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The psychological impact of her association with her religon and its practices has been reported all over the world to produce physiological changes. But this cannot be measured by modern science, and the "experiment" isn't easily duplicated.
The first part is quite true, the second is somewhat mistaken but not totally by any means.
By this I'm refering to placebo drugs and operations that have indeed been testing just such psychosomatic responses.
Meaning also that this does not calculate relgious response in particular, though I'm guessing some such studies may have and are occuring, but attempts to measure and reproduce the related base concept.
Doctors have been testing placebo drugs for a long time now, I still wonder just how many people still don't know what a placebo is (I was somewhat shocked when I found out), but it has indeed included operations that did not take place, or did not go past a basic incision, but spontaneous and highly accelerated healings occured.
Doctors noted that a key element was confidence, both of the doctor and the patient in the doctor and their abilities.
Faith, but not religious faith.
So I wasn't trying to argue your point, for I agree, but add an important element to it.
Religious faith may very well be a distraction or factor undermining, while ironically preserving, abilities we may naturally posess and can harness.
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As for the existence of God mandating there be the existence of the Creator of God: Have you considered that he is "Self-created"? Don't balk at this. It's just as enigmatic as the concept of a "beginning" of everything. Science simply cannot explain a self-contained event which is its own catalyst.
The point I made was to simply use the logic that was presented by another and applied in a quote citing a claimed obviousness that the limited logical theory does not permit, and in fact can even detract from.
As for your added point of self creation, I do not balk at it at all.
I have heard such a theory, but as you said, it is quite enigmatic and is quite hard to test or speculate on.
Just as the concepts of the beginning and end, nothing and infinity and their contradictory standings.
But I will add that the faultiness I see in this theory at first glance is that to be "self-created" implies a self existing before a created self, which as far as common sense goes, makes none.
How does a self that does not yet exist... create anything, let alone itself?
What I love and find so fascinating is that it would appear very likely that contradictions or paradoxes exist and are just as natural as the concepts that do not allow for their existance.
One reason it is so interesting is that it would mean that absolutely anything is possible, if not probable in some way, shape, or form.
That's exciting stuff.
But in terms of the question of the existance of God or its obviousness, I submit that the question is not if God exists but what God is.
From the various interpretations, which are what I tend to take issue with, existance itself could be God, and existance is the only obvious thing I know of (though its origins are not), and therefore God would be obvious, but a biblically described or defined God is not obvious to me.
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