First up from the God Machine is an invitation members of the Senate received from a religious leader offering prayers on their behalf. Considering the religious leader in question, one can only hope lawmakers have the good sense to decline.
“On January 30th and 31st, Robert Gray will be in Washington, D.C., to introduce Pastor Benny Hinn to several senators for [a] five-minute prayer session,” reads the message, which goes on to request a meeting with the senator.
“Pastor Benny Hinn is one of our most famous international citizens,” continues the message, which comes from a firm run by Robert K. Gray, a former official in the Eisenhower administration who now runs a real estate company in Florida. “In addition to dozens of crusades in stateside cities in 2006, Pastor Benny personally preached to over a million citizens in major countries like Italy, Japan, England, Greece, Korea, Denmark and Australia. He also preached to several hundred thousand in areas as remote as Fiji, Trinidad and Indonesia.”
Senators considering Hinn’s offer might want to think twice – unless they want to have a photo op with a man widely considered to be one of the biggest charlatans among the television evangelists.
Hinn is one of the most famous TV preachers and faith healers operating in the world today, but that’s no reason for senators to spend time with this guy. As a friend of mine explained a year ago, “Hinn lives and travels in style on money he coaxes from pensioners and widows scrapping by on Social Security. His healings are cruel frauds. In the highly charged, highly emotional atmosphere of a Hinn crusade, some undoubtedly do believe they’re better. It’s only later that they discover they are still sick. Some investigators have tracked down people Hinn ‘healed’ only to find that they were not only unhealed but, in fact, dead.”
Nevertheless, Hinn is one of the wealthiest preachers in the country. On two separate occasions, NBC’s “Dateline” has done exposes on his “ministry,” highlighting the enormous fortune Hinn takes in whenever he hosts another show. His greed knows no bounds — Hinn recently asked his supporters to pony up to help him buy a new jet, to help replace his old one.
As a rule, Hinn has generally avoided politics, and has shown more interest in money than power, which is why this invitation to senators is disconcerting. Are there any members of the Senate who are careless enough to sit down with him?
Next up is another disconcerting story, this time about “Christian wellness” practitioners, who’ve suddenly caught the interest of the FDA (via Ron Chusid).
As the WSJ explained, “Christian wellness” is a multi-billion dollar business that offers dietary supplements, herbal formulas, and diets inspired by Biblical descriptions. The Nutrition Business Journal estimated that “Christian wellness” accounts for 5% to 10% of the dietary-supplements business, leading to about $21 billion in 2005 sales.
The products are heavily promoted on religious TV, radio and Web sites through ads featuring testimonials akin to those that evangelicals share in church services. “Rather than sending money to the guy on TV who promised to heal you, you now can send your money for a book on diet and a list of supplements,” says Donal O’Mathuna, a chemist and co-author of a book on alternative medicine.
Federal authorities have identified at least three dozen people who drank Dr. Daniel’s mixtures, says a person familiar with the matter. Among those, at least eight people died of cancer, according to a Food and Drug Administration investigator’s affidavit. Some patients bypassed conventional therapies for Dr. Daniel’s regimen, according to the affidavit, patients and family members.
In a brief phone interview, Dr. Daniel said she has sold no substances, and only provides palliative “end of life” care. “The federal government has it wrong,” she said, describing federal investigators as “nut cases” and “evil.” She declined requests for further comment.
Her Tarzana, Calif., attorney, Manuel Miller, added, “Obviously it goes without saying, we deny anything improper or illegal that’s been done by her. She’s totally innocent.” He said Dr. Daniel “would never under any condition” tell a patient to stop chemotherapy. He said he wasn’t familiar with products patients say they bought from his client. “When you’ve got the last stages of cancer, you’re looking for anything possible. The issue is: Did she ever say this will cure cancer?”
According to the FDA investigator’s affidavit, on a 2002 religious broadcast Dr. Daniel touted cancer cure rates of 60% or better.
With such a lucrative market, desperate patients, and over-the-top claims, this is an “industry” that will likely find more and more legal scrutiny in the coming years.
Next up is a story by way of my good friend Bill, who noted a fascinating article about “magical thinking” and faith.
Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.
These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.
The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling.
The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such thinking was “only one domain where a relevant interpretation that connects all the dots, so to speak, is preferred to a rational one.”
Children exhibit a form of magical thinking by about 18 months, when they begin to create imaginary worlds while playing. By age 3, most know the difference between fantasy and reality, though they usually still believe (with adult encouragement) in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. By age 8, and sometimes earlier, they have mostly pruned away these beliefs, and the line between magic and reality is about as clear to them as it is for adults.
It is no coincidence, some social scientists believe, that youngsters begin learning about faith around the time they begin to give up on wishing. “The point at which the culture withdraws support for belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is about the same time it introduces children to prayer,” said Jacqueline Woolley, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. “The mechanism is already there, kids have already spent time believing that wishing can make things come true, and they’re just losing faith in the efficacy of that.”
Food for thought.