This is just another example when things are beyond our control, humans resort to superstitious incantation, not only for weather and natural events, but now some god believers think that magical words can influence the oil cartels.
Choir director brings prayers for lower gas prices to SF
SAN FRANCISCO - A choir director who hopes prayer can bring down high gas prices is trying out his approach at some of the costliest pumps in the country.
Rocky Twyman of Washington, D.C., came to San Francisco over the weekend to stage a pray-in at a Chevron station. He is also calling on churchgoers to ask for God’s intervention where he says politicians have failed.
BUT, he also says:
. . . people praying for cheaper fuel should also walk more and use car pools.
No duh. He already is prepared for prayer not to work. Nothing happens unless HUMANS DO SOMETHING.
LINK TO THE FULL SILLY STORY
Here is a WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com video about prayer
9 comments:
From WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com
The dictionary defines the word "superstition" in this way:
An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
We have all seen plenty of superstitions. There are the superstitions that a rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover bring good luck. There are the superstitions that breaking a mirror or seeing a black cat bring bad luck. And we all know that these superstitions are silly. A rabbit's foot or a broken mirror has no good or bad influence on the course of events. This is obvious to any intelligent person.
So let's imagine the following situation. Let's say that you have cancer. You are lying in the hospital after a round of chemo and you feel terrible. A person pops into your room with a bright smile on his face and a horseshoe in his hand. He says to you, "This is an amazing and lucky horseshoe. If you touch this horseshoe, it will cure your cancer. But I need to charge you $100 to touch it."
Would you pay the man $100?
Of course not. We all know that touching the horseshoe will have zero effect on cancer. The belief in lucky horseshoes is pure superstition.
It is also very easy to scientifically prove that the horseshoe has no effect on cancer (or anything else). The way we would do it is simple: we would take 1,000 cancer patients and split them randomly into two groups of 500. We would let 500 of the cancer patients touch the lucky horseshoe and we would leave the other 500 alone in a double-blind way. Then we would look at cancer remission rates between the two groups. What we would find is zero benefit from the horseshoe. We would see no statistical difference between the remission rates in the two groups of 500 patients.
Prayer
Now let us imagine another situation. You have cancer, you have just finished a round of chemo and you feel terrible. This time, a person pops into your room with a bright smile on his face and a bible in his hand. He says to you, "There is a being named God who is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe. I am his representative on earth. If you will allow me to pray to God on your behalf, God will cure your cancer."
You agree to the prayer, and the man prays over you for 10 minutes. He invokes all the healing powers of God, beseeching him, reciting verses of scripture and so forth. Afterwards, as he is getting ready to leave, the man says, "Oh, and by the way, God says that you should tithe 10% of your income to the church. Would you consider making a tax-deductible donation today?"
The question is: Is there any difference between the two men? Will the prayer have any effect greater than the horseshoe?
The answer is: No. The belief in prayer is just as superstitious as the belief in lucky horseshoes.
The fascinating thing is that we can prove that prayer has no effect in exactly the same way that we can prove that horseshoes have no effect. We take 1,000 cancer patients. We pray over 500 of them and we leave the other 500 alone. Then we look at cancer remission rates between the two groups. What we find is that prayers have zero benefit. We would see no statistical difference between the remission rates in the two groups of 500 patients.
In other words, we can prove that the belief in prayer is pure superstition. The belief in the power of prayer is no different from the belief in the power of lucky horseshoes.
These experiments have been performed many times, and they always return the same results. For example, this article says:
One of the most scientifically rigorous studies yet, published earlier this month, found that the prayers of a distant congregation did not reduce the major complications or death rate in patients hospitalized for heart treatments.
And:
A review of 17 past studies of ''distant healing," published in 2003 by a British researcher, found no significant effect for prayer or other healing methods.
This article from March, 2006 discusses another study that confirms the same thing:
In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.
A peer-reviewed scientific study published in 2001 did indicate that prayer works. According to this article:
"On October 2, 2001, the New York Times reported that researchers at prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had discovered something quite extraordinary. Using virtually foolproof scientific methods the researchers had demonstrated that infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them. The study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. Even the researchers were shocked. The study's results could only be described as miraculous."
