'Miracle' Spares Aurora Shooting Victim, Insults Those Left Grieving

While any positive news regarding those injured in the Aurora theater shooting is certainly welcome, I find proclamations of miracles in the aftermath of such tragedy to be a slap in the face to those whose family members and loved ones did not survive.

Via Christian Post:

It is still unclear as to what exactly about Colorado shooting victim Petra Anderson's physical makeup helped save her life after one of four shotgun pellets went through her nose and into her brain cavity.

Was it a previously undetected birth defect? Was it a brain abnormality? Or was it simply the more common trait of having a channel or "void" that winds through the brain?

Brad Strait, who is the senior pastor at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church in Englewood, Colo., where Anderson attends, and who was along her side in the emergency room, believes the 22-year-old's life was spared by a miracle.

"It seems as if the bullet traveled through Petra's brain without hitting any significant brain areas," Straight wrote in his blog post "A Miracle Inside the Aurora Shooting: One Victim's Story."

He continued, "The doctor explains that Petra's brain has had from birth a small 'defect' in it. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull, like a tiny vein through marble, or a small hole in an oak board, winding from front to rear. Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it."

He writes that the doctor talked about Anderson's recovery in "Hallmark Hall of Fame" terms, but that he and her mother, Kim, "know a miracle when we see it."

What are the faithful, church-going folks who lost their loved ones to believe? Did they simply not pray hard enough? Did their loved ones not deserve divine intervention?

These miraculous proclamations beg other questions: If God is powerful enough to ensure that stray buckshot enter at this precise brain location, why couldn't he simply have caused the guns to jam before any shots were fired? Or, better yet, why didn't God jam the exit door so that the shooter could not enter the theater? Why allow 12 deaths only to deftly navigate buckshot through an abnormality in the brain?

While it is certainly great news that Petra survived to see another day, is it necessary to lob metaphysical baggage into the laps of grieving families who were nut as lucky?

After he describes an awestruck surgeon explaining his analysis of what happened with the bullet in Anderson's head, Strait writes, "In Christianity we call it prevenient grace: God working ahead of time for a particular event in the future. It's just like the God I follow to plan the route of a bullet through a brain long before Batman ever rises. Twenty-two years before."

If we are to entertain this notion of "prevenient grace," we have no choice but to also entertain the notion that God planned the massacre.

Does that not make God a terrorist?

There is a part of me that says, "Whatever helps you get through the day." However, when that very thing that helps you get through the day insults those left grieving in the wake of such a horrible tragedy, people ought to consider keeping their miracles to themselves.

Lin-Sanity, Tebow-Mania, Divine Intervention And Race

Just like the story of Tim Tebow, you needn't follow sports to have heard about the the insane (or, Linsane) run Jeremy Lin has had lately. There is no denying that Lin's story is one for the ages.

Yet Lin's emergence on the scene, and his odds-defying streak, are not the only things he has in common with Tim Tebow.

Like Tebow, Lin has people wondering if God is meddling in sports affairs here on Earth.

Lin doesn't think there's any doubt:

“Anytime something like this happens, a lot of stuff has to be put into place, and a lot of it is out of my control...If you look back at my story, doesn’t matter where you look, but God’s fingerprints are all over the place where there have been a lot of things that had to happen that I couldn’t control...You can try to call it coincidence, but at the end of the day, there are 20, 30 things when you combine them all that had to happen at the right time in order for me to be here. That’s why I call it a miracle...I think it’s a miracle from God”

The Tebow comparisons don't stop there. Lin and teammate Landry Fields have a pre-game handshake routine involving "a mimed reading of the Bible, followed by a mutual point to the heavens."

Fields stated, "God is good. He's doing miracles in his [Lin's] life, and I'm just glad to be a part of it."

While Tebow and Lin are not the first athletes to publicly credit God for their performances (both during and after the game), they certainly are the only two in recent memory who have received such attention for their faith.

Take David Ortiz, who had a similarly miraculous ascension after he was traded to the Boston Red Sox, has always pointed to the heavens after every home run. He has praised God in interviews. And he won the World Series. Twice. Yet his performances, often 'miraculous' (17 walkoff hits with the Red Sox, including 12 walkoff home runs) never resulted in anything remotely close to the religious fervor associated with Tebow-mania or Lin-sanity. Ortiz is only example.

