SIX days have elapsed since a “Statewide Day of Prayer for Louisiana,” was mooted by some Christian numpty named Senator Robert Adley, and adopted by fellow state senators. Its aim was to get God on the case of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Senator Adley, whose prayer initiative made Louisiana look really dumb
The result: Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Following a time-worn trend, Louisiana’s prayers fell on non-existent ears, and the oil continues to gush.
This prompted an exasperated Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of Freedom From Religion Foundation to issue a statement headed “Nothing fails like prayer in the Gulf of Mexico”. In it she lamented the time wasted by politicians on something as monumentally stupid as prayer.
Gaylor, according to this Examiner report, believes there are more constructive ways for politicians to be spending their time and implores people to take action by telling Louisiana Senators to:
Stick to the business of government; our Constitution demands you stay out of the religion business. Clearly your ‘day of prayer’ was a waste of time and energy, and the only result was to embarrass those senators who signed on to it, and to disappoint the people of Louisiana. Leave aside the fairy tales and focus on preventing this from ever happening again.
Adley’s Prayer Day, wrote the Examiner‘s Trina Hoaks “made the usual human-as-worms allusion”, saying:
A Statewide Day of Prayer provides each of us with a powerful opportunity to humble ourselves before our Almighty God.
Hoaks added:
The usual primitive and superstitious invocations are offered that ‘prayers woven together through common effort can themselves become an awesome and powerful force . . . [advocating] a day of unified, intercessory prayer, by and for those people living in the regions around the Gulf of Mexico, to pray for an end to this environmental emergency’.
And she asked:
Isn’t it blasphemous for these senators to propose that a united humanity is actually more powerful than the god they believe in, that by sheer wishful thinking such ‘humble’ humans can force their god to stop the gusher over which he previously has chosen not to intervene?
Most absurdly, the resolution urged:
The citizenry of the state and all people of faith throughout the United States and the world to give personal thanks . . . for God’s continued guidance.
She also asked:
Instead of pointless prayer, how about adopting the attitude of Bill Nye, the Science Guy? When asked about the oil disaster at the recent American Humanist Association convention where he was named Humanist of the Year, Nye proposed that we turn this crisis into “an opportunity.” In this case, an opportunity to prevent future such catastrophes.
Prayer, Hoaks concluded:
Is what politicians fall back on when they don’t want to offer true leadership. Are we prepared to learn anything from this environmental disaster? Or are we just going to pray about it?
Louisiana, by the way, has a problem with giant Salvinia, a noxious water plant which originated in Brazil and is now proving a threat to Lake Bistineau. Senator Adley, a Democrat-turned-Republican who is active in the United Methodist Church as a lay leader and speaker, recently announced practical measures to deal with the nuisance plant, but surprisingly, they don’t include prayer.
One can’t help but to wonder why.
Actually I think that this was a good thing, it once again show the ineffectiveness of prayer, and hopefully knocked some sense into at least one persons mind. “There ain’t not Jesus”
Yet another waste of time and taxpayer resources.
What sort of a “loving” god would send pestilence and disaster upon his followers, and then when they had abjectly “humbled themselves” enough before him and pleaded enough for his intervention say; “Oh, well, I guess that’s enough. I’ll do what you want and make the problem go away now”? It’s just plain barmy!
Is this about right?
http://hiscrivener.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/prayer-2.jpg
Instead of humbling themselves before god maybe instead they could have soiled themselves before god and given us an even bigger laugh.
Their technique would improve if they watched Betty Bowers from the Landover Baptists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5QqEmBi8iw&feature=player_embedded
Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.
These xians would look down and scoff at tribal witch doctors that might perform ceremonies to try and effect some outcome, yet what these xians do is no different.
But the gods of the witch doctors are purely imaginary, PaulEd. They can’t help anyone!
I’m sure there’s a theological explanation for this, after all: God works in mysterious ways, people! Just like earth-quakes are caused by scantily-clad women in Iran, this oil-geyser is probably sign of god’s displeasure for some of the many sins we commit: working on the sabbath, wearing multi-fibre clothes, allowing women to abandon their god-ordained place in society and family. I expect that senator Adley wants us all to repent and join him in his efforts.
BTW, a couple of weeks ago we, in Holland, were told by an ex-prostitute who’d found god that we were all going to drown in a tsunami if we didn’t go for a christian government during our general elections. No christian government, no tsunami yet!! Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
PaulEd/barriejohn
Does this sum up your point?
http://lolgod.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-whos-laughing.html
Right, ta ta. I’m off on holiday.
the real problem is if you pray you might get an answer and that could be not so good……in 2007 Georgia governor Purdue announced a day of prayer for rain to end the long drought that the state, and others, had been experiencing. So georgians prayed for rain – they got so much they had floods………that Dog, no sense of proportion it’s all plague, famine, pestilence and disaster with him; no happy medium!!
I think “Prayer Day” has had the opposite effect to that intended. Seems the magic fairy hs been upset and hurricanes are forcast. The oil men are being warned to leg it in good time before the storms arrive. I suggest:
(a) the prayers were not sufficiently sincere; or
(b) some of those praying were not “true christians” and muddied the holy water instead of removing the oily water;or
(c) these politicians are sad, pathetic twats.
You’d think that by now, these religious twats would have learned that talking to your hands is pointless and changes nothing. They’ve been praying for a long time in a futile attempt to rid the World of Gay people, abortionists and any other group they hate – works doesn’t it!
Maybe they should pray for the wisdom and intelligence to dig their heads out of their collective asses so they could see prayer doesn’t work and then actually start listening to scientists and engineers to stop this fucking spill and find a way to prevent a recurrence. This whole mess could have been avoided if they had even a minimal understanding of what was going on on any kind of rational level.
Of course, seeing how prayer doesn’t work, I think their heads will continue to smell like shit for a while.
Well, I think it’s a jolly good idea! No, not really but at least it stops these twats going round bothering others for a while.
Thumbs up to Annie Laurie Gaylor. I think I’m going to add the “Nothing fails like prayer” bumper sticker to my already plastered with them car.
Caption competition?
http://lacefamily.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/prayer-station.jpg
Hmmm….maybe they should have tried praying to Zeus instead. He’s not very busy these days.
It’s interesting to watch, the world’s greatest engineers struggling to seal off the end of a jagged broken pipe, instead of sealing to a perfect circle flange a few inches below. The bad news is that my son had five thousand dollars invested with those idiots (BP) and has taken a bath on it. Maybe BP has pinned their hopes on divine providence as well, instead of clear thought and innovation. I know that the idea of a gently inclined reduction in a bell shaped containment cap would nearly seal the well at that flange is an idea that might be scoffed at, yet, it would work.
It’s like religion, your ideas only count when you make the paygrade. It’s also like politics, solutions are correct when you get enough earthworms to vote for them. Ignorance is king.
NeoWolfe