I saw this Indexed cartoon shortly after it was posted and thought to myself - “self, that is going to generate some thought provoking comments.” I checked back later and sure enough the two sides lined up facing each other took turns calling the other side stupid. That’s the power of the internet. No matter what your point of view you can easily find someone who disagrees with you and wants you to know it.

While it would be disingenuous to say I have any er...faith… in the power of prayer, I don’t feel the need to flog those who do. Or does this post prove otherwise? Doh!

A curious thought occurred to me over lunch. I was originally going to call it a “thought experiment” but in truth it’s more of a ridiculous analogy that I’ve managed to stretch threadbare and thin.

Why not view prayer as a vice? People have lots of vices that they enjoy even if they are not productive. I like to think of prayer in terms of drinking. Will drinking solve our problems? No. But sometimes I’ll indulge in it anyway. Why be so hard on prayer for being ineffective? In fact, drinking and prayer are a lot alike.

• Presumably, people do both because it makes them feel good.
  
• If either is practiced too heavily at the expense of other things no progress will ever be made.
  
• People like to do both at meals and right before bed.
  
• People tend to get carried away if either is done in too large of groups.
  
• In times of trouble or anxiety people turn to both for solace.
  
• There is a certain kind of person who takes pride in being able to indulge in more than you.
  
• It’s easy to resort to either in lieu of making difficult decisions.
  
• Do too much of either and you’re bound to have to some strange ideas.
  
• People who “specialize” in either tend to either love everyone or decide that everyone else is wrong and become quite quarrelsome.

I think that viewing prayer like drinking would take some of the vehemence out of the anti-prayer folks. It’s a normal human impulse to do some things that aren’t logical and/or helpful. Following that impulse doesn’t necessarily make us stupid. That being said, I like to think we’re all better off when our scientist, doctors, politicians, etc don’t make decisions while being under the influence of either.