The problem with intercessory prayer

There are many things I don't get about religion, but one of the ones I understand least is the idea of intercessory or petitionary prayer -- prayer that has as its intent to alter the course of something unpleasant like an illness or run of bad luck.

The Bible is full of examples of intercessory prayer, of God's wrath being turned away by a devout word in the Divine Ear.  In the episode of the Golden Calf (Exodus chapter 32), God apparently intended to destroy the Israelites for idolatry, but his judgment was altered by Moses' plea.  Even Sodom and Gomorrah, those pinnacles of depravity from the book of Genesis, would have been saved had Abraham found ten or more "righteous men" there.

All of this, to my admittedly unqualified ear, sounds as if God could change his mind.  The problem, so far as I can frame it, is this; in the typical Christian model of how things work, God is changeless, eternal, all-good, and all-knowing.  As such, the whole idea of a person's prayer altering the course of what God wants is a little silly.  God presumably already knows not only what is the best outcome, but knows what will happen; why would the prayers of one person, or even of everyone on Earth simultaneously, change that?  And what happens when you have equal numbers of devout people praying for opposite outcomes -- like what happens in the United States at every high-stakes sports event?  Does God simply tally up the number of prayers, or does the intensity of the prayers count?  Or the piety of those who are praying?

Old Woman in Prayer by Gerrit Dou (ca. 1630) [Image is in the Public Domain] 

So, in my effort to understand this idea, I turned to C. S. Lewis.  Even if I usually disagree with Lewis' conclusions, I find him to be generally rational, and certainly a clear, sober-minded writer on the subject.  Here's what I found, from his essay "Does Prayer Work?":

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?  For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate.  He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will.

So far, sounds like the God/No God models look kind of the same.  But Lewis goes on to say:

I have seen it suggested that a team of people—the more the better—should agree to pray as hard as they knew how, over a period of six weeks, for all the patients in Hospital A and none of those in Hospital B.  Then you would tot up the results and see if A had more cures and fewer deaths.  And I suppose you would repeat the experiment at various times and places so as to eliminate the influence of irrelevant factors.

The trouble is that I do not see how any real prayer could go on under such conditions.  “Words without thoughts never to heaven go,” says the King in Hamlet.  Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men for our experiment.  You cannot pray for the recovery of the sick unless the end you have in view is their recovery.  But you can have no motive for desiring the recovery of all the patients in one hospital and none of those in another.  You are not doing it in order that suffering should be relieved; you are doing it to find out what happens.  The real purpose and the nominal purpose of your prayers are at variance.  In other words, whatever your tongue and teeth and knees may do, you are not praying.  The experiment demands an impossibility. 

What brings this up today is that a team in Brazil did exactly what Lewis suggests -- not with "properly trained parrots," but with a group of the devout who were told to pray for a group of COVID-19 sufferers, and who were honestly desirous of a positive effect.  The people doing the praying weren't told not to pray for the other group; in the setup of the experiment, they didn't even know the other group existed, so this circumvents Lewis's objection that the prayers wouldn't be valid because the people praying would only be "doing it to find out what happens."

The results, which appeared this week in the journal Heliyon, found zero difference in the survival rate, severity, or rate of complications between the prayed-for and not-prayed-for groups.

I am very curious as to how a Christian would explain why, if intercessory prayer works at all, the prayed-for group didn't show a lower risk of complications or death.  "Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test," perhaps -- but all that means is that the scientists running the experiment were sinning, and you'd think God wouldn't be petty enough to let the prayed-for group suffer and die just to get back at the researchers.

Plus, there's the consideration that if ever there was an opportunity for God to show that what the Christians claim is correct, this is it.  You would think that if presumably God wants people to believe and to pray (and in fact Christians are positively commanded to pray, in a variety of places in the Bible), some sort of results would have been forthcoming.

You get the impression that even Lewis was a little uncomfortable on this point.  He said, "Prayer doesn't change God -- it changes me."  Again, I have to wonder how this would work.  How would praying for something to a deity whose mind I can't change, who knows what is "supposed to happen" and who will do what he chooses regardless, have any beneficial effects on me?  Imagine a parent whose mind could never be swayed by his children's requests -- and telling the children, "You should ask anyway, because it's good for you."

While I am not religious (obviously), I can at least understand the concept of other sorts of prayer -- prayers for enlightenment, prayers for understanding, prayers for courage.  But I really have no clue what the possible logic could be to praying for intercession, other than "the Bible says we have to -- never mind why."  Perhaps some reader will have a good explanation of it, but on the face of it, it seems like the most pointless of pursuits.

