Tell them: “Okay my turn to lay hands on YOU, put them on the good parts!” :eek: Helps to make squeezing movements with your hands and have a great big smile! 
It would certainly clear a path.
“Gangway! Unshielded conductor coming through!” will be Skald the Rhymer’s battle cry.
“You pray for me, I’ll think for you” has already been mentioned, but you can add “since you obviously don’t.”
“Get your hands off me, or I’ll pound you into a photon.” Popular at MIT when I was there.
“You should pray for me. I just got back from Wuhan, China. Can I breath on you?”
Start shouting “Help, I’m being repressed!” Or possibly “. . .reblessed!”
Tell them not to… “I’m not religious, stop assuming I believe in bullshit”
[Loudly, so others can hear] “Really? I just won?! I never win anything! But here you are, telling me that your going to pay for me! This is truly my lucky day! Amazing!!”
Be sure to put out your hand while you wait for the prize. If they slink off, yell after them “Scam artist!!”
This would be the win, except it would likely get the person grabbed and quarantined and maybe a charge of inciting panic.
Perhaps you should upgrade to a titanium cane. Might be fun trying to wrap that around Mr. Feely.
A friend of mine used to get tired of religious folks knocking at his door. So, he printed up a pile of literature from a Satanist group and kept it handy. He would then say, “Oh, yes, I would be glad to take some of your literature… as long as you are willing to take some of mine…”
I guess what I am suggesting is that there is a short distance between saying a prayer and casting a spell… And… You could suggest one.
Keep some appropriate spells printed on small business cards available. When someone wants to pray for you, say something like, “Oh, yes, please! May I suggest that you say this one …” Reach for a card… Wait for a reaction.
If I was going with something verbal I would go more “I sacrificed my sight to Satan; Hail Oh Darklord and smite these unbelievers to the tenth generation”.
But that could just be me.
I can understand your irritation, it is none of their business and seems only to be done to illustrate the piety of the prayer solely for the benefit of the person praying - its merely a personal demonstration of themselves.
The other thing I might find offensive is the place that such folk are coming from - because for much of the New Testament the prayer to invoke healing is to have the victims sins forgiven in order to achieve healing - this is at the very least extremely patronising.
My sister the feminist lesbian has a line “You know what’s more effective than praying? Nothing.” And when the person starts nodding “I meant doing nothing.” Then she asks them if they csn “pray the gay away.”
Hey, it ain’t hurting me if they want to waste their time praying for me.
Back in the 1880s, the bad areas of lower New York were plagued by the roaming Bowery Electric Girls. They carried umbrellas connected to powerful batteries concealed in their handbags. When one met a likely rube, she dropped the umbrella so he’d do the gentleman thing and pick it up for her, receiving enough of a shock to stun him just long enough for the woman to go through his pockets.
two things come to mind. One, I generally don’t mind and politely ignore them; I’m not rabid, I just don’t care.
two: for the real answer you want…pithy repartee: “Holy SHIT it worked!!! I can see now, Fucking hell, that’s all it took was for someone to touch me and cure me!”
Then promptly run into a stack of cans and curse them for misleading you and giving you false hope.
“Your pray for my sight and I’ll pray for you to get a clue. Oh never mind, there are limits even god cannot reach.”
KanicBird has toned it down a lot since he first came aboard, but my general impression has been “No, he doesn’t quite understand non-belief – much less antipathy toward religion, and certainly not antipathy toward Christianity – because he’s quite strongly Christian, himself.”
But that’s just been my personal impression through his various posts and, unlike the people trying to feel-up our Rhymer, the Bird has been respectful (as far as I’ve noticed) in his contributions to these forums.
–G!
Do you have a cite for this? Googling doesn’t seem to turn up anything, and I’m a little dubious because it doesn’t seem to me that a battery built with 1880s technology with sufficient power to stun a person would fit in a handbag.
You want to pray for me? No problem! I’ll just put a curse on you.
Since neither form of magic works, we will cancel each other out.
“I pray that you don’t.”
Yeah, no hostility meant In my post, although I will admit to sounding like a jerk sometimes. I was just just taken by surprise by the post and was genuinely bwuuh?