dedo

The conversion of the Eucharist and wine to the body and blood of Jesus Christ is called "Transubstantiation". If you google it, references will come up that explain it better than I can. It is a spiritual transformation, not a physical transformation. The Catholic sacraments are one reason I stayed with Catholicism in contrast to other Christian religions whose services I have attended. You just feel differently, more at peace, and the feeling continues after you leave. As far as scientific evidence, one person who explains the interaction between religion and science better than I can is Bishop Barron. He dresses this a lot on his You Tube channel. Religion is not the only area of life that is not subject to controlled, reproducible studies. For example, there is not a single controlled prospective study that proves that jumping out of an airplane with a parachute is better than jumping without a parachute. Yet we know that parachutes work from anecdotes. That is not an example from Barron's channel, as he has better ones. My conclusion has been that God will reveal Himself to those that seek Him. There are not controlled studies of this, only anecdotes. But the anecdotes include prominent atheist scientists. One other area where the anecdotes are intriguing involve the lives of the Saints. When you study the lives of these people, the stories are consistent with people who have found something much better than anything the physical world can offer. If you ever have a chance to travel to Rome, there are numerous tours of art museums given by graduate students in art history who explain the lives of the Saints in the art they show you. It is quite amazing. Sorry, but I have not yet learned how to cut up the text and respond to each point. So I will try and summarize. I believe that God is the source of all love, so He is in all living beings including atheists. Follow your conscience, do something nice, and you are following God. Now some societies will incorrectly describe God as Zeus etc, where I believe that the correct description of God is explained by Catholic theology. However, my understanding of God is far from perfect and is on a continuum, that I hope is improving. For example, my understanding cannot come close to the understanding of God by a Saint. As I said, the incidents I described are contextual, and were meant to convince me. They will not have the same meaning to you. God is fully capable of convincing you, or anyone, individually of His existence in my opinion. As far as humanity, there is a widespread "feeling" among many people that humanity is in danger. If that "feeling" is correct, then it is logical to think that we will do better connected to God, than if we "fall away" from God. I believe that God sees the future, because He sees all possible futures. So the future is not fixed and can be changed by prayer, good deeds, intentional action etc.

In our area, after Crisis Pregnancy Centers opened in the region, abortions fell by 50%. I have not looked at other areas. You do not need to prosecute women to reduce the numbers of abortions. In terms of environmental causes of disease and violence I suggest: 1. Disease: "The Brain Maker Diet" by Perlmutter, discusses the effect of diet on gut health and how the gut microbiome may the the common denominator in scores of diseases. 2. Violence: "Why They Kill" by Rhodes, discusses how violence perpetuates violence in the criminal world.

I believe that wisdom comes from God, so any historical being who exhibits wisdom is inspired by God, regardless of his or her belief system. That is my conjecture. Jesus is different from other wise historical figures in that He is the Son of God, according to the Christian belief system that I follow. I believe that all of us can have knowledge of God; however, there are right ways and wrong ways to seek God. For example, a key ingredient to seeking God is repentance, that removes sin that separates man from God according to my understanding of Christian theology. You don't have to worry about harming my acceptance of God because my personal experience will trump an argument. Nevertheless, you may show some flaw in my belief system that could reveal an area where I am weak. I am also seeking a method to instill the desire to seek God in society. One argument I am looking at is that if God exists, then it is not logical to think that humanity will thrive apart from God individually or collectively. Thus, if you think the world is in trouble, the first step is to seek God, and then serve others according to how you are called.

I believe it is morally wrong because I believe that life begins at conception. That is not a personal belief, but is a religious belief shared by a significant percentage of the planet. If the Democratic Party were to encourage or allow diversity on this subject, Clinton might have won. Personally, I agree with the Democrats on almost every issue except abortion. For example, there are ways to cut abortions in half without outlawing the procedure. If Clinton had been just willing to go that far, she might have gotten the edge she needed. Finally, there is evidence in many areas including disease and violence, that toxic effects on humanity are environmental and self perpetuating. Since the evidence is strong that at least criminal violence works this way, it is likely that other forms of violence including abortion, will result in more violence down the road. I voted a write in, and did not support any of the presidential candidates.