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Prophecy pages and prayer rugs

Apparently a new strategy amongst the severely religious is to send out broadside literature through the mail. I know this because a friend of mine got one.  However, given that (1) my friend didn't request the letter, and (2) it was warmly and personally addressed to "Occupant," you have to wonder how successful this strategy is going to be.

It's not like junk mail is as lucrative a business as it used to be, given that you can send out ten thousand emails for less than the cost of a single snail-mail letter.  But evidently this hasn't dissuaded some of these folks from trying the old fashioned way.

Anyway, how this all came up is that a couple of days ago, my friend came up to me, grinning, with some papers in his hand, and said, "When I got this, I immediately thought that you should have it."   I've found that since I'm mostly known for my interest in woo-woo crackpots, this is seldom a good sign.  And sure enough, this letter was way off to the "Wingnut" end of the spectrum.

The first thing I opened was a large, garishly-colored piece of textured paper that has a pattern around it in crimson and gold that looks a little like a Persian rug.  After unfolding it, I said, and I quote, "Holy shit!"  Because facing me was a nearly life-sized image of Jesus' face, eyes closed, wearing a crown of thorns.  As luck would have it (and sine apparently I'm not the only person who's come across one of these), I was able to find an image of it online:

One disconcerting thing is that the face looks to my eyes more like Jase Robertson from Duck Dynasty than it does like my concept of The Lord And Savior, but that may just be me.  Be that as it may, the instructions on the bottom read:

Look into Jesus' eyes you will see they are closed.  But as you continue to look you will see His eyes opening and looking back into your eyes.  Then go and be alone and kneel on this Rug of Faith or touch it to both knees.  Then please check your needs on our letter to you.  Please return this Prayer Rug.  Do not keep it.

My first thought was that if I was staring at this picture and its eyes opened, I would probably want to be alone for an entirely different reason, namely that I would think I'd lost my marbles.  But then I thought: maybe there's some reason why people see this happen.  I know that staring fixedly at something does mess around with your visual integrative system, creating afterimages and all sorts of odd effects.  So I looked closely at the drawing, and I noticed that in the center of each eye was a faint dot, with a lighter spot up and to the left -- like a ghostly image of a pupil and a point of light reflected from the surface of a human eye.  Stare at the picture long enough, I'd guess, and those features might make the eyes begin to look as if they were open.

So I folded up and put away the "Prayer Rug," because that picture is freakin' creepy, and picked up the next one, which said, "Please don't open this prophecy until after you have placed your prayer page (page two of our letter to you) and the Prayer Rug back in the mail before sunset tomorrow or the next day.  God will help you to do this.  You will see."

Now, you have to wonder why anyone would need God's help to put something in the mail, but I may be reading this wrong.  In any case, I threw caution to the wind and opened the secret prophecy.  The prophecy turned out to be a page of fine print, and I frankly do not feel like copying the entire thing, but the gist of it is that God knows I'm not happy with my life, and that in fact he has the impression that I'm kind of a pathetic sonofabitch.  (I paraphrase slightly.)  But in order to have ENDLESS JOY (capitalization theirs) all I have to do is allow God's spirit to work through me by praying a lot and sending a donation to the church that sent this letter.

The remaining pieces of paper were the checklist of what I'd like them to pray for on my behalf (after I saw Jesus' eyes open on the "Prayer Rug"), and some testimonials from folks about what they'd gotten.  Some of these included:

• strength
• spiritual blessing
• a money blessing
• happy family life
• miracle healing
• a good loving companion
• a secure future
• protection from evil
• salvation
• true love 

All of which sound pretty awesome, but honestly, I think I'll spare them the trouble.  Given my rampant atheism, I think God (if he actually exists) would not have a particularly strong motivation to shower me with gifts even if these people prayed for me because I'd sent them a checklist and returned their "Prayer Rug."

Honestly, how do the groups who send this stuff out think this could possibly work?  (As a religious strategy, not a money-making opportunity, since the way that works is pretty obvious.)  I guess that since they seem pretty sincere about wanting to do good stuff for total strangers, I can't argue with their motives.  There was none of the "Oh, and if you don't believe what we're saying, you will BURN IN AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY HA HA HA HA" business you usually see with missives of this sort.  So, as these things go, it was pretty friendly, as long as you discount the scary drawing of Jesus.

