Lots of people pray every day, they pray to end world hunger, cure disease, save lives – let me ask you this, if prayer was so effective, why isn’t it seen to work more?

You believe in the Christian God so I will refute this very quickly using the Bible – in Luke 11:9-10 and John 16:23-24 it promises that if you pray to God in Jesus’ name your prayer WILL be answered.

Now if this was the case, Christians across the planet would be changing it before our very eyes, God would be bending reality left, right and centre in order to fulfil that promise.

Yet this does not happen does it? I find it utterly staggering why more and more Christians are not left feeling incredibly cheated on this front – there is a promise in your book which you think contains wisdom, you accept it’s teachings and yet you can carry on praying til the moon turns an amusing shade of purple but nothing will happen for you or to the moon, reality will not change no matter how much you want it to.

Don’t believe me? Put it to the test, you have been promised it will work – report back when you finally realise how much you have been lied to.

Posted: January 12th 2011

See all questions answered by Philip

Dear Lord.

Please grant me the gift of believing something that I desperately want to be true despite the lack of evidence for it.

Sorry, it didn’t work… Wait, something is happening…

I now believe I am irresistable to beautiful women. Thank you for your tip. It certainly worked better than the years of praying I did while I was a christian.

Posted: January 8th 2011

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Dear Jesus Christ, the sole ruler of the Universe, who is somehow the Son of Himself:

Please send me notification by registered mail after you have completed a tax-free transaction of $17billion to a Swiss bank with my name and credentials. I promise I will use over 70% of this money for charitable causes to help fight the spread of disease in poverty-stricken countries and to feed the homeless and hungry in my home country and abroad. I know this is a difficult task for You since the Swiss bank associates You will have to communicate with are unlikely to believe in Your existence, but my faith in your ability to accomplish this task is bolstered by St. Paul of Tarsus’ letter to the Philippians where he says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (4:13)” Surely this implies that, since You can strengthen mortals to do all things, You can do all things Yourself in a much more efficient manner.

As my mortal life is much shorter than a blink of Your eternal eye, I must insist that this transaction occur within the 2011 calendar year so that I may begin my work to make this planet safer for Your children and so that I may spread the word about my generous, all-loving Benefactor.

This is the only way you can convince me that You are real, and I assure you that my loyalty and dedication are worthwhile things to buy. Not only will I dedicate my life to philanthropy in Your name, but I will use every available opportunity subsequent to the receipt of our transaction to loudly evangelize for You and for the church of Your choosing.

Amen,
John Reed Braden

This prayer contains information that is considered to be sensitive or confidential and may not be forwarded or disclosed to any other supernatural being without the permission of the sender. If you have received this prayer in error, please notify me immediately so that I can correct the error and rescind the original prayer. Thank you.

——

I will let everyone know the results of my experiment soon.

Posted: January 5th 2011

See all questions answered by Reed Braden

I spent 24 years of my life on my knees praying to the air. I will spend the rest of my life standing tall to face reality.

Posted: December 10th 2010

See all questions answered by Mike the Infidel

Why not try thinking? You might start by considering the question of faith. If your god proved he existed by answering prayers, who would need faith? If he didn’t, why believe in him in the fist place? It’s quite a conundrum. Thinking has taken humanity ever so much farther than praying ever has. Why not try it? If you don’t think for yourself, there will always be lots of people around who are willing to do it for you, and they mostly don’t have your best interests at heart.

Posted: December 10th 2010

See all questions answered by Blaise

The very act of praying is not humble. After all, despite your groveling, you are expecting that the most important entity in the universe will lend you an ear.

In the last year, I have prayed to Zeus and to Allah. Both of my prayers have been answered. The good news, however, is that I am not gullible enough to mistake good luck for the existence of both Zeus and Allah or regard the possible surrendering to such naivety as a gift.

In addition, I spent ten years of my early life praying to the Christian god to no avail, with my never feeling a spark of faith or a prayer answered despite my sincerity. This learned habit was so ingrained that up to about ten years ago I found myself impeaching god (amidst my own laughter) when I had some big problem. I gradually unlearned the habit when every time I would beseech god I realize that all that meant was that I was recognizing that there was a problem to either solve or accept.

