As communities in an around the Florida panhandle begin picking up their pieces after Hurricane Michael’s raging onslaught eased a couple of days ago, those who prayed the mega-storm wouldn’t find them are surely disappointed.

That’s the way it is with reality and religion. Nature will do what it must no matter how many prayers appeal for divine intervention. And people will always pray.

Still, the efficacy of prayers is tricky in the face of reality.

For example, about a month ago as another hurricane — Florence — bore down on our southeastern shores, Christian Right pastor and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson beseeched God to spare his Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University facilities in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

At a special prayer meeting on September 13 at the CBN complex, Robertson told staff, according to online Right Wing Watch:

“We declare in the name of the Lord that you [Hurricane Florence] shall go no farther, you shall do no damage in this area,” he said. “We declare a shield of protection all over Tidewater and we declare a shield of protection over those innocent people in the path of this hurricane. In Jesus’ holy name, be out to sea!”

Later, just before the massive, dangerous storm reached landfall, a new official report said it would not hit Virginia Beach as directly or powerfully as initially anticipated. That’s normal as storms zig-zag their often erratic paths, but in Christian circles this kind of phenomenon is interpreted as a win for faith. We prayed for it, and God saved us from total destruction!

After all, as Robertson had assured staff at the CBN prayer gathering, they would “live to mark this day” as the moment their prayers guaranteed “we are not going to let Hurricane Florence hurt us.”

Of course that’s not what actually happened. Although a storm’s drifting course might seem random and God-sent by true believers, it is in fact entirely predictable according to the constantly changing material realities within the laws of physics, completely explainable if enough information is at hand. That’s why weather forecasts change as new information becomes available about a storm’s intensity, direction and peculiarities.

But if you happen to believe in an omnipotent divinity, anything that happens remotely close to what you’re praying for is evidence that “God” has answered positively, if not completely. No problem, because who can know the creator’s mind, even if the divine decision is not to respond at all? But, no matter; it’s always the right decision, because the supreme being who made all things is infallible, don’t you know.

That said, nonbelievers should call out religious huckters like Robertson, who take people’s money and contaminate their minds with hokum — “We can stop this storm!” — with apparently zero accountability unless, like Jim and Tammie Faye Bakker, they run afoul of manmade law.

But, unfortunately, filling susceptible people’s heads with nonsense is completely legal, even glorified, as in the case of our current president and administration.

Regarding Hurricane Michael’s indiscriminate devastation in Florida and environs this week, I’m guessing that if a supreme being exists and heard the many prayers for his intercession, he decided, for impeccable reasons, against interceding.

Which would make the 17 confirmed deaths so far and the enormous collateral injury and suffering wreaked by the storm unquestioningly necessary by some divine calculation.

How are we to take comfort in that?

P.S. — After this posted, a reader on Reddit named jgs1122 submitted this wonderful quote attributed to famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee: “Praying is like a rocking chair: It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”

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