On the lunacy of prayer

[slartibartfast]

I get the idea of prayer being bullshit from an atheist perspective but I do not really understand the negative emotional response to other people praying or even prayer requests.

First off, I do not know any religious person who thinks prayer is a substitute for initiative. Religious people pray for guidance before deciding what to do. They request blessing for actions they commit to taking. And they ask for help after they've done all they can, as in "Its in Gods hands now."  Even from a secular perspective, these are just meditation, motivation, and hoping for the best. So what's the problem besides offending antitheist sensibilities? Or maybe the mockery makes some people feel superior.

I see nothing wrong with taking less than 2 minutes of hedging your bets when you are already open to the idea that the universe is richer than it often appears to be.

The problem is that from an Atheist's point of view there is no hedging bets. It would be like someone coming up to you, questioning why you don't believe in Santa Claus and offering to write to Santa on your behalf to put in a good word so you don't miss out on presents this year.


And it's not just offending sensibilities. Christianity stipulates that if you believe in Jesus, you will be a moral, happy, fulfilled person who will go on to live in immortality in the most wonderful place imaginable, however if you don't you won't be any of those things ie. amoral, unfulfilled and ultimately going to hell - definitely not good daughter marrying material.

On the "not substitute for initiative" part, I am sorry, but I have experienced this first hand many times. The guy who came up to me and my wife in the supermarket to pray for her arthritic knee definitely did think that his action was a substitute for initiative. So you can develop your own flavour of "prayer ethic" but the fact is that millions of Christians do pray for sick family members, and not because it causes them to take initiative but because they believe that this increases their loved ones' chance of survival.