David J. Leonard, associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, writes in Racialicious:

Religion, thus, becomes another marker of difference, as a means to celebrate and differentiate Lin and Tebow. Whereas black athletes are seen within the national imagination to be guided by hip-hop values rather than religious values, Lin and Tebow practice an evangelical ethic on and off the field/court. Tebow and Lin operate as “breath of fresh air.” Writing about Tiger Woods in Sports Stars: The Cultural Politics Of Sporting Celebrity, C.L. Cole and David L. Andrews argue that Woods’ emergence as a global icon reflected his power as a counter narrative. As “a breath of fresh of air,” his cultural power emanated from his juxtaposition to “African American professional basketball players who are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible.”

The Tebow-Lin narrative reflects the centering of whiteness. In making the comparison, religion in sports and even Lin’s ascendance becomes all about Tebow. While black athletes have long given “thanks,” the efforts to construct Tebow as the source of a religious revival within America’s sports world is a testament to the wages of whiteness. “Black athletes who give a shout out to God aren’t seen as being evangelical but when someone like Tebow (i.e. white) does it, there’s a different ‘purpose’ being read into it,” notes Oliver Wang. “With Lin, I’d argue that because Asianness is coded as closer to white than Black, the Tebow comparison becomes almost automatic.” Wang highlights the profound impact of the comparison as it not only elevates Tebow as leader of the religious revolution of sports, but also furthers the coding of Lin as white body.

Through the comparison, we witness the profound ways that the media erases race by denying Tebow’s whiteness all concretizing Lin’s whiteness (of a different color). Represented through a dominant white racial frame despite his being subjected to racist taunts throughout his career, the comparison denies the power of race. It erases the ways in which whiteness serves as an anchor for the media sensationalism and celebration of Tebow; it erases the ways in which race and identity functions with the source of pride Lin’s has delivered for Asian American community or the ways in which Lin operates in relationship to narratives of whiteness; and finally it ignores the profound ways in which the celebration of their religious ideals and practices is overdetermined by the meaning of blackness within contemporary sports culture.

So while the varied meaning of race, their experiences, and their identities render a Tebow comparison null and void, making one wonder why Lin isn’t the new Avery Johnson or Hakeem Olajuwon, the ubiquitous conflation of Tebow and Lin illustrates its power and appeal. With Jeremy Lin we are all witness to a post-racial fantasy amid the racial spectacle of contemporary popular culture. Within American sports media, the God squad remains one defined and contained by race.

Tebow 3:16 -- Coincidences, Odds & Our Need To Find Order In A Chaotic World

By now you've probably heard that Tim Tebow is a miracle worker. Last night, the bible verse-wearing, sideline-kneeling quarterback threw an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to lift his Broncos past the Steelers.

If the entire season had not already elicited talk of divine intervention, last night's overtime win put the miracle-speak in overdrive.

Tebow passed for 316 yards against the Steelers, completing 10 of 21 pass attempts. In other words, he passed for 31.6 yards per completion.

For those unaware, Tebow's favorite Bible verse is John 3:16.

Anyone who dipped into the Twitter stream last night would likely have seen the coincidences piling up. Many of them making any number of peripheral and mundane facts and figures into signs of the divine.

Sure, it's a neat story. The publicly devout Christian football player has had his share of come-from-behind victories this year. He has overcome the odds on many occasions. He happened to throw for 316 yards in the most important game of the year.

Oh yeah, and his coach's name is John. And he threw that winning pass to a guy who was born on Christmas. And the abbreviation for overtime is OT, which is also the abbreviation for Old Testament.

But does it prove anything? Is it more than a coincidence? I mean, seriously, what are the chances?

Lisa Belkin, in a wonderful 2009 New York Times Magazine piece on odds, coincidence, and our need to find order in our chaotic world, writes:

The true meaning of [coincidence] is ''a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.'' In other words, pure happenstance. Yet by merely noticing a coincidence, we elevate it to something that transcends its definition as pure chance. We are discomforted by the idea of a random universe. Like Mel Gibson's character Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie ''Signs,'' we want to feel that our lives are governed by a grand plan.

