Prayer – BIONICHEAD

Christian quack prays to end Medicaid expansion in Tennessee

There is a reason why it is important to keep church and state separated. Considering that religious people think that gods are talking to them, it would be extremely unwise to allow these people to make political decisions of any kind. Christian quacks have very poor judgment skills.

An example of why deranged Christian quacks need to stay out of the government is this video recording from Feb 03, 2015 of the Tennessee Senate. June Griffin, from the “Cumberland Missionary Society” was invited to say the daily prayer. Before she started her prayer, everyone was told to stand and to remain standing during the entire ritual.

I am glad that I was not there or I would have been arrested for refusing to stand.Being made to stand and show respect to the religious is highly annoying. I think it is against my Constitutional rights to be forced to take part in religious rituals of any kind. I find them to be emotionally disturbing.

After everyone started to rise, Ms. Griffin was introduced as “a longtime crusader for Christian values” before she went into a five minute prayer rant about getting the gods to help stop health care expansion.

The Rush Transcript of Ms. June Griffin’s Prayer

I pray for the people of Tennessee who have been so downtrodden by the wicked courts from on high that they have been subject to tyrannical judiciary. And I pray that you would save Tennessee from the edicts of Washington DC that would go against the plain wishes of the people of Tennessee, particularly pertaining to the 9th and 10th Amendment.

I pray that you would sanctify this state, that it would be holy and would be a leader among the other states. That they would see that there is a God that lives, that you love the people of Tennessee. That you gave your life that we might be saved from our sins. I pray that you would forgive the many sins of carelessness or lethargy or desperation. The compromises.

Oh Lord, save Tennessee for Jesus’ sake and I pray that your will would be done; that you would be our coverage; that we would not be forced into these edicts from Washington DC or any other quarter; but let the people know that our coverage is the same as with Moses and the children of Israel when they went through the wilderness with only the divine providence of almighty God.

So, I pray that everywhere there are meetings, and there is considerations and deliberations, that you would give these men and women who have been elected, give them the backbone and the remembrance of the Tennessee Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 2 — we are ordered to resist arbitrary power.

Prayer – The Act of Doing Nothing

Prayer – The act of feeling like you are helping while doing absolutely nothing to solve a problem.

Prayer is the act of doing absolutely nothing while at the same time thinking that you are helping solve a problem.

A friend or a relative of yours has cancer. You say, “I’ll pray for you.”
Your neighbor lost their job and they are losing their house. You say, “I’ll pray for you.”
Kids in Africa get Ebola. You say, “I’ll pray for them.”

Prayer is the act of talking to yourself in the hopes that a deity might be listening.

God, I’m talking to you hear, just do this one thing for me and I’ll go to church again.
God, I’m going to be know, please let me wake up in the morning.
God, my cat is missing. Please find her.

Prayer is begging.

God, please let me win the lottery
God, please let there be bagels available at the deli.
God, I wish I had a beer.

Prayer is an attempt to get a deity to do something for you.

God, please let me find my keys.
God, please let me get a green light.
God, please let me get a passing grade on my chemistry exam even though I was drinking alcoholic beverages all night. Oh, yeah, please get rid of this hangover.

Prayer – Quotes For Atheists

“I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds,” Quentin Crisp.

“Prayers are to men as dolls are to children,” Samuel Butler.

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell–mouths mercy, and invented hell–mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him,” Mark Twain. (The Mysterious Stranger)

“I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don’t…Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe…same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat’s testicles. It’s all the same…so just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself,” George Carlin.

“An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done, instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated,” Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“The next time believers tell you that ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word ‘trinity.’ The word ‘trinity’ appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural, Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord’s Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible,” Dan Barker. (Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist)

Atheist Quotes about Faith and Prayer

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time,” Friedrich Nietzsche.

“Faith is believing something you know ain’t true,” Mark Twain.

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason,” Benjamin Franklin.

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church,”
Ferdinand Magellan.

“Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew – who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed, there was no guess — no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They knew that in the eternity — back of that morning, he had done nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth — all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested. They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all disease and death.

At the same time, they knew that God created man in his own image and was perfectly satisfied with his work… They knew all about the Flood — knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his children — the old and young — the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe — the young man and the merry maiden — the loving mother and the laughing child — because his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds — everything that walked or crawled or flew — because his loving kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes, destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

Then I asked myself the question: Is there a supernatural power — an arbitrary mind — an enthroned God — a supreme will that sways the tides and currents of the world — to which all causes bow?

I do not deny. I do not know – but I do not believe. I believe that the natural is supreme – that from the infinite chain no link can be lost or broken — that there is no supernatural power that can answer prayer – no power that worship can persuade or change — no power that cares for man.

Is there a God?

I do not know.

Is man immortal?

I do not know.

One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine — with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the last drop the golden cup of joy.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol 1: Lectures

Prayer – Dying for Fish

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.”