NOM

dispirited wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:01 pm With all the priesthood blessings happening in the Salt Lake Valley, we should have the most remarkable hospital outcomes in the world...guess what, we have the same cure rates as any other city. I guess they are just words.

I agree with this. The "belief bias" which is not panning out is priesthood blessings cure people. The evidence doesn't support it.

To me, when those blessings continue to be given in massive rates, it supports the idea that there is an extreme "belief bias" in this here neck of the woods.

But this doesn't explain the other happenings: the open visions (my father), the "waves" (me and others), and when there are spiritual type experiences that, according to ocam's razer, just might be mostly easily explained by "hey, there really was something that happened."

Above i've said the words: "I don't know" multiple times. The evidence begs conclusions--but I prefer to keep an open mind for a while before making any. What happened happened,...but what does it mean?...that is the real question.

LostGirl wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:55 pm I don't want to write a long reply on my phone rob but I think your idea is intriguing. I don't know what happens after this life but I believe that if there is somethinh else then it makes sense that we take all of our thoughts and beliefs with us.

Can't say I relish the thought of living for eternity but I've put it in the I don't know basket to be tomorrow's problem. I feel like I don't really need to know to live a good life today.

There is a whole branch of NDE research that is investigating the idea of reincarnation.

When I found that out, I just about freaked. it involves children mostly, and there are some pretty smart people steeped in "scientific method" who are looking at this.

Once while I was poking around on the internet, I came across quotes and things that said Eliza R. Snow believed in this as well. Here is a link:

http://reform-mormon.blogspot.com/2006/ ... ation.html

I am just at the beginning of my own personal look into this whole deal, and this thread is about blessings and real experiences, so I don't want to hyjack it. But,...this is an interesting tangent.

As far as powerful blessings, powerful emotions and healings we must remember that there is nothing intrinsically Mormon about those experiences. It is something that is reported by every religious group that believes in such things. I encountered far more claims non-Mormon healings on my mission than I saw or heard about from LDS priesthood holders. I'm with dispirited on this, I will take it seriously when medical journals start publishing that there are significantly lower cancer rates in Utah. I know a hospital administrator (former contributor to NOM) who did some research on this and found that, although people in Utah seem to have a lower rate of contracting cancer (word of wisdom?), they actually have slightly lower recovery rates than the national average.

I had the warm waves of power down my neck and back experience when I blessed my mother that she would recover. As you will recall, she didn't.

deacon blues wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:38 am Yes, but the details are a little fuzzy. On my mission, at the request of an LDS friend, we blessed a non-member who had apparently been diagnosed with cancer. I left the area shortly after. A few months later a missionary called from the area, saying the lady, went in for more tests, and the cancer had disappeared. She and her family, except for the husband had all been baptized. I never got more details. When I go home tonight I am going to check my missionary journal to see if it has any more details. I do not remember the words that were said in the blessing. I just figured the lady must have had great faith.

After a short search, I cannot find my missionary journal, but I don't think it was much different than the account I gave above. I never got the names of the people involved, so I have no way of verifying anything. I have one other memory from my mission, where a young couple felt their toddler son was greatly blessed by a priesthood blessing. The mother was a convert, who went on and on about the priesthood blessing, until finally her non-member mother said, "Don't forget, we prayed for little Johnny too." I remember being surprised on my mission to California that some other faiths claimed healings too. They didn't teach us much about that in Zion/Rexburg, ID.

dispirited wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:04 pm I keep waiting for someone with a NDE to come back and say "Hey, the mormons are right!" Haven't heard of it yet...

I am waiting for someone to really come back from the dead. I mean really dead like cold and stiff, in the morgue for three days. None of this heart stopping for a minute or so.

Rob4Hope wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2017 7:55 am My take on it?....they took "belief bias" with them.

Just curious here Rob: Is there a difference between what you call: "belief bias" and "confirmation bias"?

wtfluff wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:37 pm

Rob4Hope wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2017 7:55 am My take on it?....they took "belief bias" with them.

Just curious here Rob: Is there a difference between what you call: "belief bias" and "confirmation bias"?

No...to me I am talking the same thing.

Found a corroboration:

“One of the near-death experience truths is that each person integrates their near-death experience into their own pre-existing belief system.” – Jody Long

Purdin, Wayne. NDEs - 10 Fascinating Facts: Recent scientific studies of near-death experiences stun, then amaze researchers! (NDE - Life After Death? BK 1) (Kindle Locations 418-420). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

I have experienced the waves of power in blessings, and also had the same outcome, the waves did not correlate with healings necessarily, but usually they did have some effect, sometimes more to comfort someone going through a difficult experience, and less to remediate the situation. I have also given a few blessings that produced immediate improvement that appeared miraculous. One to heal a severe migraine and one to reverse cancer for a time (which was validated by medical tests the next day, the doctors thought their equipment was broken and could not believe it). But far more blessings have failed in my experience, including several cancer deaths after blessings, a death from a mysterious auto-immune type illness, and failure to reverse chronic illness even with BP, SP and GA blessings that insisted there would be healing.

So what is a blessing really? It appears to me to usually be some kind of mechanism in the subconscious mind that can have a profound effect but usually is only palliative (perhaps psychosomatic). There are times where palliative help is really useful, so I don't ever refuse to provide a blessing if someone asks, even though I DON'T believe priesthood is anything more than a human belief system. Because I do think human belief systems can have their own power. And perhaps we can combine our energies in some way to improve healing, the group mind thing, who knows, there is so much we have yet to learn about our reality.

