Prayers Are Keeping Me Alive

December 14, 2011 By 23 Comments

This is an oldie but a goodie. Prayer does work… as long as you do something practical, too.

 

Filed Under: Comics, Humor, Prayer 23 Comments
  • http://www.control-z.com CraigD

    I’d be more willing to live-and-let-live with all those of a ‘supernaturalist’ ilk if they didn’t want it both ways, that is, to have their cake and eat it too.

    In other words, if you are a person of a magical mindset that believes the ‘power of prayer’ and ‘miracles’ are not only real but actually ‘proven’ to be real, then please eschew all forms of modern medicine. Seriously.

    Put your money–uh, your health–where your mouth is and quit running to science, technology, and modern medicine whenever something goes wrong, especially if you have small children. Instead, depend for all your family’s health needs entirely on the ‘power of prayer’ and ‘miracles.’

    If doing so doesn’t prove the old adage that ‘Nothing fails like prayer’ then nothing will.

    At least, denouncing science, technology, and modern medicine and relying completely on the ‘power of prayer’ and ‘miracles’ would have the added side benefit of thinning the herd and proving a boon to the gene pool, since I’m guessing a lot of magical-minded folks’ children are never going to make it to the procreation stage.

    • Azel

      I don’t like the idea to make their children suffer for their parents opinion…I however think that making the parents rely for their health and comfort on prayer would do wonders to convince said children that it doesn’t work.

  • ScottW

    I love it. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves.

    • grumpygirl

      my personal favorite are the people who use advanced reproductive techniques to get pregnant, but then talk about how “God” was involved in their getting pregnant, and refuse to selectively reduce multiple pregnancies. “God” didn’t want you to get pregnant!!!! If you hadn’t had assistance with medicine, you never would have gotten pregnant!

  • L.Long

    I agree with Azel about the kids.
    But when one of these hole-ier then thou states some nonsense about miracles and anti-science I call them out by calling them lyres&hippocrites and throw a similar statement at them. They tend to sputter a lot.

    • http://theascendancymemoirs.wordpress.com Wazza

      I think I’d be a little annoyed at being compared to an archaic musical instrument, too.

    • Michael

      I did not know that lyres sputtered.

      • JK

        Oh come on. Give L.Long a break. He meant liars of course. As if you didn’t know that.

        • JonJon

          Of course he did. Hence the joke, for he did not say what he wished to, and we recognized that fact. (And yes, that’s called a joke…)

          • http://fugodeus.com Nox

            I read that as “lyres and Hippocrates” too. Couldn’t tell if it was a typo or some sort of obscure ancient greek pun that I wasn’t getting.

            • UrsaMinor

              I think “Lyres and Hippocrates” would make a great name for a band.

    • Thin-ice

      Also comparing them to the famous Greek doctor.

      • L.Long

        Hippocrates was a slip on my part sorry about that…It is Hippo-crits as their hypocrisy is bigger than a hippo….bad joke.
        I tried liars 4 times and could not make it look right and I’m TOO lazy to get a dictionary and Ya even the one on line. and spell check never indicated liar as a good choice…So I’m blaming spell checker.

  • Thin-ice

    Exactly! Here’s the proof that the vast majority of christians don’t believe prayer works, though they pay lip service to believing:

    If you contract pneumonia, and are made to choose ONLY ONE OPTION, either prayer, or medicine, which one will you choose? The christian would choose medicine 99.9% of the time.

    The only exceptions are the hard-core faith healers and Christian Scientists, whose children die unnecessarily, because they refuse medicine in favor of prayer. At least they aren’t hypocrites!

  • FO

    Mandatory XKCD….

    http://xkcd.com/808/

  • Saratoday

    I don’t know what bothers me more – that my friend whose child has spina bifida invokes the power of prayer while taking advantage of modern medicine or that she does so with significant help from Medicaid while voting against socialized medicine for other people. Agh! Guess you hit a nerve there.

  • PastorJCPulgarin

    Maybe when you discover the POWER of prayer itself, you wouldnt be quick to criticize. The power of God comes from humility. #teamjesus

    • Yoav

      Did you use a computer or did you just pray for your comment to show up here?

    • Sunny Day

      We’ve tried the power of prayer, we called those times The Dark Ages.

      But you can scurry back there if you want.

    • SunshinEsBH

      Ok PastorJCPulgarin i;m game.
      How do we discover the power of prayer?
      If you could direct me to the academic journals where this power has been researched and documented it would be a good start.

  • vasaroti

    You just can’t win with these people. If you point out that a scientist or atheist or person of another religion did something great, they just come back with “God used them to work his will.” Same thing if a Xian does something bad. He was seduced or forced to do it by the Devil.

  • Kass

    My biggest beef as an ICU nurse is that religious families absolutely believe that their loved ones are going to heaven, yet they continue painful treatments such as mechanical ventilation, vasopressors, and even defibrillation and chest compressions to prolonged those lives. Why torture your family members? They’re going to a paradise! I can understand the younger patients, who are leaving behind families, but the grandma who danced at her great-granddaughter’s wedding? Let her have peace, let her have her heaven.

    • Custador

      This is why it’s nice working in Britain: The responsibility for making a decision not to resuscitate belongs ultimately to the patient’s doctor, not to their family. If a consultant (always in consultation with the rest of the medical team) decides that continuing with aggressive treatment or attempting CPR in the event of an arrest would place an onerous burden on the patient which would outweigh the benefit, then we don’t do it. Families have taken hospitals to court to try to force us to attempt CPR in the event of an arrest, but to my knowledge they’ve never won.

      There was a recent case in which a man tried to sue an ICU consultant in Britain for signing a DNAR (NFR) form. His wife had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and she had then been paralysed from the neck down in a car crash. I wish I was kidding, but it’s a true story. Anyway, she was on a ventilator and (as you can guess, I’m sure) was never going to be weaned off of it, so the consultant filed the DNAR. Cue the husband and his shyster lawyer taking everybody in sight to court.

      Medical decisions. Best made by medical people.