Tom1205

There are so many religions out there....so many Gods... so many "bibles" (i.e. religious texts). Who are you to tell people to believe in what? What gives your "particular religion" the authority to claim ultimate truth? This phenomenon alone supports the idea that religion is merely a man-made entity, arisen from different cultures/geographic areas, and is not the truth. Obviously, one may argue, there is "good" religion, like Christianity, hence you should believe in Christianity. But how can you base the validity / truthfulness of a religion on merely if it's morally good or bad? In psychological experiments, animals are given food (positive reinforcement) randomly and unpredictability. Then you start to observe that the animals will form ritualistic body movements to try to obtain the food. The body movements are movements that the animals were doing right before receiving the food. This shows that religion arose because of one person / caveman who happened to receive a positive reinforcement by doing something, and has passed on the belief that "by doing that something, you will get a reward". Thoughts?

I totally understand your concern. I have this very religious family friend, and she has a 12 year old daughter. I read on the daughter's facebook status saying how she "wants to prepare well for the end time because the end time is near" and that she is not sure what she will do if "someone puts a gun to mother's head and asks her (the daughter) to renounce Christ". What worries me here is that because of her upbringing and family values, which were forced upon her (I don't want to offend people here, so I refrain from the word "brainwash"), the daughter may actually consider giving up her mother's life in this scenario. This is really disturbing because who knows what else she might do in the name of religion when she grows up later on. Therefore, I truly believe that instilling kids with religious beliefs at a too early age is actually detrimental to them. It blinds them from thinking rationally.

@your first link. oh wow. looks like someone thought of that already. they should have done a CD4 T cell count to see if it went up... even though the symptoms didn't really improve :\

1. people with neutropenia due to inherited defects in immune activation pathways are routinely treated with GM-CSF to stimulate bone marrow release of immune effector cells. 2. furthermore, GM-CSF is shown to be able to reconstitute CD4 T cells (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23001765) >>>So why can't we just treat mid-late stage HIV/AIDS patients with GM-CSF, thereby increasing their CD4 T cell count....at the same time administering the HAART to keep virus in check......perhaps this would reverse AIDS symptoms due to the increase in CD4 T cell count? What do you guys think?