The need is especially strong in an age when paranoia runs rampant. ''Coincidence feels like a loss of control perhaps,'' says John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of ''Innumeracy,'' the improbable best seller about how Americans don't understand numbers. Finding a reason or a pattern where none actually exists ''makes it less frightening,'' he says, because events get placed in the realm of the logical. ''Believing in fate, or even conspiracy, can sometimes be more comforting than facing the fact that sometimes things just happen.''

Belkin reminds us of the mountain of coincidental details that many saw as meaningful after the events of 9/11:

We need to be reminded, Paulos and others say, that most of the time patterns that seem stunning to us aren't even there. For instance, although the numbers 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equal 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers, and there were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4), and there are 11 letters each in ''Afghanistan,'' ''New York City'' and ''the Pentagon'' (and while we're counting, in George W. Bush), and the World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11, this seeming numerical message is not actually a pattern that exists but merely a pattern we have found. (After all, the second flight to hit the towers was United Airlines Flight 175, and the one that hit the Pentagon was American Airlines Flight 77, and the one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was United Flight 93, and the Pentagon is shaped, well, like a pentagon.)

Sound familiar? If we were to start digging though other statistics from the game, and from Tebow's life (and believe me, many are busy piling these up right now -- we will continue to see them trickle out this week), we would find an endless stream of forced, and increasingly thin, coincidences.

We would also find the same coincidences by crunching numbers related to our own daily lives -- even those of us who are not devout. The most breathtaking of happenings, Belkin says, could actually have been predicted by statistics.

The mathematician will answer that even in the most unbelievable situations, the odds are actually very good. The law of large numbers says that with a large enough denominator -- in other words, in a big wide world -- stuff will happen, even very weird stuff. ''The really unusual day would be one where nothing unusual happens,'' explains Persi Diaconis, a Stanford statistician who has spent his career collecting and studying examples of coincidence. Given that there are 280 million people in the United States, he says, ''280 times a day, a one-in-a-million shot is going to occur.''

Throw your best story at him -- the one about running into your childhood playmate on a street corner in Azerbaijan or marrying a woman who has a birthmark shaped like a shooting star that is a perfect match for your own or dreaming that your great-aunt Lucy would break her collarbone hours before she actually does -- and he will nod politely and answer that such things happen all the time. In fact, he and his colleagues also warn me that although I pulled all examples in the prior sentence from thin air, I will probably get letters from readers saying one of those things actually happened to them.

Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, uses the example of a hand of poker as a great example of how we ignore the millions of meaningless events in our lives, but find meaning in the events which happen to trigger a mental connection.

''The chance of getting a royal flush is very low,'' he says, ''and if you were to get a royal flush, you would be surprised. But the chance of any hand in poker is low. You just don't notice when you get all the others; you notice when you get the royal flush.''

The odds that Tim Tebow passed for 316 odds are similar to the odds that he'd pass for 309. We simply would not have made any big deal out of it if he threw for 309 yards (except for the fact that it was impressive yardage that helped him win a game).

Still, the faithful will continue to insist that there simply has to be meaning. They will continue to say, "Coincidence? I think not," and ask, "What are the odds?" Again, these people are focusing on the seemingly meaningful connection, and ignoring real-world statistics.

Belkin describes 'The Birthday Problem':

There are as many as 366 days in a year (accounting for leap years), and so you would have to assemble 367 people in a room to absolutely guarantee that two of them have the same birthday. But how many people would you need in that room to guarantee a 50 percent chance of at least one birthday match?

Intuitively, you assume that the answer should be a relatively large number. And in fact, most people's first guess is 183, half of 366. But the actual answer is 23. In Paulos's book, he explains the math this way: ''[T]he number of ways in which five dates can be chosen (allowing for repetitions) is (365 x 365 x 365 x 365 x 365). Of all these 365 5 ways, however, only (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) are such that no two of the dates are the same; any of the 365 days can be chosen first, any of the remaining 364 can be chosen second and so on. Thus, by dividing this latter product (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) by 365 5 , we get the probability that five persons chosen at random will have no birthday in common. Now, if we subtract this probability from 1 (or from 100 percent if we're dealing with percentages), we get the complementary probability that at least two of the five people do have a birthday in common. A similar calculation using 23 rather than 5 yields 1/2, or 50 percent, as the probability that at least 2 of 23 people will have a common birthday.''

Got that?

