Tag Archives: Christianity|prayer

Are Christians distinguishable from the rest of humanity?

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Empress Alexandra, wife of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, led a life of humble piety, and yet she and her family were murdered shortly after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Their bodies were dismembered and disfigured, and they were buried in two unmarked graves. Surely the empress was praying, but God wasn’t listening.

This is the next clue that we live in a godless world (part 1 of this list of 25 reasons we don’t live in such a world here):

5. Because nothing distinguishes those who follow God from everyone else

A few years ago, I visited a museum exhibit of the jewelry of Russia’s imperial family. The focus was on the Faberge jewelry, with several of the famous Easter eggs as the centerpiece, but there was more. I was most taken with Empress Alexandra’s Christian icons—paintings and statues of religious figures, crosses, and so on. She was extremely religious, and as Tsarina she performed daily religious rituals, humbled herself by embroidering linen for the church, read almost nothing but religious material, and consulted wandering “men of God” like Rasputin.

Her devotion did nothing to save her family.

We can find many other examples where Christians took to heart Christianity’s promise of answered prayer. Christian faith was strong on both sides of the U.S. Civil War, and yet roughly 700,000 died, about as many as in all other wars involving the U.S.

Francis Galton conducted an innovative prayer experiment in 1872. Since “God save the king” (or something similar) was a frequent public prayer, members of royal families should live longer. Few will be surprised to hear that they did not.

This reminds me of inconsistency from a radio ministry on the question of prayer. The ministry first mocked atheists’ stupidly observing that God didn’t save the lives of Christians in a Texas church shooting in 2017, insisting that Jesus promised tribulation for his followers, not luxury. But six weeks later, the ministry was asking for prayers to speed the recovery of a staff member with a serious injury, insisting now that prayers do benefit believers.

If there’s a God who answers prayers, prayers and devotion from believers should have an effect in our world. Here again, the pro-Christian evidence you’d expect doesn’t exist.

Surely the empress was praying, but God wasn’t listening.

Here’s a bonus reason we don’t live in God World:

6. Because televangelists make clear that prayer doesn’t work

Watch a televangelist show. You will see periodic appeals that first ask the audience for prayers and then for money. Sometimes you’ll see a text crawl across the bottom with the phone number euphemistically labeled “prayer request” (which sounds better than “place to give me money”).

But doesn’t that sound strange? If prayers get God to do something, then the televangelist could just pray himself. Or, if the power of prayer is proportionate to the number of voices, the televangelist could just direct the audience to turn his small voice into a holy airhorn. And God’s actions make any human generosity pointless. What could money do that God couldn’t?

Televangelists are an ongoing experiment, and they make clear the uncomfortable truth: prayer doesn’t work, but money does, as if there were no god at all. A real god who claimed that prayers work would deliver on that promise.

See also: Televangelists Show Prayer is Useless

Continue with more reasons here.

When religion is good, I conceive it will support itself;
and when it does not support itself,
and God does not take care to support it
so that its professors are obliged
to call for help of the civil power,
’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
— Benjamin Franklin

Irresponsible use of the awesome power of prayer

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Christian parents teach their children to pray, but is that wise?

The claims made for prayer in the Bible are hard to overestimate. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). Jesus said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). Jesus said, “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do” (John 14:12).

Having the all-powerful creator of the universe just a prayer away is a lot of power. It’s an inconceivable amount of power. And we’re going to trust that to children?!

God intervenes

Christians will say that there’s no cause for concern because God will make sure to only grant safe wishes, but that’s not what the Bible says. The verses above, in context, don’t have such a limitation. Little Tommy could pray for his rival on the football team to get sick so he can start in the next game. He could pray that Susie returns his affections. He could pray that his math teacher dies so he doesn’t have to take that test on Friday.

One Christian response is to say that prayer can come with caveats. For example, in James 4:3, we are cautioned that we won’t receive when we “ask with wrong motives,” and little Tommy’s motives are pretty selfish.

