“Restore the Voice of God”
I read an article this morning which is a wonderful example of faulty thinking. The basic gist of the article is that school deaths don’t seem to happen in Catholic schools, which indicates that prayer might make a difference. Please read the article in order to better understand my comments below.
1. The writer says that there aren’t any Catholic school killings, suicides, or murders “to my knowledge.” This is a rather meaningless statement. Unless she claims to study these things, then not knowing something is not useful in any way.
2. The writer specifies Catholics as the religious group which seems to be singularly blessed. Why is that? Did she hear about a shooting at a school run by a church of a different Christian denomination? If there was any evidence that Catholic prayer in particular had any unique effect, it would be all over the news. For the record, all properly-conducted studies into efficacy of prayer have produced negative results, regardless of particular religion.
3. Although her ignorance about deaths of Catholic school students is pointless, I shall also point out that her attribution of the lack of deaths to prayer and bible study is also unfounded. If there were, in fact, no deaths at any Catholic schools, it would still take a lot of evidence to prove the cause.
4. The writer then goes on to blame a the United States Supreme Court for making it illegal to force children in schools to study the bible. More nonsense.
5. Finally, I’d like to take issue with her final sentence: “Perhaps, a new Supreme Court will reverse itself and once again God will take the place of violence.” Trust me lady, there is more violence done in the name of your god on this planet than we can handle. Just read your bible. There is no time in recorded history when any god replaced violence, although a great many, including yours, have ordered mass murder on a horrible scale.
