Does Prayer Really Work? Does God Even Care?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Look at who does most work for charity. Prayer stimulates concern for others, and action fir others. Even people like Richard Dawkins have said that atheists need to find a way if galvanising themselves to do charitable work in the way theists do. And to be fair to RD he has made a serious effort in that direction.

There are just as many, if not more, secular charities than religious ones, though.

MSF, Oxfam, green peace, amnesty, water aid, save the children, UNICEF, fair trade, Friends of the earth, CND and so on. Indeed the list is almost endless.

Now naturally a lot of the people involved in those charities will be religious, but equally a lot of them won't be.

I don't think its fair to automatically presume that people with a religion by default 'give' more to charity than those who don't. A lot of religious charities act in a very sectarian and sometimes downright nefarious way in their activities. I'm thinking of Islamic relief who rarely have donation drives in countries where money is needed by whose populations tend not to have a Muslim demographic. This is one of the reAons why I never give to a religious charity and only lend my monetary or physical support to secular ones (currently acorns in England).

My circle of friends has very few theists, but many of them have done a lot for charity, as have I. So anecdotally I don't recognise your claim.