Skeptics have a couple of responses. First: what part of, “Ask and it will be given to you” do you not understand?

Second: at best this admits that the Bible is contradictory—prayer has constraints in one place but no constraints in another. Ordinary, fallible Christians are left putting the pieces together, trying to make sense out of the contradiction (or discarding it as manmade mythology).

Purposes of prayer

Another Christian response is to say that prayer has lots of purposes—confessing sins, thanking God for the good things in life, reassuring God that he’s fantastic, and so on. But this is a smokescreen, and the prayer of petition remains the primary kind of prayer in the Bible.

Let’s admit that prayer can be beneficial in the same way that meditation can, but when you’re praying for someone else, meditation is not the point. The idea behind person A praying for person B isn’t for person A to feel better, it’s for a specific good thing to happen to person B.

Prayer as described by Jesus is powerful medicine, though there are different kinds of medicine. A bottle of sleeping pills left in the kitchen where small children could find it is reckless . . . unless it’s homeopathic medicine, which is just pretend medicine. And that’s the key insight—that prayer is like homeopathic medicine.

Prayer can be given to children with the confidence that it can’t be used for bad requests because it can’t be used for good requests, either. It’s just pretend.

The recommended age
to use a Ouija board is 8 years old.
So . . . you need to be 21 to drink alcohol
but only 8 to summon demons?
— seen on the internet

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/9/16.)

Image from Nancy Big Crow (license CC BY 2.0)

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How Does Prayer Work? And What Does that Say About God?

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What’s the point of prayer? Why bother praying if God already knows?

Christian apologist Greg Koukl took skeptics’ questions on the Unbelievable? podcast (audio here @13:02). Let’s evaluate his response to a question about prayer.

The question could be interpreted several different ways.

  • What I think the caller was asking: What difference could asking make when the future is fixed? It doesn’t seem fixed to us, but there are no forks in the path ahead of us since God knows every future event. To God, events unfold as if he’s watching a play that he wrote. He knows every line. So what’s the point?
  • What I want to ask: Why bother praying since God already knows what you need? You’re obviously not informing him of anything. Shouldn’t he just do the right thing for you, regardless of whether you pray or not?
  • And then the question Koukl wanted to answer: Is there a constraint on human free will if God knows everything in advance?

Christian response to the puzzle of prayer

Koukl began by imagining a boss who has already decided that if a particular person asks for a raise, he’ll grant it. But if a raise makes business sense, why not just grant it without being asked? Koukl says that the asking requirement comes from the Bible: “You do not have because you do not ask God” (James 4:2). In response to pushback from the caller, Koukl called the asking-for-a-raise example “a perfectly human illustration that matched every item exactly” and which makes perfect sense to us.

No, this is actually a poor parallel. In the first place, can Koukl possibly be saying that you don’t get things from God if you don’t ask, but you will get them if you do ask? I’d like to see a demonstration of that.

The Bible has a handful of claims about prayer’s efficacy. Some have no caveats—for example, “Ask and you will receive” from John 16:24—but this one cited by Koukl does. The next verse says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” But surely someone has asked with good motives. How many millions have prayed for world peace or a dramatic healing in someone?

How about this for a good motive: I will ask for a something mundane to appear (a candy bar or a glass of water) and do this demonstration repeatedly, in public, simply because this will shock millions of non-Christians to consider afresh the Christian claims.

But everyone knows that this won’t work. What does this tell us about the Bible’s claims about prayer?

Ordinary people have constraints, but God has none

A second reason this isn’t a good example is because a good boss should provide the raise if it’s the right thing to do and not put capricious obstacles (like asking) in the way of any employee getting what they deserve.

Third, money is in short supply in the typical company. It must be spent wisely. Not so with God—he can grant anything at no cost or effort.

Let’s fix these problems. Map God into the employer’s role, but now the employer adjusts everyone’s pay from his unlimited supply of money and perks to maximize productivity. If the janitor would be maximally productive with a salary of a million dollars per year, that just happens. There’s no haggling or negotiation, just happy, motivated, and hard-working employees.

