Why prayer does not work

Prayer does not work. And why does it not work? Well, because there is no God. So, whether you're hoping for a lottery win, or looking for celestial respite for your Aunt Pru's arthritis, all that kneeling and head-bowing and amen chanting is about as much use as a chocolate shovel. You'd be better off praying to Satan. Satan doesn't exist either, but the parties are more fun.


But because humanity likes nothing better than self-delusion, millions of us labour on in the pretence that an invisible yet all powerful Creator actually gives a handful of monkey droppings whether we get that job we applied for or not. There are two very obvious reasons why prayer doesn't work and wouldn't work even if there was a God.

The first is that you obviously don't get everything that you pray for, from good health to happiness. The religious, always quick to dodge a sharp question, will tell you that this is God's will, and His ineffable wisdom chooses not to grant every request directed to him in the form of prayer. Which renders the whole process quite spectacularly pointless, really.

If you're going to go to all the trouble of praying to a being who's then going to decide whether or not to answer your prayers based on a set of criteria you can't see and wouldn't understand, and if that being is all knowing and is therefore aware of your situation anyway, then what's the point of flagging it up? Is praying the equivalent of sending a high priority email? Why not direct your prayers to Bill Gates in an email instead? He'll probably ignore them too, but at least he won't claim any moral high ground or spurious ineffability to fudge the issue.

We'll skip the usual 'what kind of God could allow the prayers of the suffering to go unheeded' argument because it's just too obvious.

But let's look at common prayers. Praying for a promotion, or praying that you get a job you applied for. Now, any rational person would suggest that the prayer time is probably better spent polishing your CV or hitting a few targets, but even if you assume for a moment that there is a God who is minded to answer prayers, isn't it sort of cheating to ask for divine intervention in a recruitment process? It's not really fair on the other guy applying for the job, if they have more experience and perform better in interview, and then fail to get the job because you did a bit of brown-nosing to God the night before?

And what if the other guy prays for the job as well? You're not theonly praying person out there and it's a bit unfair to ask God to do the whole judgement of Solomon thing about which of you is the worthier, when there's a perfectly competent recruiter whose job it is to do just that.

Sometimes of course, prayer seems to work. Someone does some praying, and of a hundred vague prayers for the health of friends and family, financial windfalls and romantic conquests, something goes right. Your prayers have been answered, God's in his heaven and he's in the mood for micro-managing your requests! This is called confirmation bias, and works according to the same principles as incredibly vague horoscopes - people pick out the one thing that might just apply to them, and assume insight on the part of the astrologer, ignoring all the irrelevant details.


The only sense in which prayer genuinely works is in the sense that it's an opportunity for quiet reflection, as close to meditation as some religions get. Praying can settle the nerves or build confidence not because of miracle beams from a non-existent God, but through the prayee spending a few moments relaxing into their own thoughts and just calming down a bit.

So, prayer. Hurts your knees, wears out the carpet, doesn't work. Have a cup of tea and a good think instead.

Believe in Hank

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: 
"Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: 
"Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: 
"Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"

John: 
"If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."

Me:
"What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

John:
"Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss His ass."

Me:
"That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Why Atheists Align with Democrats

By: Adam Brown (Founder of AtheismResource.com)

Yes, this is a long article… but it has good research and is worth your time to read. Sorry, no TLDR – just read it!

The United States of America is hardly united. On virtually every political issue, America will cover the entire sliding scale of opinion from extreme conservative, evangelical Christian right to the extreme liberal, progressive, socialist left. We also have a large chunk of the population that just does not care. These people do not pay attention to the issues, regardless if it directly affects their lives, especially in their local or national elections. In fact, if someone in a conversation doesn’t mention these political issues with him or her, they probably wouldn’t know anything about it. For the purposes of this article, we don’t discuss these people. I will look at the political views of active atheists and non-religious people in America and show that there is a preponderance to be towards the left (Democratic) side of the political spectrum and why this alignment occurs. It will also become clear that the more religiously motivated a political position, the more united and fervent the atheists in America are in opposition to it.

