Recently Converted Hindu Woman

TALKING TO ATHEISTS

Who Is Allah?

Talking to an Atheist
about Allah's existence

Allah's Existence

Belief
In The Existence Of Allah

Almighty God's Proof To
Humanity: Intellectually Established

Proof Of Allah's
Exisitence In The Quran

THE INTELLECTUAL PROOF OF
THE EXISTANCE OF ALLAH

Is There A God?

Is there
is a creator of this universe?

The Origin Of Life

So, Which Is The True
Religion Of God?







Resources guide -
Free Quran
- Free Books
- Free downloads
- P ictures
- mp3



Comparative guide -
atheism
- Buddhism
- Christianity
- Hinduism
- Judaism



Site guide -
search
- chat
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Complete EXCERPT: from abcnewshttp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=2192678&page=4





Excerpt: "The Language of God"
Author Francis Collins Shares Personal Testimony to Explain Reasoning


Consider a major example of the force we feel from the
Moral Law -- the altruistic impulse, the voice of conscience calling
us to help others even if nothing is received in return. Not
all of the requirements of the Moral Law reduce to altruism, of
course; for instance, the pang of conscience one feels after a
minor distortion of the facts on a tax return can hardly be ascribed
to a sense of having damaged another identifiable
human being.

First, let's be clear what we're talking about. By altruism I
do not mean the "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kind
of behavior that practices benevolence to others in direct expectation
of reciprocal benefits. Altruism is more interesting:
the truly selfless giving of oneself to others with absolutely no
secondary motives. When we see that kind of love and generosity,
we are overcome with awe and reverence. Oskar Schindler
placed his life in great danger by sheltering more than a thousand
Jews from Nazi extermination during World War II, and ultimately
died penniless -- and we feel a great rush of admiration
for his actions. Mother Teresa has consistently ranked as one of
the most admired individuals of the current age, though her
self-imposed poverty and selfless giving to the sick and dying of
Calcutta is in drastic contrast to the materialistic lifestyle that
dominates our current culture.


In some instances, altruism can extend even to circumstances
where the beneficiary would seem to be a sworn
enemy. Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, tells the following
Sufi story.

Once upon a time there was an old woman who
used to meditate on the bank of the Ganges. One
morning, finishing her meditation, she saw a scorpion
floating helplessly in the strong current. As the
scorpion was pulled closer, it got caught in roots
that branched out far into the river. The scorpion
struggled frantically to free itself but got more and
more entangled. She immediately reached out to
the drowning scorpion, which, as soon as she
touched it, stung her. The old woman withdrew her
hand but, having regained her balance, once again
tried to save the creature. Every time she tried,
however, the scorpion's tail stung her so badly that
her hands became bloody and her face distorted
with pain. A passerby who saw the old woman
struggling with the scorpion shouted, "What's
wrong with you, fool! Do you want to kill yourself
to save that ugly thing?" Looking into the stranger's
eyes, she answered, "Because it is the nature of the
scorpion to sting, why should I deny my own nature
to save it?"

This may seem a rather drastic example -- not very many of us
can relate to putting ourselves in danger to save a scorpion.
But surely most of us have at one time felt the inner calling to
help a stranger in need, even with no likelihood of personal
benefit. And if we have actually acted on that impulse, the consequence
was often a warm sense of "having done the right
thing."

C. S. Lewis, in his remarkable book "The Four Loves," further
explores the nature of this kind of selfless love, which he calls
"agape" (pronounced ah-GAH-pay), from the Greek. He points
out that this kind of love can be distinguished from the three
other forms (affection, friendship, and romantic love), which
can be more easily understood in terms of reciprocal benefit,
and which we can see modeled in other animals besides ourselves.
Agape, or selfless altruism, presents a major challenge for
the evolutionist. It is quite frankly a scandal to reductionist reasoning.

It cannot be accounted for by the drive of individual
selfish genes to perpetuate themselves. Quite the contrary: it
may lead humans to make sacrifices that lead to great personal
suffering, injury, or death, without any evidence of benefit. And
yet, if we carefully examine that inner voice we sometimes call
conscience, the motivation to practice this kind of love exists
within all of us, despite our frequent efforts to ignore it.

Sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson have attempted to explain
this behavior in terms of some indirect reproductive benefits
to the practitioner of altruism, but the arguments quickly
run into trouble. One proposal is that repeated altruistic behavior
of the individual is recognized as a positive attribute in mate
selection. But this hypothesis is in direct conflict with observations
in nonhuman primates that often reveal just the opposite -- such as the practice of infanticide by a newly dominant male monkey, in order to clear the way for his own future offspring.