Humans in a Skinner box?

Back in the real world, prayer is reinforced intermittently. Once in a great while it seems to deliver, which is that little push to convince the believer that it works (though it certainly doesn’t work in any way like “works” is normally used, like with a typical home appliance or car—y’know, reliably). We find this in pigeons who had behaviors reinforced intermittently in B. F. Skinner’s famous experiment. Prayer becomes nothing more than a slot machine.

What have we turned God into?

This is a tangent, but I think it’s an interesting one. Consider what Koukl’s god has become. God knows the future perfectly, including every request or need that he will respond to and what each response will be. If we look at God’s actions, we could reduce each one to a conditional cause-and-effect statement like this: “If person P requests R then grant it (or not), but if he doesn’t request it then grant it (or not).”

But the conditional part is unnecessary since God already knows whether P will make the request or not. So it becomes: “When person P requests R (or doesn’t), then give it (or not).” That is, God knows whether or not P will make the request, and he knows whether or not he will grant it.

But even this can be simplified to a simple timeline: “At time T1, do action A1; at time T2, do A2,” and so on. Give these instructions to a universal wish-granting machine, and that’s God. This God doesn’t react in real time to anything. Is this mindless and soulless God what Christians want? What does it say that God could be replaced with a machine? What have God’s love or worry or anger or any emotion become without the time component?

Like the poor parallel between God and the boss, God has become a poor parallel to a loving creator, father, or caregiver. And prayer becomes pointless.

More on how prayer works (or not):

Tweeted after a devastating 2013 tornado:
Beyoncé, Rihanna & Katy Perry
send prayers to #Oklahoma #PrayForOklahoma,
Tweeted in response by Ricky Gervais:
I feel like an idiot now . . .
I only sent money.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/1/16.)

Image from University of Washington Neurobotics Lab (license CC BY 2.0)

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Prayer Doesn’t Work as Advertised

