A man is crumpled by a car;
He’s lying dead, and there you are–
Don’t waste your time with CPR,
Just bow your head and pray.
No need to call for EMTs;
The Holy Bible guarantees
Just fall down praying on your knees
The proper Christian way.

From prairie plains to shining shores
The hospitals will close their doors;
The pow’r of life and death is yours
If only you believe.
No more a need for any meds,
Or research messing up our heads,
Since raising people from the dead’s
So easy to achieve.

It’s really quite a simple game:
Just find a corpse, and then proclaim
“Rise up! Rise up, in Jesus’ name!”
And that’s what it will do.
But if by chance he will not stand;
The corpse won’t do as you command,
The fall-back is already planned:
We put the blame on you.

Over on Pharyngula, PZ has posted a video of a man who claims to have raised the dead. Says it’s not that hard to do, really. In the comments to that post, there are a number of commenters who doubt the man’s sincerity. I wish I could. I really do.

But, the thing is, I have known people who honestly believed that prayer could raise the dead. Despite the fact that it did not work for their son, my friend. So, of course, it demonstrated that their faith was insufficient.

I hear there are groups that are actively praying for the victims of the Haitian earthquake. I hope that praying was the second thing they did, after donating. I remember my own church, decades ago, donating far more money than they feasibly could, to the victims of a tornado-struck town. Churches can be a tremendous vehicle for good in a situation like this; they are an organized group of people with a structure in place that can be put to this use. Of course, so can clubs, sports teams, schools, and even internet communities. There is little or nothing that a church can do that these other groups cannot. On the other hand, they could easily do less, if they choose to pray instead of work.