Ravindra Papineni

Faith healing, the practice of attempting to cure illness or disability through prayer and divine intervention, remains a powerful and pervasive phenomenon across the globe. Far from being a benign spiritual practice, it is often a highly organized, multi-billion-dollar industry with deep political connections and a devastating human cost. This post will dissect the mechanics of this deception, explore the psychological factors that keep the illusion alive, and highlight the vital role of...

Godmen offer miracles. They sell illusions. They promise a direct line to heaven. Yet, their followers are not just the uneducated or the destitute. They are doctors, engineers, tech executives, and civil servants—millions of educated Indians who, despite their training in logic and reason, fall for what often amounts to little more than low-level magic tricks. Why does this happen? And more importantly, how can we steer ourselves and our society towards a path of rational thinking and...

For millennia, humanity has faced the same relentless enemies: plagues that swept through cities, famines that starved nations, and diseases that stole children in their prime. In the face of such overwhelming despair, the default response was often to kneel and pray for divine intervention. But history tells a different story about what actually works. It wasn't prayer that ended the reign of polio. It wasn't prayer that wiped smallpox from the face of the Earth. And it wasn't prayer that...