The Unspeakable Cruelty of Faith Healing

I think this goes beyond the usual indifference of faith-healing frauds toward the actual health of the marks they con.

I think this is a deliberate strategy to make people with AIDS suffer more and die sooner.

From Pam's House Blend:

The “healing process” involves the pastor shouting over the person being healed for the devil to come out of their body, while spraying water in their face.

You know that the U.S. has fundie churches willing to put their flock’s health at risk with false claims of healing HIV+ patients through prayer and purportedly “de-gaying” through “de-demonizing” people. Across the pond, from Sky News, an undercover investigation into practices at an evangelical church in Britain.

There is evidence evangelical churches in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow are claiming to cure HIV through God.

Sky sent three undercover reporters to the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), which is based in Southwark, south London.

All of them told the pastors they were HIV positive – all were told they could be healed.

Once a month, the church has a prayer line, where people from across Europe come to be cured of all kinds of illness.

This sounds like bullsh*t exported from our charlatan churches:

One of the pastors, Rachel Holmes, told Sky’s reporter Shatila, who is a genuine HIV sufferer, they had a 100% success rate.

Ms Holmes said: “We have many people that contract HIV. All are healed.”

She said, if symptoms such as vomiting or diarrhoea persist, it is actually a sign of the virus leaving the body.

On a point of curiosity, aside from the general outrage at this nonsense, is why do these sects not recognize, through the lens of their own belief systems, that God — through humans — has allowed the discovery and creation of medicines, surgical procedures, and all sorts of medical advances? Why is prayer alone the way to cure disease? It makes no sense — and in the end, doesn’t work.

If those are not rhetorical questions, the answer is that science disproves religion, so freakazoids must reject all science and cling ever tighter to their myths. The "faith healing" con is just one of the more ludicrous manifestations of their fear of reality.

That, and the goal of killing off people with AIDS, of course.