Was/Is This Necessary?

stevetheupsguy

sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
Look at the last paragraph of the link I am posting. Was the last line necessary? What does the last line have to do with the preceding article? For those of you that don't feel like clicking the link, I've pasted the article below the link. I've also highlighted the portion in question.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is "furious" that doctors failed to diagnose her husband, actor Michael Douglas's throat cancer earlier, she said in an interview published Thursday.
But Douglas himself, who this week revealed that his cancer was more advanced than previously thought, vowed to overcome the disease, telling People magazine: "I'll beat this."
Douglas, 65, only recently revealed his diagnosis when he returned to the United States from a family holiday. This week he said it was a stage four cancer, but that he had an 80 percent chance of beating it.
But British actress Zeta-Jones, who married Douglas in 2000, voiced anger that his chances of beating the cancer are reduced because it was only diagnosed three weeks ago.
He had spent months seeking a cause for persistent throat and ear pain, before a walnut-sized tumor was discovered on the base of his tongue in early August, the couple said.
"He sought every option and nothing was found. I knew something was up. He knew something was up," Zeta-Jones told the US weekly, adding: "It makes me furious they didn't detect it earlier."
Douglas was more philosophical about how soon he was diagnosed, saying: "Without having to blame anybody... these things sometimes just don't show up."
And he was upbeat about his chances of overcoming it. "I'm treating this as a curable disease," he said. "It's a fight. I'll beat this."
Douglas is a pillar of Hollywood, having starred in more than 40 films, including such hits as "Fatal Attraction" (1988), "Wall Street" (1988), "War of the Roses" (1990), "Basic Instinct" (1992) and "Traffic" (2001).
Douglas's latest film, the sequel to the 1987 box office hit "Wall Street" called "The Money Never Sleeps," directed by Oliver Stone, is due to hit movie theaters in the United States later this month.
Douglas has a son from an earlier marriage, Cameron Douglas, who was sentenced in April to five years in prison for drug-trafficking.
 

moreluck

golden ticket member
Consider the source....AFP....That's an international news, so they will report all they can about the bio for Michael Douglas for the international readers who might not know who he is (like if they live under a rock!)

Aside from your question.....Apparently Mr. Douglas had symptoms and complaints and doctors found nothing for months. We sometimes sit back and think that the stars have the very best doctors and best care.......but guess what ? Cancer will show up whenever. It doesn't necessarily mean his doctors aren't sharp......it is what it is. I sure wish him luck in his chemo & radiation. I hope he beats it !!!
 

stevetheupsguy

sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
It appears [-]you[/-] they are prejudiced against drug-traffickers and people who have been in prison.
Maybe [-]you[/-] they should try to be more tolerant.
fixed it for ya.

Consider the source....AFP....That's an international news, so they will report all they can about the bio for Michael Douglas for the international readers who might not know who he is (like if they live under a rock!)

Aside from your question.....Apparently Mr. Douglas had symptoms and complaints and doctors found nothing for months. We sometimes sit back and think that the stars have the very best doctors and best care.......but guess what ? Cancer will show up whenever. It doesn't necessarily mean his doctors aren't sharp......it is what it is. I sure wish him luck in his chemo & radiation. I hope he beats it !!!
I hope he beats the cancer, as well. I'm adding him to the ever growing prayer list.

Aside from the cancer, I think it's so wrong when a reporter throws a "fact" like this into a story. He's got stage 4 cancer, and btw, his son is a convicted drug addict. It's simply shameful.
 

moreluck

golden ticket member
Oh yeah, the ex football player....nice guy!

[video=youtube;7yl3UMO-TkE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yl3UMO-TkE[/video]
 

tieguy

Banned
Look at the last paragraph of the link I am posting. Was the last line necessary? What does the last line have to do with the preceding article? For those of you that don't feel like clicking the link, I've pasted the article below the link. I've also highlighted the portion in question.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is "furious" that doctors failed to diagnose her husband, actor Michael Douglas's throat cancer earlier, she said in an interview published Thursday.
But Douglas himself, who this week revealed that his cancer was more advanced than previously thought, vowed to overcome the disease, telling People magazine: "I'll beat this."
Douglas, 65, only recently revealed his diagnosis when he returned to the United States from a family holiday. This week he said it was a stage four cancer, but that he had an 80 percent chance of beating it.
But British actress Zeta-Jones, who married Douglas in 2000, voiced anger that his chances of beating the cancer are reduced because it was only diagnosed three weeks ago.
He had spent months seeking a cause for persistent throat and ear pain, before a walnut-sized tumor was discovered on the base of his tongue in early August, the couple said.
"He sought every option and nothing was found. I knew something was up. He knew something was up," Zeta-Jones told the US weekly, adding: "It makes me furious they didn't detect it earlier."
Douglas was more philosophical about how soon he was diagnosed, saying: "Without having to blame anybody... these things sometimes just don't show up."
And he was upbeat about his chances of overcoming it. "I'm treating this as a curable disease," he said. "It's a fight. I'll beat this."
Douglas is a pillar of Hollywood, having starred in more than 40 films, including such hits as "Fatal Attraction" (1988), "Wall Street" (1988), "War of the Roses" (1990), "Basic Instinct" (1992) and "Traffic" (2001).
Douglas's latest film, the sequel to the 1987 box office hit "Wall Street" called "The Money Never Sleeps," directed by Oliver Stone, is due to hit movie theaters in the United States later this month.
Douglas has a son from an earlier marriage, Cameron Douglas, who was sentenced in April to five years in prison for drug-trafficking.

