Locally we have a church that's been on the news continuously over the 6 years I've spent here. Their kids get sick and the church prays for them. Often the kid dies. They think that's a message from God and I agree.
In the 1940's and 1950's the two big killers were heart disease and cancer. Every family either had a member or a close friend who suffered with one or the other. Wednesday night services had prayer lists a foot long. They prayed...all over the world they prayed. They prayed till their knees were bloody but the ailing suffered and died. Back then medical science didn't have anything they could do for them. For cancer they could do surgery but more often than not when they cut into the tumor it metasticized and the cancer spread all over their bodies. If the first heart attack didn't kill a person they laid around like an invalid for a year or two and then died.
Now...with sophisticated diagnostic machines, controlled diets, stents, bypasses, transplants, chemo, radiation, stem cell therapy etc. the same kind of patients live into their eighties and sometimes nineties. Those who are doing the praying now have a lot to brag about. We never hear nor do most of them even realize about the billions of unanswered prayers from the old days.
This is not rocket science. One can check the mortality rates from insurance actuarial tables from the 40's and 50's and quickly see how many died and from which ailment.
Prayer is in the mind of the one doing the praying and that's the only place.
Prayer is in the mind of the one doing the praying and that's the only place.
I'd say that's more true than not despite my own belief in a God of some sort. Go ahead and pray if it helps you feel better but get your kids to a medically competent professional, not your favorite witch doctor/rapture predicting/Rev. Muttonchops.
on another note, the headline reads....'divorce gone bad'
OMG! was it them pesky gays destroying marriage again?
Nah, just paw shootin ma, no apple pie or baseball involved.
5 dead, 1 wounded in Yuma, Ariz.
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
I'd say that's more true than not despite my own belief in a God of some sort. Go ahead and pray if it helps you feel better but get your kids to a medically competent professional, not your favorite witch doctor/rapture predicting/Rev. Muttonchops.
on another note, the headline reads....'divorce gone bad'
OMG! was it them pesky gays destroying marriage again?
Nah, just paw shootin ma, no apple pie or baseball involved.
5 dead, 1 wounded in Yuma, Ariz.
Divorce courts are fustrating and festers one's anger but I would have to say that shooting up the place and everybody in it is a bit much. Thank GOD I never got divorced, (the wife would beat me senseless first).
Yeah well I have my own story. When I was about four or five years old, about 70 years ago, my maternal grandmother had it bad too. When I did anything contrary to her "Right Thing" she would say, "Ol Scratch Will Get You!" Ol' Scratch being her name for Satan. When I was in the third and fourth grades my teachers assigned bible verses for us to memorize on Mondays and to recite back to the class on Fridays.
When I was 22 years old(1957) I was baptized before a congregation of about 1000 and then I proceeded to live within the church and it's activities for the next 40 years. When I was a little over 60 I denounced the whole thing. I actually never did believe in virgin birth, healing by touching, raising from the dead, feeding 6000-8000 with two fish and five loaves then gathering 12 baskets of leftovers, turning water into wine, walking on water, etc. I surely never believed that a man was hung on a tree, bled like a hog and then to at least thirty or forty people showed up fit as a fiddle two days later.
The people who wrote this stuff do not even believe it themselves...not to mention that there were at least three dozen similar stories told by primitive mankind dating all the way back to ancient Egypt nearly 3000 years before the Jewish version.
I have declared in my last will and testament that I do not believe in ghosts, holy or otherwise. I think the brainwashing of innocent infants and small children should be classed as child abuse and the ones who do it should be prosecuted. This continued worship of ancient gods should be stopped by any methods necessary to end it.
WOW!! pretty touching . . .mean ol grammas anyways. When I was a youngen, I rode my bicycle out MILES to my Gramma's house, (she wasn't my real blood G'mom though) and she tried to POISEN me with cookies. And the lemonaid following those sweet cookies really made me pucker. I think she too had ill intent. Mean ol Grammas, no wonder you don't believe in GOD.
WOW!! pretty touching . . .mean ol grammas anyways. When I was a youngen, I rode my bicycle out MILES to my Gramma's house, (she wasn't my real blood G'mom though) and she tried to POISEN me with cookies. And the lemonaid following those sweet cookies really made me pucker. I think she too had ill intent. Mean ol Grammas, no wonder you don't believe in GOD.
I guess you missed the part about it taking me till age 60 to get over my childhood brainwashing. Oh well...the grandmaw stuff is still to be dealt with but thank goodness third and fourth grade teachers can no longer contribute to the brainwashing. A typical school day for me back then was saying the lord's prayer at the beginning of the day and memorizing an assigned bible verse during the week. We also said the pledge of allegiance each morning but ironically "Under God" was not in it back then. The McCarthyites had that inserted in the early 1950's.
I believe brainwashing innocent, gullible infants and small children with the ridiculous claims of life after death is child abuse and those who do it should be prosecuted in a court of law.
I guess you missed the part about it taking me till age 60 to get over my childhood brainwashing. Oh well...the grandmaw stuff is still to be dealt with but thank goodness third and fourth grade teachers can no longer contribute to the brainwashing. A typical school day for me back then was saying the lord's prayer at the beginning of the day and memorizing an assigned bible verse during the week. We also said the pledge of allegiance each morning but ironically "Under God" was not in it back then. The McCarthyites had that inserted in the early 1950's.
I believe brainwashing innocent, gullible infants and small children with the ridiculous claims of life after death is child abuse and those who do it should be prosecuted in a court of law.
'spect so, I'm still bouncing off the walls from the sugar rush from that huge plate of cookies my Gramma "tricked" me into eating. Maybe Bush and the CIA was in on this conspiracy, ya think?
'spect so, I'm still bouncing off the walls from the sugar rush from that huge plate of cookies my Gramma "tricked" me into eating. Maybe Bush and the CIA was in on this conspiracy, ya think?
so just because someone does something good that justifies any harm they did whether intentional or not? I'm sure hitler had some good points, doesn't make up for the harm he did.
Governments have almost always used religion to get what they want, and now is no different....
so just because someone does something good that justifies any harm they did whether intentional or not? I'm sure hitler had some good points, doesn't make up for the harm he did.
Governments have almost always used religion to get what they want, and now is no different....
Yeah...I voted for president Obama but he has practically lost me by continuing the Bush, "Faith Based Initiatives."
Either none of them know what the constitution meant by separation of church and state or they know they can't win without the evangelicals...one or the other.
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