But I still must ask the question -- if they think that God knows everything and has a plan for everyone, and will always make sure everything works out for the best (for all of which there was ample evidence on the "prophecy page"), isn't it contradictory to believe that they could change someone's destiny by praying, using the person's wish list of stuff (s)he'd like to have?  Do they think that God is sort of like Santa Claus, reading a kid's Christmas list and going, "I didn't know little Billy wanted a Lego set!  Well, we'll just have to have the elves make him one!  Ho ho ho!"  If there is a God, I somehow can't imagine that he works that way.

So, the open question is what to do with the letter, "Prayer Rug," and the lot.  I think I'm going to give it back to my friend.  After all, it was addressed to him ("Occupant"), so if anyone should get all of the bad luck from not returning the "Prayer Rug" to the church, I think it's only fair that it should be him.  Okay, I opened the Prophecy before I was supposed to, but if I seal it back up with a little piece of scotch tape, maybe God won't notice.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: the late Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.  It's required reading for anyone who is interested in the inner workings of the human mind, and highlights how fragile our perceptual apparatus is -- and how even minor changes in our nervous systems can result in our interacting with the world in what appear from the outside to be completely bizarre ways.  Broken up into short vignettes about actual patients Sacks worked with, it's a quick and completely fascinating read.

Fireproof

New from the "You Really Think The World Works That Way?" department, we have the edifying story of the guy who was in a fiery car crash, in which both he and his bible survived more or less unscathed.

The unnamed driver had his Jeep sideswiped while driving down the highway in Tennessee, veered off the road, and ran into a telephone pole.  The car burst into flames.

According to witness Anita Irby:

I just saw GOD on 385.  I'm always in awh [sic] of his wonders but today just blew my mind.  This car ran off the road and hit a metal post and burst into flames not to mention the passenger was trapped inside as the car was filled with smoke the flames began to fill the inside.  THE ENTIRE EXPRESSWAY STOPPED and people ran from their cars trying to break the windows and open the doors of this mans [sic] car to free him, as they were the others went up in prayer for God to deliver this man from the paws of the devil....  Now it appeared our prayers was in vain because he couldn't move and the flames had reach the inside of the truck.  But God!!!!!! .....the flames were on the inside but the way my God is set up The Way It Look Like and what it is, None of the flames touched him and even after the car exploded once All these God blessed people ran back up ... Now the passenger even begged them to just let him die .  End of Story he's Alive and well. ......  Jesus thats my Goddd

When the scene was investigated, they found something else -- that a bible on the front seat of the car had also escaped damage.  Another witness, Eugene McNeil, said, "That is God.  If you don’t believe it, I don’t know what to say."

Here's a photograph of the car, mid-explosion:

So that's pretty terrible, and I'm really glad the guy made it out alive.  What I'm going to say in addition should not be construed as minimizing the fact that there was a catastrophic accident in which no one was hurt.

But really -- attributing the whole thing to god?  How about the people who pulled him from the car?  How about the paramedics who helped him and made sure he wasn't badly injured?

And the whole bible thing... the cynic in me thinks that it was a deliberate plant by one of the witnesses or rescue crew.  I mean, bibles are made of paper, which last I checked was highly flammable.  Take a look at the photograph; the entire passenger compartment of the car was engulfed in flames.  The likelihood of a bible surviving unburned is awfully slim.

But even if it did -- you really think an all-powerful, all-compassionate deity would work that way?  If god really did want to protect the guy, how about keeping him from getting in the accident in the first place?  And the dude's car burned up.  Cars, you may have observed, are a hell of a lot more expensive to replace than bibles.

Yes, yes, I know, money's not the point, the love of money is the root of all evil, and so on.  But seriously.  People are absolutely convinced that god intervenes in football game outcomes, helps people find their lost car keys, and makes sure they find exactly the pair of shoes they were looking for in Walmart.  Don't you think that on the whole, there are more pressing things he should be attending to?

Evidently, the answer is "no."  Here are a few of the responses to the article about god making sure the bible didn't get burned:

"Behold, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like unto the Son of God...."   If Nebuchadnezzar could say such things, then I think we can safely assume that they have happened, and continue to happen...  Only believe. 

Sometimes God make [sic] it as a lesson for the people who have a faith in him to make their faith even stronger.  And those who don't believe in God.  If you warn them or you don't do in either way they won't believe.  As they have locks on their hearts. 

Adonai, the Living God.  Glory is yours Father. 

God saved a man and proved that his word fireproof! 

