Dear Santa…

First we had Conservapedia, then GodTube, and now yet another site for the deluded has made its appearance at “Dear God“.

On this web site, the devout can send their prayers to their Imaginary Friend, whereupon I suppose He/She/It is supposed to read them and take some sort of divine action to make things all better. Considering that these messages are meant to be read somewhere out there in the heavenly void, I suppose the best method for He/She/It to get an Internet connection would be via satellite dish. The monthly ISP bill must be murder, but then I guess it’s just lunch money when you’re Mighty and All Powerful.

At the bottom of the site is a disclaimer that reads:

“This website is totally independent and non-denominational. We are not a religious or spiritual/new-age organization. We have no affiliation or relationship to any church or religious or spiritual group or organization.”

Pardon moi if I find that a little hard to believe, because just above that bit, they also state:

“…praying to a higher power soothes and heals. It’s scientifically proven that people who pray are healthier, happier and more resilient.”

Really? Praying heals? There’s been scientific research that actually proves that people who pray are healthier? Gee, I must have missed that one; perhaps it was in the copy of Nature that got lost in the mail because my postman got taken up in the Rapture last month.

They also state:

“It doesn’t matter what your version of God is…Jesus, Allah, Buddha or simply a spiritual universal energy…”

but from what I’ve seen of the site so far, it looks to be overwhelmingly Christian in nature.

A lot of the messages I’ve read on the site are sad. One of them was from a woman who wanted God to save her marriage. Her husband wants to leave her and is filing for a divorce. This is where the delusion of religious belief does its harm: rather than acknowledge that there’s a problem that we need to sit down and work out a solution to (or if there really is no solution, and sometimes the cold hard reality of human relationships is that it just simply doesn’t work out and so we need to call it quits and move on), these people just throw their hands up in the air, absolve themselves from any personal responsibility to sort it one way or the other, and then hand it over to God to fix by sending He/She/It a message on a web site.

HOW is this any different from kids writing to Santa Claus at the North Pole for a new bike?

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