JC> LP> Oh, very good observation!  Though, without sarcasm, I'd prefer
  > LP> nursing care over my 'nurse' praying for me if I were forced to 
choose.
JC> Actually, I have been known to throw hospital chaplains out of my 
ospital
  > room. 
The hospital chaplain that came to us when Christine was dying was OK.
He managed not to say anything stupid, like "It's God's will", or
anything like that.  He was a little uncertain about how to handle the
fact that we didn't have any minister to come in to us (although we had
several friends who were with us throughout the entire ordeal.)
JC> LP> I pray for someone, I tell them about it.  I know that praying is
  > LP> psychologically beneficial but I don't know how it works.
JC> The wife and I have a Shih-Tzu that was a Pet Therapist. My wife used to 
ta
  > the pup to hospitals, nursing homes, etc. The medical profession doesn't 
kn
  > how _that_ treatment works, either, but it does.
It's true that animal therapy works, and no-one knows how.  Furthermore,
in a time of serious life and death crises, people who have famly
members close by are more apt to survive than those who don't, even when
the treatment or the situation is, otherwise, the same.
JC> Not me. I'm an atheistic agnostic. (And, yes, according to my dictionary 

  > _can_ be both.)
Let me see: an atheist believes there *is* no god; and an agnostic
believes you can't *prove* whether or not there's a god.   So an
atheistic agnostic who is a person who, knowing the existence of god is
beyond proof, has made a faith decision that there is no God.
                              Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ þ An eye for an eye makes the world blind. M.Gandhi
--- Opus-CBCS 1.7x via O_QWKer 1.7 
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