Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Prayer Works and This Drives People Mad

Prayer Works and This Drives People Mad

Last updated on: September 11, 2017 at 8:02 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Prayer Works and This Drives People Mad 2017-09-11T08:02:28-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

uZYSV4nuQeyq64azfVIn_15130980706_64134efc6e_o_opt

During tropical storm Harvey, we prayed. Prayer works, but evidently, that statement of fact drives some people quite barmy. Here is a comment I got for some reflective (not philosophical) pieces on surviving this horrible tropical storm. The first sentence is worth the read. Such larks!

“What abject nonsense and gibberish. Self delusional lunacy.”

This is hard to do, but evidently, I did it: not just nonsense, but abject nonsense with gibberish thrown in to cover for redundancy! Self-delusional lunacy may fit my Fantasy Football draft (where I keep picking Aaron Rodgers too high), but it seems a bit incoherent. “Prayer works” may be wrong, but that it can be wrong means it cannot be gibberish. The string of letters “81a*387@^^^sll,dfm” is gibberish. 1a*387@^^^sll,dfm cannot be wrong.

One cannot hear: “81a*387@^^^sll,dfm” and think: “No. That’s quite wrong.” You can speak in gibberish or you can be wrong, but you cannot be both simultaneously.

Let’s assume that I am just wrong: prayer does not work. How are we supposed to know this is true?

Our friend quotes me:

“My belief in God does not depend on God’s response to this particular set of prayers. Faith is, at least, a rational trust in a divine, indubitable experience. Anybody who tells you faith is belief despite the evidence is a fool, an existentialist, ignorant, or a liar.”

He responds: “Nothing fails like prayer. Nothing.”

This seems an overstatement. I can think of a good many things that fail more often than prayer! Nobody has ever run an atheist state without killing hundreds of thousands of people. That strikes me as a serious failure. On the other hand, Handel prayed and was inspired to write The Messiah. Prayer might be a failure in general, but if it kept George Washington Carver going, as an African-American scientist when people hated the idea, then prayer cannot be the worst failure in humankind’s sad history.

I might start with National Socialism, from the atheist Hitler, or the Soviet Union under the atheist Stalin and work backward.

In any case, having proclaimed prayer worse than atheist North Korea, our critic goes further:

“Every scientific double blind study of this infantile wish thinking has demonstrated that prayer is worse than a sugar pill.”

This is wrong. Some studies show prayer works. Some do not. It is, of course, difficult to get the parameters of such a study right as there are many variables. The science is not settled by any means. I don’t claim it is, but an atheist should not do so either!

“Billions and billions of “prayers” have been offered up to 10,000 different deities through the ages begging for everything from rain to cancer cures…all for naught. All self deluded nonsense.”

An argument from insult is never very effective. Shouting “self-deluded nonsense” may gratify the desire to shout something at the foe, but thinking it effective could be described as a self-delusion, though not as nonsense. We understand what is being said, so it cannot be nonsense, though thinking it effective argumentation is delusional.

People pray. People also overwhelmingly see what they believe is answered prayer. This might be wrong. Let’s keep studying. I have seen people pray and be immediately healed. At Lourdes rigorous tests are applied before one can say a miracle has happened.

The trouble is that some people are not skeptical enough. They apply test after test to straightforward requests from one person to another when one of the people is God, but they never apply such tests to requests between two humans. After all, science cannot explain human consciousness. Do human agents exist? Do they have free will? Are any requests granted by free agents or can this all be explained away by biochemistry and brain science?

If your view of reality is dubious that we exist, then naturally you are going to find it hard to prove that God exists. Yet my critic goes on to complain:

“You “believe” in spite of evidence and against all evidence.”

This would be bad. Of course, everybody has to believe despite some evidence. Few beliefs are so obvious that they could not possibly be wrong. Still, nobody should believe anything against all the evidence.

People should never get so nasty that they think disagreement is intolerable.

What is belief in prayer?

“This is willful delusion. Infantile wish thinking and entirely contradictory to the passage you lunatics love to quote “thy will be done” which implies that nothing you could beg your celestial dictator matters!”

