So on Twitter, Chris Pratt (a.k.a. Starlord) tweeted in part “I’m praying for you because I believe in the healing power of prayer” to Kevin Smith, who had recently announced that he’d had a heart attack.
And now people are bashing Pratt for saying he was sending prayer. Why? Because they’re apparently conflating it with people who send empty prayers to the victims of gun violence.
No. It’s not the same. At all.
When I had my stroke five years ago, do you guys have ANY idea how many people said they were praying for me. Hundreds. Probably thousands. Including an entire Buddhist temple. And we totally got where everyone was coming from. When faced with a situation where someone was ill, many people were resorting to asking God to give me a break. No one said, “Hey dûmbášš, if you weren’t morbidly obese you could probably have avoided this.” There is nothing wrong with evoking sympathy from a higher being when confronted with bad news.
The reason there is now backlash against offering prayers during gun shootings is because the politicians who are claiming they are praying are capable of doing so much more. The same people who claim that their thoughts and prayers are with the victims are taking thousands of dollars in donations from the NRA and doing nothing to try and address the problem directly. We don’t need God to step in and prevent shootings; we need the changes in gun laws that people have been demanding but are seeing squashed by the orange dûmbášš and his coterie of gun suckers. It’s a completely different circumstance from wishing for divine intervention to help a fellow human who is having medical problems.
I too wish Kevin Smith the best and a full recovery from his heart attack. And leave Chris Pratt the hëll alone.
PAD
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I can see the religious right sending thoughts and prayers while doing nothing and due to a lack of education continuing to back the traitorous Trump . But I can’t understand people getting uptight about what amounts to as good wishes from Chris Pratt …I’m sure Kevin felt better and I know I would have. Can we start getting the names of the áršëhølëš on both the left and the right as when we realise we’re over populated we will need this data for the Cull ….
Totally agree, but PAD, did you give Mr. Pratt a little promotion? Although, in this discussion, invoking him as a deity is somewhat apropos… 😉
I identified him as “Star-Lord” in order to distinguish him from Chris Evans (Cap) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Chris Pine (Steve Trevor). There’s just so many dámņëd Chris’s running around that I figured I would clarify which one it is.
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PAD
Actually, PAD, I think he means here that in the headline you refer to him as “Christ” Pratt. 🙂
And totally agreed with your overall point, even as a pretty intense atheist. Folks need to lighten up on this.
No, just add a comma and it’s an Onion headline. “Christ, Pratt getting bashed for no reason”
Agree totally, Peter. The only way Chris Pratt’s message of sympathy would be analogous to the sit-on-our-hands politicians would be if Mr. Pratt were a cardiologist who was on hand when Mr. Smith had his heart attack and just stood back and offered “thoughts and prayers”.It would be nice if sometimes folks on the ‘net would think before they post.
My favorite interpretation of this issue (and represents said asshats who ignore helping others when they could) –
optipess.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-and-prayers/
As I said over on Facebook, some people need to go screw themselves with something long, pointed, and sharp edged.
Not understanding it myself. We’ll probably be seeing something from Kevin Smith soon to try and nip this in the bud.
On February 16, my mother passed away. Among other things, I posted on Facebook what I intended to be and hope was a thorough, heartfelt tribute to her life. I received many condolences and, yes, many expressions of prayer for myself and my family over her passing. I did not at any time regard those prayers as anything but sincere. I cannot believe that we have come to a point where such expressions are regarded as anything but what the people offering them say they are. I suggest if you feel someone offering thought and prayers are not sincere about them, just ignore them, and accept and appreciate those thoughts and prayers from those who are offering them sincerely.
Sorry about your Mom.
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PAD
My condolences, Kim.
As to the folks PAD calls out, they are about as sorry as those who hear ¨Ḧappy holidays!”and go all snarly about it. What a sad way to go through life.
My take on it?
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We had two decades of an increasingly de-energized left-wing. As much as the Clintons and Obama were passionately hated by increasingly energized right-wingers and considered as extremists, they were very centrist politicians, pro-Free Market, pro-war, “Uniters”, etc.
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The right became more extreme, just as the left became more “respectable” and distanced from their base. It happened on England too, with Tony Blair.
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I see the current New Left as a symptom of these decades of bottled up leftism. They finally found room to expand and shape the conversation and try to be as aggressive as right-wingers have been. Though they’re still not really even a fraction as aggressive.
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And any time a political movement starts to call the shots, there are always people who go too far and get a bit ridiculous.
I hate to break it to you, Rene, but, at least here in America, this faction of the fringe left has been around and acting this áššhølìšh for many years now.
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There’s long been a section of the intellectual set (and the wannabe intellectual set) that has confused the concepts of skepticism, intellectualism, and the intellectual advancement of society with been bigoted áššhølëš towards religion. They’ve just grown louder and more obnoxious with the growth of the internet and the explosion of social media.
