Posted on 04/15/2008 8:34:19 PM PDT by blam
Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death'
By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008
Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today.
They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent.
Antioxidants, including vitamins A, E, and C are said to mop up free radicals, which cause disease
Researchers at Copenhagen University carried out a review of 67 studies on 230,000 healthy people and found "no convincing evidence" that any of the antioxidants helped to prolong life expectancy. But some "increased mortality".
About 12 million Britons supplement their diets with vitamins and the industry is worth £330 million. But little research has been done on the long-term health implications.
The Department of Health said yesterday that people should try to get the vitamins they need by eating a balanced diet and advised care in taking large doses of supplements.
A spokesman said: "There is a need to exercise caution in the use of high doses of purified supplements of vitamins, including antioxidant vitamins, and minerals. Their impact on long-term health may not have been fully established and they cannot be assumed to be without risk.
"Anyone concerned about their diet should speak to their doctor or dietitian."
Antioxidants, including vitamins A, E, C and beta-carotene and selenium, are said to mop up compounds, called free radicals, which cause disease. It is this action that researchers believe may cause problems with the defence system.
The Danish research, released by the influential Cochrane Library, applied only to synthetic supplements and not to vitamins that occur naturally in vegetables and fruit.
It found that vitamin A supplements increased the risk of death in healthy people by 16 per cent. Taking beta-carotene was linked to a 7 per cent increased risk, while regular users of vitamin E supplements increased the risk of an early death by four per cent.
Although the review found no significant detrimental effect caused by vitamin C, it found no evidence that it helped ward off disease. Millions take it in the hope of avoiding a common cold.
Goran Bjelakovic, who led the review, said: "We could find no evidence to support taking antioxidant supplements to reduce the risk of dying earlier in healthy people or patients with various diseases.
"If anything, people in trial groups given the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality."
But Patrick Holford, a nutritionist who has formulated supplements for the company Biocare, said: "Antioxidants are not meant to be magic bullets and should not be expected to undo a lifetime of unhealthy habits.
"When used properly, in combination with a healthy diet full of fruit and vegetables, getting plenty of exercise and not smoking, antioxidant supplements can play an important role in maintaining and promoting overall health."
A spokesman for the Health Supplements Information Service said: "People should get all the vitamins and minerals they need from their diet, but for the millions who are not able to do that, vitamins can be a useful supplement and they should not stop taking them."
However, Catherine Collins, of the British Dietetic Association, said: "This study is deeply worrying and shows that there should be more regulation for vitamins and minerals.
"The public can buy vitamins as easily as sweets. They should be treated in the same way as paracetamol with maximum limits on the dosage."
As as far as being weak, real power is shown by a God who knows that He is GREAT ENOUGH that some will choose Him due to LOVE and LOVE alone. God is LOVE. Petty, weak, pathetic dictators without real power, force their slaves to come out to parades and "show affection" for them. Of course no one is fooled one bit that those crowds of people, since they are FORCED to show that affection. And you are claiming that God is just the same way. Without a free will, our love for God means nothing, proves nothing.
It's not all or nothing. That is just completely false, bogus logic. It is not "Well, if God allows us any free will, then He must be weak or out of control. You force God into a limited set of options from your own limited view of Him.
Where does this love come from? Please show us the verses in Scripture that say any man can love God before God loves him first.
If God draws a man, that man will come. The outward call goes to all men; the inward call by the Holy Spirit goes to God's elect from among all nations and races and times because ultimately, election is God's call and not men's.
Otherwise, men would be telling God they are good enough to be redeemed. And the truth is men are only redeemed by Christ's righteousness being imputed to them by God's grace alone.
"And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." -- John 6:65
And just why should I show you that, when I have never claimed that? But I can see that you are once again trying to make a flawed logical assumption. "If the love comes from God then it's impossible for man to show love."
Otherwise, men would be telling God they are good enough to be redeemed.
Oh boy... here we go again... No, not "otherwise". Man can say anything, but that does not prove the point you are trying to make. I could try to make an equally baseless point such as: "God does not choose only certain men, because then those men could claim they were special compared to their neighbors, and get puffed up with pride."
You misunderstand.
If God were to save men based on something smart or pious or clever or righteous they did themselves, like deciding to believe in Jesus Christ, then men would have a reason to boast of themselves. They would be smarter, more pious, more clever, more righteous than their doofus neighbor next door who didn't believe.
