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I'll never forget a former friend telling me about another person who had just started chanting and, of course, had been told that you can "make the impossible possible." The newbie decided she would really challenge that; she'd been in a car accident, and lost most of her teeth. You guessed it, she chanted to have them grow back. She didn't seriously think it was going to happen, but took the view that if chanting worked for anything, then anything should be possible. When it didn't work, she cheerfully told my friend to shove off. My friend was offended, and told her she shouldn't have chanted for anything so ridiculous.
Years ago, there was an experience in the World Tribune where a woman said her teeth DID grow back! This would have been in the late 1980s, I think O_O
What use is "make the impossible possible" if all you're permitted to chant for is the mundane, trivial,
possible stuff that other people are already able to get without having to chant at all???
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They aren't willing to test their faith quite that far.
What would be the point? They already know those things are off limits. Ain't gonna happen - Mystic Law or no Mystic Law; magic spell chanting or no magic spell chanting.
In the Bible, all prayers are guaranteed to be answered - take a look:
John 14:12-14 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
Ha ha ha - right?? Yeah, pull the other one, Jeezis! Yet there it is - JESUS ITSELF making false promises! People, though, desperately want to believe that this sort of thing CAN happen, that they can get something for nothing and that there is some "agency" of some kind that can bend, even abrogate, the rules of reality in their favor. Just because they want it so much. If they can only learn the magic spell, the "Open Sesame", the ritual that activates this power. So, since Christian prayer doesn't work (we all know that), maybe Buddhist chanting will. I applaud that noob who set the bar high enough to not get suckered in by "I found a nickel on the sidewalk and, with the rest of the change I already had in my pocket, I could afford to buy a Coke!" kinds of "benefits".
I've already pointed out several areas where SGI cult "buddhism" has strong similarities to Evangelical Christianity, so it's no surprise that this sort of same-just-slightly-altered belief system should have been able to spread within a Christianity-dominated culture. But I really don't think it's growing any more - I suspect it has contracted significantly. Game over, Ikeda.