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Yes, it's true, I have no magical powers to either remotely manifest ill will or telepathically engage the offices of supernatural beings for the purposes of doing my dirty work. I haven't even offed myself yet by repeatedly thinking, "kill me, now," after reading some news item that must be true because no one could make such a thing up. It's really an enormous relief, as I was raised to believe that I was very nearly as culpable for stray wicked thoughts as I would have been for acting them out.
It might sound silly to say it like that, but Pat Robertson actually believes in his ability to commit psychic murder, or he wants you to believe in it, as noted when he famously started a movement a couple years ago to pray for the deaths of Supreme Court justices. This is the depth of how weird it is that Pat Robertson, or any other hateful bigot, is a serious political figure in US politics.
Even some Tea Partiers apparently believe they have these kinds of psychic powers. A St. Louis rally included a prayer vigil for the death of Rep. Russ Carnahan. While it's certainly true that holding group hate sessions is intended to be threatening, that's because they often lead to material acts of violence committed by people acting of their own free will.
Everyone who knows anything about reproductive health care work understands how these public outpourings of supernaturalized hate work to further traumatize women who need compassion, for example. 'It's all about our love for the baybeeez,' the anti-choice demonstrators say, totally denying responsibility for the way their circuses of intimidation work to threaten women and doctors. Clinic protestors are really a fascinating case of telepathic fantasist; believing at the same time that their prayers (which they believe are effective) for harm to clinic workers should be judged by the 'love' in their hearts for other persons/entities, so they can want to kill without guilt because 'god' would be doing it, while the real world vandalism, threats and body count they normalize should be ignored in favor of their supernatural assertion that they act on behalf of a peaceful deity.
I'm not sure if this is news, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that one of our major political parties regularly pays homage to such hateful scornings of reality for superstition. People who take seriously the idea that you could (and, given that, it would be right to try to,) kill someone with your mind may believe in other crazy things, like that Republicans oppose tighter financial regulation for populist reasons.
I have crises of faith from time to time, but the worst ones are always precipitated by acceptance of these ridiculous uses of spirituality in public dialogue. You can't effectively respond to people praying for the deaths of others primarily by saying how mean it is without including something like, "I'm sorry, do you really believe you can kill people with your mind? That's ridiculous."
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