This study was later proven to be completely fraudulent. However, everyone who cut out the original article in the NYTimes and posted it on their refrigerators still has that article as "proof" that prayer works.
This article entitled A prayer before dying uncovers another case where a "scientific study" of prayer is unmasked as fraudulent.
It's not just prayer that is ineffective. Not even a hopeful attitude helps. According to this article:
A positive attitude does not improve the chances of surviving cancer and doctors who encourage patients to keep up hope may be burdening them, according to the results of research released Monday.
Quite simply, prayer has absolutely no effect on the outcome of any event. The "power of prayer" is actually "the power of coincidence." Belief in prayer is pure superstition.
Fraud
Now here is the problem. We all know that people who believe in superstitions like rabbits' feet and broken mirrors are daft. And we know that the man with the horseshoe asking for money is a complete fraud. These facts are obvious to everyone with intelligence.
It should now be obvious that the believer's faith in prayer is just as daft, and the minister asking for donations is just as fraudulent.
This is the problem with religon. We allow daft and fradulent people to run freely in our society, spreading their superstitions and collecting their money, rather than pointing out the superstition and the fraud:
* For a person to say "God answered my prayers today!" is just as silly as a person saying, "My lucky horseshoe granted me my wishes today!" or, "The planet Jupiter answered my prayers today!"
* For a person to say, "God wants you to tithe 10% of your income to the church, and if you do, God will answer your prayers and let you into heaven when you die," is completely fraudulent.
The time has come for intelligent people to stop accepting or "tolerating" superstition and fraud and, instead, to call it what it is. It is time to state clearly that God is imaginary. Religion is pure superstition, nothing more -- It has been proven time and time again with dozens of scientific experiments. It is time for us to begin eliminating the superstition and fraud from public discourse, for the simple reason that superstition and fraud are detrimental to society.
Well, I have to give him this, if enough people stayed at home and spent all day praying, gasoline consumption would decrease, which might bring down prices at the pump a teenie little bit.
The problem is that Rocky drives to the Chevron station to pray. Apparently hoping god might hear them better at the gas station rather than in their homes or churches.
OMG that was actually funny. I thought that was some kind of "The Onion" piece!
Sadly, this is one prayer which I wish was answered....
Hi Stardust... I'm pasting this here --I think this post has gone from public interest-- because I have no e-mail for you. I thought it might interest you
From The Objective Standard:
Mere Atheism
Posted by Craig Biddle at 9:54 AM
During the question period of the otherwise unremarkable debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza on the question of “Is Christianity the Problem?” the following two questions were posed to Hitchens: 1) “What [does atheism] have to offer us as an ethics?” and 2) “What standard [of value] can you appeal to?” Although any objective approach to debating a theist on this subject would involve answering these two questions in the main course of the debate, Hitchens had not addressed either of them there and was unable to answer either when asked. Instead, he went off on tangents about such things as the absurdity of a God who would permit cannibalism and suffering, man’s oversized adrenal glands (which supposedly explain why people do bad things), and the alleged value of “human solidarity” (a euphemism for altruism and collectivism).
This is yet another example of the feckless nature of mere atheism. While religion holds that morality comes from God via faith and revelation—and while religion posits all sorts of divine laws that are supposed to provide people with moral guidance (e.g., the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes)—atheism provides no moral guidance at all. Atheism says nothing about what is good or bad, right or wrong; nothing about how people should live; nothing about what we should and shouldn’t do. All atheism says is: “There is no god.” It is true that there is no god, but that truth alone is of no value to anyone.
If religion is wrong, then what is right? It is not enough to say “Go by reason, not faith.” What does it mean to go by reason? To what moral principles does reason lead? How are those principles validated? And what do they mean in practice?