But the Bible tells us God elects based on nothing in the individual because ALL men are fallen and NONE seeks God. We don't know why God chooses to give saving faith to one man and not to another, but we do know that He does do this, according to His holy and eternal decree determined from before the foundation of the world.
Again, read Romans 8 and 9, and Ephesians 1 and 2. It's all there. And it is a glorious fact. As a redeemed Christian, you were loved by God before you could ever have loved Him. And that love is why you have faith -- because God gave it to you as a merciful gift of grace.
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
Read that verse and try to align your own perspective to what God is telling us here. God decides who is to be numbered among His family. God "decreed the end from the beginning," and determined the salvation of His elect from all eternity by the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
Most of us Reformed once believed as you do now, so we know just how strong the blinders are which prevented us from understanding election. By the grace of God, when it finally sunk into our heads it was a "light-bulb" moment we won't soon forget.
He is engaged in this context in reminding his readers of the greatness of their salvation. They had been dead in their trespasses and their sins, children of wrath by nature, like the rest of men. But God is rich in mercy and has loved them mightily. Because of this his great love for them, he has come to them, lying helplessly dead in their sins, and has made them alive in Christ. Here the apostle breaks in on himself to cry, for the first time, "By grace have ye been saved"! God has raised them with Christ and seated them with him in the heavenly places, for no other reason than that he might show forth in the ages to come the surpassing riches of his grace, as manifested in this his kindness to them in Christ Jesus, for — the apostle now adds with iterant emphasis — "by grace have ye been saved." We see that the apostle is most eager to impress on his readers this one fact, asserted and reasserted as the one thing needful for them to keep fully in mind, that it is by grace that they have been saved; that it is by grace, and nothing else than grace, that they have been saved. In this reiterated phrase we have in effect the heart of the heart of his gospel, to know which is our prime necessity if we are to know what that gospel is. The whole gospel turns as upon its hinge on this fact, that salvation is of pure grace...""By grace have ye been saved," says Paul to the Ephesians (Eph. ii. 5, 8); and so important does it seem to him that his readers shall understand this and bear it on their hearts that he says it twice in the course of four verses. He says it in such a way, moveover, as to throw a tremendous emphasis on the word "grace," and therefore on the manner in which they had been saved, as distinguished from the salvation itself. He is not assuring the Ephesians that they had been saved. They knew that for themselves, and were rejoicing in this wonderful thing which had come to them. What he is eagerly repeating to them, intent on fixing it so firmly in their hearts that they cannot escape from it for a moment, is that it is just "by grace" that they have been saved.
http://www.allanturner.com/calbk_3.html
Man Possesses Free Will
There are myriad Bible passages that present the reception of God's blessing or cursing as contingent upon human choice. This is epitomized in Deuteronomy 11:26-28, which says: "Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known." When Joshua challenged the people to "choose you this day whom you will serve,"5 he was addressing individuals who were free to make a moral decision. This is no place made clearer than in Matthew 23:37, where Jesus cried: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" The Bible teaches conclusively and emphatically that man has free will.
God's Will Can Be Rejected
As the passages cited above teach, not only does man possess free will, but he can actually exercise this free will in a way that defies God's will. In other words, although God is Sovereign Ruler, He does not always get everything He wants. To the Calvinists, such a statement is totally unthinkable and completely contrary to their concept of God's sovereignty. Even so, in Isaiah 65:12, God said, "Therefore I will number you for the sword, and you shall all bow down to the slaughter; because, when I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not hear, but did evil before My eyes, and chose that in which I do not delight." Again, in 2 Peter 3:9, it is plainly stated that God is "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." If, as the Calvinists claim, God decrees everything that happens, and if, as the apostle Peter claims, God is not willing that any should perish, then all mankind will ultimately be saved. But even Calvinists reject the idea of Universalism. What, then, is their solution? Simply this: They must come to understand that Calvinism is not just anti-scriptural, which is certainly bad enough, but is anti-God as well. Calvin's god (with a little 'g') is not the God (with a big 'G') who has revealed Himself in the Bible. Calvin's god, apart from anything the creature may or may not do, predestines some to eternal life and others to eternal damnation. However, the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible actually pleads with His creatures to obey His preceptive will so they can be saved. This God, as opposed to Calvin's god, "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."6
Why Does God Permit Men To Reject His Will?
