Praying that it wasn't so god damn ugly. It didn't work.The email:
From: Stephanie Candland
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 11:10 AM
To: A bunch of email addresses that I've deleted
Subject: JANICE NEEDS OUR PRAYERS NOW
I got a call about an hour ago from Janice Friedland. Their grandson, Jared, who is 5 years old, is having surgery right now to remove a cancerous brain tumor. The tumor was found on Monday of this week. Janice was very upset, as you can imagine. She asked me only for my prayers. I told her I would keep them all in my prayers and let others of you know so that you can keep them in your prayers as well. I know, firsthand, the power of prayer and the comfort one can receive from the prayers of many. Please, whatever you are doing, stop and say a prayer for Jared and his family so they will be comforted in this difficult trial they are going through. His parents are Jared and Candice Friedland.
My brother prefaced his forward with the following:
I just wanted to send this to you so that the great I AM could hear prayers from more time zones than just those here in the States. Because, as we all know, when it comes to saving the life of a child with a cancerous brain tumor, it’s all about numbers. Kind of like the petition to remove Gray Davis as Governor of California. Please forward this email to all your friends; even your non-Mormon friends because all righteous prayer goes to the same god; because he loves us all equally—except for women, Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, American Indians, people who break the Sabbath, and anybody who lives in Canaan when the ELECT OF GOD come calling.
I personally know the power of prayer. So give it your all and maybe we can make it happen.
And I say these things in the name of the Father (Oh Lord, hear the words of my mouth), his son Jesus (dances on the cross) Christ, and the Holy Joseph (I fuck my nannies) Smith, Amen.
My buddy Jeff replied:
OK, so I started to say a prayer for the kid but decided to change the prayer to "please god help Phil start sending me porn again." Is that bad?
I replied the next day:
What happened to Olivia? Did my prayers work for the kid?
On a serious note, I certainly hope he's doing ok and wouldn't wish that on anyone. Now back to the banter:
If he gets better it's because of Jesus and my prayers played a part in that. Thank you Jesus. If he didn't get better it's not because of Jesus. Sometimes he lets things happen. And also possibly because the kid's name wasn't put on enough prayer rolls. God's ways are not our ways. So thanks Jesus, for all you do and all you are. We know your will is what's best for us.
Let me know if I need to pray tonight, or adjust any of the words from my prayer from Tuesday, which went like this:
"Hey dumbass, I want some money. Send some my way now so I can hook up with some strippers. And whatever your preferred religion is, you do a pretty shitty job of making it clear to your kids, because everybody down here keeps fighting about it. It would be nice if you told some of the Muslims to lay off, because they've got little better to do than blow themselves up in your name and you just sit around and let it happen. You can make a dude live in a whale's stomach for three days, you can make donkeys talk, and you let your servant Joseph Smith bang 11 married chicks because he was your prophet, but you can't stop Muslims from blowing up each other? Jesus Christ you are stupid. And by the way your Plan of Salvation sucks my white ass. Anything that involves arks and Towers of Babel and virgin births and crucifixions and walking dead is just not very believable. Couldn't you have at least chosen something that people don't have such a hard time coming to grips with? I know it's all part of your plan but your plan is shit. You're totally incompetent. If I could fire your ass you would be out on the fucking street in like two seconds. But you're god and I'm just one of your kids, so I won't have that chance until I become a god myself (according to your plan anyway), if even then. So it's going to take awhile. In the interim, can you help the little boy in Virginia with cancer? I mean just make it happen, dude. Don't be such a god damn lazy ass. Find another missionary for the spirit world and let this kid live in this one. And send me some fucking money. Now. Thanks a lot.
5 comments:
Wow, someone forgot to bring his AM certificate to France, what is with all of the anger Dave you went to a class for Hells sake. I have some similar thoughts I will share but with much less anger and indignation. Let me introduce myself to those who do not yet know me. I am Dave's friend who actually still believes a lot of this Mormon stuff but who really likes to mock its absurdity. I am very practical about religion as I am about most things in my life, if it seems to work and be more effective then any other alternative then I will do it.
Now on to prayer. I said about 10 personal prayers in 2007, no prayers with my wife, about 80-90 family prayers (just in case that sins of the child heaped on the father thing pans out), 3-4 prayers in church, and a couple around the dinner table at random relatives houses (Never at my MIL's house I have brothers-in-law that my MIL and FIL like more then me so they never pick me...bastards). So now that I have listed my qualifications let me give my opinion. I warn you this opinion is not really funny and it does not mock anything to any real effect so essentially it will suck, don't say I did not warn you. Of the 10 times I prayed all by myself last year I will say that probably 9 out of 10 (the 10th one was for more porn just like John) of those prayers where asking God to help some sick kid. I really have a soft spot for this issue. When I hear about a child who has been totally worked by some illness, accident, or other tragedy it really gets to me and for some reason if I ask God to help them I feel better about the whole thing. It is a very practical thing for me that goes something like this; 1.Hear about sick or dying kid and feel like shit. 2.Think to myself I should say a prayer, what the hell else am I going to do. 3. Say a prayer and ask God to help the child and his family. 4. I feel much much better and I can continue my lazy do nothing life without feeling like shit. There is one other thing I ALWAYS do when I pray. Say thank you. Thank God that MY kids are not sick or dying and that somehow I have the life that I have. You want to see a mystery, try to explain how a total slacker f**k up like myself has the life that he has. The church and Joseph Smith seem entirely plausible when I look at all the other random unexplained crazy nonsense that is everywhere.