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This is an excerpt from my book, Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey.
A bit of background: Jim is a wealthy, housebound, and somewhat obnoxious atheist, though formerly a devout and learned Christian. Paul is the young acolyte of a famous pastor, doing his best to evangelize. It’s 1906 in Los Angeles, and they’re in Jim’s study.
“Have you thought much about how prayer works?” Jim asked.
“The Bible tells us how: ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’”
“Does it really work that way? You just ask for things and then you get them?”
Paul breathed deeply to focus his mind. He had to think clearly. Jim’s arguments always seemed to trap him. “Well, no, of course not. And that frustrates some Christians. They don’t understand that they need to let God’s plan unfold for them. It may simply not be part of God’s plan to give you what you ask for right now. You can’t treat God as an all-powerful servant always at your elbow, fulfilling every whim that comes to mind. God isn’t a genie.”
Several white chess pieces—three pawns, a knight, and a bishop—lay on the center table. Though the table was not marked with a chessboard, Jim leaned forward and set them up on the table in their beginning positions. “Perhaps not, but ‘ask and ye shall receive’ is pretty straightforward. It makes God sound like a genie to me.”
“But that’s clearly not how prayer works.”
“I agree, but the Bible doesn’t. It makes plain that prayer is supposed to work that way—you ask for it, and then you get it. Prayer is a telephone call to God, and he always answers your call.”
“No—you’re misreading the Bible. It doesn’t say when you get it.”
Jim shook his head. “But it does say that you’ll get it.”
Paul tried another tack. “God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is No.”
“That’s not what the Bible says. Jesus said that if you have faith as tiny as a mustard seed, you will be able to move mountains. Jesus said that prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. Jesus said that whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Jesus said that all things are possible to him who believes. Jesus said, ‘Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.’ No limitations or delays are mentioned.”
“Fine,” Paul said, clenching his teeth. “Fine.” He hated conceding ground, but he had no response.
“Okay,” Jim said, “let’s look at another aspect of prayer. When you pray, are you telling God something he doesn’t already know? That is, is prayer important because you’re informing God of some news, like ‘I’ve lost my job’ or ‘my brother has consumption’?”
“Certainly not—God is all-knowing. Obviously, he already understands your situation. It’s the asking part that’s important.”
“So you need to change it to ‘please help me get this new job’ or ‘please cure my brother’s consumption’?”
“That sounds better.”
Jim leaned forward. “But even this doesn’t make sense. God knows what’s best for you. For you to ask God to change his plans is presumptuous. It’s like an ant giving an engineer tips for designing a bridge. Will God think, ‘It’s best that you not get the new job, but since you asked nicely, I’ve changed my mind’? And maybe it’s simply part of his plan that your brother die from consumption.”
“But prayers are answered all the time! Lots of consumption patients can point to God as the reason they’re alive now.”
“Not with any justification. Let’s say Aunt May has an illness. She and her family pray, and then she gets well. She concludes that it was prayer and God’s intervention that cured her. But obviously there are other explanations, such as, that her treatment saved her. And if she had no treatment, perhaps it was simply her body healing itself.”
“And perhaps it was God!” Paul ached to pace around the room to burn off some of his tension, but he was a guest and thought better of it.
“Perhaps so, but you’re basing that on no evidence. I agree that we can’t rule out that it was God—or Vishnu or Osiris or a four-leaf clover. But we have no evidence that any of them did anything.” Jim was quickly running through different opening moves for his five chess pieces—tick, tick, tick as the pieces quickly struck the table, then a pause as he set them up again.
Paul wondered if his responses were so bland that Jim needed to play chess to keep his mind occupied.
Jim looked up and said, “The attraction of prayer in many cases is that it’s easier than doing the hard work yourself. Praying for a promotion is easier than doing what’s necessary to deserve a promotion. But let’s look at this from another angle. God has cured zero cases of birth defects—say, mental idiocy. We know this because zero cases have been cured by any cause, natural or supernatural. Millions of mothers have been devastated by the prospect of their children growing up with a disability or even dying an early death. Has God found none of their prayers worthy of an answer? Or amputations—there are probably men in your own church who have lost limbs due to war or injury. Has a single limb ever grown back? No. And since God has cured zero of these, maybe he has intervened in zero illnesses. That is, since God hasn’t performed any visible cures, maybe he hasn’t done any invisible ones, either.
“And think of the millions of people around the world who are starving. Prayers or no prayers, God apparently can’t be bothered to help them. If God is going to set aside the laws of physics and perform a miracle, is he to put my needs at the top of the list? If he won’t save a country starving during a famine, why should I think he’ll cure my rheumatism?”
Jim expanded his diversion, adding opposing black chess pieces to his imaginary board—three pawns and a knight from the other side of the table. He alternated moves from each side and held the captured pieces between his fingers so that the round bottoms embellished his hands like fat wooden rings.
