The apparent futility (or inconsistent results) of prayer is also one of the reasons why I started to doubt my faith and walked away from Catholicism — well, that and the whole “Catholic guilt” thing, which is very real and very annoying.

If there is a higher power up there somewhere, I’d like to believe that it’s content to simply let us mature and live our lives without interference. That strikes me as more like what a true parent would do. The opposite approach would be to manipulate humanity’s fortunes to try and achieve a favorable outcome, but that would stymie our evolution as individuals, sort of like how “helicopter parenting” is starting to be seen as a detriment to children. At least, that’s how I’ve come to see it.