I am sorry about the crappy non-funny comment I will make up for it later I promise. Who picked a sick kid as the topic to make fun of prayer with? That totally stole my mo. Why couldn't we mock all the truely funny stuff people pray about. Kids and especially sick kids are my mocking cryptonite.
I wasn't mocking sick kids. I think you know how I feel about sick children. Like most adults, I'd jump in front of a bus to save a kid. That's just how you feel once you have your own children and realize how unimportant your life is in the grand scheme of things. But a child hasn't lived yet. I'd do anything to help them.
And the first thing I'd do is say a prayer, if I had even the slightest belief that it would make a difference. I mean, really, does that even take any effort? Praying about something is for god damn lazy asses. "I'm not going to get off my ass and do anything about this physically, but I'll say a bunch of words in my mind and that will then make me feel like I did my part." Fucking ridiculous.
Like prayer, there are a lot of things one can do on behalf of others that take some effort but that deliver no results. When I hear there is a sick child I don't go get a bunch of leeches or drill a hole in the child's head. That's because we now know doing those things don't solve the real issues. And how is prayer different?
In the history of the 80 trillion (literally) prayers that people have said throughout time, there isn't a single "validateable" instance in which a higher power answered that prayer. Literally not one. Them's pretty poor odds.
That's why it makes sense to make fun of prayer whenever you want. Because it's useless and gives people a false impression that somehow they're making a difference, thereby possibly reducing their sense of urgency to do something that might make a difference. In the case of a sick child there's usually nothing anyone can really do (outside of giving love and time if you're part of the family), but in other contexts prayer can actually be dangerous when it acts as a substitute for reasonable action and clear-headedness. Or at least the use of the scientific method. Prayer is useless shit designed to make the prayer-giver feel better about himself and his world. That's all it's good for. That's not much.
I understand what you are saying here Dave but tell me this. Why do I feel better after I say a prayer for some sick kid. Am I just a weak minded idiot that cannot see the error of my ways or do I just not understand my own feelings. I never said prayer did anything to help the sick kid, (I have it on good authority that there is a big wheel in heaven that they spin to see if sick kids will live or die), I said it did something to help me, the person who is really important at a time like this. So just like everything else in life I did it because it was good for me. Believe me if prayer could do this for other things, if it could actually help me find really good porn in a short amount of time or get me more sex from my wife I would be a praying fool. All I said was it made me feel better, it really does, that is why I do it, it has a practical use. Now tell me this why does it work?
It works because you've been conditioned to believe that somehow it increases the probability that the outcome of a negative situation will improve, and therefore have done your part. It doesn't matter to you if the probably has increased from 0% to 0.0000000000000000001%. The probability has increased because of your prayer and that feels good.
But the fact is that the probability of improvement has NOT increased. Only your hope that improvement will come has increased. But hope is a powerful thing. And that's why people believe in religion in the first place: they want to hope for something better, something longer-lasting, something more meaningful than this life sometimes has to offer. Which is too bad, given how beautiful this life can really be. Why do we have to make up stories to embellish a hallucination about a future life?
It is false hope based on nothing real, but rather on concepts that are generally so incredibly ludicrous that we have to suspend all rationality to even consider them: gold plates that no one has seen, God saying bigamy is good, wearing stupid underwear, not saying naughty words, giving part of your money to someone else in exchange for being able to go into a building where old men touch your virtually naked body with tiny drops of "sacred oil", baptizing living people on behalf of George Washington so he can be saved in heaven. Getting married to your mother by proxy in this life so she can be married to your dad in eternity, since he died before they could go into the Mormon temple. I mean it's so ridiculous it defies all description. And that's not the half of it. Other religions are probably even more stupid.
Hope is a powerful thing. But hope for and blind belief in God is very dangerous. And all belief in God is blind, since no one's ever seen him (since he doesn't exist) and no, Joseph Smith's vision does not count. Everyone knows that religion has killed more people in world history than any other non-naturally occurring cause. It has been that way since man became smart enough to differentiate his culture and language from someone else's, and continues to this day. Fortunately as more people stop believing and start caring about life and others' lives just because they exist, the severity of religion's effects on various societies is muted. Thank God for that.
Ok I will go with that but to me the bottom line is that it still works. I really do not care why as much as that it has the desired effect. Like a lot of other things I am encouraged to do my my religion there is a practical benefit to doing some of them.
One thing I am totally a fan of right now is the help I get from my church teaching my kids to be positive contributers to their world. I really am a huge fan of the church's system for its youth. Set aside all of the crazy stuff and you cannot come up with a better system for helping youth come of age in the world today. My son is given opportunities to serve others, speak in public, administer a meeting that includes adults at the age of 13. He is taught to be respectful to others, to care about the well being of others and to honor his parents and stay close to his family.
Our church is by no means the only system out there that can do all of this and more but it is by far the best organized and executed that I have witnessed.
I feel like the benefits I get from the church far outstrip what I put into it including my 10%. It is just money, my family is better off then we would be without the church, I am sure of it. I am in no way making a general statement about all families. I am also not trying to say in any way that you cannot effectivly raise your kids without any church or religion. All I am saying is that I feel that for me and my family we are better off with it then we would have been without it.
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