The pointlessness of prayer

What is the purpose of prayer?

It's a strange habit, and could probably be considered as one of the defining characteristics of religion. Most theists pray, either to their god or to saints, prophets, angels and minor deities. They pray for many reasons, and those reasons are what I shall be examining here.

I should point out that this section may be considered to be extremely offensive or blasphemous by any theists reading it. It is not my intention to offend or upset, just critically examine prayer. I shall also be making wild, sweeping generalisations as this is such a diverse subject.
So, be warned, or direct your flames to /dev/null =)

Personal Prayer

To me, this seems to be a form of meditation - a chance to take a break from the day's chores and calm down, gathering your thoughts, sorting out your feelings, deciding what path to take to overcome some problem. Also, it seems quite significant that people always say they talk to God - God never seems to initiate the conversation (have you ever heard "Oh, you'll have to excuse me, God wants to tell me something. I'll call back in a minute.").

If taken as something more than personal meditation, the most obvious criticism of this type of prayer is - what's the point? God, being omniscient and omnipresent knows what you are feeling every second of the day anyway, probably better than you do. He knows all your problems, concerns and desires before you do. Why should you bother to spell them out to him? It could even be argued that your problems are a direct result of god's will - part of his Divine Purpose for you, to test your faith or build your character. Surely, to question that purpose is almost blasphemy?

"Think about your friends. If you had a problem either with one of them, or perhaps you thought one of them may be able to help you with a dilemma, would you talk to them? As you talk to your friends or family members every day, it builds a relationship. You wouldn't have a very strong friendship with someone if you didn't talk to them, or ask their opinions on things. That is the reason that I pray. It is to build my relationship with my friend, Jesus Christ. He wouldn't be a very good friend if I didn't talk to him day in and day out.

Sometimes I don't ask for prayers to be answered. In fact, quite often I just talk to him just to talk to him. Just as if he were next to me, or like I talk to my husband. I cannot have the relationship I have with Jesus if I didn't talk or pray every day. Just as I'm sure that if you all of a sudden stopped talking to your best friend that your friendship would wane."

Praying for change

Praying for yourself has a placebo effect. Praying for the strength of will or the confidence to overcome some personal problem may well work, but not because god hears your prayer and decides to up your confidence level on his divine control panel. It's an indirect way of building self-confidence.

Praying for change in others is bit more complex. I have had people tell me that they will pray for me to see the light, to recognise the error of my atheistic ways etc. They pray to god asking him to directly intervene and alter a person's life. They effectively want god to temporarily remove someone's free will (which theists always hold to be so sacred). They are saying "I believe that your lifestyle needs correcting. There is something wrong with you. I shall ask my god to fix you and make you a better person. You should thank me for it."
This is one of the reasons that atheists become offended when people say that they will pray for them.

Praying for something to happen is similar. If you pray, asking for some wish to be granted - not for money, fame or cars, but maybe to meet someone, or for some decision to be made in your favour - you are asking god to intervene and remove someone's free will (albeit briefly), forcing their life to become interwoven with yours when it otherwise might not have been.

When people pray for something to happen, the way in which they interpret the results can be quite interesting. As an example, I knew a woman who a strong belief in her god, and prayed to him very often. She told me that when she's driving around town she might pray to him to help her find a parking-space - and he nearly always provides her with this small blessing (you can probably think of many similar examples yourself). Apart from the obvious question of what the heck is God doing sorting out parking spaces when children are starving to death in Africa, it seems pretty obvious that if you drive around town long enough you are certain to find a space eventually. If your god does not come up with the goods, you just tell yourself "It was not meant to be", or "God must have some other plan for me". People count the hits and forget the misses, or even count a miss as a different type of hit - God always answers your prayers, even when it looks like he doesn't. Praise Be!

An example of apparent divine intervention was given in a recent Oprah Winfrey show (no prayer involved, but this shows the sort of consequences that seem to be expected). At a zoo in the USA, a small child fell into the gorilla enclosure. The child was picked up and looked after by a female gorilla. In the gathering crowd were a crew of paramedics, who were taking a trip out to the zoo. Hearing what had happened, they rushed to aid the child when the zoo-keepers had retrieved her from the gorilla. Oprah concluded that God uses normal people as angels from time to time (referring to the fortuitous timing of the medics). This leads to some bizarre conclusions -

• God knew all about the event beforehand (being omniscient, this is expected)
• Instead of preventing the child falling (and possibly being killed or severely injured), he allowed the child to fall
• He either made sure the child fell near a kindly gorilla, or forced the gorilla to protect the child
• He intervened in the lives of the medics some time before the incident, to force them to attend the zoo when they did to make sure they'd arrive in the nick of time.
• There is a shortage of real angels (or maybe they were on holiday).

But, I digress. Back to prayer.

Giant poking device

If you ever watch faith-healing on Evangelist TV shows, you'll see what I mean. Somebody is brought on stage suffering from some disease, or they're blind, or deaf or physically handicapped. Even though they have had to put up with this condition for twenty or thirty years, God was seemingly unable to do anything about it until they got up on stage and an audience of millions prayed at him (and send buckets of cash to the TV station). Was God unaware that they needed healing? Maybe it is a good test of a person's faith to be kept sick for ten years before finally getting healed? Maybe God likes to show off on TV? How come he can only heal one person at a time - why not everybody? Why is it necessary for someone to suffer for years just so that God can heal them Live And Exclusive On TV, apparently at the command of the faithful?

Have you ever seen a faith-healing show when miracles did not occur - "Oh, I'm sorry, little Jimmy, but God must be busy today. Let's get you off the floor and back into your wheelchair. We'll try again next week.". It seems a little odd that the Creator of the universe seems so interested in TV ratings...

Prayers for the dead.

However, prayers are usually also said for the recently deceased; asking god to look after them, take them into heaven, rest their souls and so on. This is puzzling - do they honestly think that god will ignore the newly-dead, stick their soul up on a shelf somewhere and forget about it? God has probably had enough practice by now to figure out what to do. Maybe the power of the prayer is what opens the Heavenly Gates - people who are not prayed for have to mill around outside, while those with prayer-tickets are whisked straight through. (None of this is a concern for atheists; when you're dead, you're dead.)

When you think about it, prayers for the dead are pointless. If you think it is God's Will that the person died when they did, why do you think that God isn't going to look after them beyond that? This sort of prayer really serves several purposes:

• As a form of personal prayer, helping the individual to deal with a great loss.
• As a public show of love and respect for the deceased (and the bereaved). I don't have any problem with this aspect, but why does God have to be invoked?
• As a public show of prayer - praying must be seen to be done, even if it is led by some anonymous priest who has never even seen the deceased outside of the coffin. This is more to do with the church than the bereaved. (I recently attended the funeral of a family friend. Before the coffin was lowered into the ground, the priest read a five-minute service which talked almost exclusively about God and Jesus and their glory and love. It seemed to be more like some sort of advertisement for the church than an attempt to comfort the grieving family or remember the life of the deceased.)

Conclusion

Which is more likely -

• there is one god who hears all prayers from all religions, and responds (even to conflicting prayers)?
• there are many gods who hear the prayers from only their own followers?
• only one true god hears prayers and the followers of other religions are deluding themselves? (even though they all claim similar results.)
• there are no gods to hear any prayers, and prayer is nothing more than religious meditation, self-delusion or public posturing?

If you've gotten this far and have decided to pray for me, ask yourself who it is more likely to benefit - me or yourself..

© Adrian Barnett 1998