Using similar math, you can calculate that if you want even odds of finding two people born within one day of each other, you only need 14 people, and if you are looking for birthdays a week apart, the magic number is seven. (Incidentally, if you are looking for an even chance that someone in the room will have your exact birthday, you will need 253 people.) And yet despite numbers like these, we are constantly surprised when we meet a stranger with whom we share a birth date or a hometown or a middle name. We are amazed by the overlap -- and we conveniently ignore the countless things we do not have in common.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. This is likely part of our biology, a behavior that evolved to help us survive. Early humans needed to be hyper-aware of anomalies in order to detect threats. And while these happy accidents provide many with hope and inspiration, our willingness to attach meaning also works to our detriment. We have, in many ways, become fundamentally irrational beings.

The more personal the event, the more meaning we give it...

The fact that personal attachment adds significance to an event is the reason we tend to react so strongly to the coincidences surrounding Sept. 11. In a deep and lasting way, that tragedy feels as if it happened to us all.

[This] sheds light on the countless times that pockets of the general public find themselves at odds with authorities and statisticians. Her results might explain, for instance, why lupus patients are certain their breast implants are the reason for their illness, despite the fact that epidemiologists conclude there is no link, or why parents of autistic children are resolute in their belief that childhood immunizations or environmental toxins or a host of other suspected pathogens are the cause, even though experts are skeptical. They might also explain the outrage of all the patients who are certain they live in a cancer cluster, but who have been told otherwise by researchers.

While the Tebow divine intervention anecdotes themselves are harmless, and while many may find inspiration and hope in his story, we must remember that there is a down-side to cobbling together random bits of information and forming a conclusion.

In some ways, the Tebow narratives reinforce many people's irrationality. We are simply too caught up in the feel-good nature of the story to realize that this is the same type of thinking that has fueled everything from truthers and anti-vaxxers, to bigotry and grilled cheese sandwich auctions.

Jesus Appears In Foyer Of Mississippi Home

Ruth Mersenski and her daughter Sandra have been opening their doors for strangers lately. They are all coming to see Jesus.

The Mississippi family says that the image of Christ appeared above their doorway after they had their foyer painted.

The painter, Wendy Brady, finished the job using a technique she calls 'Mississippi Mud. When Brady wiped a colored glaze from the textured compound, all three women recognized the familiar face that was left behind.

"It's as if the image of Jesus is keeping watch over their front door," Baker said. "I'm just the vessel, so what it's meant to me is the joy that it has brought other people...You don't have to guess when you see it. You know what you're looking at."

Surely, this divine simulacrum means something. When asked about the meaning of the phenomena, Mersenski replied, "I'm sure that it came with some purpose, and we have yet to do is find out what that purpose is."

Communion Wafer Turns 'Blood Red': When Miracles Aren't

The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (500 BCE – 428 BCE) was onto something when he stated that the sun was not a god, but rather a red hot stone. (It's also worth noting that he was imprisoned for saying as much.) Granted, Anaxagoras was a little off on the physical properties of the sun, but he knew that there was a natural explanation for even the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.

Fast forward a few thousand years to St. Paul, MN where a communion wafer has turned "blood red" after being placed in a cup filled with water.

The Pioneer Press reports:

[Rev. John Echert of St. Augustine Church] said the host fell to the floor as a member of the laity who is appointed to assist priests was distributing Communion at the 7 a.m. Mass on June 19, the Feast of the Holy Trinity. It was put in a ciborium, a container for the Eucharist - which is typical practice - with the expectation that it would be poured in a sacraium, a kind of special sink where items are washed into the ground not into a sewer system.

When the Rev. Robert Grabner, the church's parochial vicar, next looked at the cup the following Sunday, Echert said, "he noted a red color in the ciborium." Normally, he added, the host would dissolve in water within a day or two.

Grabner asked Echert to examine it.

"The host was a very bright red," Echert said. "On one side, it was completely red, and on the other side, it was red around the perimeter and it looked almost like the white of the host tended to have an appearance of a cross."

Echert said he transferred it to a glass bowl the next day. A day later, he saw the blood-red color.

"It appeared to be like the blood red of tissue," he said. "If I had not known what it was, I would have thought that there was maybe a small bloody piece of tissue. It was striking enough that there was no way I could have disposed of the remains of the host at that time with good conscience."

Clearly, this was the stuff of miracles:

"It was notable enough that, clearly, it was some phenomenon and not the ordinary way in which a host would dissolve...that we're familiar with," Echert said.