Liberals must really hate it when God does things like this.  Oh make no mistake about it God is real.  The fact that the bible wasn't touched and the man got out on time like that is proof.  There is no scientific explanation.

Well, maybe this is because of my locked heart, but even if you start from the assumption that god exists, it doesn't make sense that he'd run the universe this way.  On the one hand, he answers prayers to eliminate minor inconveniences, and allows major suffering of innocent people without doing a thing?

Oh, but "God Works In Mysterious Ways."  I suppose that explains everything.

I'm not setting out to be obnoxious, here.  I just don't get this worldview.  It seems to be telling us that there's a deity who is super-concerned about trivial stuff -- not to mention disapproving heartily every time people masturbate -- but stands back and does nothing during famines, wars, and even the Holocaust.

Which is a way of thinking I simply don't get.  Probably explaining why for me, it seems far more probable that there's no deity up there in the first place.

Mass eviction notice

Buoyed by the success last month of Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, who conducted an exorcism of the entire country of Mexico, a Catholic priest in Scranton, Pennsylvania is now suggesting that we do the same thing for the United States.

Monsignor John Esseff, who has been a priest for 62 years and an exorcist for 35, says that "Such exorcisms … have helped bring awareness that there is such a thing as sin influenced by Satan...  The devil has much to do with [influencing people in] breaking the law of God."

William Blake, Satan Smiting Job (1826) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Right.  Because things in Mexico are ever so much better since Íñiguez and his intrepid team of Satan-fighters expelled all the demons from the country.  Notorious drug cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera escaped from jail last week, almost certainly with help, and is now in hiding.  A "killing surge" in the city of Monterrey three weeks ago left 25 people dead. Ruben "El Menchito" Oseguera Gonzalez, son of the Jalisco Cartel's leader, was arrested for the third time last week after already being arrested and released twice for complicity in "two cases of forced disappearance."  Officials have said, basically, that everyone knows he's guilty, but he almost certainly won't be tried and found guilty because of the culture of corruption, coercion, and fear that exists in the Mexican judicial system.  A study just found that Mexico has a gun-seizure rate twice that of Iraq -- and yet the violent crime is on the increase, with 2015 looking to set a record, just as 2014 did.

So the exorcism really worked well.  It's no wonder that Monsignor Esseff wants the United States to follow suit.

And if we can't get our act together to have a country-wide expulsion of demons, local bishops could still do a piece-by-piece exorcism.  "Every bishop is the chief exorcist of his own diocese," Esseff said.  "Any time anyone with the authority uses his power against Satan, that is powerful.  Every priest and bishop has that power...  During the exorcism of a diocese, the bishop calls on the power of Jesus over every court, every single institution, every individual and every family.  The whole country would have such power if bishops would exorcise their dioceses."

What strikes me as most bizarre about all of this is the seemingly complete lack of awareness by people like Esseff and Íñiguez that their Get Thee Behind Me Satan routine has no effect whatsoever. I mean, this is a lack of connection to reality on a truly colossal scale.  You'd think that the first time you had a flat tire, and you prayed to god to expel the demons from your steel-belted radials, and nothing happened, you'd go, "Huh.  What a goober I am.  I guess this doesn't work."

But no.  They keep doing their rituals and prayers and so forth, and nothing continues to happen, and they are for some reason completely undaunted by this.

When it comes to true disconnect with reality, though, they've got a good precedent in the bible itself.  "Truly I tell you," Jesus says in Matthew 17:20, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Either that's simply not true, or else mustard seeds are setting the bar for faith higher than they appear to be.  Because the faithful pray for stuff all the time -- ordinary stuff, not mountains moving around -- and a great deal of it doesn't happen.

But "god works in mysterious ways."  Which, I suppose, covers damn near every failure I can think of.

So we'll see, over the next few weeks, if American bishops take Monsignor Esseff's advice and exorcise the United States.  I suppose the whole thing falls into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department.  Myself, I'm not expecting anything to change much.  Life will go on, crimes will still happen, Donald Trump will still be running for president.  Just showing that some demonic entities are harder to get rid of than others.

Swing votes, squirt guns, and prayer

Most of you probably know that the United States Supreme Court is likely to announce a decision on the federal legalization of same-sex marriage some time this month, and that the decision is likely to come down to how one man votes -- Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is in the uncomfortable position of being the "swing voter."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The more liberal-leaning justices -- Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan -- seem likely to vote in favor.  The remaining four more conservative members are likely to vote against.  That means that Kennedy will almost certainly be the one who casts the deciding vote.

