Gambling | Image via flickr user Sean MacEntee

Associate professor of psychology at Indiana University and NDSP member Kevin Ladd is renowned for his thinking and research on prayer. In the Psychology Today blog “Pray for Me,” he gives serious consideration to a comparison that unbelievers delight in making:

To some observers prayer looks a lot like playing the slots.

With a slot machine you put something in (money) and what you’re hoping for (money) may or may not come out after you pull the lever (or push the electronic button on contemporary machines; the lever was too much strain for people’s elbows). 

Similarities abound but so do differences…