Incidentally, I have also experienced the wave type power in non-blessing situations, and learned to produce it using 'healing hands' type of energy treatments (aka Reiki). Mostly I learned this out of curiosity but was surprised to find it helped produce the same type of effect as the waves of power in some priesthood blessings. So I agree with other posters here, this appears to be a human capability that is not unique to the religious context.

dispirited wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:04 pm I keep waiting for someone with a NDE to come back and say "Hey, the mormons are right!" Haven't heard of it yet...

Here you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbr8IA1R5DE

dispirited wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:04 pm I keep waiting for someone with a NDE to come back and say "Hey, the mormons are right!" Haven't heard of it yet...

The caveat in this situation: the person returning from an NDE claiming "the mormonss are right" needs to be NON-MORMON. Ideally, someone who knew absolutely nothing about mormonism when they "died".

wtfluff wrote: ↑Tue Aug 08, 2017 5:40 am

dispirited wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:04 pm I keep waiting for someone with a NDE to come back and say "Hey, the mormons are right!" Haven't heard of it yet...

The caveat in this situation: the person returning from an NDE claiming "the mormonss are right" needs to be NON-MORMON. Ideally, someone who knew absolutely nothing about mormonism when they "died".

Oh yeh....I am interested in this as well. I am aware of MANY who said that the "mormons are right"....but none who were non-mormon to start with.

So this one is interesting for me as well...

I just ran across this post from r/mormon. Interesting discussion of spiritual experiences. Skip the part about taking mushrooms, haha...

https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comment ... oly_ghost/

John G. wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:28 pm

moksha wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:57 am I think faith can help kick your body's natural defenses into high gear. That is not always sufficient to overcome an infection or illness.

The placebo effect is very real so I think priesthood blessing can have a significant positive effect for TBMs.

This is not for just Mormons. The laying on of hands is one of the oldest healing techniques in human history. If modern human existence stems back to 300,000 years ago, I imagine that by the year 299,999 those human mothers found they could soothe their infants with a gentle touch. Such "blessing" techniques could be observed to be palliative rather than curative, but there is still much to be said for a palliative approach. When we approach our end, think of how much nicer it is to go out with some degree of comfort and caring.

It is much more than a sugar pill we are talking about here.

Even the most TBM would seek the best medical attention available over only having a PH blessing.

If someone fractured their femur or had a massive heart attack, they are going to get the the hospital ASAP. After getting the best medical care available then maybe they would get a PH blessing, that way six weeks later they can testify how a PH blessing saved their life.

The cop-out has always been that the effectiveness of the PH is based on the faith of those involved. Now, isn't getting medical care showing a lack of faith? Wouldn't the real show of faith be to have a PH blessing only, not hospitals or doctors involved? Break a femur, get a PH blessing then stand up and go mow the lawn.

Interesting topic

Some experiences:

The most recent, about six months ago I was asked to bless a newborn baby in intensive care. Mother had been told to prepare for the worst. Baby turned around in a day or so and is now thriving. Yes, probably medical science doing its thing, but I was not opposed to giving comfort to the baby's mother and being a possible conduit for the good of the universe - at the time I was keeping all mormon rules, although not believing in 'the church'.

Some experiences before my disaffection with the the church:


I blessed my son in the middle of a night terror, after he had repeated terrors - they stopped.

My daughter at less than a week old started to choke at home, DW (nurse) tried to turn baby and rub back, no joy, baby turning blue, hurriedly gave baby to me; and me and DW's dad held and blessed baby. Baby's passageway cleared.

As a kid i would go into comas; basically I would go weak, fall asleep and be unresponsive for 2-3 days. I would then come round and be as hungry as a horse. If I was to guess, I think over a year or two it happened about 6 times. I started to feel weak at church - I became very aware of how it felt when I was about to go/out/down/under - I was given a blessing and I never did go under and I never had another coma (was the only blessing I was ever given for the ailment as far as I recall). The Drs had no clue why I was sick.

BTW I was never a person who gave blessings at the drop of a hat, e.g. if the kids had chicken pox or a cold, then that was just a part of normal life and was not a reason for a blessing IMO.

A mixture of coincidence and placebo effects perhaps, but perhaps not. I am open to the idea that there is a benevolent power in the universe. And I could be accused of magical thinking in that regard. I'm a licensed psych, so you might think that I would be above such nonsense - I am not.

But then I have have had some experiences with spirits, as a child and a teen - all of all I am happy to discount, apart from one, which was so odd, and objectively 'real' that I cannot rationally explain it, and it's not worth sharing on the internet as a random person, as I think I'd appear to be a quack.

In the book "John D. Lee, Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat" by Juanita Brooks, the story is told of a miraculous healing by John D. Lee after he was excommunicated (before being executed) of a young boy who was accidentally shot in the head. I would like to know how an excommunicated murderer can perform miracle priesthood blessings.

Some Penguin wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:16 am

Yet Another Penguin wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:16 am The laying on of hands is one of the oldest healing techniques in human history.
It is much more than a sugar pill we are talking about here.

So are you suggesting that if while giving you a hug the bishop recites the words, "Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!", it could have a palliative effect?

Yes, but only if you believe in the Hasenpfeffer with all your heart.