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Think about this- “Go God Go” and “Go God Go XII” from South Park, the episodes that sought to (among other things) rip Richard Dawkins a new áššhølë for being an obnoxious dìçk about religion will be 12 years old this year. Dawkins was already a well established áššhølë when it came time to rip him a new áššhølë in that episode, and he’s only become worse.
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But, he’s acquired followers of a sort. Rather than look at him and decide that maybe that’s not how one should act, there’s a generation of “scientific thinkers” and “skeptics” who think it’s acceptable to be complete dìçkš towards anyone who utters a religious belief; even one meant to express support to someone in a time of grief or need. And there’s a new generation who thinks it’s their duty to swat down religious comments whenever they see them no matter where they see them or if it’s an inappropriate time for them to comment on the matter of religion.
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For years now, almost anyone taking the horrible action of offering “thoughts and prayers” to anyone else during a time of public crisis or tragedy would find a growing number of áššhølìšh trolls in their feed berating them for expressing a religious belief rather than “doing something useful.”
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It’s not new, but there are more people in that faction acting like bigger áššhølëš than ever.
I almost always agree with you, Jerry, but I think you’re way off base on this one. Yes, there are some jerks in the atheist community (as there are in every community), but I don’t think Richard Dawkins is one of them. “The God Delusion” is a wonderful and important book that, rightly, points out some of the fallacies of religious belief. Mostly this came as a reaction to religious folks poking their noses into science, i.e. creationism. I don’t see this as áššhølë-ìšh behavior.
All that said, what Chris Pratt posted was very nice, and only a complete troll would object to it. And I think Dawkins would support him in this.
I’d agree with you if this was still way back when, but the man started becoming an insufferable ášš quite some few years ago.
Richard Dawkins has become almost as much a atheist icon as Christ or Buddha for believers. I’ve had people who like Dawkins argue things that have happened to me that A) I was witness to since, like I said, it happened to ME and B) I didn’t know them at the time so the DIDN’T witness it.
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Prayers are a funny thing, though. I know some truly spiritual people who whentheysay they’ll pray for a person, it shows depth of feeling and respect.
Jerry –
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Dawkins has been a huge áššhølë for some time now, and I’m no more a fan of militant atheists as I’m of militant evangelicals.
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And yeah, they’ve been quite vocal and influential since the early 2000s at least.
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The only thing I disagree with you is that I never quite saw them as fitting comfortably in the left. Hitchens found common cause with some Conservatives by being hardcore in his Anti-Islam tirades. Dawkins himself several times came closer to quasi-Social Darwinism than to good old bleeding heart liberalism.
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There is a portion of the alt-right that is quite taken with atheism and skepticism, and of course Libertarians have been in the hardcore atheist camp since day one, so I see militant atheism as more of a thing that is interlocked with both left and right.
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When I talked of the New Left, I was thinking more of how quick they are nowadays to be triggered by any slip of the tongue by straight, white, male celebrities that can’t get the knack of being 100% “woke” all the time. I was thinking they got angry with Pratt for saying stuff that reminded them of hypocritical gun activists, not necessarily for being religious.
So, is Dawkins an A-hole who is an Atheist, or an Atheist who is an A-hole?
Kevin Smith Defends Chris Pratt ‘Praying’ for Him after Backlash<b/
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http://epicstream.com/news/Kevin-Smith-Defends-Chris-Pratt-Praying-for-Him-after-Backlash
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“Poor Chris Pratt, one of my favorite actors on the planet, f-cking put up a nice tweet, saying, ‘Hey man, I don’t know you that much, but I love Clerks and I’m praying for you,’ and, apparently, some people were like, ‘F-ck your prayers,’ and attacked him and sh-t. And then [Guardians of the Galaxy director] James Gunn had to jump in and be like, ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with praying for a person, man.’”
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“Number one, oh my God, thank you to Chris Pratt. How sweet was that? Star-Lord praying for me. But number two, yeah, please don’t fight over stuff like that. It’s a waste of time. Prayer, whether you’re religious or not, somebody saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ it’s good-intentioned, it’s very nice. Especially because it’s not like Chris Pratt was like, ‘Move over, I’m going to reach my hands over into his chest and save him, save f-cking Silent Bob’s life myself.’”
Called it!
I was in the hospital around the same time you were Peter, fighting off this touch of leukemia I had picked up. I’m a pretty secular guy but I married a Southern girl and she had dozens of people approach her and offer their prayers. It hurt nothing and honestly it was just nice that someone cared enough about me and her to offer her that “We’re rooting for you guys.” Plus, positivity is key in getting your health back. As you and others have stated, it wasn’t “No doctors, no medicines, prayer only!” it was just about people showing love and support in addition to being proactive.