Spirituality is not inherently bad. The belief in God is not inherently bad. Nor is rejection of spirituality or disbelief in God inherently bad. I have known many good people who were believers and many who were not. I have never seen a clear association between goodness and any particular set of beliefs or disbeliefs.

The problem seems to come when a set of beliefs is organized by people who then appoint themselves as guardians of the belief system. Then we have dogma, and that leads to turf wars, but this has nothing to do with God or spirituality. Catholicism is a dogmatic religion. Islam is a dogmatic religion. Soviet Communism was a dogmatic religion. In all these examples, a codified set of beliefs is used to bestow temporal power on the priesthood, or Politburo, or whatever the group in charge decides to call itself. But the beliefs they proclaim are irrelevant except as they can be used as a club to keep the members of the gang in line and prevent them from joining a rival gang.

I don't care which gang you belong to. If belief in God or feng shui or astrology--or disbelief in the above--helps you get through the day, that's fine with me. All I care about is how that is manifested in who you are.

What makes this problem worse is that lead salts such as those used as pigments have a sweet taste. Toddlers will put anything into their mouths, true, but once they taste the lead they will seek more of the sweetness. The ancient Romans stored their wine in lead vessels for this very reason: it made the wine sweeter. They dosed themselves into oblivion. Lead paint is not just a passive hazard; it is a magnet for the children who will be most harmed by it.

Don't think of a sick child - 35 letters

Nuclear hypocrisy - 57 letters

The Iran hawks - 82 letters

Genocide: An inconvenient truth - 84 letters

How the Christian right could defeat Rudy -- and make Hillary president - 56 letters

The healthcare war - 43 letters

Bush "at peace" waging war - 19 letters

Ellen, the dog bullies and me - 323 letters

ROFL

You are correct about "averse," but a hyphen is used only when a compound adjective precedes the noun it modifies.

This is from an Associated Press story about the tapes' destruction:

In a separate case, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help their client. In November 2005 a federal judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had them.

'nuff said.

Many people visualize the mind as a separate entity from the body—something that entered the body at birth and, according to some, will live on after death. Many identify the mind as the “self” that is in control of the body. Others see the mind as simply the self-awareness resulting from the complexity of the organism. As such, it would have an influence on the body—as research has shown—but an influence that falls far short of the degree of control that some envision.

Just as the effective dose of a prescription drug can vary from person to person, so can the amount of influence a person’s mind has on the body. I knew someone who had recovered from strokes twice and from cancer once; her daughters believed that the diseases were interfering with their mother’s shopping, and she couldn’t abide that, so she got well. Maybe she was able to "think" herself well, but maybe it was simply another success story for medical science. Many people seem to lack the mental ability to suppress the symptoms of a cold. Perhaps such an ability exists, and perhaps it would be possible to train it; that would be wonderful, but the jury is still out.

Can one person be healed by another? My mother was an R.N. who had to go back to work after being out of nursing for 20 years. She lacked the technical knowledge of the younger nurses, but she had a talent for making people want to get well. In that sense she was a healer, but there was nothing mystical about it. I liken it to a coach helping an athlete develop a winning attitude. This is a skill that probably is trainable.

It is as foolish to believe that the mind has no influence on the body as it is to believe that the mind has total influence on the body. Both beliefs spring from the idea that the mind and body are separate entities in the way that a computer and its operating system are separate entities. But the mind is not the body’s operating system; it is simply the body thinking about itself. Does it matter if the body is thinking good thoughts about itself? It seems to, and I hope that someday science will help us understand more fully how it works.