It took all I had to not walk over and bitch that younger woman out.
How DARE you prey upon someone who is down on their luck with your useless drivel to try and get more money for yourself? That is fundamentally SICK! Why don't you offer some of your swindled cash to the poor woman who can't even afford to get all the medications she needs to survive?! Stop buying goddamned $3,000 diamond tennis bracelets and HELP SOME FUCKING PEOPLE IN NEED!!!!!
I hate, HATE the people who claim that God can heal anyone. Some very close people in my life have major health issues that cannot be completely cured by modern medicine... yet. So they try and rely on faith healing. And when that inevitably fails, they fall into a spiral of self-hate and loathing, thinking that they are not worthy enough for god to heal them. Then they decide they will try again, convinced they will be miraculously healed. They'll be a fully functioning human being again! Able to walk unaided, able to work again! And then faith healing doesn't work. So they try again. And again. The same vicious cycle over and over, each time killing them a little more on this inside.
How is this not illegal? How is this not fraud? And what about when there are children involved? Look at this article. Two dozen children. TWO DOZEN!!! Twenty-four innocent lives lost because the parents have their heads so far up the ministry's ass that they can't see the world around them.
Science has done so many wonderful things in the past 25 years and has advanced modern medicine to the point that we could be looking at a cure for AIDS sometime in the next 20 years. We have eliminated two diseases in the world, smallpox and rinderpest. Polio is well on its way. Vaccines have allowed us to protect our children. We don't have to go through the heartbreak of losing many of our children to disease, as our grandparents and great-grandparents did.
All of this wonderful advancement, and religious people are trying to send us back into the middle ages. Jenny McCarthy has led countless parents away from potentially life saving vaccinations for their children, compromising others who cannot have the vaccinations for REAL medical reasons. Whole religions reject modern medicine, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Church of Christ, Scientist. These people and groups are compromising not only us, but our children as well. We, as a society, rely on herd immunity to help keep our children safe. The less people who are not vaccinated or who don't vaccinate their children, the less effective our herd immunity becomes. Because of this, we are seeing outbreaks of measles and whooping cough, both of which are potentially deadly.
I honestly could go on and on for days about how I feel. This is a very, VERY important topic to me. Relying on faith healers is not only setting yourself up for emotionally trauma, but could potentially keep you from getting a life saving treatment. You not only put your health on the line, but your family's well-being, and potentially the health of everyone you come in contact with. And that is just plain selfish.
I leave you with a wonderful video by the lovely and talented Tim Minchin. He sums up exactly how I feel about prayer being a healing tool.
