Honesty in Blogging
It’s not often that we come across a brutally honest post in the blogosphere. Here in the Bunker, we applaud such efforts even when the post in question makes an admission so frank and self defeating as to wonder if the writer realizes the point they were trying to make in the first place. Bloggers rarely advertise their own gullibility and desperation. Kudos I guess. In any event, we agree whole-heartedly with all of it but have to wonder about the sanity of any individual who would go to a so-called faith healer for a legitimate medical problem. We’ll keep that in mind when reading all of his future posts.
This is a good reminder that behind even the most offensive blogging persona lurks a human being. I should remember that more often.
I have a lot of sympathy for desperate folks who seek miracles. My mom was a very smart and very hard-headed woman, but when she was dying of cancer she flew to Fatima in search of a cure. It didn’t help.
But the English language doesn’t contain vocabulary strong enough to express my loathing for the parasites who knowingly prey on the faithful of any stripe by offering the hope of miraculous respite. And anyone in doubt that that’s exactly what they’re doing is advised to read James Randi’s “The Faith Healers”, and find out how the multi million dollar corporations run by Peter Popoff, W.V. Grant, Leroy Jenkins, Oral Roberts, and Pat Robertson really work, and cynical these vendors of false hope actually are.
Unfortunately the folks who would benefit most from this book probably don’t read much.
do I detect a hint of sarcasm or perhaps intellectual “superiority”.
Come on cut the guy a bit slack.
When I was 8 there was a girl who lived near me – a smart, funny, warm person who was, while we lived there, one of my best friends – and she had a problem with her eyes that made it hard for her to read. She also had some serious family stress and economic lack.
There were not feasible medical solutions at the time for kids (although now there are surgical solutions, I believe). So her mom took her to a faith healer; one of the big ones, but I don’t remember which. I DO remember her hope beforehand, and afterward, how she took it on herself. “I didn’t believe enough”.
It made me mad at 8 years old, and it makes me both angry and sad, now. They didn’t have enough money to spend, and she already had more emotional stress and self-doubt than a kid her age should have.
I hope things are better for her, wherever she is.
Unfortunately this sort of thing is all too common in all belief structures and I hope that CS’s personal faith is not too negatively impacted by the discovery of a charlatan in its’ midst.
“do I detect a hint of sarcasm or perhaps intellectual “superiority”.”
I’m afraid detecting a hint of “intellectual superiority” in discussions about Scenty is like detecting a hint of height watching Will Chamberlain in conversation with Warwick Davis.