During my earlier phases of being an atheist I had conversations with Christian friends about my disbelief in prayers. I argued that there has already been scientific studies conducted proving the statistical failure rate of prayers based primarily on the outrageous claims of the Bible. I also mentioned that I while it doesn’t offend me when people say, “Tek, I’ll pray for you...” for me it’s nothing more than someone saying, “I’ll be thinking of you”. And to a certain extent, I can appreciate that.
But what drives me nuts sometimes is that people attribute coincidences to answered prayers and worse they feel a false sense of accomplishment that they had a hand in fulfilling requests because they talked to God in someone’s behalf. I had a friend actually tell me that it’s too much of a coincidence, apparently missing the fact that unlike God, coincidences do exist and that occurrences of coincidences are actually more plausible than granted requests from an invisible personal friend and saviour (or his dad).
Isn’t praying just talking to yourself (or to an invisible personal friend and saviour or his dad) or at the very least to put it more sanely, “self meditation”? Because what happens when you pray especially in times of trouble? Ok, so let’s say you are late for an important business meeting and you can’t find your car keys (oh yes, the classic lost car key analogy). You looked everywhere you thought you’d find it but still can’t. You start to sweat bullets because you know your boss is going to chew on your ass for being tardy again for the third time in a row. You then start to pray to God to help you find your keys so you won’t be late. You start to calm down. You realize you probably left it in your other pants and threw them in the dirty hamper. You rummage through the laundry and found the keys! Viola, answered prayer! Or is it?
Never mind that you think you are that special to your God that he ignored all the suffering in the world to take the time help you find your car keys. But was it not also too much of a coincidence that after praying you placed yourself in a less panic stricken state of mind and was able to compose yourself momentarily to trace back your steps on where you might have left your keys? If you want to categorize that as an answered prayer ok, but dude, I think you are giving yourself less credit than you deserve.
People get sick, they go to the hospital, they get prayed for, they heal, answered prayer! Natural disasters happen, people pray for help, rescuers and volunteer groups respond to assist fellow humans in need, answered prayer! Jessica Alba gets a flat tire, she goes out of her car and prays for road assistance, dozens of eager young men line up to help, answered prayer! (ok, maybe that last one was more of a consequence rather than a coincidence, hehehe).
When bad things happen, Christians pray that God makes things better. When things do get better it’s never a coincidence. It’s an answered prayer. God fixed the problem he allowed in the first place, and for what, so that he can be glorified in the end. How screwed up is that?
I think that deserves a second stab: God knew something was going to get screwed up. He allows it to get screwed up. You pray that he unscrews it. He eventually does so that you can thank him later for unscrewing what he freakin' screwed up in the first place!
Let’s pretend for a moment that there is a God who is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, all loving and he created us all making him the father and us his children.
As a parent myself, if my eight year old daughter for instance falls down I won’t just blankly stare at her and wait until she cries out for help. I will stop whatever it is I am doing and run to her aid because I would never want my child to get hurt or to suffer needlessly. I would want my daughter to be strong and independent, but if I am aware that harm will befall her, I will do everything in my power to intervene simply because I love her too much. As a parent, she need not ask for help that will always be readily available.
If it’s still hard to accept that answered prayers are mere coincidences, at least think about this, why does it seem that God has no initiative that we have to get his attention through prayer?
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