Atheists Pray! (According to Christians)

[robvalue]

Prayer is one of the most ridiculous facets of religion in my opinion. I've tried getting an answer about what exactly people hope to achieve, but it seems even the people doing it don't actually know.

If God has the best intentions and the best plan for all of us, why are you asking him to alter it in any way? Do you know better than God?

If you're never actually asking him to alter his plan, but you are asking for some kind of change, then you must be praying for the free will of others to be bent to your request or something. Or just talking to yourself, to alter your own attitudes.

If you're not requesting any change at all, what are you doing? Massaging his ego while just saying what you hope will happen? Why would you hope it would be anything different from what God plans?

If anyone has an answer to this conundrum I'd be interested to hear it.

Anyhow! An atheist can do whatever they want. They can say they are praying, although obviously if they claim they are actually talking to a god then they are contradicting themselves. They could pray to themselves, to the universe, to ghosts, or whatever. Being atheist doesn't preclude any other kind of woo beliefs.

Pretending to pray out of respect is really weird... weird if they know you are an atheist anyway. If not, I suppose I could see going along with it for a quiet life as a strategy until you get out of the situation. Not something I'd do, but there's no atheist manifesto, if you want to pretend to pray you are free to do so!

By enlarge, I'd say most atheists wouldn't pray to anything, because they tend to otherwise reject woo and would realize they are just talking to themselves. I do talk to myself however, out loud sometimes (when I'm alone of course!) but I wouldn't call it praying. I find it a useful technique for sorting through my thoughts.