Some congresspeople, notably Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, took offense to this outpouring. Echoing the sentiment expressed by President Barack Obama in 2015 that “thoughts and prayers [were] not enough” after a mass shooting in Oregon—a claim which itself echoed the appeals of many after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and, in turn, those of still others after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, ad infinitum—Murphy tweeted, “To my colleagues: Your cowardice to act cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers. None of this ends unless we do something to stop it.”

Part of the platitude’s persistence relates to the fact that “thoughts and prayers,” as an all-encompassing and simple phrase, is easily articulated in a state of shock when other words are hard to come by. For the religious and for the many atheists who do partake in prayer, the response of prayer after tragedy is intuitive. Experiencing shock, according to Kevin Ladd, a coauthor of The Psychology of Prayer: a Scientific Approach and a professor at Indiana University South Bend, takes away the breath and limits the range of speech responses. “Most immediate expressions of tragedy are monosyllabic,” Ladd told me. “We still are not sure what type of language will allow us to interpret what has taken place, so we default back to the most central practices for us. Prayer steps in and fills a void—creates a common kind of language.”

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/10/thoughts-and-prayers-vs-policy/542076/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=48d70ab67d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-48d70ab67d-400098637