Prayer...Again

1. Do I care if you pray? - No
2. Do I care if you pray for me? - No, although it depends somewhat on what you are praying to happen to me
3. Do I think anything bad will happen because you are praying - No
4. Do I think prayer is effective - Also NO

And I'm defining prayer specifically as someone asking the deity of their choice to perform some action on their behalf. I realize that there are other definitions of prayer, but I am not addressing those in this post. I also realize that some people maintain that prayer for something is not "true" prayer. Okay, you're welcome to hold that opinion, but millions believe that it is. 

I'm also defining "effective" for the purpose of this post, as "getting the results that were asked for in all particulars". Notice that I am not using the term "answered prayer", since so many people, when confronted with not getting the results that they asked for, trot out "the prayer was answered, the answer was no", which I believe is a cop-out. I'm also including "in all particulars". Because if you're dealing with an omnipotent entity, why would you get the job that you prayed for but not the pay rate that you needed? 

The reason that I do not believe that prayer (as defined above) is effective is that, when observed objectively, the positive results do not appear any more often than one would expect without prayer. True, anyone can point to specific incidents where the result equaled the prayer, perhaps even as I specified, in all particulars, but how often does this happen? What percentage? How often is the result disastrously different than what was prayed for? No one really knows, because people who believe in the effectiveness of prayer don't keep track, while those who don't, don't pray! As a skeptic however, I can come up with numerous examples of people who I know prayed for certain outcomes and unequivocally did not receive what they prayed for, or received part of what they prayed for. It's not effective if it doesn't work all the time, so even a handful of negative examples should indicate its non-effectiveness. 

Confirmation bias is something that we all are subject to. It's the tendency to remember, or even simply notice, the things that confirm our preconceived beliefs, while ignoring or explaining away those things that are at odds with those beliefs. We see this in politics all the time, we give credence to the news stories that bolster our position; everything else is fake news. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in religious beliefs. People pray for years for certain outcomes and come up empty, yet they still believe. 

In the beginning of this post I listed a few things about prayer that I didn't have a problem with, however there are a few things where do have a problem. One is the self-righteous crowing from certain quarters when they survive a natural disaster, a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or even a medical condition. It's kind of humble-bragging, look at me, I survived because my deity loves me so much, as if everyone else in town who died in the floods, or lost their homes in the tornado, or died a gruesome and painful death was unloved or somehow skipped praying. Either praying is ineffective or your deity is an asshole. 

The other issue I have is when people pray for me to change some part of my life, such as my religion (or lack of it). My beliefs are as valid as yours and as worthy of respect, don't pray for me to change into what you think will get me into Heaven or deliver me from Hell, doing so shows an utter lack of respect for who I am. Stop it!

So other than that last thing, pray away, I won't be offended, I won't judge you, and unless you ask me what I think about it, I won't even talk to you about it. In fact, if you didn't want to hear my thoughts you probably wouldn't have gotten this far, or even clicked on the link!