And this is why he is currently the target of prayer rallies.

The effort is being organized by "Coach" Dave Daubenmire, who came into the public eye after an ACLU suit to stop him from forcing the players on his high school football team to pray.  Daubenmire and the school district he worked for settled out of court (the school district lost $18,000 in the process), but Daubenmire now spends a lot of time on the lecture circuit telling everyone how he beat the ACLU because of god's power and the power of prayer.

And now Daubenmire, who in his post-coaching days runs a ministry called "Pass the Salt" (further increasing the WTF factor in the whole thing), is organizing a nationwide series of prayer rallies that have as their goal persuading god to persuade Anthony Kennedy to vote no:

We're going to have a solemn assembly of prayer and repentance, asking God, please God, help us rescue marriage.  And we're going to totally focus on Justice Kennedy, we believe he is the swing vote, and we're just going to ask the Lord to forgive us of our sins and turn the heart of Justice Kennedy that he might see the error of his ways and protect marriage. The neat part about it... is that we're asking people from all across America.  Clear out there in California, you can't come to Washington D. C., but could you organize a prayer vigil at the same time we're doing it, noon to three o'clock Eastern Time on June 14?  Could you get the people in your church to come to a prayer rally?  It's not where we're asking the politicians to do something, it's not where we're marching and carrying signs and rebelling, it's where we're saying "Lord, forgive us, how did we ever get in this mess, please, Lord, forgive us."  

Can I paint a picture here, real quickly?  I like to use the illustration of Super Soakers, the little squirt guns that look like big cannons that kids like to play with.  That's they way I see prayer.  Everybody has a Super Soaker.  There a lot of people who are praying, and they're squirting their guns, they're doing all they can, but there's a difference between putting a lot of people out in a field and telling them to shoot away, and bringing them into your living room and putting a dot on the ceiling and saying, "Hey, everybody, point your Super Soaker at the dot on the ceiling."  The end result of that, if we got a hundred people to point their squirt guns at the dot on the ceiling, eventually there'd be a hole in the ceiling.  Concentrated, focused prayer.  That's why we think the Salt and Light Brigade is so important.  They don't have to come, we'd love for people to come, but we realize they can't.  But what if they all gathered in their local churches, or with their prayer groups, or with their families, and we told them who to pray for... We're going to focus all of our power in the same direction rather than just sporadically squirting our guns up in the air.  We're going to focus our guns on the same target, and punch a hole in the heavenlies. 

So far, this all Super Soakers For Jesus business seems to fall into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department, but I do have to wonder how this could possibly work even if you accept Daubenmire's premise that there is a god who somehow likes to micromanage affairs here on Earth.  Daubenmire and his ilk always go on and on about how god knows everything and is all-good and all-powerful and will ultimately make everything work out; so it seems a little odd that anyone who believes that would think that prayer would accomplish anything.  Either your opinion is in line with what god already intended to do (in which case god was going to do it anyway, and your prayers are unnecessary) or it isn't (in which case god has no intent of doing what you say, so your prayers are futile).  Either way, it doesn't accomplish much.

Even C. S. Lewis, whose writing is usually pretty clear-headed and rational -- not that I agree with most of his conclusions -- seemed troubled by all this.  In his essay "Does Prayer Work?", he is up front that you can't change god's mind, but he thinks that petitionary prayer still somehow makes sense:

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?  For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will.

Which, frankly, strikes me as a little petty.  It's like a parent saying to his child, "I know you're hungry, but I'm not giving you food unless you ask, and you have to ask in exactly the right way."

And it also brings up the problematic situation for Daubenmire if Kennedy votes "yes."  Was god not listening?  Did the devil persuade Kennedy to vote in a more infernal way?  Did the prayers not work for some other reason?  Did they not have enough people praying?  ("You know, if there'd been 1,284,733 people praying, I'd'a had a chat with Justice Kennedy.  But 1,284,732 people just didn't quite do it for me.")

Because if god is so dead-set against same-sex marriage, you'd think he'd find a way to make sure it didn't happen regardless, right?

So the whole thing seems to turn on a philosophical point that doesn't, honestly, make a lot of sense.  It's far from the only thing in this worldview that I can't make sense of, of course.

As I said before, however, there's no real harm in it.  If they want to spend their time trying to change a presumably all-knowing deity's mind, they can knock themselves out.  At least that's less time they'll have to try to convince politicians, who not only can be swayed, but who actually exist.