Until atheists come to understand and embrace a positive, rational moral philosophy, they will continue to default to the ethics of religion (i.e., altruism and collectivism); consequently, they will continue to accomplish nothing of significance in the battle against religion. And in order to understand and embrace a positive, rational moral philosophy, they will have to find the courage not only to be atheists but also to be egoists—because egoism is the only morality supported by observation and logic.
richard, thanks for that link.
Here is something interesting by Madalyn Murray O’Hair that I will use in response to that. Though we atheists have no churches, no creeds, no organized set of rules and regulations, we do have a general moral philosophy.
"An Atheist loves himself and his fellow human instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that "heaven" is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all people together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow human can he find the understanding that will help lead to a life of fulfillment.
Atheism is based upon a materialist philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. There are no supernatural forces or entities, nor can there be any. Nature simply exists.
The church teaches a contempt for earthly life and that to reach some imagined "heaven" is the main goal of life... The church teaches that this goal can be achieved only as the reward for obedience and meekness. The church threatens the wrath of God and the torment of hell for those who dare to oppose its teaching. But Materialism liberates us, teaches us not to hope for happiness beyond the grave but to prize life on earth and strive always to improve it. Materialism restores to man his dignity and his intellectual integrity. Man is not a worm condemned to crawl in the dust, but a human being capable of mastering the forces of nature and making them serve him. Materialism compels faith in the human intellect, in the power of knowledge in man's ability to fathom all the secrets of nature and to create a social system based upon reason and justice. Materialism's faith is in man and his ability to transform the world by his own efforts. It is a philosophy in every essence optimistic, life-asserting, and radiant. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation, and impossible without noble ideals that inspire men to struggle, to perform bold, creative work."
And this from Steve Corbett
"Living in a godless world - what about ethics?
Some people believe that ethics without religion is a paradox. This is a fallacy, very similar to the "holier than thou" argument (see previous chapter). The truth of the matter is that "ethics" are simply arbitrary rules imposed on the masses by the most powerful members of society. What is "right" and "wrong"? Is it possible to compile an absolute, irrefutable list of what is ethical and what is not? I believe not. Each individual's perception of "right" and "wrong" is forged by that individual's experiences and upbringing. The most powerful members of society will enact laws that are closely patterned after their own personal code of ethics, but they are just as arbitrary as anyone else's.
"Even the ethics imposed on us by religion are arbitrary, despite the claims that they are handed down from a supreme deity. Religious ethics are not automatically better than atheistic ethics. The 1990 US Survey shows that about 10% of the population of the United States are atheists. A prison survey conducted at about the same time places the percentage of atheists behind bars at closer to 1%. What does this tell us about religious ethics? Shouldn't the prison population be closer to 99% atheist, if atheists have no ethics?
"It's my belief that each and every individual forges his or her own code of ethics during his or her lifetime. Sometimes this code of ethics is modelled after the regional system of laws, other times it is modelled after a particular religion, but each person's code of ethics is as unique as a snowflake. When we adopt someone else's code of ethics for our own use, we accept what we like and ignore what we disagree with. For example, civil disobedience is a widely employed method of stating your objection to a local law. Even within Christianity, people decide which ten commandments to follow and which to conveniently ignore. How many evangelists have been caught in bed with a woman not their wife? How many priests have been caught molesting choir boys? Asserting that accepting religion automatically makes you a more ethical person is, at best, laughable, and at worst, delusional."
Very nice, Stardust, and I could not agree more. Craig Biddle simply (which is really not so simple) adds to that, by pointing out that one still needs guiding principles, in order to avoid the nonsense of hedonism: such as the college students of earlier conversation engage in until they 'get a grip'.
Steve, that was dreadful to read, because it is so wrong.
Ethics is a function of the nature of an individual by which relevant principles are inescapable, in terms of what is right and wrong. It is one's manual for living. When an individual must deal with others definite principles still apply, but they arise in a social context. That context ultimately leads to politics. I suggest reading Ayn Rand, starting with Atlas Shrugged, The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Ignore the nonsense of those who disagree with her they, simply put, were too stupid or invested in whim, to grasp the value of what she offers.
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