Prayer
by Jim Davies
To "pray" means to beg. In this context, when a person prays he begs his god to intervene favorably in his affairs or in those for whom he cares. That's so whether the god is a star or an image carved in stone as in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, or whether he is invisible as in the cases of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed - hence less obviously a construct of anthropomorphic imagination.
It's a part of worship, the other main components of which are adoration or praise, and submission. Prayer includes thanksgiving as well as petitioning, but the latter predominates. The premise is that in some way, the otherwise reluctant god will respond by granting requests.
All that is really quite a mouthful. Observe the premises:
The third of those is interesting in itself; in sermons on the subject Christian preachers often mention all three possibilities, in an attempt to deny the obvious alternatives that there is no god, or that he does not hear prayer, or that if he hears prayers he ignores them. Reports of "answers to prayer" usually celebrate positive answers (eg the patient recovered) but the faithful will also say their prayers were answered (in the negative) if the patient dies. There is then a new round of prayer that the bereavement can be borne. It usually is - with or without prayer.
- that a god exists
- that he (she, or it) will listen to humans praying
- that he will answer their prayers - with a Yes, No or Maybe
To call all that a copout would be rather too polite. It is deeply hypocritical; the prayor goes to all the trouble of abnegating himself before an alleged benefactor like a bug-ridden street beggar before a passing plutocrat, yet any result is credited to the benefactor even if it's not the one requested.
Let's check the other two premises.
The existence of a creator god is neither proven nor capable of being proven. It cannot be proven because any proof of anything requires an axiom from which to start - a premise that is undeniable or at least uncontested - as well as reasoning from that axiom to the conclusion; and in this case, by the definition of "god", such as it is, no such more primitive premise can exist. "I am" says Revelation 1:11, "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last" and much earlier in Exodus 3:13, "God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." One might use the premise that God exists so as to prove something else (though it would be far from an axiom because it's quite easy to deny) but one cannot find any axiom on which to build a proof that the source of everything that is exists, because by that admission in the Good Book, God is "first" in eternity.
Various "proofs" or lines of reasoning have even so appeared over the centuries, but they all fail on that ground alone. They each fail for other reasons too; a popular example is the "watchmaker" analogy. We look at our surroundings or in at our own bodies and observe the immense complexity and elegant harmony with which everything works, like a watch, and "conclude" that there must be a Designer. The problem is that as soon as a credible theory of natural development is worked out (by Darwin in the case of living things) this statement fails; it's an argument for a "god of the gaps" (in knowledge) with the gap getting ever narrower. As Richard Dawkins showed eloquently in his "Blind Watchmaker" there is no validity whatever to the claim that there "must" be a designer.
Another popular "proof" is that since everything has a cause - nothing happens without one - there must be a first cause, way back whenever. Neat; but the god-hypothesis by no means identifies that first cause, it merely pushes the reasoning one stage further back; if God caused the things and events that we can observe or learn about, who or what caused God whom we can neither observe, learn about or even define? It's a total non-answer. We simply do not know whether there was a first cause of everything, and it's not clear that we can ever know.
A third (and last, here) is that human morality would be impossible without a divine rulemaker, and since humanity has managed to survive with at least a sense of right and wrong intact, quod erat demonstrandum. This fails for the same reason as the first, above; the conclusion is contained in the premise (that no other source of morality is possible.) In truth, there is at least one very adequate foundation for doing what is good, namely: self interest. Those who repeatedly harm their fellow humans tend to have few friends and may be hurt themselves in retribution; while those who are benevolent attract benevolence. This is not hard - it's everyday experience, and we can find an echo even in the Scriptures: "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again" (Luke 6:38.)
That God hears prayer is the second premise, and is equally shaky. How might one tell?
Notice first that it's extremely improbable, even on the assumption that a god exists. We are talking here of some undefined and mysterious Power that is necessarily greater than everything that exists (a contradiction in itself; for if god exists, how can he create everything that exists, including himself? - if he can create himself, why cannot everything else create itself given time?) So this god, to whom humans pray, is immeasurably majestic; larger than the universe, whose boundaries (if any) we have not yet discovered. Carl Sagan famously referred to "billions and billions" of stars with solar systems, and at present we just don't know how many billion, though as telescopes get more powerful we continue to count. This god, if any, must be greater than all that; and yet, it's claimed he listens, when a child prays. This is a delightful fairy tale but stretches credulity well beyond twanging point, absent solid proof to the contrary - and in fact there is no such proof at all, outside a wholly subjective "feeling."
Then comes the problem of worthiness. The usual claim is that this undefined God is morally perfect (something incredible in itself, since he must have created cruelty and suffering even among animals, who are generally considered not to have a moral sense.) How, then, can morally imperfect human beings expect that His ear might be open to their petitions?
That question is addressed by the theory of sacrifices, in many religions; yes we are sinful but look, Lord, we have sacrificed this valuable animal so that you can punish our sins in the death of the innocent lamb. The theory is brought to a nice height in the Christian one, in that God is alleged there to have provided the sacrifice for that purpose - a perfect one, in the person of himself in human form; one that needs no repetition, except as a weekly celebration of the fait accompli. I hope you're still with me, it does get complicated.
That god hears prayer might be demonstrated by the answers given. If some experiment were performed by which, say, 100 people faced a similar difficulty they wanted to overcome and fifty of them prayed for divine intervention while the other fifty did not, if prayer were heard and answered (in the affirmative) we would expect to see all fifty prayors delivered but only some of the non-prayors succeed. There would (as evidence) have to be some statistically significant difference. Yet I am unaware not only of any such result, but even of any such experiment ever being conducted; and so suspect that the priests and preachers who encourage prayer are not all that confident, after all, of the efficacy of what they recommend. Little wonder.
It's sometimes alleged that religious people, doubtless praying daily, live longer lives than others. This may be true; I hear that of Mormons it has actually been shown to be true. Is this evidence that their doctrinal beliefs are objectively true or that their prayers are heard? - hardly. It may just as well be that habits of "good living" such as abstinence from smoking and drinking (even of coffee and tea!) tend to prolong life a few years; that the longevity results from the abstinence, rather than from any supernatural intervention. That too could be tested, though only if a control group could be found, of non-believers willing to abstain all their lives. Good luck with that.
One other piece of "evidence" that prayer is heard and answered is worth comment: a person gravely ill recovers after friends prayed for him, surprising his doctors. We can assume that medical science has done its best; that nothing will save the patient except something beyond its reach. Now, all will agree that "the will to live" is a commonplace factor, in matters of life and death, among several others which usually determine the outcome. But when those other factors are balanced, the will to live can be the deciding one; and if the patient hears that his friends want him to recover - that his continued life is valuable to them - I argue that that information will considerably enhance his will to live - and so, quite possibly, result in his recovery. If his family tells him "We're praying for you!" that can therefore have quite a strong, positive effect in those circumstances. The determinant factor, however, is not the praying itself but the patient's will to live, enhanced by the news.
In summary, there is not a shred of hard evidence that a god exists, or that if he does, that he hears or responds to human prayer in any way to indicate a change of divine mind. The whole notion is a grand delusion, that serves to keep the person praying in an attitude of dependence and immaturity, like a child dependent on its mother or father - and the very idea that the creator of the entire universe, if he does exist, would with-hold a benefit until and unless someone asks for it, suggests that he is capricious at best and cruel at worst.