I dont particularly like or dislike Mike douglas. For his sake I hope he beats the cancer but I'm not going to pray for him. It would be an insult to the concept of prayer to pray for someone who has led such a pivledged life when there are so many in this world that have endured so much more and are in need of all the help they can get. Pray for the guy on the street corner begging for your change and talking to himself. He needs it much more then Mike D.

better yet lets take this lunacy to its fullest and say **** the guy on the corner while we pray for silver spoon in his mouth Mike D.
 
P

pickup

Guest
I dont particularly like or dislike Mike douglas. For his sake I hope he beats the cancer but I'm not going to pray for him. It would be an insult to the concept of prayer to pray for someone who has led such a pivledged life when there are so many in this world that have endured so much more and are in need of all the help they can get. Pray for the guy on the street corner begging for your change and talking to himself. He needs it much more then Mike D.

better yet lets take this lunacy to its fullest and say **** the guy on the corner while we pray for silver spoon in his mouth Mike D.


In less time than it took to type out that post, you could have said a prayer for Mike D as well as one for the guy on the street corner.

Just sayin' (a prayer for Mike D and a guy on the street corner)
 

tieguy

Banned
In less time than it took to type out that post, you could have said a prayer for Mike D as well as one for the guy on the street corner.

Just sayin' (a prayer for Mike D and a guy on the street corner)

coommenting on the point the rich guy you see on tv will get the prayer while we drive by the guy on the corner and never see him. Noteriety and privledge tend to garner prayers for those who have had an easier life.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
I dont particularly like or dislike Mike douglas. For his sake I hope he beats the cancer but I'm not going to pray for him. It would be an insult to the concept of prayer to pray for someone who has led such a pivledged life when there are so many in this world that have endured so much more and are in need of all the help they can get. Pray for the guy on the street corner begging for your change and talking to himself. He needs it much more then Mike D.

better yet lets take this lunacy to its fullest and say **** the guy on the corner while we pray for silver spoon in his mouth Mike D.

We all can use a prayer regardless of our status amongst men ... in God's "eyes" we are all the same.
 

Jones

fILE A GRIEVE!
Staff member
What the latest prayer study tells us about God.

