"I do not discount the power of willful human thought in mass..."

I don't either Donuel. I also know that it takes a tremendous amount of highly focused, intentional thoughts AND right actions to prevent and/or stop wars among an exponentially increasing mass of people. I know this not because science has proved it, history has.

But to claim this can be done by preaching to others that deep breathing and positive visualization are the only worthy, right answer to this evil, shows a tremendous ignorance and dangerous naivety about how prayer, meditation, visualization (or whatever people choose to label the concentration and focus of specific attention/intention) works. And if people do understand the nature of the beast, then I can only ascribe much more distasteful motives to people coming into a thread started to help people cope with the feelings of despair, and lecturing them that their chosen strategy for coping with that despair is evil. Evil compared to what? As McGrath pointed out--are these people serious when they claim that black humour regarding our despair over the US march to war is actually more evil than the blood of the innocents that will be spilled?

Some people around here are in serious need of reality checks.