I Believe: An Atheist's "World View"

I believe in absolute and unconditional equality amongst all people. We must not make exceptions for women, gays, Asians, left-handers, no-one. Organizations that seek to curtail the rights of any demographic should be disbanded, ridiculed or lose their tax-exemption status.

I believe that the right of people to live in a manner of their choosing, self-evidently excludes any right to prevent others from living how they choose. A person's faith cannot be used to justify hindering the lives of others. This particularly applies to children, who must be protected from harm, including (and especially) harm caused by their own parents.

Reasons Atheists Have to Fight for Their Rights

In the U.S., atheists have laws protecting us. But laws aren’t always obeyed, or enforced — and fighting for legal rights can have dire consequences.

“You atheists are just taking on the mantle of victimhood. There are laws protecting you — especially the First Amendment. Therefore, you’re not really discriminated against. And it’s ridiculous for you to claim that you are.”

Atheist activists get this one a lot. When we speak out about ways that anti-atheist bigotry plays out, we’re told that we’re not really oppressed. We’re told that, because we have legal protection, because anti-atheist discrimination is illegal, therefore we don’t really have any problems, and we’re just trying to gain unearned sympathy and win the victim Olympics. (I’d love to hear Bob Costas do the commentary for that!) It’s a classic Catch-22: If we speak out about oppression and point to examples of it, we’re accused of “playing the victim card,” and the oppression becomes invisible. And if we don’t speak out about oppression … then the oppression once again becomes invisible.

Remove "In God We Trust" from our currency.

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Richard Dawkins: The God of the Old Testament

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction:

The Coming Atheist Demographic Tide

The WIN-Gallup International network of polling firms has released a new poll titled Global Index of Religion and Atheism 2012, and there's a lot of good news in it for us. Some of these results are so encouraging, I hesitate to believe them without additional confirmation - but if they bear out, they show that atheism is rising all around the world like the tide coming in!

Name change

Today I changed the blog name from "Atheism is Love" to "ACE - Atheist Community of Earth" to match our Facebook community page and other ACE outlets.
Sorry for the inconvenience. 

Seth Andrews "Scrabble on the Space Station"

Seth was the keynote speaker at the 2012 Oklahoma Freethought Convention.
His presentation takes an often humorous look at the claims of religion in the Age of Information.

I dare any believer to watch the whole thing from beginning to end. 
it just might make you think! scary, I know. 

Afterlife

Why Secularism Is Good for the U.S.

Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans documents the extraordinary rise of secularism in the United States and how it offers hope for more rational, inquiry-based public policy and discussion. In this essay, author David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, talks about how secularism has always been part of America, but it's only now becoming a force to be reckoned with.

What's the harm if believing makes people feel good?

On the occasions when I discuss religion, I can count on being asked one question every time: What is the harm in believing? A common phrasing of this question would be as follows:

I understand that you don't believe in God. But I don't know why you seem to care that others do. I mean, what's the harm in believing in God if it makes people feel good to believe?If you are an atheist, I'd say it is a virtual certainty that you've been asked this question many times too. In this post, I'd like us to forget about how we might phrase our response and just think through the question itself.

What's so bad about religion?

I have never met an atheist who would claim that religion is the source of all evil in the world or that a post-religious world would necessarily be some sort of Utopian paradise. Many of us may still long for a post-religious world, but we are realistic about what it would involve. The far more common view, and the one to which I personally subscribe, is that religious belief (i.e., faith) facilitates evil in a way that few other organizations or belief systems are capable. As Steven Weinberg famously said,

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.Again, the claim is not that religion is somehow the source of all evil but that it facilitates a particularly devastating form of evil.

Atheists: The Last Minority to Get Civil Rights?

