Prayer

I must admit that over the past few years my religious beliefs have shifted significantly. Contrary to the beliefs of the most ardent of both, I have never really seen atheists and Christians as being black/white opposites, but rather representing the extreme sides of some spectrum or continuum. It is not always as easy as being 100% convinced of the existence and benevolence of God or 100% of the non-existence of God, and I believe many more than one might expect find themselves somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. With this idea in mind I would say the best way to describe my recent personal journey is a marked shift away from the Christian side to the direction of the Atheist side. That is to say, I am not an atheist atheist in the way that many are (take for example my Christian-school impressed habit of capitalizing the first letter of the word “God” which I still often do simply because it just looks right to me), but I certainly have more in common with the fervent atheist than the fervent Christian.

However for all my doubts and uncertainties regarding the existence of God or my personal place on the imaginary Atheist/Christian spectrum, there is one thing I am certain of; there is one thing that remains concrete to me regardless of whether God actually exists or not. That is the fact that prayer is futile.

The methodically verifiable conclusion that prayer is of essentially no value is proven by the simple fact that its effectiveness is impossible to test for.

Take for example an “average” prayer request such as the request to be able to pay all the bills on time at the end of the month (feel free to replace this with “heal my dad’s cancer”, “let my sick child recover quickly” or “help me pass this exam on Friday”); for all the variance in how such a request may be specifically “answered”, there are only two possible outcomes in each and every prayer: either God grants the wish or he does not (i.e. you make your bills or you don’t, you father’s cancer leaves his body or it stays, your child recovers quickly or stays ill, you pass the exam or you fail). In either scenario God wins. If you can pay rent (likely by your own financial planning, but we’ll put that aside here), then God worked things out and answered your prayer; yet if you cannot make ends meet then a host of religious copouts is there to save the day, the most likely for this case probably being “God was trying to teach you a financial lesson.” If your dad dies God was “calling him home”, if your child stays sick it was God’s will and if you fail the exam then God was just teaching you the importance of hard work and study. The fact is that it is impossible to determine God’s hand in these matters because the entire array of possible outcomes, good or bad, can be somehow “attributed” to God. One could pray to a hockey puck or a hollow tree stump and the conclusion would be no different whatsoever. There is no more proof that God heard and graciously granted your request than there is the hockey puck did.

This may lead you to suggest “Yes, you can’t verifiably prove God is answering the prayers but you can’t prove he isn’t either.” To which I must agree; no atheist can prove God’s non-existence any better than Christians prove the contrary. If my point were to scientifically and verifiably prove that God cannot and does not answer prayers then this would be the point where I bow out of the issue. However let me reiterate that my main point was prayer’s futility and its lack of value; this is neither a pro-atheist nor an anti-Christian rant, this is simply a rational human being’s perception of the human phenomenon of prayer.

If prayer is “of value” (which I assume any praying man would claim it is) then I must assume it works; and it must work at least an acceptable portion of the time, enough to justify its use in the everyday lives of billions on the globe. Yet why is it that so many scientific studies have produced results that at very best are inconclusive? A simple Google search on the “effectiveness of prayer” or a peak at the opening synopsis of the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer) will show that neither side trying to prove a conclusive point has done so. In all likelihood this is due to the fact that the older studies were biased and more importantly not double-blind. On a small side note, more recent and better conducted studies have even suggested being prayed for can make conditions worsen do to the added stress of an anticipated immediate recovery (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html).

…and before I continue, no, I usually do not make all of my arguments and philosophical decisions centered on Wikipedia and the New York Times haha, but hey the points are the same…

The placebo effect is a nasty one and I personally will vouch for the occasional effectiveness of prayer when asking for strength, peace or any other intangible request. To any rational human however, I need not delve into why this is not proof of anything other than the effect of a sugar pill.

However, putting that aside entirely, I see the very fact that there is no conclusive evidence suggesting the effectiveness of prayer to be reason enough for me not to do it. If prayer really is an effective way of governing your life’s decisions and handling life’s problems, shouldn’t it show up as “effective” a decent amount of the time? Would you hire a personal financial consultant whose track record was disputed and who couldn’t prove they had even directly succeeded in their work in the past? Would the FDA approve the sale and distribution of a drug if the scientific jury was still out on its effectiveness? Would modern doctors instruct their patients to undergo treatment whose creators promoted it saying “You can’t prove it is effective, but you can’t prove it is ineffective either”?

Then why do so many people pray? Because humans are creatures of habit? Because it makes people feel like they have more leverage or control over their lives? Because their pastors tell them to? It’s likely a mix of all of those reasons and more. I’m (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) not one to attack something solely on the grounds that it is done out of tradition. I’m actually quite the opposite, a staunch supporter of tradition; I say we maintain the traditional Christmas story (including the carols, the cards, the nativity scenes and the Charlie Brown special with its overt religious message) because I think tradition here is not only beautiful and positively-themed but more importantly harmless. Tradition for the sake of respecting the past, and more or less just for the sake of tradition is all well and good in my eyes, provided it does not come accompanied by negative side effects.

Were it not for the growing length of this little post I would here jump headlong into the societal domino effect that prayer sets in motion. Prayer and religion are certainly not mutually exclusive; while prayer in itself is at worst just a waste of time, religious fervor and narrow-mindedness ride on its coattails. They, as the countless annals of history have shown, can lead to more undesirable outcomes than merely wasting time. This however could easily spin itself into another topic entirely and I will accordingly leave it for another day.

After realizing the futility of prayer, the only conclusions left to reach are either prayer does not work because God does not exist or prayer does not work because God isn’t listening. Discovering which of the two is the true story is another matter entirely, yet the undeniable conclusion is that praying for physical health or for a good grade on an exam to the Christian deity is just as ridiculous and time-wasting as turning east and praying to Mecca five times a day, or spending your days worshipping the sun and your nights worshipping the moon. I’m as pro-tradition as the next guy, but there’s got to be a line drawn. To waste your time reciting words in your head because you think your personal thoughts are being tapped by some unseen deity who is patiently waiting to hear and grant your request is both naïve and foolish and during a time in history where man has walked the moon, mammals have been cloned, and successful heart transplants number well into the thousands every year, I think we could frankly do a lot better.