Another argument is that there are indirect reciprocal
benefits from altruism that have provided advantages to the
practitioner over evolutionary time; but this explanation cannot
account for human motivation to practice small acts of conscience
that no one else knows about. A third argument is that
altruistic behavior by members of a group provides benefits to
the whole group. Examples are offered of ant colonies, where
sterile workers toil incessantly to create an environment where
their mothers can have more children. But this kind of "ant altruism"
is readily explained in evolutionary terms by the fact
that the genes motivating the sterile worker ants are exactly the
same ones that will be passed on by their mother to the siblings
they are helping to create. That unusually direct DNA connection
does not apply to more complex populations, where evolutionists
now agree almost universally that selection operates on
the individual, not on the population. The hardwired behavior
of the worker ant is thus fundamentally different from the inner
voice that causes me to feel compelled to jump into the river to
try to save a drowning stranger, even if I'm not a good swimmer
and may myself die in the effort. Furthermore, for the evolutionary
argument about group benefits of altruism to hold, it
would seem to require an opposite response, namely, hostility
to individuals outside the group. Oskar Schindler's and Mother
Teresa's agape belies this kind of thinking. Shockingly, the
Moral Law will ask me to save the drowning man even if he is
an enemy.

If the Law of Human Nature cannot be explained away as
cultural artifact or evolutionary by-product, then how can we
account for its presence? There is truly something unusual
going on here. To quote Lewis, "If there was a controlling
power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one
of the facts inside the universe -- no more than the architect of a
house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that
house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself
would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying
to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do
find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?"

Encountering this argument at age twenty-six, I was
stunned by its logic. Here, hiding in my own heart as familiar as
anything in daily experience, but now emerging for the first
time as a clarifying principle, this Moral Law shone its bright
white light into the recesses of my childish atheism, and demanded
a serious consideration of its origin. Was this God
looking back at me?


And if that were so, what kind of God would this be? Would
this be a deist God, who invented physics and mathematics and
started the universe in motion about 14 billion years ago, then
wandered off to deal with other, more important matters, as
Einstein thought? No, this God, if I was perceiving Him at all,
must be a theist God, who desires some kind of relationship
with those special creatures called human beings, and has
therefore instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one
of us. This might be the God of Abraham, but it was certainly
not the God of Einstein.

There was another consequence to this growing sense of
God's nature, if in fact He was real. Judging by the incredibly
high standards of the Moral Law, one that I had to admit I was
in the practice of regularly violating, this was a God who was
holy and righteous. He would have to be the embodiment of
goodness. He would have to hate evil. And there was no reason
to suspect that this God would be kindly or indulgent. The gradual
dawning of my realization of God's plausible existence
brought conflicted feelings: comfort at the breadth and depth of
the existence of such a Mind, and yet profound dismay at the
realization of my own imperfections when viewed in His light.
I had started this journey of intellectual exploration to confirm
my atheism. That now lay in ruins as the argument from
the Moral Law (and many other issues) forced me to admit the
plausibility of the God hypothesis. Agnosticism, which had
seemed like a safe second-place haven, now loomed like the
great cop-out it often is. Faith in God now seemed more rational
than disbelief.

It also became clear to me that science, despite its unquestioned
powers in unraveling the mysteries of the natural world,
would get me no further in resolving the question of God. If God
exists, then He must be outside the natural world, and therefore
the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him.
Instead, as I was beginning to understand from looking into my
own heart, the evidence of God's existence would have to come
from other directions, and the ultimate decision would be based
on faith, not proof. Still beset by roiling uncertainties of what
path I had started down, I had to admit that I had reached the
threshold of accepting the possibility of a spiritual worldview,
including the existence of God.

It seemed impossible either to go forward or to turn back.
Years later, I encountered a sonnet by Sheldon Vanauken that
precisely described my dilemma. Its concluding lines:
Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe.
For a long time I stood trembling on the edge of this yawning
gap. Finally, seeing no escape, I leapt.
How can such beliefs be possible for a scientist? Aren't
many claims of religion incompatible with the "Show me the
data" attitude of someone devoted to the study of chemistry,
physics, biology, and medicine? By opening the door of my
mind to its spiritual possibilities, had I started a war of worldviews
that would consume me, ultimately facing a take-noprisoners
victory of one or the other?








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