When men begin to say that God can force a man to freely do His will, they are talking meaningless nonsense. Citing a passage that says, "with God all things are possible,"7 does not provide these folks any help. The "all things" that are possible with God are actually qualified by other scriptures and the law of non-contradiction. For example, the Bible says God cannot lie!8 Therefore, it is not possible for God to lie. This means that the "all things" that are possible with God must be those things consistent with His divine nature. Further, God cannot make 2 + 2 = 5. He cannot make it to be raining and not raining in the same place at the same time. He cannot give a hydrogen atom and a helium atom the same atomic structure. Finally, even God could not make man free and not free at the same time in the same way. In order for man to be free, God had to give him the opportunity to rebel.
But there is much more to this story. In Psalm 32:1, David says, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." In verse 5, he continues: "I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and You forgave the iniquity of my sin." In verses 8-9, the Lord replies: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you."
Why did God allow David to sin? Why did He not simply stop David from sinning in the first place? The answer seems obvious: God did not want his servants to serve Him because they are forced to do so. He wants those who will serve Him to do so freely, willingly accepting His instructions and counsel. He wants a relationship with His creatures based on mutual affection and love, and not because of some kind of force. The Almighty God, if He so desired, certainly had the power to bridle His creatures, forcefully manipulating their minds and hearts and turning them into robots (or mules), so that they are forced to do His will. But if He did this, He would not be able to achieve His purpose of developing free relationships, like the one He desired with David, with His creatures. He wants all men to repent and enter a free love-relationship with Himself. If He forced them to do this, as Calvinists allege, their allegiance could not be freely given, that is, they would no longer be men but mules. God, who made man in His own image, wants him to be conformed to the image of His Son.9 Unless man is a free moral agent, this simply cannot be done!
What Man's Freedom Cost God
Man's free moral agency is a unique gift from God Almighty. Without it, we could not be what and who we are. No other earthly creature has been given this special freedom. Furthermore, it should almost go without saying that only God could have made a creature with free moral agency. Therefore, man's free will is a constant reminder of God's omnipotence. But for many, and this includes Calvinists, the opposite is true. As the secular philosopher J. L. Mackie says, "There is a fundamental difficulty in the notion of an omnipotent God creating men with free will, for if men's wills are really free this must mean that even God cannot control them, that is, that God is no longer omnipotent."10 In his book, The Inexhaustible God, Royce Gruenler says that man's free will, which necessitates a future that is open and indefinite, is "logically incompatible with the doctrine of a sovereign God."11 In other words, Calvinists believe that if man has free will, then God is actually impotent. The fallacy in all this will be more completely exposed in the section to follow on foreknowledge. At this point, suffice it to say that it is God's foreknowledge which permits Him to maintain complete control of His world in spite of man's free will, because foreknowledge gives God the option of either permitting or preventing man's planned, free will choices, and as we pointed out in our previous discussion on God's permissive will, prevention is really the ultimate in control.
Therefore, man's free will does not render God impotent. Nevertheless, it does, in fact, limit Him. But if God is really limited, then how can He continue to be omnipotent? Are not these two concepts mutually exclusive? Only in the mind of the determinists! As we have already pointed out, the "all things" that are possible with God are qualified by both Scripture and the law of non-contradiction. God can do all things consistent with His nature and that are not, in and of themselves, illogical. Therefore, if God, of His own free will, chooses to create creatures with free moral agency, and in order to do so, He must limit Himself, such self-limitations are not a denigration of His omnipotence, as the determinists think, but are, instead, a powerful demonstration of it, which is exactly the point I made at the beginning of this subsection.
In order to insure man's autonomy, God, of His own free will, was willing to pay a tremendous price. Although He did not have to do so, the Almighty God was willing to limit Himself in relation to His creation. This gives us some idea of just how important man is to God. Furthermore, and this ought to humble us greatly, the final measure of God's concern for man is to be found in the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. Praise God, the Sovereign Ruler, for His willingness to give us our freedom, even though it ultimately cost Him the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. "Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"12
ROTFLOL!!! God "insures" men's autonomy??? What does that even mean?
Dear God in heaven, please, please, please do NOT "insure my autonomy." Keep me in the covert of your wings, in which I trust.
That's some "limited" god, alright. Nowhere in Scripture does there appear a "limited" god.
This gives us some idea of just how important man is to God.
No, this gives us some idea how important men think they are.
