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(CNN) - God may not sign your name the thousands of prayers tweeted for wounded of Oklahoma's devastating storm - but Ricky Gervais indisputable has. And he is not thrilled.
As of Tuesday afternoon, especially than 75,000 race presume hand-me-down the hashtag #PrayForOklahoma, among pop starlets, pastors and politicians, according to Topsy.com, a trend-monitoring site.
For instance, the Pale House of representatives tweeted,
Come first Obama: Our prayers are with the race of Oklahoma today. #PrayForOklahoma--
The Pale House of representatives (@whitehouse) May 21, 2013
But the hashtag and the sentiments it promotes provoked a rough backlash on outgoing media, led by Gervais, a British comedian, and other blatant nonbelievers.
And after one Oklahoma City minister says he appreciates the Whistle prayers, some serious scholars say goody-goody petitions imply especially than moving your hands obliquely a keyboard.
A prayer is alleged to presume a import for you, thought Elizabeth Drescher, a governess at Santa Clara School in California. Its not an act of magic.
Gervais, an fierce foe of level religion, was especially caustic.
Once upon a time MTV tweeted that pop stars Beyonce, Rihanna and Katy Perry are transfer their prayers to Oklahoma, Gervais responded, "I contact feel like an idiot now... I in simple terms sent money."
Gervais and other atheists moreover kick-started a counter-trend, using the hashtag #ActuallyDoSomethingForOklahoma.
"If all race are play is praying, it is trivial," Hemant Mehta, an Illinois math presenter who writes the blog "To hand Agnostic," told CNN. "If they are praying and donating to the Red Sail, that's especially feel like it."
Mehta is promoting a group called Underpinning Scarce Intent that aims to serve up a humanist greeting to crises feel like the Oklahoma storm.
The prayer negotiations spilled inside other outgoing media sites as well, with commenters on CNN's Facebook page sparring leader God's position in Monday's no tempest.
According to Oklahoma officials, 24 race presume died, oodles especially are hurt, and once-orderly streets view likes foretastes of the apocalypse.
In greeting to a insect who thought she was praying for the wounded, Facebook commenter Peter Verbal communication replied, "If prayer works, represent wouldn't be a calamity feel like this in the premature place.... so temptation soak your religion to yourself."
But believers had their say as well.
"God is steady in control!" thought Wilbur Dugger, a commenter on CNN's Facebook page. "Whatever thing (God) does is to get our consideration.... My comprehension and prayers go out to community who get immovable up in his demonstrations of (God) send to prison the world."
The social-media sparring leader prayer and God's ghost think over a culture in which traditional notion of religion - and the chairs everywhere race grant about dependence - are irregular nearer than a Whistle silage, thought Drescher, the Santa Clara governess.
"We're thought race re-articulate what it intermediary to be spiritual and serious," she thought.
Proper a few living ago, for instance, no one knew what a hashtag was. Now the "#PrayFor..." meme appears what time touch on every national and international business catastrophe.
But what best does it mean? Is the twittering horde really cave in its hands in prayer, or is it a firm signal of existential angst? Or perhaps decent a dressed in thing to say?
"It seems to sky vista and be anxious, and perhaps even incapacity," Drescher thought.
"At the exceedingly time, it evokes this strong greeting from race who see it as a cop-out, a way of claiming some giving of spiritual space that doesn't actually presume any meaning to the race who are relocation the meme or the community they are addressing."
Usually, prayer has edging something of the pray-er: an attitude near awe, a quickness to act, Drescher continued. "You are made-up to do something - and that something may not be an easy thing."
Slapping a hashtag at the end of a chirrup doesn't bump into that normal, the scholar thought.
The Rev. David Johnson of St. Andrew's Associated Methodist Cathedral in Oklahoma City thought the suppliant tweets mean something to him - even if he's been too thunderous to read them.
In the same way as Monday, St. Andrew's has become a Red Sail ruling post and understanding site for families to find loved ones immovable in the tornado's path. The catastrophe has moreover touched the gathering itself, with homes, and some lives, lost on Tuesday, Johnson thought.
Told of the Whistle prayers, Johnson thought, "that's breathtaking."
"Relations contact at sea - feel like God called them to do something but they don't know what. That's everywhere prayer comes in."
Johnson thought his church appreciates the oodles solid aid organization coming its way: the generator sent by a noble from Arkansas, the nutrition and water sent from in the neighborhood of towns. But they moreover procure, and are sunny to assert, the oodles prayers recited - or tweeted - on their behalf, he thought.
"We've seen prosperity a lot of trauma in the failing day," Johnson thought. "Clearly, race are leave-taking to ask why God allows tornadoes to gush. That's decent part of this world. God doesn't promise us that bad things that are part and parcel of won't gush, he promises to help us get throw down it. That's what prayer helps us do."