The God that answered is Jesus Christ. Over the years I have reached the conclusion that God seeks to convince each of us individually of His nature. Thus, the things that happened to me will have less meaning to you, and vice versa, as we have not walked in each others' shoes. Perhaps you are a scholar in some subject about which I know little or nothing. If God were to reach you in that discipline, I could not appreciate your feeling etc. A few of the experiences included: Once a young neighbor who was learning to surf was going to Maui and he was excited to tell me about it. I knew of an easy break near where he was staying and was about to tell him about it. I had this strange premonition of danger that I heeded, and did not tell the lad about the break. That week, a surfer was killed by a tiger shark at the exact break I was about to tell my neighbor about. The kid would have been the least experienced surfer in the water, and the most vulnerable to attack. Once I had a real problem with one aspect of theology involving the coexistence of free will and God's ability to "see the future". At this time I was browsing in a religious bookstore and randomly picked up a novel about religious fiction that I felt I should read. The novel answered the question exactly. Shortly after having several prayers answered, and not knowing much about how we are supposed to interact with God, I decided to "speed up the process". I literally asked by guardian angel to meet me at a restaurant for a chat. I was sitting in the restaurant watching the front door and a person taps me on the shoulder from behind, and asks if I would like to join him and his friend for dinner. The person was my parish priest who I barely knew and his friend, another priest. I don't recall ever having had dinner with a priest prior to this episode. Nevertheless, the invitation was not ignored. Later, I learned that when people meet angels it is often to strengthen them for something awful. After that, the desire to meet one ebbed. There are scores more examples, most of which involve God letting me know that I never have to face anything alone.

The elitist hypocrisy of the American liberal is amazing. Although they have many important thoughts on areas like health care and the environment, they should also take credit for 60 million abortions they inflicted on the U.S. Neither side has any right to be sanctimonious about anything and it is time to work together.

My belief system is similar to the one described by the OP: Catholic who believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. My belief system was in large part based on Pascal's Wager when I was younger. However, at one point I decided to seek God partly out of intense curiosity, and partly out of a feeling of "something missing". The result was that prayers were answered etc. that erased any doubt I had had about the existence of God.

Areas to consider learning more about relating to stress are diet, meditation, and exercise, especially exercise involving stretching. Of course any new changes should be approved by your doctor, but what works for me is: 1. Regular stretching. I do a short yoga routine several times a week at home that I believe reduces stress. I read once that Hawaiian healers believe that disease comes from stress, and that stress can be relieved in the muscles by massage. Yoga is easier for me than massage. 2. Diet. Two areas of diet I am focusing on are gut health (The Brain Maker Diet), and gene switching (Dr. Gundry's Diet Revolution). I just started the second book; however, it is by a heart surgeon who wrote a book about a diet that switches off harmful genes that he has found to be particularly effective for cardiovascular disease. The brain Maker Diet is by a neurologist whose practice involves healing neurological problems, including anxiety, with dietary changes. 3. Meditation. I believe that stress is compounded in the mind by repetitive thought circles of worry that can be interrupted with meditation that trains the mind to be present. I do a form of religious meditation called "Lectio Divina" because I am Catholic, but any meditation should help. Good Luck.

It is not surprising that medical advancement in many areas is slow when the diet and activity level of populations is so bad. How can doctors make up for an unhealthy lifestyle with a pill or an operation when people just return to their unhealthy ways? I think the problem of advances in health at the population level will come in preventive medicine. However, how to achieve improvements in diet / exercise on a large scale is unknown. So far, it is proving very difficult to even change behavior among doctors. It takes on average 17 years for evidence based practice to become fully adopted by doctors once the practice is accepted in medical journals. It may be that once the problem of changing behavior among doctors is solved, enough insight will be gained to advance changing behavior among patients.

I believe in God because I when I sought God things happened that I interpreted as a response from God. These events convinced me that God exists, and that His nature is good. The nature of these occurrences, from my perspective, seemed to be specifically designed to achieve both items eg. 1. God exists. 2. God's nature is good. The events do not seem to be designed to only achieve #1, or to be used to convince someone else of #1 without #2. Thus, I have become convinced that God desires #1 and #2 together, so that He can reveal His nature at the same time that He reveals His presence.