Prayer Requests Don't Make Sense

Being from Kentucky and especially the most religious part of the state, the Appalachians, my daily Facebook Friends feed is almost never void of someone from back home posting a status contained with a prayer request for them, a family member(s), or a friend.  I am going to run down why this confuses me to no end.

Many of the prayer requests on Facebook are for someone’s family member that is in seriously ill health or someone who is going through an illness or injury which can be solved usually by medical intervention.  I have honestly read statuses from people on Facebook that read something like these examples:

Example 1: “Everyone I want you to pray for me because I’m still coughing and blowing my nose and the Dayquil can only help me so much.”

Example 2: “I am asking for prayers for my great-aunt to get better, she is 83, and her health has been getting worse the past year and the doctors are saying she has maybe 3-6 months left.”

Now, I will say that I can understand the emotional state that would put someone into the mindset of wanting God to intervene to help someone in poor health especially someone that is close and dear to you. Yet, these two examples bring up a few questions:

Question 1:  If the person in example 1 gets better the next day, was it because the prayers worked or because the medicine plus the body’s own natural defense mechanisms made them better?

Question 2:   Which one can we actually verify from an outsider’s perspective worked the prayer or the medicine?  Does anyone remember this study that tried to research such a thing?
http://www.templeton.org/pdfs/articles/060331Houston_Chronicle_AP.pdf

Question 3:  When in human history has God intervened and let someone live beyond what medical science predicts (other than the bible)?

Question 4:  In example 2, the great-aunt is 83.  If her health has been in decline for a year, and she has already seen a physician and/or a specialist, what else can be done?

Question 5:  Let’s say that her health improves tremendously over the next month and she lives another ten years.  Does that mean the prayers worked and were the doctors wrong in their initial prediction?  Or were they just making an educated guess based on what they’ve seen and other patients with a similar affliction?

Question 6:  I have seen statuses in example 2, and then it ends up where the great-aunt dies within the 3-6 months predicted by the doctors.  If God answered the prayer for the great-aunt to live longer, why would God intervene for some people’s prayer requests and not others? It seems sort of like God is picking which requests to grant and which ones to ignore.  If all else is equal, then why make some suffer the pain of losing their relative in less than 6 months while the others get that relative alive for another ten years?  Seems unfair to me.

Question 7: Why did these people seek real medical attention in the first place if prayer supposedly works?  If you are taking medicine or seeing a doctor first, then you ask for prayers on Facebook then aren’t you really telling us that you trusted medicine (based on scientific knowledge) instead of having faith you’d get better to begin with?  What does that say about the majority of people who are religious but use modern medicine to get better when they are sick or hurt?  Jesus supposedly cured worse things during his lifetime and modern medicine didn’t exist then.  So, if you are exalting the power of Jesus every week, then why do Christians go to modern medicine first? 



Now that’s the first type of prayer request(s) that I see on Facebook.  The second type is similar, but it brings up another different set of questions.  This type of prayer request is the “silent” prayer request.

The silent prayer request is one that I remember hearing in different churches when I was a kid.  The pastor would collect prayer requests either throughout the week in a notebook or at the beginning or end of the service on index cards or verbally.  Some of them would be specific to certain people and their loved ones and others would be a “silent request”.  A request where we, as the parishioners, who had heard this, were to pray for something by someone in the congregation.  As you are probably noticing now, this brings up some very interesting paradoxes, which I will go into in the next couple of paragraphs.

First, why are we being told that there is a silent prayer request from someone in the congregation?  If it’s a “silent” prayer request, shouldn’t it be just that, silent?  I know it’s a bit nitpicky, but it is sort of relevant because it plays into the next thing.

Second, if we don’t know what the request is for but we know whom wants the prayers, then most Christians are going to pray something along these lines, “Lord, it’s me, Frank.  Please grant Kelly her silent request, Lord. I don’t know what it is, but she seems really upset and she is really sincere in her faith, Lord, and I want you to give her what she needs at this time, Lord. In Jesus name, Amen.” 
Now, let’s propose that what Kelly wants is for Frank to die in a car accident after the service or that her gay teenage son gets  beat up viciously by bullies at school show him that being gay is sinful because she can‘t convince her son otherwise.  I know these are silent prayer requests that people rarely ever have but I’m sure in all the history of silent prayer requests there have been a few horrific ones requested. Why would anyone, Christian or not, pray for someone to have someone else’s silent prayer request fulfilled then?  The request could be for someone to be harmed.  You’re best bet is not praying at all in that situation.

