![\"Prayer\"](\"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/prayer002.jpg\" "\\"Prayer\\"")
Tonight I passed a church that frequently updates their sign with (sometimes) clever sayings. Today, they have the old saying, “After all is said and done, usually a lot more is said than done.”<\/p>\nTonight I passed a church that frequently updates their sign with (sometimes) clever sayings. Today, they have the old saying, “After all is said and done, usually a lot more is said than done.”<\/p>\n
There’s nothing innately religiousy about that phrase… except that it immediately struck me as a perfect analogy for prayer.<\/p>\n
If you’re relying on prayer, then all that ever happens is the saying… and none of the doing… since prayer is basically mental masturbation under the guise of religious piety. As a popular bumper sticker says (Hooray for bumper sticker psychology!), “The hard work of one does more than the prayers of millions.”<\/p>\n
If prayer truly worked and religious-minded people actually believed that it worked, it would seem that prayer would solve every problem. It doesn’t, of course, and therein lies the basis for explanatory shenanigans… as follows.<\/p>\n
If a prayer is made and the wish comes true, it was God answering the prayer and is a delightful, miraculous experience, be it large or small. If a prayer is made and the wish doesn’t<\/strong> come true, then it wasn’t God’s plan for it to happen or the non-answer is a test of some sort. It never means that God wasn’t listening.<\/p>\n If I pray for a flipped coin to land heads up, what will happen is that my prayer is answered roughly fifty percent of the time. It’s a miracle! The other fifty percent of the time, God chose not to make the coin land that way.<\/p>\n A funny thing, though… if I don’t say any prayers (because perhaps… I don’t know… there’s nobody listening?), then the coin will land heads up (are you ready for this?) roughly fifty percent of the time!<\/p>\n Amazingly enough, anyone that believes in prayer will dismiss that little example by calling it trivial or nonsensical. Of course God isn’t going to intervene in something so silly. That’s a useless request. However, those same people will, no doubt, claim divine intervention for small things like a cool breeze or for help with the tricky loading of a lawnmower onto a truck or for the serendipitous discovery of a ten dollar bill blowing down the sidewalk. It seems there’s a double standard in operation there.<\/p>\n I will concede one possible benefit of prayer. For some people, it no doubt makes them feel calmer and more at peace. However, the same can be said for meditation or a quick nap or deep breathing or even spending time with friends, all things that can be used to accomplish the same effect without the superstitious notion of a all-powerful voyeur.<\/p>\n It’s not that God isn’t listening. It’s that he doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight I passed a church that frequently updates their sign with (sometimes) clever sayings. Today, they have the old saying, “After all is said and done, usually a lot more is said than done.” There’s nothing innately religiousy about that phrase… except that it immediately struck me as a perfect analogy for prayer. If you’re … <\/p>\n