Therefore, man's free will does not render God impotent. Nevertheless, it does, in fact, limit Him.
Astounding. Sad. Anti-Scriptural. But not surprising.
"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" -- Isaiah 46:10
I used to have more patience with this stuff. I must be getting old.
And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them." -- John 17:9-10"I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
Like many open theists, AU has to apply to irrational arguments rather than the whole counsel of Scripture.
This whole dialog is just amazing.
You have got to be kidding me?! That is my exact claim that I have made here again and again against the completely IRRATIONAL, ILLOGICAL theology you spout. When I do point these out to you all I get back in return are "CRICKETS CHIRPING".
You laugh and mock, so cocksure of yourself and yet here is just one small example that so easily BLOWS AWAY what you just stated. The Bible says God "cannot lie". He has limited himself in this area. But I'll wait for either A) Crickets (no response) or B) Some very weird twisted interpretation of a vague verse that somehow proves that this dead on plain meaning of how God has limited Himself is false.
In a sense, God is limited. The Bible says God "cannot lie."82 In other words, "it is impossible for God to lie."83 Nevertheless, this in no way affects His sovereignty. Even Calvinists would have to agree with this. Why? Because, they know that God's sovereignty, power, might, rule, etc. is not affected by self-limitations. God cannot lie because it is inconsistent with His nature, a nature that includes holiness, justice, righteousness, to name but a few. Therefore, things that are impossible with God because of who He is, do not mitigate either His Almightiness or Sovereignty. As we stated in the section on the Sovereignty of God, the key to Sovereignty is not causation, as the Calvinists believe, but control. God's permissive will allows Him the right to intervene in the decision-making process if His purposes demand it. Although He does not do this very often, allowing man, in most cases, to go his own way, nevertheless, He can and does intervene if necessary. This prerogative allows Him to exercise ultimate control over the life of every man and woman. By deciding of His own free will to make a creature who would himself possess free will, God agreed to limit Himself. This self-limitation does not destroy nor degrade His Sovereignty, regardless of what Calvinists think.
“You laugh and mock, so cocksure of yourself and yet here is just one small example that so easily BLOWS AWAY what you just stated. The Bible says God “cannot lie”. He has limited himself in this area.”
You mistake the nature of God with self-limitation. God is truth.
Num 23:19 God [is] not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do [it]? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he [is] not a man, that he should repent
Our theology is God cenntered. You are elevating man to God’s throne.
More pure nonsense. If God has chosen to give man a free will, for His plan and purpose, then man has elevated nothing. You have taken God off His throne, by claiming He somehow can not do this if He so chooses. You limit God by YOUR own flawed logic.
Run fast, run far, run long.
I've outwitted them for more than 20 years now. ;^)
http://www.naturalnews.com/023034.html
Looks like these folks have found out how the study was done.
Like I've already explained to you from Scripture, our free will is a barrier.
Cling to logic, I'll rely on Scripture.
You do need a functionally logical brain to read and comprehend scripture. Don't try it without one. You'll only wind up confused, spouting oddball, kooky theologies.
Once again, please explain how "your god" creates people who SIN and DO EVIL, and yet they have zero free will? Don't you understand what a MONSTER SIZE irrational contradiction that is?! My God has stated as plain as day that He CAN NOT SIN or DO EVIL. Without the concept of free will, you make "your god" do the very thing He declared He can not/would not do.
Please no crickets chirping again. If you can't answer this one then just humbly admit.
Isn't it? But it illustrates the nonsense that results from believing in a god who "limits himself."
Apparently god limits himself so that men are not limited, but "free to choose."
Yeah, like that makes sense. lol.
AU, does God know everything? Does God know who will "choose" Him and who won't?
And has He known this from before the foundation of the world, or is this knowledge He acquires late in the game?
And if He knows who will believe in Him and who won't from before the foundation of the world and yet He creates them and gives them life anyway, then you have God purposely creating men whom He knows will not believe and who will be condemned for their unbelief. Right?
You mistake the nature of God with self-limitation. God is truth.
AMEN!
To think God "limits himself" so that men can be "unlimited" is ludicrous.
But that error shows how fervently we really, really want to be the center of the universe and have God revolve around us and our desires.
But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel." -- Psalm 78:37-41"For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant.
God does not "limit" Himself. But that doesn't prevent some men from trying to do that very thing.
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