A lot of Christians would respond that God wouldn’t intervene to make such a horrible request happen.  Well, if you take the bible as God’s word and actions, then the story of Jepthah sacrificing his daughter to God in order to win the war against the enemy seems to contradict this.  The Wikipedia article on Jepthah is here: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jephthah

After having read apologetics on this story, even if he didn’t actually sacrifice his daughter and actually put her in solitary confinement or made her stay a virgin her entire life, then tell me how that is still moral.

So, whenever someone asks me to pray for them (especially on Facebook), I usually read through the resulting comments of responders saying they are praying for that person.  Which are really just a bunch of people humblebragging, when in reality the prayers won’t work and want to get their pat on the back for doing nothing of demonstrable worth.  I usually offer something tangible.  So, I leave it to the words of comedian Hannibal Burress, who encompasses this whole post much better than I could:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feXnZZ2o5ys

What happened to you?

Ask any atheist out there, whether they were raised religious or not, if they’ve been asked this question, or something like it, from a religious person:  “What happened to you?” 
I have read enough atheist bloggers and read enough atheist themed books to know that almost every atheist gets asked this question from the religious.  As if there was some sort of traumatic thing that happened that made that person not believe in God, or as the believer phrases it more often, “What happened that made you so angry at God?”

If this post is read by a religious person, I can tell you that for almost every atheist I have met they will tell you there wasn’t something bad or traumatic that happened to make them stop believing.  There isn’t one single event that leads a believer to doubt.  In a lot of the atheists’ experiences I’ve met, it was usually a conglomeration of many, many smaller events (most of them pretty uneventful on their own) and many conversations that lead atheists to conclude that the scientific contradictions and the ethics of the god(s) and the characters presented in many holy books aren’t the best cases for morality that can be made in society.  It’s not a decision that is taken lightly.  There are many doubts that lead a person to stop believing in nonsense.

Yet, the main impetus for this post is that I was recently in a conversation with two very religious Christians.  One of them said he found Jesus after he was arrested and put in jail for a little while and another after the death of a spouse.  So, is that in essence, “what happened” to them for them become as devoutly religious as they are?  I find that there is a certain pattern like this for a sizable portion of the very religious out there.  I am excluding those who were raised in faith and are still in it.  They find solace in religion after something bad happens to them: a drug addiction, an arrest, a death of someone close to them, their own impending death either through a serious illness or accident or being sentenced to death.  Side note: Christians love to throw around the conversion stories of demented criminals who were saved right before being executed.  I still don’t understand that one, by the way.  Ted Bundy apparently converted to Christianity on his death bed when he was executed.   What if Hinduism is the correct religion?  He threw his support behind the wrong god! He’s doubly screwed!  Even celebrities who get arrested for very serious crimes and sentenced to jail terms somehow find Jesus and then they are suddenly given all this undeserved outpouring of support.  Converting to Christianity in the USA is somehow equated with being given a new lease on life, when more often than not it’s a smoke screen to hide what never really went away, ask the Catholic Church, Ted Haggard, or any others on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_leaders_convicted_of_crimes

I think a few reasons for this phenomenon exist and I may not have all of them in mind right now, but here are a couple that stand out.

1.    Religion (especially evangelical Christianity) seeks out those who are in bad spots in life. I bet that most current Christians that I am speaking of didn’t become religious after a happy time in their lives either by accident or by choice and attempts to bridge the gap between what happened to that person and how Jesus can fix them, by telling them that they are sinners that need salvation (in the case of criminals that become religious), Or….

2.    By giving them the comfort that someone close to them who died will be in heaven waiting for the reunion (with the caveat of accepting the faith and just assuming that person is in heaven and not hell)

3.    Providing easy answers when the answers to very bad things that happen aren’t so easy.

So, I ask this to a lot of devoutly religious people (especially the ones who didn’t grow up in the church), “What happened that was so bad that made you religious?” 

See how demeaning that sounds when I ask it to the religious person?  It’s sounds just as offensive coming from me as it does coming from every religious person who asks it of atheists.  So, please religious people, stop asking this one. 

Hypocrisy in action...

Apparently another thing holding back the Catholic church holding itself back (besides the ass hats at the top of the hierarchy) from joining the rest of the secular world in the 21st century is a bunch of people afraid of losing their social status and not being part of the club.  A couple of days ago, an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal raised awareness of the plight of the status of women in the Roman Catholic church.  And showed me why it's not just the cardinals and bishops holding them back.