The archdiocese, which now has the host, is taking a "very cautious stance on the matter," spokesman Dennis McGrath said.

"I make no claims, and the archdiocese makes no claims, as to the likelihood of this being supernatural," Echert said. "But it is enough of a phenomenon, or unusual, that we will continue to examine this host."

He added: "I've never in my 24 years as a priest seen or been aware of a phenomenon where a consecrated host placed in water turns to this bright-colored red and continues in what I would call the blood-red color."

Word of the wondrous wafer eventually landed on several Catholic websites and blogs, sparking discussion and conjecture by some that it resembles the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

Anyone with a knowledge of religion is sure to have noted that the supernatural claims and miracles associated with biblical writings were far more fantastical, and more frequent, than those of modern day. It also might be worth noting that we didn't have the scientific understanding in primitive times that we have today, nor the luxury of crowdsourcing.

In simpler times, news of this bloody wafer might have spread via telegraph or word of mouth, and soon enough, people would be making pilgrimages to lovely St. Paul to view the flesh of the Lord. But thanks to the Internet, and to science, many pilgrims have been saved the trouble.

One blogger has raised the red bacterium, Serratia marcescens, as a possible explanation for the communion wafer turning red.

According to Microbe Zoo, a website developed by the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, the bacterium grows on bread and communion wafers that have been stored in a damp place.

The site goes so far as to cite Serratia marcescens as the probable cause of the bloodlike substance that a priest discovered on communion bread in 1263, referred to as "The Miracle of Bolsena."

More-recent incidents have pointed to bacterium contamination, including a highly publicized instance in 2006 when people flocked to a Dallas-area church after a host turned red in a glass.

According to a report on Texas Catholic Online, the Dallas Diocese had the host analyzed by two University of Dallas biology professors who concluded it was anything but a miracle.

In a letter to the parish priest, Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann wrote "... the object is a combination of fungal mycelia and bacterial colonies that have been incubated within the aquatic environment of the glass during the four-week period in which it was stored in the open air."

Archdiocese spokesman Daniel McGrath stated, "The Church does not presume supernatural causes for things that can have a natural explanation," an odd statement coming from the church, especially considering that whole Bible thing.

Poll Shows Way Too Many People Take The Bible Literally

According to a recent Gallup poll, 3 in 10 Americans take the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God. Although this is lower than the 40% recorded in 1980 and 1984 by Gallup, it is up from the low point of 21% in 2001.

49% say the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally, while 17% consider the Bible an ancient collection of stories recorded by man.

Additional findings from the poll show that frequent church attendees (those who attend weekly) are most likely to view the bible as the literal word of God, while those who rarely (or never) attend are more likely to view the Bible as the inspired word of god, or mythology.

This may seem benign to many, but let's consider what this means, exactly. Assuming that this 30% is as familiar with the text as they think, we must assume that they believe the following to be true events in history:

God made the heavens and the earth in seven days. Gen. 1; 2

God made a dude out of dirt, and then, later, as an afterthought, took the dude's rib and fashioned a lady out of it. Gen. 1

The entire earth was flooded for 150 days. Gen. 7

A dude built a boat and put two of every living species on Earth on the boat (because God told him to).  He kept all of them afloat and fed for 150 days.  Gen. 6:14-22; 7:8; Matt. 24:38; Luke 17:27; Heb. 11:7; 1 Pet. 3:20

A dude's cane turned into a snake. Ex. 4:3,4,30; 7:10,12

A dude's wife was turned into a condiment. Gen. 19:26

A dude parted a sea. Ex. 14:22.

A dude's donkey talked to him.  Num. 22:23-30

A bush in flames talked to a dude. Ex. 3:2-5; Acts 7:30

A dude was fed by an angel. 1 Kin. 19:1-8

A dude made an entire army go blind. Kin. 6:18

A dude hung out for a while in a fish's belly. Jonah 1:17

A dude turned water into wine. John 2:1-11

A dude fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and a couple of fish. Matt. 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:5-14

A dude walked on the sea. Matt. 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:16-21

A dude pulled money from a fish's mouth. Matt. 17:24-27

A dude brought a bunch of other dudes back to life. Matt. 9:18,19,23-26; Mark 5:22-24,35-43; Luke 8:41,42,49-56; John 11:1-46; Luke 7:11-16
 
A dude healed all kinds of handicapped people (blind, crippled, lepers, deaf, mute, demoniacs, you name it) John 4:46-54; John 5:1-16; Matt. 12:22-37; Mark 3:11; Luke 11:14,15; Matt. 9:27-31; Mark 7:31-37
 
A virgin had a baby. Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:27,34

A dude came back from the dead. Matt. 28:6,7 Mark 16:6,7; Luke 24:5-7; John 20:1-18

After he came back from the dead, that dude floated up to heaven, body and all. Mark 16:19,20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-12.