God, games, and prayers

Many years ago, when I lived in Seattle, I was intermittently part of an amateur theater group.  I had several minor roles, but then finally, in what turned out to be the last play I'd be in, I got a lead role in Paul McCaw's musical comedy The Trumpets of Glory.

The idea of The Trumpets of Glory is that angels are constantly interfering with human affairs, all the way from major world events (wars) down to minutiae (sports).  Angels take sides, and manipulate things so that their side will win, thereby scoring points and moving up in the hierarchy.  I played the villain (which will come as no surprise to former students) -- an archangel named Zagore, who was undefeated in the past 3,000 years, until he meets up with a hapless newbie in a contest over the outcome of a high school football game.

Of course, being musical theater, the underdog wins, and Zagore goes down to ignominious defeat.  Still, it was a fun role, especially since I got to strut around on stage being extremely badass while wearing renaissance garb, including a cloak and a velvet hat with an enormous feather in it.

All of this comes up because of a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, which indicates that half of the Americans polled actually believe that the universe works more or less like McCaw's play -- in spirit if not in exact detail.

"As Americans tune in to the Superbowl this year, fully half of fans — as many as 70 million Americans — believe there may be a twelfth man on the field influencing the outcome," PRRI CEO Robert Jones said.  "Significant numbers of American sports fans believe in invoking assistance from God on behalf of their favorite team, or believe the divine may be playing out its own purpose in the game."

Of the fifty-odd percent of Americans who believe that god cares about the outcome of the Superbowl,  26% reported that they have prayed that their team will win, 19% say that the winner is determined by god, and 25% suspect their team is cursed by the devil (this year, this last group probably includes 100% of the fans of the New Orleans Saints).

Furthermore, 62% of white evangelicals who responded to the poll said they thought that god favored athletes who were Christian themselves.

[photograph courtesy of Ed Clemente Photography and the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I know that being an atheist, I'm to be expected to view all of this with a wry eye.  But even trying to be open-minded and ecumenical, and putting myself in the shoes of religiously-inclined sports fans, I find myself asking: how could this possibly work?  Does god employ an accountant, who keeps track of the number of prayers offered up on behalf of each team, and then he awards victory to the team that showed the greatest number of prayers?  (If so, the Washington Redskins fans may have some 'splainin' to do.)  Does the fervency of the prayers have an effect?  If so,  how do you measure the intensity of a prayer?  ("O Lord, the Seahawks fans offered up a total of 14,879 prayers, but their average prayer intensity only measured 3.47 tebows.  Do I let them win?")

What if everything comes out about even -- both teams have equal numbers of religious players, and the fans are all praying about the same amount?  Does god then just kind of sit back, crack open a beer, and say, "Heh.  Maybe I'll just wait and see what happens this time."

In all seriousness, I find the whole thing really puzzling.  As I've mentioned before, the concept of petitionary prayer has always struck me as the weirdest idea from conventional Christianity, as it seems to imply that you can change god's mind.  Even C. S. Lewis was uncomfortable with the idea, and in his essay "Does Prayer Work?" said that prayer doesn't exactly change god's mind, but it does influence things in some vague way: "He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will."

I dunno, the whole thing sounds kind of peculiar to me.  It boils down to my asking for god to do something, which either he already intended to do ("Yay, god is so awesome!") or else not ("Oh, well, god works in mysterious ways.").   Either way, it's hard to see how my praying (or not) had any influence whatsoever, and honestly, it seems to be more a way for me to feel good about having done something to help the situation without actually doing anything to help the situation.

But in the case of sports, it's even weirder, because then you not only have to believe that god exists, and considers the content of prayers, but cares who wins the Superbowl.  Which is just stretching credulity too far, even considering some of the other things religious people believe.

Of course, I guess it's to be expected that I'd have this response, and I'm writing this more in complete mystification than I am out of disapproval.  If any religious people who read this are so inclined, and want to explain to me how any of this could possibly work, I'd be willing to listen, even though I have to say up front that I doubt it'll convince me.  The suspension of disbelief I'd have to undergo in order to buy into any of this is just too great.

So I'm left where I started, which is that I really don't understand maybe half of the people who live in this country.  Which, I guess, is not all that shocking, considering the material I write about daily.  And if I'm entirely wrong, and there is a god up there, and he does factor in prayer in determining the outcome of events, allow me to say that had I known, I would have put in a good word for the Saints, because when they lose I kind of stop paying attention.