UK Lottery Funding for spiritual healing on NHS

In the UK there is a national Lottery that, for every £1 that the public spends on Lottery tickets, 28 pence goes to the Lottery good causes. How do they define “good causes”? Well, these are the arts, charities and voluntary groups, heritage, health, education, the environment and sports. OK, so far that sounds great.

OK yes, you can tell there is a WTF moment coming up because I’m blogging about this, and indeed yes there is, so brace yourselves.

The National Lottery has awarded a £205,000 grant for the two-year study to healing charity “Fresh Winds”. Basically NHS patients will be offered a treatment where a healer will pass their hands over the patient’s body to channel ‘healing energy’ to affected areas in 20-minute sessions to correct energy flow imbalances …WTF (Well I did warn you) … As for this being actual value for money, this is more or less akin to taking the entire pile of cash into the car park and setting fire to it. The evidence that this will be anything other than a placebo is zero.

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Climate Change and Cloud Cover – the new report

The climate change debate is heating up yet again. OK, so what has happened? Well, before I go there, lets first establish a few things so that you fully understand where I’m coming from. Man made climate change is real, the evidence is in, there is not really much real scientific controversy. In April 2010 a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that nearly 98% of working climate scientists accept the evidence for human-induced climate change, this latest study does not change that.

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The WTC cross and the 9/11 memorial

David Silverman writes in the Guardian to explain why the WTC cross does not belong at the 9/11 memorial. There is been a lot of biased news that does not represent what is going on here (think Fox News), so if this is not at all clear, then you might be interested in reading why … Read more

Multiple Christian death threats aimed at atheists in the past few days

The news is that following his appearance on Fox News’s show, America Live w/Megyn Kelly, American Atheists’ Communications Director, Blair Scott received multiple death threats from Christians. Many even appeared on the Fox News facebook page. Here are some examples … When posting Facebook snapshots the normal convention is to blank out names … but … Read more