Along Comes Mary

I'm starting to really believe that people think prayer alone will do something.  I'm assuming they pray because they don't have enough money to actually do anything, so they pray to make themselves feel better.  In a lot of these tragedies you hear people say ''Our prayers are with them.''  Then you see other people donating real money to help these people, or even going over themselves to help.  Then a couple of weeks or months later, when the disaster's cleaned up and people are getting back to their normal lives, the people who prayed said ''Oh, our prayers were answered!'' while the people who actually donated or helped didn't get any credit for anything.  Why is this?  I'm thinking it's because America, being predominantly of the Abrahamic faiths, thinks that prayer will do more than money and help will.  It won't, folks.  It really, really won't.  Money will actually help pay for the materials, and volunteering will help use those materials more efficiently and effectively.  Prayer only exists to make people feel better because they're too cheap or poor to do something.  Usually too cheap.  The people who have money, but no fame are safe here.  They don't have to do anything and no one will know they didn't.  It's like that one guy in a group of people who could have helped save a man's life, but didn't.  He had no emotional connections and no real reason to, so he didn't.  He isn't wrong for not doing it, but we all assume he is.  There is nothing morally or lawfully wrong with letting some guy get shot in the face if you had a chance to stop it.  Some people wouldn't do it because they didn't want the fame, others because they had people at home to take care of and didn't want to risk their lives, and others still because they just didn't want to risk their lives for a person they didn't know.  Just as there are people who do good things just for the fame, there are people who don't because they don't want the fame.  They hit both ends of the spectrum, and neither of them are wrong.