The article in full by Charlie White is here:
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20131208/NEWS01/312080047/Louisville-woman-ordained-priest-ceremony-meant-send-message-Catholics

Recently, the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (which has been disavowed by the Vatican) held a ceremony in the city where they ordained three local women as Roman Catholic Priests and two others from outside of the state.  The ceremony itself had over 200 attendees.  It has been the second ordination ceremony held by the group here in Louisville in the past year.   One of the goals of the organization is to show the Vatican that women can be represented equally amongst the sausage-fest Catholic priesthood and that women have a voice.  They started ordaining members over a decade ago and their membership of women priests has been slowly climbing since.  While I commend these women and others in the organization, most of whom grew up in the traditional Catholic church, challenging a very misogynistic and sexist practice in their own way.  I am upset at another group discussed only briefly in the article quoted here:

“Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville officials have said Catholics should not support or participate in events held by the association, maintaining it has no connection to the Roman Catholic Church.
Some association supporters who attended Sunday’s ceremony sat on the upper level to avoid having their photos taken because they said they would be excommunicated if they were seen at the ceremony.”

We all know that the official Catholic top level hierarchy has a level of sexism that cannot be matched anywhere else, and will vocally confirm it when asked at every opportunity.  That’s been done enough.  Who I am taking to task right now are the spineless “association supporters” who support the ordination of Catholic women priests, but are afraid to be seen publicly supporting them because that would mean they get kicked out of the special club whose authority figures disagree with them.  That sort of hypocrisy just makes me seethe with frustration.
I would love to ask some simple questions to these nameless, faceless Catholic church members who don’t want to be seen for fear of excommunication:

If excommunication is what I would get if I were a traditional Catholic seen supporting ordination of women priests, then give me excommunication.  It’s the same thing as being a Catholic who supports contraception, abortion, or gay marriage in private but afraid to show it in public because they don't want to be kicked out.  It makes no sense.  If you are so afraid of being kicked out for showing that you disagree with the church, then why would you even risk being exposed?

I understand that getting kicked out of any religious organization such as the Catholic Church could cause issues like being socially ostracized, losing friends, family members and a support network.  And the only case I could possibly understand where a Catholic person would not want to be exposed is if they are employed by the Catholic church directly.  Getting removed from your job (for doing the right thing) without a fallback is a very risky choice especially if you are raising a family, and why I support movements like The Clergy Project.
 
There’s a movie that reminds me of this whole situation.  It’s a kids’ film, but I guarantee eight year olds would get the parallel easier than these adult scaredy-cat, not willing to take a stand Catholics would.  The 1994 film Little Rascals.  In that film, the little boys have a “He-Man Woman Haters Club”, where women are not allowed in.  Alfalfa, (best friend of Spanky, founder of the club) falls for a girl named Darla and tries to play both sides.  While his friends try to sabotage his lunch date rendezvous with Darla at the clubhouse, Alfalfa unwittingly burns the clubhouse down (which is what the club deserved for not letting women join in the first place).  While Alfalfa is trying to convince Darla he isn’t part of the club anymore and also trying to convince his friends that girls aren’t all that bad, Spanky decides to make Alfalfa test loyalty to the club by guarding the club’s go-kart before the big race. (Personally, this is the point where I would’ve said ‘Screw you, asshole.’)  When Alfalfa leaves his guard post to try to make up with Darla, the go-kart gets stolen.  The friends eventually make up when Alfalfa finds out the other boys sabotaged his date.  So, Alfalfa and Spanky build a new go-kart to win the race where the prize is given to them by a famous race-car driver that Spanky adores, with the name A.J. Ferguson, who turns out to be a female which blows Spanky away.  Alfalfa gets the girl and the trophy, Spanky and the He-Man Woman Haters have a change of heart and allow women into their club.  And the entire thing would’ve never happened if the club had just accepted women in the first place.  And then it only got resolved because a club member stood up for what he knew was wrong and was willing to give up his club and friends for it. Now if a group of kindergartners can watch this movie and learn that lesson and stand up for what’s right, then why can’t these spineless Catholics who avoided being publicly photographed at a Catholic women’s ordination ceremony they obviously supported tell their Catholic elders to go screw themselves. 

How did life begin?

