Atheist Girl In Rhode Island Faces Stream Of Death Threats
Jessica Ahlquist is a 16-year-old self-described nerd who has garnered nationwide attention after successfully suing to have a giant banner emblazoned with an official school prayer removed from the auditorium of her public high school in Cranston, Rhode Island. The response has demonstrated the limits of Christian love — she has basically become the villain of her entire city, with her state representative, Peter Palumbo, called Jessica an “evil little thing” on the radio, and a sample of the online outpouring of hatred from other Cranston residents can be seen on JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks:
With $666,000 in Federal Research Money, Scientists Determined Prayer Could Not Heal AIDS
Trine Tsouderos reports in the Chicago Tribune:
Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn’t do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone’s intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did.
NCCAM also has invested in studies of various forms of energy healing, including one based on the ideas of a self-described “healer, clairvoyant and medicine woman” who says her children inspired her to learn to read auras. The cost for that was $104,000.
Rick Perry’s “Response” Prayer At Reliant Stadium
George W. Bush redux? In case you missed it, here is Texas Governor and possible next president Perry laying it on thick at his massive prayer meet, dubbed “The Response”, on August 6 in Houston. He wants you to know that he has determined the cause of all of the United States’ current economic, social, and political woes: “As a nation we have forgotten who made us, who blesses us.”
Atheist Group Sues to Block Texas Governor Rick Perry From Prayer Rally
Mike Tolson writes in the Houston Chronicle:
A group that has already criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his involvement with a Christian prayer rally scheduled for Reliant Stadium next month went a step further Wednesday and filed a federal lawsuit in Houston to stop him from promoting it.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation claims Perry’s association with the “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a National in Crisis” breaches the separation of church and state.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District on behalf of five named individuals who live in Houston, notes the plaintiffs are “nonbelievers who support the free exercise of religion, but strongly oppose the governmental establishment and endorsement of religion ….”
The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring Perry’s official involvement. A Perry spokesman said he won’t back away from the event.
Texas Governor Organizes Statewide Prayer To Jesus
Watch the batshit insanity unfold as Texas governor Rick Perry proclaims a statewide day of fasting and prayer to Jesus to solve “economic collapse, natural disaster, terrorism” and your “troubles paying your bills” — all things that the governor says are “spiritual issues.”
It’s dubbed The Response, and involves Texans simultaneously praying on August 6 so as to “make a sound that will be heard in the heavens,” with a football stadium in Houston as the focal point. Also, it’s kind of a response to New York’s legalization of gay marriage, and other governors are invited:
Newark’s Prayer-Based Crime Fighting Effort Isn’t Working (Video)
Expanding the effort to the state of California? Well in the words of Brian Wilson: I wish they all could be California/I wish they all could be California/I wish they all could be California … Bruce Wilson writes on Talk To Action:
A radical notion: who needs cops? Just pray down crime. But in Newark, where the murder rate has risen over 70% from 2010 to 2011, the approach doesn’t seem to be working very well.
Privatizing government services has long been a key goal of the American religious right, and as a 2-part new Talk To Action report details (here and here), the push for education vouchers has been orchestrated by right wing funders dedicated to eradicating public schools altogether. But voucher initiatives are presented as secular. Then, there’s prayer-based crime fighting, an even more radical privatization scheme:
As Texas Burns From Worst Wildfires In History, State Government Organizes Rain Prayers
Wildfire is ravaging the Texas landscape on a never-before-seen scale which will shatter previous records.
Governor Rick Perry’s response? He has commanded residents to pray for rain. No, not in a passing remark in a speech, but with an official decree designating “Days of Prayer for Rain” on which Texans will “offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land and the restoration of our normal way of life” and “to humbly seek an end to these dangerous wildfires.” No further comment needed.
Praying To A Tree Trunk: Will The Tree Trunk Help?
One of the main things people pray for is peace. But there have already been trillions upon trillions of prayers for peace through the years, yet peace remains as elusive as mercury, as groups and factions and nations persist in warring viciously with each other, the violence continuing unabated.
Wouldn’t one think that people would finally come to the realization that either there’s no one up there listening to their prayers for peace, or if there is, he doesn’t have the power to stop the violence, or if he does, he has no desire to do so? That they may just as well be praying to a tree trunk?
I’ve been told there is some religious sect in the Himalayan Mountains that has been praying for peace, twenty-four hours a day in shifts, for more than five hundred years. Nuns of the Franciscan Sisters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, have been praying for…
Man Demoted For Failing To Pray
Religious discrimination and sexual harassment are, sadly, nothing new to the workplace. When your boss tells you “to attend the prayer meetings or find another position,” getting transferred may be the best opportunity. Unless your personal medical information is leaked to your new co-workers. Courthouse News Service reports:
A BNSF Railway worker claims he was demoted because he declined to join his supervisor in prayer meetings at work. James Dunkin claims his boss proselytized on the job, handed out booklets that contained “instructions for raising ‘masculine sons and feminine daughters,’” and says that when he objected to the coerced prayers, the boss told him that “he needed to attend the prayer meetings or find another position.”
To top it off, Dunkin says that the offensive boss, Jeff Kirby, once “stood in his office with his door open and pants down” staring at him suggestively.
In his federal complaint in Kansas City, Kan., Dunkin says…
Listening to Prayer Halts Brain Activity
Photo: Sergei Frolov (CC)
Believers and non-believers alike, please chime in. This is sort of how I felt when I had to attend church as a kid (I never went into a coma, although I did get really, really bored). Your experience with praying may have been different back then and still is today.
Andy Coghlan has written, what I think will be a contentious article for disinfo.com readers, on New Scientist:
When we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for scepticism and vigilance become less active. That’s the finding of a study which looked at people’s response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers.
To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues turned to Pentecostal Christians, who believe that some people have divinely inspired powers of healing, wisdom and prophecy.
Using functional magnetic…
Brain Shuts Off In Response To Healer’s Prayer
By Andy Coghlan for New Scientist:
When we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for scepticism and vigilance become less active. That’s the finding of a study which looked at people’s response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers.
To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues turned to Pentecostal Christians, who believe that some people have divinely inspired powers of healing, wisdom and prophecy.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Schjødt and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 Pentecostalists and 20 non-believers while playing them recorded prayers. The volunteers were told that six of the prayers were read by a non-Christian, six by an ordinary Christian and six by a healer. In fact, all were read by ordinary Christians…
[continues in New Scientist]
