- I am defining "prayer" as asking "God" (or gods) to do something, provide something, or answer something, either for oneself or others
- I am aware that there is a category of prayer that involves thanks or praise, that's not the type of prayer that I am discussing
- I am also aware that some people insist that #1 is not true prayer, but #2 is. My response to this is that millions of people engage in #2 - that's what I'm talking about.
- I have no problem with other people praying. Go for it, knock yourself out, but if you're going to attempt to convince me that it "works", provide evidence
I don't know when I started praying. I know that our family were traditional church-goers and that I was taught to pray. Formulaic, ritual prayers, like "grace" before meals, scripted prayers that were part of Sunday mass and personal praying - between me and God. I don't remember if this was actually taught, or it was just something that was simply believed, but I remember believing that "sometimes the answer is 'no'" when asking God for something. I don't recall ever being told how we were supposed to know what we were allowed to ask for and what God's standards for answering prayer affirmatively were.
When I was 19 I joined a group that can easily be described as a cult (see my journey in the blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult"). They taught that when you didn't get the answer you asked for when praying, it wasn't some ephemeral "Sometimes God says no", but that it was one of two main categories. This group pointed to two verses that talked about prayer, one said that God would answer our prayers that were "according to his will". How would we know what God's will was? It was in the Bible! The other verse said that God would provide "whatsoever we asked in prayer, believing...". So, before praying, we needed to know if what we were asking for was something that God said in the Bible we could pray for, and that we had to believe; believe that the promise in the Bible was true, and believe that God would answer our prayer. What it boiled down to was that when we didn't get an answer to prayer, it wasn't some "mysterious ways", it was our own lack of faith. I subscribed to this view for many years.
Over the years I started paying attention to the results that I was receiving (or not receiving) when I prayed. It seemed like the way things were turning out had nothing to do with whether I prayed about it or not. Prayer just didn't seem to be a factor. Now this lack of results could be chalked up to me being an "unbeliever" (I prefer "disbeliever"), or that I wasn't a "real" Christian, or any other number of excuses. But I started then to look at the people around me as they talked about the things that they were praying for and the results that they were receiving and saw a pattern.
A common logical fallacy is what's called confirmation bias. This is when events that back up, or confirm our pre-existing beliefs or opinions are remembered, or even magnified or exaggerated, while those that contradict those pre-existing positions are forgotten, ignored or explained away. This was something that I observed among people whom I knew believed in the power of prayer. When things went well, when that surgery was successful, when that job came through, well, that was a "praise God" moment, but when the surgery didn't go well, or the person died, or someone else got the job, that's when the excuses and rationalizations came out. The ever-popular "Sometimes God says no" or "God knows what's best for us" or "God doesn't necessarily give us what we want, but what we need". Or sometimes, just silence.
Some of this just doesn't make sense. If God is just going to override or ignore your prayer in order to give you something better, why pray at all? If praying doesn't get you the desired result all the time, then it doesn't really work, does it? If there's a good chance that your prayer will go unanswered, it's kind of like playing the lottery.
I look at the evidence, and I see none that there is any efficacy in prayer. It doesn't work.
To expand upon a previous point, if you want to pray, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm not trying to convince you that it's a bad idea, or even that it's stupid. But if you want to try to rebut or refute what I'm saying, be prepared to offer evidence. What evidence would I accept that might change my mind that praying is effective - that it's perhaps my own stubbornness that is preventing me from seeing the light? How about a prayer log, containing every single thing that is prayed for over a year's time? Log the results, in detail. No excuses. If done honestly it would be quite illuminating....one way or another.
So that's why I don't pray.
