Convictions

She stopped praying one day simply because her prayers were seldom answered, and the random ones that were answered could just as credibly be ascribed to chance as divine intervention.  Who can reliably ascertain whether a prayer has truly been answered by a benign deity as opposed to the vagaries of fate “determining” what a certain outcome might be?  No one.  Modern science cannot answer such a transcendent question, nor can modern medicine nor a corps of the most learned philosophers ensconced within the lofty ivory towers of academia.  People have preconceived beliefs, usually strongly held, and they’ll believe only those parts of a narrative that align with their convictions.  In the same vein, positive outcomes will be ascribed to the God they pray to, while negative outcomes will be willfully ignored and “their” God will not be blamed for them nor vilified as an unreliable, backstabbing slacker. God has a pretty sweet life in the minds of these sycophantic disciples: He/She receives all the credit when something turns out peachy, but shoulders no blame when a situation ultimately heads south into the cesspool.