Will you pray for us every day for the rest of your life? Or is your praying potent enough to be an one-shot-deal? If it is so potent, then why not say one really inspired prayer for everybody just once? If you are going to pray for us for the rest of your life, will you know when some of us are dead and you can stop praying? Or is this praying just a cheap sweet— misguided, meaningless, passive-aggressive, unasked-for, and ritualistic kindness—its wrapper soiled from being so readily dispensed while simply satisfying your own rotting sweet tooth?

Your saying that you will pray for us shows that you have run out of arguments to present your faith case, and all that is remaining is to tell us to take a leap of faith as if faith is such a desperately desirable thing that caution and uncommon sense should be thrown to the wind. What part of religious faith is a vice that you do not understand?

Your question is reminiscent of the dialogue from a recent TV show. A religious patient and his wife insisted that all the medical staff around his bed join hands in prayer. When they resisted, the wife said, I see you are not in the habit of praying. I say to you, I see you have embraced the irrational habit of praying.

Why don’t you just for a few moments, humbly accept you have no evidence to believe in your god while identifying your faith as a load of wishful thinking and subjective feelings? Or is such free thinking not encouraged in your religious neck of the woods? Atheists have no problem, we can try our hand at praying anytime we want. Zeus and Allah seems worth a go from my experience, while the Christian god is a deadbeat. Tomorrow I think I will pray to Joe Pesci, George Carlin’s recommendation.

Posted: December 9th 2010

See all questions answered by logicel

This type of “question” is mildly amusing because it carries the suggestion that atheists just don’t “get” it, or that we’re missing something obvious. However, one thing that you don’t seem to get is the power of self-suggestion: the way people can use their own thoughts to warp their own reality.

You can wish for something so much that the wish appears to be self-fulfilling, at least within the confines of your skull. I clearly remember an incident at school, when I badly wanted out of a particular class: by wishing I was sick, I actually made myself nauseous, and the teacher took one look at my face and sent me out to the sick room to lie down.

So, as a rule, I do not trust my feelings on any important matter such as this. I know that I have the ability to fool myself, if I want it badly enough. I could conceivably turn myself in to a believer, just by wanting it badly enough – but none of it means anything in the real world. Wishes and beliefs are simply not enough.

Posted: December 8th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson

Firstly, I was a deeply committed Christian for 7 years. I know what it’s like to have faith, and I know what it’s like to pray and feel convinced that my prayer will be answered. I even know what it’s like to convince myself that my prayer has been answered. Sorry, it won’t wash any more.

You also have to understand something very fundamental about honesty. Why would any of us actively try to believe in something that we in fact don’t believe in? If, as I firmly believe (since there is no evidence for them), there are no gods, I cannot possibly want to believe in one, because to want to believe in a god when in fact I do not would require me to actively want to deceive myself. I rejected Christianity precisely because I wasn’t prepared to deceive myself any longer.

Not only do I not believe in your god, I am actively glad to have left behind such a silly and monstrous belief. I was very happy as a Christian, and certainly hadn’t been looking for reasons to give up my faith – but doing so (much to my surprise) felt like coming up for air and being able to breathe freely again. Only a sense of loss could lead someone to try to regain a faith they once had: I have no sense of loss, only gain. If proper evidence were ever provided for the existence of your god I would of course have to accept it and adjust my assessment accordingly – but I certainly wouldn’t see anything to rejoice about in the discovery.

Why don’t you offer a humble prayer to Krishna? Or worship your ancestors? Or the Goddess of the pagans? I’m guessing it’s because you don’t believe in them and, because you don’t believe in them, you would consider it a gross waste of your time and intelligence, as well as insulting to your integrity, to go through such an empty and pointless ritual. Well, that’s exactly how I feel about the idea of praying to the Christian god – or indeed, any other.

Finally, your question presupposes that the kind of inner feelings we might get after prayer (or at other times) are reliable guides to external reality. Just a little bit of research into how the human brain works will suffice to show you why that is simply not the case. I recommend Kluge, by Gary Marcus. It’s very readable and accessible, and will show you very clearly why thinking you can arrive at a knowledge of reality on the basis of your inner convictions is the ultimate folly.

Posted: December 8th 2010

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby

I did, many times, firstly off my own bat while I still thought I had some faith and later at the direct requests of several independent evangelicals I met online. I was as sincere as I could be, and nothing happened. So, what does that mean?

Posted: December 7th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX

Why not try astrology?

There’s too much woo in the world to rule out each example personally. Besides, I’ve seen plenty of evidence that intercessory prayer doesn’t work.

Posted: December 7th 2010

See all questions answered by George Locke