By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, April 6, 2006, at 2:37 AM ET
Brother, have you heard the bad news?
It was supposed to be good news, like the kind in the Bible. After three years, $2.4 million, and 1.7 million prayers, the biggest and best study ever was supposed to show that the prayers of faraway strangers help patients recover after heart surgery. But things didn't go as ordained. Patients who knowingly received prayers developed more post-surgery complications than did patients who unknowingly received prayers—and patients who were prayed for did no better than patients who weren't prayed for. In fact, patients who received prayers without their knowledge ended up with more major complications than did patients who received no prayers at all.
If the data had turned out the other way, clerics would be trumpeting the power of prayer on every street corner. Instead, the study's authors and many media outlets are straining to brush off the results. The study "cannot address a large number of religious questions, such as whether God exists, whether God answers intercessory prayers, or whether prayers from one religious group work in the same way as prayers from other groups," the authors shrug.
Bull. If these findings involved any other kind of therapy, doctors would spin hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms and why the treatment failed or backfired. And that's exactly what theologians and scientists are doing as they try to explain away the data. They're implicitly sketching possibilities as to what sort of God could account for the results. Here's a list.
1. God doesn't exist. This is the simplest explanation, favored by atheists. You pray, but nobody's there, so nothing happens.
2. God doesn't intervene. This is the view of self-limiting-deity theorists and of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. God may be there, but He's not doing anything here.
3. God is highly selective. The positive effect of prayer on the study's participants "could be smaller than the 10% that our study was powered to detect," the authors suggest. Maybe God heeds prayers, but not enough of them to reach statistical significance.
4. God ignores form letters. According to the study's protocol, if you were assigned to pray for patients, the only information you got about them was a daily fax listing their first names and the initials of their surnames. A script told you to pray in each case "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." This cookie-cutter approach may have "impacted the quality of the prayer," according to a scientific editorial that accompanies the study. Form letters don't impress Congress; why should they impress God?
5. God requires a personal reference. "Intercessory prayer makes much more sense in community, in family, [where] we're concerned about the well-being of one another," one of the study's authors argued in a teleconference on the findings. A congressman may care whether your lobbyist knows the congressman, but what God cares about is whether your intercessor knows you.
6. God is unmoved by the size of your lobbying team. The authors lament contamination from "background prayer" as though it were radiation. Patients "may have been exposed to a large amount of non-study prayer" from friends and family, they warn, possibly swamping "the effects of prayer provided by the intercessors." Evidently, the 1,000 prayers delivered on your behalf by strangers in this study added no discernible effect to the prayers God heard from people who knew you.
7. God ignores third parties. Why should God do what a fax from one stranger tells another stranger to ask for on your behalf? The person God's going to listen to is you—and maybe you want relief or salvation more than life. As one author puts it, "What we have in mind for someone else may not be what they have in mind for themselves."
8. God takes His time. Maybe the study didn't follow patients long enough, the authors suggest: "The occurrence of any complication within 30 days of surgery may not be appropriate or relevant to the effects of intercessory prayer." When ordering from Heaven, allow at least one month for shipping.
9. God has a backlog. Patients' names were faxed to intercessors "starting the night before each patient's scheduled surgery," according to the protocol. Was that too late?
10. God ignores you if you don't pray hard enough. "Maybe the people weren't praying very hard," a monsignor tells the St. Petersburg Times.
11. God ignores you if you're wicked. Responding to the findings, a Baptist pastor cites James 5:16: "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." No righteousness, no effect.
12. God helps those who help themselves. "Many if not most of the wonderful hospitals in this country were built through the intercessory prayers of religious communities of various denominations," a member of the study team observed during the teleconference. "Theirs was the prayer of action instead of word." Deeds, not pleas, save lives.
13. God does not hear the prayer of a Christian. The protocol says prayers were delivered by members of a Benedictine monastery, a Carmelite community, and a Protestant prayer ministry. "We were unable to locate other Christian, Jewish, or non-Christian groups that could receive the daily prayer list required for this multiyear study," the authors explain. Oops! Maybe Jerry Falwell had it backward.
14. God chooses His own outcome measures. The study measured the effect of prayers on "postoperative complications defined by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons." But as the accompanying editorial notes, "many prayers for the sick contain the implicit objective of easing the passage of the spirit out of the body, an outcome which, by Society of Thoracic Surgeons definition, would be coded as death." If God doesn't pass your test, maybe you're using the wrong test.
15. God doesn't participate in studies. The authors say 1,493 people refused to participate in the study because they had other priorities or were "not interested in clinical research." Why should God, who has a lot more to do and nothing to learn from a study, react differently? "I don't see him cooperating in a test," opines a Baptist theologian.
16. God hates being told what to do. Several clerics argue that the kind of intercessory prayer used in the study is "manipulative … of divine action" and sinfully treats God "as our instrument." The editorial accompanying the study, noting that patients who were prayed for "had worse absolute rates of complications" than those who weren't, asks "whether it was the intercessory prayer per se that may be unsafe." Is the prayer study, like so much in the Bible, a sign of God's wrath? "Researchers must be vigilant in asking the question of whether a well-intentioned, loving, heartfelt healing prayer might inadvertently harm or kill vulnerable patients," the editorial concludes.
17. God is malevolent. Patients who received prayers were marginally more likely to develop complications (52.5 to 50.9 percent) and substantially more likely to develop major complications (18.0 to 13.4 percent) than patients who received none. You can't blame the major-complication gap on psychology, since both groups were told that they might or might not be prayed for. In the teleconference, one of the study's authors tried to explain the gap away—"We don't feel confident statistically that that difference is at the level of significance barely that it's actually perhaps real"—whatever that means. But another called it a "possible hotspot," and the editorial warns that in clinical research, "assumptions of Divine benevolence … could only be considered scientifically naïve," since "in the history of medicine there has never been a healing remedy that was actually effective without having potential side effects or toxicities."
 

Nimnim

The Nim
We all can use a prayer regardless of our status amongst men ... in God's "eyes" we are all the same.

So god needs glasses like Mr. Magoo, got it.

Anyways, more on topic, can't say Mr. Douglas is familiar to me by name. Either way, here's the hope that he gets well. And at the same time, here's hoping all illness gets better in the world.
 

tieguy

Banned
We all can use a prayer regardless of our status amongst men ... in God's "eyes" we are all the same.

my point was not on the need for prayer or that we should pray for everyone. My point was that mr. Douglasses fame will get him more prayers where the guy sleeping next to the steam vent needs it more.

my first post to that point may have been kleined a little bit.:happy-very:
 
Last edited:
Top