religious

Man Dies After Sitting In Recliner For Eight Months – Waiting For God To Cure Him

Best part of the article: “Webb says she has no regrets about leaving him in that recliner.”

Man dies after sitting in recliner for eight months

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (NBC) — Believing his faith would heal him, a Greenwood County, South Carolina man sat down in his recliner after an injury in March and never got up.

On Thursday, his wife explained why he stayed in the recliner until shortly before he died.

“The man totally believed in God and his healing,” said Ada Webb.

In March, Webb’s 550-pound husband, Tillmon, sat down in a recliner inside their trailer in Greenwood. Wearing nothing but a blanket, the 33-year-old didn’t move from that recliner for the next eight months.

“He couldn’t do nothing for his self and I couldn’t do but so much,” Webb explained.

Webb says Tillmon tore his ACL in March and drove to a doctor’s office.

“They were gonna give him an appointment, but they wanted $300 up front, and we didn’t have the money,” said Webb.

Webb says he returned to the recliner, picked up his Bible and became determined that faith would heal his leg.

“He read his Bible daily, he spent his full focus on God,” said Webb. “And he was literally waiting and praying for a Job miracle. If anybody knows the Bible and knows Job, he really and fully believed that God was going to heal him just like he did Job, because he said he couldn’t think of a better testimony to go out and to tell people.”

For eight months they had no visitors. Webb rarely left his side, and she tried to keep him clean.

“I couldn’t get him rolled over to use a bedpan,” said Webb.

Other than eating and reading the Bible, she says Tillmon posted sermons online and texted messages of faith through his cell phone.

“He wanted so much to get up and you know, he wanted to tell everybody what Jesus done,” said Webb.

Webb says Tillmon consistently told her not to call for help. She says Wednesday morning he was in so much pain that she finally called an ambulance.

Greenwood County authorities say they found Tillmon covered with sores, and that he appeared to weigh about 800 pounds. They say he was stuck to his chair, and they had to saw the recliner apart. They cut a large hole around the front door to get him out.

He died at the hospital.

Webb says she has no regrets about leaving him in that recliner.

“If I feel anything right now, it’s envy for him because I wish he had taken me with him,” said Webb.

Greenwood County deputies will not charge Webb with a crime. They determined she had no malicious intent of neglect.

Neighbors at the trailer park said they had no idea Webb had a husband inside that trailer the whole time.

Researchers find brain differences between believers and non-believers

Researchers find brain differences between believers and non-believers

In two studies led by Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, participants performed a Stroop task – a well-known test of cognitive control – while hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain activity.

Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.

“You could think of this part of the brain like a cortical alarm bell that rings when an individual has just made a mistake or experiences uncertainty,” says lead author Inzlicht, who teaches and conducts research at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors. They’re much less anxious and feel less stressed when they have made an error.”

These correlations remained strong even after controlling for personality and cognitive ability, says Inzlicht, who also found that religious participants made fewer errors on the Stroop task than their non-believing counterparts.

Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a “double-edged sword” which is at times necessary and helpful.

“Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you’re paralyzed with fear,” he says. “However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we’re making mistakes. If you don’t experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don’t make the same mistakes again and again?”

The study is appearing online now in Psychological Science.

Source: University of Toronto

Unaffiliated? Join The Growing Club

Seems that despite the ever loudening and aggressive Christian right, the American public is becoming less religious.

Many Americans religiously unaffiliated: survey

CHICAGO (Reuters) – When it comes to religion, more and more U.S. adults either have none or do not identify with a particular church, although the country remains highly religious, a survey said on Monday.

The report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found a constantly shifting landscape of religious loyalties, with the Roman Catholic Church losing more adherents than any other single U.S. religious group.

One in 10 Americans now describes himself as a former Catholic, it found, although that church’s membership is constantly being replenished by immigrants, particularly Latinos.

Despite predictions that the United States would follow Europe’s path toward secularization, the U.S. population “remains highly religious in its beliefs and practices,” the survey concluded.