In America, freedom of religion does not yet include freedom from religion. If you doubt that try spending time in a very religious state such as Alabama. Here is what you can expect:

• On his first day in office, the state governor might say that anyone who does not believe in God is not his brother. That would be discrimination against atheists from the top.
• Your weather man might helpfully inform you that you will “need a jacket tomorrow on your way to church.” Religious indoctrination by meteorologists!
• If you tell someone you have no religion, they might say: “I would keep that to myself, if I were you.”
• Instead of saying “have a good day” your waiter or waitress might say “have a blessed day.” That might be tough for an atheist. Imagine telling an African American to “have a white day,” or vice versa. You would have to be Eddie Murphy to get away with that.
  

The Real Reason Atheists Have Higher IQs

Is atheism a sign of intelligence? 

Recent posts have proposed convoluted theories accounting for why atheists score higher on IQ tests than religious people. There is a much simpler explanation. Like a lot of correlations of this type, it is probably less exciting than it appears.
Atheists are probably more intelligent than religious people because they benefit from many social conditions that happen to be correlated with loss of religious belief. When one looks at this phenomenon from the point of view of comparisons between countries, it is not hard to figure out possible reasons that more intelligent countries have more atheists as Richard Lynn (2009) reported.

Why Atheism Will Replace Religion

Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. Atheism is thus a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Why do modern conditions produce atheism?

First, as to the distribution of atheism in the world, a clear pattern can be discerned. In sub-Saharan Africa there is almost no atheism (Zuckerman, 2007). Belief in God declines in more developed countries and is concentrated in Europe in countries such as Sweden (64% nonbelievers), Denmark (48%), France (44%) and Germany (42%). In contrast, the incidence of atheism in most sub-Saharan countries is below 1%.

From minister to atheist.

Teresa MacBain tells us her story on CNN.

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God - a Primitive Superman.

Believers widely portray their god as an all-powerful, all-wise, transcendent and perfect,spiritual being. I contend that modern theologians have reconfigured god from the Bible authors’ original crude conceptions of god as a rather fallible, uber-human with superpowers.

By “uber-human,” I mean a being that is basically human in terms of psychology and emotions, yet possessed of greater intelligence and power. This is how modern humans have usually imagined comic book superheroes. That is, they are generally built on a basic human physical and psychological plan, but with accessory super powers, like Superman and Spiderman.

Surely, the Bible authors thought god and man were very much alike, as attested by Genesis 9:6, “. . . for in the image of God made he man.” For evidence I offer the inclusion of anger in the Biblical conception of god, and the fact that Bible-god occasionally changes his mind about things. Obviously, a “perfect” spirit being does not get angry, nor does he change his mind (or whatever passes for “mind” in a spirit).

Anger has been aptly described as a reaction to a perceived threat to ourselves, our loved ones, our property, our self-image, or some part of our identity. If a being is perfect and all-powerful, then how or why would it feel threatened by anything? This only makes sense if that being was somehow unsure of itself; that is, was less than perfect.

Indeed, there are many Biblical passages which attest to this unsureness, this anger. In Job 38, god upbraids Job for questioning god’s foul treatment of him. This harangue goes on for 71 verses about what business has Job got judging god? He asks, was Job there when he laid the foundations of the earth? “Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?” “Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?” God goes on like this for dozens of examples. I mean, god is seriously pissed off and there is no mistaking it.

The scene with Job is not exceptional; the Bible is full of episodes describing an angry god. In fact, one of the most frequently used words in the Bible is “wrath,” and it is almost always used in connection with god. According to one online dictionary, wrath means, “strong vengeful anger or indignation.”

Anger is a very human emotion, and the Bible’s primitive authors gave their god a very full measure of it. Jesus was quite clear about how we humans should respond to that angry god when he said, "fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matt. 10:28)

But, Bible-god is not just human-like in his anger, he is also human-like in his propensity to change his mind from time to time. Now a perfect spirit being, it would seem, would get things right the first time, and would not be changing its mind. But that would not be an accurate description of Bible-god.

