The prayer challenge.

Even when I was a believer I couldn't really understand the purpose of prayer. We used to pray at church and when I stayed over at my grandparent's house or cousin's house. I couldn't understand what we were doing. Though christening me before I was old enough to 1) Object and 2) Know what was happening, mum and dad weren't really strict on religious rituals at home. They sent me to a Catholic school (according to one of the nuns/teachers, when I left that school it was the end of a 26 year run of one of my family members being enrolled there). Apart from that, church on Sunday was pretty much the limit. 

I've since come to understand that prayer is really for the person doing the praying, rather than for the people being prayed for. When praying for the victims of a tragedy, the pray-ers feel like they're doing something. They feel like they're helping fix the situation. There's plenty of quotes about what's going on here. One that I really like is "One pair of hands working does more than 1000 clasped in prayer" This feels very accurate for me. 

But going back to the purpose of prayer - what exactly are we trying to achieve. The kind of prayer I'm talking about is the one directed to an omniscient god. The god that knows not only that we are going to pray, but when we're going to pray and what we're going to pray for. 

I recently saw on twitter that someone tweeted they were praying to find a missing girl. It's lovely that this person was concerned for the welfare of the missing girl and of course I don't have a problem with that. Who could? What I didn't understand was what he thought he prayer would achieve. I asked a couple of questions, but never got answers. I guess the questions may have been seen as an 'attack' but I was genuinely curious. I asked whether the god that was being prayed to was waiting for this person to pray before ensuring the girl would be found safely. Or perhaps there was a target number that the god required. Maybe if 9,999 people pray the girl is never found, but once the 10,000th person gets on board, the right police officer knocks on the right door at the right time and she's found safe and returned to her family. Of course the god in question knows these people are going to pray so why wait for the right number? It's not like those people know how many others are praying. Why not let the missing girl be found immediately since he knows that the right amount of people are going to pray? (Of course it's a different topic to question why he would allow the girl to go missing in the first place). When the person is praying, are they asking god to do something that he wouldn't have otherwise thought of (despite knowing everything about everything forever)? Do they think that god is sitting(?) there, knowing that someone is missing and wishing he could do something about it? He then receives a prayer from Tommy in Jacksboro, Texas, asking god that the missing girl is found safe and well and god thinks Ah Ha! That's what I can do...I can save her! Thanks Tommy. I doubt this is what the fictitious Tommy is expecting, so why is he bothering to pray? 

Natural disaster is also a big time for prayer. Whether it be earthquake, tsunami, bushfire, or cyclone, when something catastrophic happens the pray-ers of the world get fired up and try to encourage as many people as they can to join them. Twitter will always see a new hashtag get created. #PrayForJapan for example. Again I need to question what people think they're going to achieve. Whatever the natural disaster is, people that believe in prayer must necessarily believe that the god they're praying to allowed the disaster to occur. Are they assuming that their god of choice is unaware of the destruction he has caused? Do they think he's sitting there with all the angels saying 'hey, check this out' then creates an earthquake before boasting about all the buildings he made collapse? Is it only when the prayers start arriving asking that people survive the disaster that god realises that maybe people aren't 100% happy with what's going on? Does Michael or Gabriel (or their equivalent) need to tap this god on the shoulder and say 'Um god...the humans aren't happy with that earthquake. They're asking if you can save some of the people'. We must not forget that this is an omniscient god. He knew before he allowed the earthquake to happen that people wouldn't be happy. He knew before the earthquake that people were going to ask that people be saved. So given that god knows all this, and he knows this beforehand...why are people praying to him? What is the goal of the prayer? 

When a tsunami hit Japan I received some criticism on twitter for saying 'rather than praying for Japan, why not do something useful and donate'. The criticism wasn't from a religion person. They asked who I was to say what was useful and what wasn't. They questioned why it was a bad thing to pray, suggesting that a person sitting on the other side of the world might feel completely useless and that praying might be the way the can feel like they're contributing. This goes back to what I said at the start - praying is for the person doing the praying, not the person being prayed for - and praying is certainly not for the god being prayed to. One religious friend said that rather than needing donations over prayers, we need both. Although I concede that maybe there could be an argument made for saying that people being prayed for could take comfort from knowing that although people are unable to help, at least the victims are in their thoughts, the same arugument could be made for simply letting the victims know. 'We haven't forgotten you, you are in our thoughts'. How would this be any less affective than 'we're praying for you'?

The discussion about prayer versus donations lead me to write something that to this day is still one of my favourite tweets of mine. I said 'Tell you what, put all the prayers in one warehouse and all the donations in another warehouse and let the Japanese take their pick'. 

Being an atheist with a twitter account means I get to hear a phrase pretty much daily. I'm sure you can guess what it is... 'I'll pray for you'. Yep, this is the way many theists choose to end a discussion - 'I'll pray for you'. It has been described to me as being passive/aggressive. There is certainly something about it that feels threatening, though I'd be surprised to learn that it's ever meant that way. I'm sure it's genuine. I'm sure the person saying it feels that letting me know they're praying for me should be seen as a good thing (it's not). There is the old response 'I'll think for you'. But I prefer to ask why they would pray for me when the could be praying for a child starving to death. I've said 'rather than do that, why not spend the time reading a science book'. I've also told them that I'm being prayed for by many, many people and I'm still an atheist, and that their praying is simply a waste of time. 

This leads me to issuing the prayer challenge which I first saw on The Atheist Experience. It was given by Matt Dillahunty in response to a caller asking what would convince Matt that god was real and is borrowed by me here. 

I don't believe in god, therefore I necessarily don't believe in prayer. It might, however, be possible to convince me simultaneously that these things are real. 

The Prayer challenge:
If you believe there is a god, and if you believe that this god answers prayers do this - Pray to your god and have them tell you what you can do to convince me he/she is real. Once you have this information, come back to me. Present that information. I will then be a believer.