A big misconception amongst the religious community at large (essentially a majority without a proper education in basic biology) always throw on believers the concept that evolution is incorrect (which without the explanation of evolution by natural selection we wouldn’t have modern biology today) and ask how living things came to be if not through a deity. 
I cannot stress this next sentence enough to the religious layperson. 

EVOLUTION    IS    NOT    ABIOGENESIS

They are two separate topics in biology that essentially are filling in different parts of the timeline of how living things are the way they are now by looking at our history (evolution) and how they formed.  And in more detail how non-living materials became the first living creature (which is abiogenesis and a very hard question to answer).

Evolution (by biological definition: change over time) by natural selection explains how the simplest single-celled organism changed over time to form more complex single celled organisms, then multi-celled organisms, then multi-celled organisms of even deeper complexity.  There is a key note here:  Evolution starts off with the simplest single-celled organism as its base.  Life is existing already.  Note that it does not say how or why or very accurately when that first single celled organism formed.  Evolution has shown that favorable genes get more represented in populations over time which helps the species survive its environment better. 

Through science and especially the field of biochemistry, scientists have discovered what chemical elements and compounds make up the more complex structures in our cells and how they form the basic structures such as cell membranes, organelles, proteins, DNA, RNA, the nucleus, etc.  What isn’t known is how the chemical soup that existed on early earth (and could have come from other celestial bodies like comets and other planets) over time formed these basic organelles and structures which then in turn became the first living and replicating cell.  From the non-living pieces to living cell.  That’s abiogenesis.
 
Think of it as the origins timeline.  From the beginning of our universe, to the forming of galaxies, stars, and planets.  To the formation of our solar system: the sun and the planets.  To Earth itself and its changes in its ecosystem since it was around, to the first living cell, then on and on as described before all the way to now, highly intelligent humans that have a brain that can comprehend some of it.  Note I said some of it, not all of it.  And at each step along that timeline, there are humans asking how did this happen (and philosophers who ask the why).  The timeline itself as we know it right now is for all intents and purposes is pretty well established.  Now we are trying to figure out the how the major events played out:  Human Life and Health (genetics, medicine) back to simpler organisms such as sea creatures and plants, back to the first single celled organism all living things derive from (evolutionary study), to how did the first living cell form and replicate from non-living materials (abiogenesis), to the complex chemicals that made up those first cells and how they formed (chemical reactions), then as to how all the elements came about to even have all of what we have currently (astronomy and physics). 

Conflicting thoughts...

A couple of weeks ago a very religious co-worker of mine had a step-son pass away.  It was a motorcycle accident and of course the whole family was devastated (understandably so) and somehow my co-worker was able to come to work the two days before the funeral.  He was definitely visibly shaken and he did his job very admirably.  He is normally a quiet, reserved fellow to begin with and he does get animated and can be a lively conversationalist at times but this particular week was different (obviously).  So, I tried to keep my distance and the next week after the funeral I asked him during our shift how the funeral was.  This was his response:

"The funeral was really nice and a lot of friends and family were there.  It was quiet and nice, lots of memories and good times were shared, but there was a feeling of sadness the whole time because we all knew he wasn't saved when he died."

Which my reaction being a non-believer is one of consoling but it definitely wasn't a time to bring up my thoughts. 

Every Christian I have ever encountered who has had someone close to them pass away always puts posts on Facebook, the newspaper, and tells others that they believe said person is in heaven with God and they are with the Father even if that person wasn't saved.  It's like a cognitive dissonance to prevent yourself from thinking your loved one is in hell. Yet, my co-worker didn't.  He pretty much admitted to me that he believes his step-son is now burning in hell for eternity.  He is in a lake of fire skin roasting, being tortured in immense agonizing pain in perpetuity.  Yet, here you are back at work?  Really?  If that were my step-son or anyone close to me and that's what I believed happened to those who weren't saved I'd quit my job and literally make it my life's work to prevent people from ever having to go to hell. 

One of my biggest complaints about religion especially evangelical Christianity in particular is that 99% of adherents don't think their loved one are possibly in hell when they die.  When my uncle passed away (and believe me, the man lived almost every day with some sort of filled alcohol container near by and I'm sure pills and illegal drugs of all kinds in his system) even some family members said that he was in heaven with Jesus.  How can this be the case?  If you believe what you say you do, then when someone dies that wasn't saved don't give me the platitudes that said person is in heaven now.  Face the idea that they may be burning in a pit of eternal fire in agonizing pain.  The logic of your faith dictates this very clearly.  Because I get threatened with burning in hell on occasion as do many atheists around the world.  If you can't bring yourself to even admit that as a Christian, your unsaved loved ones are burning in hell right now then you really don't believe what the central tenet of your faith is defined by.  This is a cognitive dissonance that is very all too common amongst the faithful, replacing what your religion says with what makes you feel better even if it contradicts its own logic. 