In Exodus 32, the Israelites create a golden calf and god gets angry: “. . . Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them . . .” But Moses pleads with god, reminding him of his promises to the people, and warning him of how the Egyptians will interpret his actions, and god relents – changes his mind: “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. “ Isn’t it apparent in this story that god was unsure of himself; that Moses showed superior reason in convincing god what he should do?

A similar story is found in Genesis 6: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”

Here, god repents creating man and beast. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, “repent” in this context means: (2a) to feel regret or contrition, or (2b) to change one’s mind. So, according to the Bible, god decides he made a mistake in creating humans and changes his mind about keeping them around (except for Noah and family).

Does this sound like a “perfect” being, an all-wise, creative spirit entity? Or does it sound like an angry man with super powers? Does this sound like an omniscient being who knows the future, as modern theologians describe god?

I have searched several Christian apologetics sites to learn how modern Christians explain how god can know the future, on the one hand, yet change his mind, on the other. In researching this subject, and thinking about it, it appears to me that the “explanations” all fall into one of three broad types:

1. The naive, or special-pleading explanation (God can do anything).
2. The Bible doesn’t really mean what it says.
3. The Bible was just made up by many primitive authors and never checked for consistency.

If we were to go with (1), we would be throwing out the rules of logic which have led us out of the caves and into modern societies of relative abundance. After all, god cannot construct a four-sided triangle, nor can he simultaneously “be” and “not be.”

“Explanation” (2) includes too many apologetic “escapes” to even summarize here, but they generally involve disputes concerning translation and convoluted pretzel-logic. For any of them to make sense, we would have to redefine many of the common words we all have been using all of our lives.

Which brings us to my own favorite, number (3). That the authors of the Bible were superstitious primitives should really be beyond dispute. These men included a whole host of imaginary characters in their texts including witches, wizards, sorcerers, demons, ghosts, giants, spirits, angels, dragons and unicorns. These were men who believed disease was caused by demons (Matt. 8:14-16); men who didn’t know where the sun went at night.

And, clearly, the Bible was never checked for internal consistency. When it comes to the “Good Book,” as ye seek, so shall ye find is a truism. It is not all that difficult to find a passage which defends virtually any claim you wish to put forth. If you need a passage to show that god is loving and compassionate, it’s in the Bible. If you want to show god is hateful and cold, that’s in there, too. If you need to show god is patient, it’s there. If you want to show he is quick to anger and punish, that’s there, too. Isn’t it interesting that Bible-god is so much like us?

The Bible was written by dozens of different authors over hundreds of years, so it’s not surprising that their conceptions of god varied and were sometimes even contradictory. When the Bible canon was established by vote, long after the various texts were written, no one bothered to ensure consistency among its parts, and this is how we can be certain that no god oversaw its authorship. It was quite obviously written by many independent and very imaginative men.

Now, modern theologians tell us that god is an extraordinarily esoteric entity; perhaps, “. . . a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence,” (Karen Armstrong), or, not a being at all, but the ground of all being (David Hart). But such explanations are no more than wishful thinking; they do not correlate at all with the descriptions of the Bible’s authors. “Symbols” don’t get angry or change their minds, nor does “pure being.” These apologists are fighting a rear-guard action here; they know that the god described in the Bible bears no resemblance to their descriptions, but they still want to believe and have you believe.

Those primitive authors who wrote the Bible were quite transparent in their depictions of god. Theirs was a crude god of very human characteristics, like anger and indecision; an uber-human, a primitive’s conception of a comic book superhero. If you’re looking for a perfect, transcendent spirit, you won’t find it in the Bible. For that, you’ll have to consult the modern apologists. And this tells me that we shouldn’t take the god of those ancients any more seriously than we take Marvel Comics superheroes - and the same goes for the gods of those more modern myth makers.