I'm often a little stumped by the urge of religious people to pray for others, especially in times of need or tragedy. I understand that in their mind it comes from a positive place. They believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god who listens to prayers and intercedes in the world on behalf the faithful. Sounds fair enough except that there is absolutely no independently verifiable evidence of the efficacy of prayer. To an atheist, the belief of religious people in prayer goes beyond quaint into the realms of incredulity.
If god is good, all-powerful, and listens attentively to the prayers of his acolytes, why on earth are so many religious people's prayers so obviously not answered? Why is a world full of ardently praying people so painfully full of suffering? The convoluted answers provided in response to this question would be laughable if they didn't demonstrate such a frightening absence of critical reasoning. Prayers are quite clearly not answered - the single best piece of evidence against the existence of the Christian god that I believe exists.
So how then should one respond when an apparently well-meaning person offers to pray for you? Be grateful for their concern and good intent? Laugh at their stupidity? Wonder at the power of 20 centuries of indoctrination? Try to demonstrate to them the appalling weakness of their position? Or tell them to bugger off and leave you alone?
I recently had reason to consider my approach to this, when a lady who happened to hear in hospital that our newborn son had been diagnosed with spina bifida (fortunately a mild case, diagnosed and managed by the wonders of modern science) offered to pray for us. My wife, immensely distressed, treated the offer for what it was - an unwanted intrusion into our private space. The lady was on the receiving end of a vicious put-down - far better than I would've managed under the circumstances. Her, and my view was that while praying to her chosen fairy of love, she should ask him what kind of a vicious, torturing, uncaring, hateful imaginary friend would create a disease as traumatic and painful as spina bifida and then randomly inflict it on innocent newborn children. If I were able to get in contact with a fairy-god that behaved like that, I'd kick the torturing bastard in the nuts (all monotheistic religions have male overlords; I wonder, by the way, how the 50% of congregants who are female feel about that).
My response is somewhat moderated in the case of religious friends. Their offers come from a general personal concern. At some point I'm going to have to explain to them how little respect I have for their worldview, but not yet. For the moment, I am going to accept the warmth and caring of the offer and ignore how ridiculous it is. Is that a copout? Probably. But I am not prepared to alienate virtually every person I know in this intellectual and cultural backwater because the impact will run beyond me to my wife and kids and I am not prepared to do that to them.
But next time some stranger offers to pray for some innocent child, I'll be sure to ask them why their imaginary friend saw fit to punish the kid in the first place.
And if they offer to pray for me, I'll have to tell them not to waste their breath. If there was a hell, I'd be headed there out of choice. At least the devil does what it says on the box - torture, pain, suffering. I'll take that over a fairy-god of love that created spina bifida any day.
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