Pray, you idiots! Pray like it might do something!

At virtually any time, I have 1 or more people that I know who are suffering from some illness. These illnesses are at best, minor inconveniences and at worst, life threatening.
But that is probably pretty typical for most people.
And it sucks for the sick folks, obviously. Most of them are likely ill for no good reason other than just rotten luck. And even though I am often cold and dead on the inside when it comes to the suffering of adults, I do feel bad for them.
At least until I start seeing all of the religious bullshit.

"God is so awesome!"
"Praying for you!"
"Jesus heals!"
"Have faith... He will fix you!"

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
No, really. I'm not being dramatic. You need to shut the fuck up.
Now, being an atheist, I find this pleading to some invisible entity pretty silly. However, there is one thing that could be done that I might at least have an inkling of respect for all this nonsense: blame your fucking god when it doesn't work.

I see people get cancer, and they go through all of these medical procedures involving machines and drugs that didn't exist before humans made them. And then these machines and drugs are run and administered by humans who probably had to have a lot of training and education. Sorry, but God is not in this mix. So when/if the cancer goes away, I just want to slap the fuck out of these people that "Praise God!" for all the healing he did.

Plenty of studies have been done that strongly indicate prayer has no discernible effect on healing. Maybe it makes you feel better emotionally which might make you more receptive to all the things the humans are doing to heal your ass, but that still doesn't mean that your pleading causes a deity to fix you up.

Besides, if prayer DOES have an effect, that just causes more problems for the legitimacy of your religion because it means that God DOESN'T have a plan.

God either has a plan and knows what will happen, which means it doesn't matter what you do because the script is written, or God doesn't have a plan, which means God just hands out pain and good fortune all willy nilly to see what will happen next. Either way, he sounds like a real dick.

But at the end of the day, if you want to thank your invisible friend for help and put your faith in him for healing, remember to thank all of the doctors and nurses and any other person that helped you too. Otherwise, I'd very much like to get your sorry ass out of the hospital and stop using resources for which you aren't grateful.

Just go home and pray. I'd be willing to bet very few of you have the balls to rely on nothing but your super awesome god. How much faith in him do you really have?

"God caught her."

Did you hear about Makenzie Wethington, the 16 year old who survived a 3500 foot fall even though her parachute failed to open correctly? Well, she's apparently gonna be a-ok after a whole lot of rehab and has already started walking (short distances with help).
She apparently "hurt her liver, broke her pelvis, lumbar spine in her lower back, a shoulder blade and several ribs and a tooth."

Her older sister said, "God caught her."

Well, God, that was a pretty shitty "catch."

First of all, God could have done a myriad of other things that would have allowed the girl to land UNHARMED.

Even beyond that, I'm more interested as to why God would save the life of a teenager doing something that carries a certain amount of risk but didn't save a bunch of little kids at Sandy Hook. That's fucked up.

And don't give me any of the "not our place to know God's thinking" or "all part of God's plan" bullshit... if he takes the time to save a girl who is choosing to do something dangerous for fun but not lift a finger to save some children, whose only crime was GOING TO SCHOOL, he's an asshole. There is no morality there.

Fuck God.