“Consider smallpox,” Jim said as he set up the pieces for another mock game. “We don’t think of it much now, but it has been one of civilization’s most deadly diseases. In fact, the last smallpox outbreak in this country was here in Los Angeles, about thirty years ago. Suppose you have a large number of people who are vaccinated against smallpox and an equally large number who aren’t, and both groups are exposed to smallpox. Those who were vaccinated will do far better than those who don’t—regardless of who prays. You can look at this from the other direction—the high death rate from smallpox suggests that God’s plan is for it to be deadly. That is, vaccines interfere with God’s plan. Maybe we shouldn’t be using them.”
Every confident tick of a chess piece was a goad to Paul, a reminder that he was the novice in this discussion. Tick, tick, tick became “i-di-ot.” He said, “Maybe God doesn’t need to focus on smallpox anymore because science has stepped in. Maybe He’s focusing His miracle cures on diseases like consumption or cancer because that’s where the need still exists.”
“Did God ever focus on people with diseases?” Jim tossed away the chess pieces, and they clattered on the table. “Before vaccines, smallpox was life threatening. It killed hundreds of thousands of people every year. But in America, it’s now just a nuisance. Science has improved life expectancy; prayer hasn’t.”
Paul clenched the arms of his chair. “You can’t judge prayer with science,” he said, probably louder than he should have. “You can’t expect God to perform like a trained monkey at your command. It’s not our place, nor is it even possible, to judge God’s work. I agree that there are aspects of God’s actions that we just can’t explain. But I have the patience and the humility to accept God’s wisdom and wait for understanding. Perhaps I won’t understand until I get to heaven.”
“Fine, but if your argument is that you don’t understand, then say so. When asked, ‘Can we say that prayer gives results?’ the correct answer must then be ‘No, we cannot because we don’t understand.’ God might answer every prayer as you suggest, but we have no reason to believe that. A sufficient explanation is that prayers don’t appear to work because there is no God to answer them. The invisible looks very much like the nonexistent. Which one is God—invisible or nonexistent?”
Paul had no clever rebuttal, so he treated the question as rhetorical. “You’ve ignored praise,” he said. “That’s a vitally important reason for prayer. We humble ourselves before God and acknowledge that He can do what we can’t. It’s only appropriate to give thanks and praise to God.”
Jim snorted. “What’s the point in praising God? Surely God doesn’t need to hear how great he is. Is he that insecure that he needs constant reminding? Put this in human terms—do we curse insects for not acknowledging how important we are? Suppose we built a race of mechanical men. Would our first command to them be that they need to worship their human creators?”
“Are you unwilling to humble yourself before a greater power?”
“I’ll consider it when I know that such a power exists,” Jim said. “The picture of God that the writers of the Old Testament painted for us is that of a great king—a man with the wisdom of Solomon, the generalship of Alexander, and the physical strength of Hercules. And he apparently needs the fawning and flattering of a great king as well. You would think that God would be a magnification of all good human qualities and an elimination of the bad ones. But the small-minded, praise-demanding, vindictive, and intolerant God of the Bible is simply a caricature, a magnification of all human inclinations, good and bad. As Man becomes nobler, he loses these petty needs. Shouldn’t this be even more true of God?”
Jim leaned down and picked up a rumpled copy of a newspaper from the floor. “Let me show you something I read in this morning’s paper,” he said as he noisily flipped through a section. After a few moments he laid the newspaper on the table. “Here it is. It’s about a train accident in which eight people died. A woman was just released from the hospital, and here she says, ‘The doctors told my husband that I probably wouldn’t make it. But he prayed and prayed. And his prayers were answered—it was a miracle.’” Jim looked up. “So according to this, prayer works. But I must wonder if I understand the meaning of the word ‘works.’ Imagine if the utilities that we use so often—electricity, clean water, trains, mail delivery, and so on—worked no more reliably than prayer.”
“You’re mixing two different things,” Paul said. “You can’t judge the Almighty’s response to prayer in the same way that you judge something as artificial and profane as electricity.”
“Then don’t use the same word to describe their reliability. Prayer clearly does not ‘work’ as electricity does. And to compensate, the rules are rigged so that success is inevitable—if I get what I pray for, that’s God’s plan, and if I don’t get what I pray for, that’s also God’s plan. When a train crash kills eight people, and it’s called a miracle, how can God lose?” Jim slapped his hand on the newspaper. “But this makes praying to God as effective as praying to an old stump.”
Paul’s rebuttal lay scattered about him like a division of troops overrun by Jim’s argument. His fists were clenched, but he felt defenseless. “Are you saying that prayer has no value?”
“Many spiritual traditions across the world use meditation to clarify the mind or relax. Christian prayer can have these same benefits. A mature view acknowledges what you can’t control and can be an important part of facing a problem, but to imagine an all-powerful benefactor helping you out of a jam is simply to ignore reality. None of prayer’s benefits demand a supernatural explanation, and to imagine that prayer shows that God exists is simply to delude yourself. The voice on the other end of the telephone line is your own.”
Photo credit: Wikimedia