Soul Surrender: Prayer's Demeaning Power

Leafing through clips of madness I come across this brief AP bit from 1998, datelined Philadelphia: “A teen-ager accused of fatally stabbing his mother and shooting to death two classmates testified today that he had been driven by demons who told him he would be ‘nothing’ if he did not kill.” That was the story of Luke Woodham. The defense didn’t stick. He was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences, plus a bunch of consecutive 20-year terms for aggravated assaults, though Woodham continued his idiotic rationales the moment a camera was turned on him: “The reason you see no tears anymore is because I've been forgiven by God.” His likes aren’t taken seriously for good reason. Calling in gods or demons to pinch hit for one’s barbarism isn’t exactly good form. But how different is that from calling in gods and prayer legions to intercede on one’s behalf in tough times? Why take seriously the claim that prayer can make a difference in one’s life if we’re not ready, as we shouldn’t be, to take seriously the murderer’s claim that Satan made me do it? Leave it to America’s ongoing miasma of religious hysteria to devote millions of dollars and billions of man-hours on figuring out whether a Hail Mary or two can keep John Big Mac’s bypass surgery from crapping out. Read the rest...