This is only a fraction of the fantastical, supernatural claims made in The Bible.  One could fill a whole book with them (oh, wait).

If anyone claimed any of the above events occurred today, we would consider them to be delusional, insane, or a ridiculously gullible victim of someone's tall tale. What gives these fantastical, supernatural biblical events their legitimacy is, quite simply, their inclusion in a text that is believed to be the word of God. This is circular reasoning at its finest: "The Bible is literally true, because The Bible tells us it is literally true. If any of it is not literally true, then we can't trust any of it, and that's not possible."

We must ask ourselves why it is that these fantastical, supernatural events only seem to occur during and prior to the Bronze Age, and in the future.  This leaves us with a large gap of zero fantastical events of a biblical scale.  In between what we think occurred, and what we expect will occur, we are lucky to get a Cheeto shaped like Jesus.

This is not just about debunking religion.  These literal beliefs have real-life impacts. When we believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, we deny human rights, we impede progress in medicine, we condone wars, we are complicit in the submission of women, we subscribe to religious exceptionalism, and we deny the realities of the natural world and of the cosmos.  Until we come to terms with the fact that the Bible includes mythology, legend, and parables, we perpetuate suffering and condone harm. There is impact on decisions that are made every single day in the halls of governments across the country.

And as we have seen from the potential GOP presidential candidates, a few are having a hard time separating their literal religious beliefs from public policy.

The thirty percent finding from Gallup is not a number we can should feel comfortable with.  It is not a stretch to state that 30% of Americans are incapable of thinking critically, do not have a grasp on the fundamental laws of nature, and reject basic science.  And a good portion of those folks are penning legislation at this moment.

Flying Spaghetti Monster Spotted Over Argentina

A carb-heavy apparition has been spotted in the Argentina skies. Could this be the source of recent Oregon church vandalism?

Atheist Converts After Mock Prayer 'Answered' By $1 Million Lottery Win

From The Christian Post:

A self-confessed atheist has become a believer after mocking God by sarcastically praying for his mother to win the lottery. However, his joke prayer was amazingly answered as the next day his mother won $1 million on the New York Lottery Sweet Million game.

According to the report, 28-year-old Sal Bentivegna, who did not believe in God, told his mother to pray to her god to ask "for a million dollars." His mother, Gloria, a Catholic, would not do any such thing.  Since his mother refused to, Sal mockingly 'prayed' the following: “God, I don’t know if you’re real or not, but if you are there, please let my mother win a million dollars.”

Guess what happened. You're right. Sal's mother won a million dollars the next day when she purchased a "Lotto Tree" at a church charity auction. One of the tickets on the tree was a million dollar winner.

He testified, “I can’t shrug off that Jesus had a hand in it.”

“No pun intended, but it was a Godsend,” he said.

Gloria Bentivegna, reflecting on what had happened, is thankful to God for her winnings, but even more thankful for her son’s conversion. She said: “'God performed two miracles, a true miracle.”

By winning New York’s Sweet Million game, Gloria Bentivegna will now receive $50,000 every year for the next 20 years.

The odds of winning the New York Lottery Sweet Million game is 1 in 3.8 million.  Two tickets would take it to 1 in 1.9 million.  I'm not sure how many tickets are on a "lottery tree," but regardless, those are considerable odds.

I am curious to know the odds that a Sweet Million player uttered a plea for divine intervention in the game, mockingly or not.  I would assume that a great many do. I am also curious to know the percentage of praying Sweet Million players who were 'denied' the money.  I would bet a million dollars that all of them, winner excluded, did not have their prayers answered in the form of $1 million.

A few things I do know: 1) Sal Bentivegna was not very good at being an atheist.  2) Pascal deserves a share of the winnings.