If you enjoyed yesterday's documentary with Derren Brown exposing the tricks of faith healers, you'll be pleased to know that there is a group of people traveling through India also teaching the locals some basic critical thinking skills, and exposing in the process the cheap ploys used by scam artists who are only too happy to take advantage of the poor and the uneducated...
It's hard to come up with many examples of practices more cruel and exploitative than faith healing because its practitioners deliberately prey on the poor and sick by taking advantage of them in their greatest time of need and desperation. If your kid is diagnosed with an incurable and terminal disease, for instance, and science-based medicine can't help, it's understandable that you might try other 'alternative' methods. What parent wouldn't be willing to try anything to help their children?
What kind of purpose drives these healers? No, it's not love for their fellow man... it's greed: you have to pony up a pretty penny to show that you have the requisite faith for the holy spirit to descend upon you (and it takes cash and credit cards... no checks, though).
Philosopher A.C. Grayling (whom you've seen debate along with Richard Dawkins against the notion that atheism is the new fundamentalism), has just come out with a secular bible.| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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People, Americans especially, have a love relationship with Pluto that borders on the bizarre. Sure, it was discovered by an American, and we like to be proud of our own, but there's not much (that we know of) that's particularly interesting about this celestial body other than the fact there's a Disney dog with the same name. And yet, when Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet, the general public, politicians and even children started protesting...Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.
This week is full of religious celebrations. The Christians are celebrating Easter, the time when Jesus sodomized the Easter Bunny and knocked him up (hence the eggs). Oh, and also something about Jesus, a carpenter, being ironically punished by getting nailed to two pieces of wood...
Empathy, very simply, is the ability to place yourself in another's position and understand things from his point of view. It's a skill that we are naturally equipped with, but not one we often choose to exercise... probably because it's a lot easier and convenient not to. One could make a pretty convincing case that becoming more empathic could truly solve many of the problems that affect the world, from the personal to the political and international.While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer,.
nothing is harder than to understand him.
