I’ve always heard of incense being symbolic of prayer, and most formulations follow something similar to what Doug Eaton writes at Christian Theology, where he gives four ways incense is like prayer:

1. Incense was beaten and pounded before it was used. Likewise acceptable prayer proceeds from a broken and contrite heart.
2. Incense rises toward heaven, and the point of prayer is that it ascends to the throne of God.
3. Incense requires fire for it to be useful, and prayer has no virtue unless is set on fire by the power of the Holy Spirit.
4. Incense yields a sweet aroma, and our prayers are a sweet aroma to the Lord.

Today in Mass, watching the smoke waft up from the thurible into emptiness above it, I realized that, incense being smoke, there are a couple of ways a skeptic can continue to view incense as a symbol of a believer’s prayer.

Incense, being smoke, dissipates into nothingness

The priest swings the thurible and billows of smoke flow from it, but like the spidery line of smoke rising from a cigarette, a few feet above the priest’s head, it’s turned to haze. As it rises to the top of the church, it disappears, indistinguishable from the smokeless air.

So too, words mumbled in prayer dissolve to nothingness as soon as they leave the lips. They rattle around inside hearers’ heads for just a moment, producing a warm feeling if they are believers, to be sure, but if there is no god, they are just so much noise.

Incense, being smoke, is ultimately carcenogenic

Breath enough smoke and one risks cancer: we see that warning everywhere. The Mayo Clinic’s web site describes the process thus:

Doctors believe smoking causes lung cancer by damaging the cells that line the lungs. When you inhale cigarette smoke, which is full of cancer-causing substances (carcinogens), changes in the lung tissue begin almost immediately.

At first your body may be able to repair this damage. But with each repeated exposure, normal cells that line your lungs are increasingly damaged. Over time, the damage causes cells to act abnormally and eventually cancer may develop.

In my slow arc back from belief to skepticism, I’m reading again Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, and I think the idea of faith, and its outward expression through prayer, causing a brain to act abnormally — carcenogeically — is apt. The funny thing about prayer is that for the believer, even when it’s not answered, it’s answered. “God just said ‘No’” is the common response. Or “God has different plans.” Nothing counts against it. No evidence stands contrary to it.

That’s the very nature of faith, but that’s not how we work on a daily basis. We seek evidence for what we do. Teachers seek evidence for student mastery. Lawyers seek evidence for guilt or innocence. Construction workers seek evidence of a strong foundation before building higher. They all test, probe, ask questions, and ultimately, they might say, “No, there’s not sufficient evidence.” And faith is not enough. I don’t want to drive on a bridge that the engineers built on faith. I don’t want to get in an elevator that an inspector has inspected on faith.

Why should it be different with religious belief? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence asserted Carl Sagan (among others). To do otherwise is to think, in a sense, abnormally.