Pray for Madeleine?

reposted from: NSS Newsline 5/10/07
Chris Street comments are in bright green; highlights in blockquotes (yellow).

From Robin Blick:
This nauseating orgy of praying for the missing Madeleine requires some blunt speaking from atheists. We should ask ... what exactly do those who encourage and engage in this brainless activity actually want or expect to happen? Either the girl is dead, or held captive. In the first instance, is God being asked, without the aid of his earthly incarnation, to raise her like Lazarus from the dead and return her unharmed to her parents, presumably at some specified location? If so, why the agonising delay? And, equally to the point, why did the God of infinite power and goodness now being implored to restore innocent life permit its destruction? After all, the girl's parents belong to a church that believes not only in the miracles of the bible, but those such as at Lourdes being performed in the here and now. Goalkeepers who cross themselves when facing penalties obviously believe God cares about football results. So why doesn't he seem to care about Madeleine?

In the second case, what impact are the millions of prayer hours supposed to have on the evil ones who hold her captive? Will God persuade them to return her, again, we must suppose, at some pre- arranged rendezvous? Or will she be whisked bodily from their grasp? Do those who 'pray for her return' as the phrase has it, ever asked themselves such simple and to me at least, obvious questions? What are you actually asking to be done, and how? Clergymen and theologians will tell us 'it doesn't work like that'. God moves in mysterious ways. Easily said when it's not your child. But then, if it doesn't work like that, what exactly is all this praying about?