But John Green, a senior researcher with the Pew Forum, told reporters American religion appears headed for more diversity, with the likelihood the country will be “less Protestant and less Christian” in the future than it is now.

The survey, based on interviews with more than 36,000 U.S. adults, found 78.4 percent of the population identify themselves as Christian. Of U.S. adults in general, it said 51.3 percent were Protestant, 23.9 percent Catholic, 1.7 percent Mormon, 0.7 percent Jehovah’s Witness and less than 0.3 percent each Greek or Russian Orthodox.

“The biggest gains due to changes in religious affiliation have been among those who say they are not affiliated with any particular religious group or tradition,” the survey found.

Hilarious Religious Fundie Quotes

Here’s an amazing collection of insane quotes from religious nutjobs.

Google Cache of fstdt.com

This is what it would be like, if the majority of people were athiests.
ATHIEST KID: Mom, I’m going to go fuck a hooker.
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, son.
ATHIEST KID: Afterwards, I’m going to go smoke pot with my friends, since it’s “not addictive.”
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, come home soon!

The athiest kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.

ATHIEST DAD: Hey!
ATHIEST MOM: Hi, honey! I’m pregnant again. I guess I’ll just get another abortion, since “fetuses don’t count as human life.”
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, get as many abortions as you want!
ATHIEST MOM: Oh, and don’t go in the bedroom.
ATHIEST DAD: Why not?
ATHIEST MOM: There are two gay men fucking eachother in there.
ATHIEST DAD: Why are they here?
ATHIEST MOM: I wanted to watch them do it for awhile. They just aren’t finished yet.
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, that’s fine with me!

Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.

ATHIEST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there’s a Christian outside!
ATHIEST MOM: We’ll be right there!

The athiest couple quickly put on a pair of black robes and hoods. They then exit the house, and run into the street, where a Christian is nailed to a large, wooden X. He is being burned alive. A crowd of athiests stand around him, all wearing black robes and hoods.

That’s but one of the amazing quotes. I love it.

Hold on, I have to go back to my bedroom, I didn’t finish watching those two gay guys fucking, cause, I love doing that, you know.

Alaska’s `Papa Pilgrim’ gets 14 years

 Good thing he’s a religious man, otherwise I might have thought he was an immoral man.

Alaska’s `Papa Pilgrim’ gets 14 years

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A man who called himself “Papa Pilgrim” and took his family far from civilization to raise them according to his interpretation of the Bible was sentenced to 14 years in prison for sexually assaulting a daughter.

A judge imposed the sentence Tuesday after Robert Hale’s wife and many of their 15 children delivered statements that included intense stories of physical and mental abuse. Judge Donald Hopwood called it “one of the worst cases of domestic violence I’ve seen.”

Hale and his family came to prominence during a feud with the National Park Service after family members used a bulldozer without permission to clear a road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

Land rights advocates rallied to their cause, and stories featured their plight as a case of big government versus simple folks loving music, fearing God and living off the land.

Virgin Mary In a Window

Can you see her? It’s the virgin mary! (what’s most amazing about this, some stupid group actually leased this building just so they could turn it into some sort of ‘sacred’ site.

Virgin Mary Window

Aww, she got smashed by some hooligan.

Mary Smash

Teen held in Virgin Mary smashing

“He was sorry. It wasn’t anything he intended to do,” said Officer Christian Zarra, one of two officers who interviewed Maskell. “It’s just pretty much that life caught up to him. He was very apologetic.”

Reactions from those visiting the image Monday were mixed. Some stressed forgiveness, others punishment and responsibility.

“We’ve been praying for whoever did it since the day it happened,” said Rosie Reed, site leader for Shepherds of Christ Ministries, which owns the building. “We pray for the whole world under Mary’s image. I’m going to continue praying for everyone involved.”

But Jose Pombo II, who was there to light a candle Monday, had punishment in mind.

“If he’s 18, he’s an adult. For this kid not to know, at the age of 18, what this represents is inexcusable,” Pombo said. “I think he should serve a very long time. It’s desecrating a holy place. That’s like going to Lourdes in France and desecrating it.”