I do not want to be deluded. Let’s all agree that to be deluded, infantile, believing anything because we wish it, is bad. Of course, I might be all those things, but perhaps we should judge that based on the evidence presented. Here the critic has made an argument:

God is a celestial dictator
We pray “thy will be done.”
Therefore: prayer is self-referentially incoherent.

This is not a very good argument against prayer. Assume for a moment that God is, in fact, a celestial dictator. The good news is that God loves us and is all good, all knowing, and all powerful. We pray for what we wish, but we know that God knows best.

“Aha!” says the critic. “Why pray?”

There are at least two reasons.

Why should you pray?

First, prayer is good for us. We are expressing what we really want, even if it turns out that what we want is not best for us. Honesty is good in any relationship. I say to the beloved: “I would like this.” She says: “No.”

Excellent! She knows what I wish and I now know her desires. We move forward!

Second, we want God’s will, but that does not mean that God has a particular will for every circumstance. Some choices are between several permissible outcomes. We ask God for our preference and in such a case can get it. God can have a general will about the cosmos and even a particular will about many things and still leave us options as free will beings.

Think of a parent. We do not give our children the choice to put a fork in an electric outlet no matter how much they beg. We do let them choose vanilla or chocolate ice cream. We pray: “If there is only one good choice, help me make it. If not, please grant this request.”

This critic is not satisfied since faith is bad:

“‘Faith’ is THE most dishonest position anyone can hold. IT IS “belief” without evidence the very definition of gullibility and credulity.”

I suppose one could mean this by faith. If so, then faith is bad. Recently I got to talk to leading skeptic Dr. Michael Shermer about the nature of faith. We both agreed that belief without evidence was bad, but that not all forms of religious faith were “belief without evidence.” Some Christian someplace may believe in this bad definition for faith, there are billions of us after all, but no thoughtful Christian this side of Soren Kierkegaard does! Faith can and should be reasonable.

My angry man goes further:

“ALL “beliefs” ALL “faith” must be considered equal meaning that “faith” in Allah is as just as “faith” in Thor and “faith” in Yahweh.”

First, God is not a god like Thor. They are different kinds of beings. There are different types of persons that seem alike, because we use the same English word for their very different sorts of beings. Thor is super-human . . . God is totally different. Allah is more complicated. Some versions of Allah (a word used by Christians long before Islam) simply point to the being that must be God.

“All “beliefs” without evidence are the same…pixies, jesus, the loch ness monster…all justifiably the same and ALL just as ridiculous and infantile.”

We should not believe anything without evidence. The weird idea that Jesus, a figure of history, has the same level of justification as a pixie is odd. I don’t know of any decent evidence pixies exist, but there is a great deal of evidence Jesus existed. We are once again warned against what this critic fears most: being ridiculous and infantile.

“Ridiculous” is what people say about beliefs that are either wrong or that frighten them. I don’t mind trying out such a belief to see if the evidence will support it. As for being “infantile,” at 54 this is impossible for me to do. I am stuck doing logic, thinking, and reading hard books!

Every so often one meets a person who thinks pop-atheism is smart and they had better become an atheist to be on Team Clever. This kind of comment is normal for folk atheism.* If it bugs you, then be bothered. If you think about it, then you will relax.

Best choice is to go pray a blessing on this angry person . . . almost surely white, male, and mad.

—————————–

*Atheism is a sensible position. I do not agree with it, but I appreciate thoughtful atheism. This is like TV evangelism to mainstream Christianity: sad, but there. One way to know a nutter atheist site: most of the content is against theism and not for anything.

Previous Post

September 5, 2017

The Unexpected Pleasure of the Vinyl Record

Next Post

September 7, 2017 How to Raise Christian Kids: Two Tips and One Error

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Apologetics Art Culture Education On Books On Education Philosophy Politics Pop Culture Spiritual Reflections Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 July 2025 June 2025 September 2024 July 2024 June 2024 December 2023 June 2023 September 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Go to this tiny creature, you sluggard! Observe its ways and be wise, for it has no commander yet stores provisions. What industrious insect is this?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The spider The ant The bee The grasshopper

Books by This Author John Mark Reynolds

See All Titles »