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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
 Posted - 10/09/2008 : 01:36:54
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Are there any doctors here who could shed some light on the safety of this? To me, this looks insane! Some theist and his wife tried to do a forty day fast; fortunately they quit "early", but isn't even trying such a thing bloody crazy?
The quote is from the second post.
Froggie said: "This is totally [irresponsible] and life threatening.
A perfectly healthy person might get away with that some, but you could kill your wife with this irrational stuff."
So I said: I appreciate your concern but we are watching very closely.
Please don't think for one moment we are not watching carefully and monitoring and listening to our body's, otherwise you might be the one that is irrational. Remember we made promises to God to go 40 days and fell short by 4 days to call it off to err to caution. If we were "irresponsible" or "irrational" we would of done the full 40 no matter what. We broke our word with God for her safety.
In an attempt to ease your mind, if that is even possible, we are monitoring with, so far, more then 10 MRI's of her brain and have the very best doctor and team in the entire United States to help 24/7. We are no dummies and/or fools here.
Hopefully your lack of confidence and your prejudice has been thwarted. You were completely wrong and irrational yourself. |
He's responding to some guy who took issue with his fast and seems to have gotten some facts wrong.
As a side note, look at the side of his blog; he's thanking "god" for the state of California for keeping homeschooling legal. Now they don't have to move, he says.
One can guess as to the quality of "homeschooling" their poor kids' going to get.
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>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 10/09/2008 : 02:25:18 [Permalink]
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I seem to remember that, back in the early '70s, I think, a couple of IRA guys in a British prison went some 70 + days before dying. Do any other of you old farts recall that?
Just tried a google and found this page. Lots of voluntary starvation lunacy.
Unfortunatly, this nonsense is quite common amongst the devout. I really don't see how it debunks atheists, though.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 08:18:07 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
I seem to remember that, back in the early '70s, I think, a couple of IRA guys in a British prison went some 70 + days before dying. Do any other of you old farts recall that? |
Bobby Sands is the most famous of them. He died after 66 days.
I'd say that it should be reasonably safe to go on 40 days without food. Especially if they are going to be followed medically, the human body is fairly resilient, after all.
Not sure how it would affect cancer. Cellular starvation will probably trigger quite a different set of genes, so it might actually help... or prove disastrous.
Not to mention that cancerous cells being more metabolically active, it makes sense that they would be more affected by nutrient reduction.
That'd be interesting to see.
But really, is it a clever thing to do?
I ask that, especially considering the cost. 10 MRI? Having a doc on call 24/7? That's big bucks right there.
Maybe they could shorten their fast to something easier and use that money for, I don't know, improving somebody's life rather than making their own more difficult!
They could fund a soup kitchen for weeks; build a school; vaccine several hundred of children with that money!
You know, something useful and not completely retarded! |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 09:10:45 [Permalink]
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Cut their fast short, eh? True Christians would have gone the full 40 days. Hell, I think we should encourage all true Christians to aim for 100 days.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 10:09:28 [Permalink]
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40 days without food is survivable, but its not safe. It takes months to recover from such an ordeal.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 10:17:43 [Permalink]
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I say let Natural Selection do it's work :)
I just wish people would do this crap BEFORE they have children. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13481 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 12:40:33 [Permalink]
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All in all, where it comes to fasting I do believe that Gandhi
was there first and used it most effectively. The blueprint is his.
Fasts
It was in South Africa that Gandhi first used fasting as a tool in "Satyagraha". Gandhi recognized that fasting could be misconstrued by others (he was, for example, accused of selfish egoism exhibited in his fasts!), so he developed very clear rules. In essence, fasts were an expression of "suffering love", in a deeply Christian sense.
According to Bhikhu Parekh, in his book in the Past Masters series, Gandhi's reasons for fasting were essentially fourfold:
*
it was his way of expressing his own deep sense of sorrow at the way those he loved had disappointed him
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it was his way, as their Leader, for atoning for their misdeeds
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it was his last attempt to stir deep spiritual feelings in others and to appeal to their moral sense
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it was his way of bringing the quarreling parties together.
Gandhi also placed limits on when fasting was appropriate;
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Fasts could only be undertaken against those people he loved
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Fasts must have a concrete and specific goal, not abstract aims
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The fast must be morally defensible in the eyes of the target
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The fast must in no way serve his own interests
*
The fast must not ask people to do something they were incapable of, or to cause great hardship.
Gandhi followed these principles on every fast. During his lifetime, he fasted 17 times. |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 12:51:36 [Permalink]
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In contrast, the people in the link seem to do it for no good reason and comes out, to me at least, as shellfish attention seekers.
Whatever.
(Visiting the site again, it seems like what he described as tumour was actually a non cancerous cyst. Not nearly as impressive. Plus; the guy can't spell miracle). |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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A 40 day fast?