So, if you have to convince yourself that a dead unsaved loved one is in heaven when your religion says they aren't, then accept that you might not 100% believe what you say you do.

An interesting experiment...

In honor of the Out Campaign, I was originally going to write a small version of this post as a Facebook status but it wouldn't fit.  So, here is me rambling about something that I have been thinking about when it comes to the Bible and public schools.

Throughout the past 60 years or so in the US, and more so in the past 30 there has been a push by the religious right to push for the Bible to be taught in public schools.  Even Republican politicians bring up bills to be voted on in state legislatures that would require teaching of the Bible in public school classrooms.  Separation of church and state clearly makes this illegal and rightly so.  Neil DeGrasse Tyson sums up my view on the topic:   "I don't have an issue with what you do in the church, but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they've got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. Because that's when we're going to fight."

This struck with me immediately.  Yet, digging a little deeper most atheists like myself know there's a lot more to the Bible than just what gets taught in Sunday school.  In 2010, the Pew Forum quizzed different groups with the same knowledge quiz of religious knowledge.  Atheists/agnostics scored the highest above all other religious demographics on the quiz.  While this came as little shock to the atheist/agnostic world (most people aren't born atheist/agnostic, they come to their conclusions after researching the religion they left as well as others they may have converted to or researched along the way) the mainstream media was amazed. 

Yet, I know this is going to sound a little extreme coming from the atheist guy, but what if we taught the Bible in public schools?  Now the bible can be taught in public schools as a work of literature (which most people don't know is legal) so if we teach it as such then what we should do is teach it from the beginning.  Start at Genesis 1:1 and teach a chapter a week all the way through Revelation beginning with 6th grade through 12th grade an hour a day, no skipping verses.  Let students discuss the multiple creation stories in Genesis.  Let students try to comprehend how God killed every single mother, father, teenager, baby and elderly person along with a majority of earth's plants and animals.  Shakespeare has nothing on the Bible as a book of death.  If you think Tarantino movies are bad for kids, let them watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ starting at age 3 by themselves with no adult supervision.  Then let's see which one scares them the most.

I guarantee that by the end of middle school we as a society would probably be rushing to get the bible out of society all together because our kids start learning skepticism at a young age (Santa & the Tooth Fairy, anyone).  Then why do we as a society take a young child's skepticism and start beating it out of them by the time they are old enough to drive?

Why religious displays and symbols do not belong on public property...

Around this time of year, you'll always hear of some evil, liberal atheist who is trying to get the baby Jesus Christmas display off the lawn at the county courthouse or city hall.  Then Christians come out in droves saying you're infringing on their religious freedom.  Look it up on a basic google news search, you'll find those stories are quite common.  So, from an atheist's (or any other non-Christian) perspective, here are some myths I'd like to dispel about this whole phenomenon:

1.  Atheists and church/state separation advocates aren't singling out your Christmas or Ten Commandments display to be taken off government property.  If the government puts up an overtly singular religious display on their property this is seen as an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.  This applies to any religion, not just Christianity.  Christianity is the one that gets singled out not because of its "Christianness" but because it just so happens to be the majority religion in the US and is the one most likely to be represented.  I always try to explain to my religious friends to imagine the shoe on the other foot.  If this were a Muslim religious display on government property, then Christians would be up in arms, right?  Well, guess what?  If the government allowed a religious display promoting Islam singularly on public property, then atheists would be right along side the Christians protesting.  I promise you this.  Ask any atheist, you'll get the same response.  It's the idea of all or none.  If the government chooses to display symbols of one religion on its property then it must accommodate all religions' displays.  So, let's play that out.  One day, Christians put up their display at city hall.  Then Buddhists the next day.  Then Jewish people the day after. And so on.  So for each religion that wants to be represented they would be allowed that right and government has to accommodate that.  But considering there's an abundance of different religions in the US it would seem highly impractical to accommodate tens if not hundreds of displays all at once, so the practical solution is to represent none at all (neutrality).  This is what atheists and church/state advocates are doing when they file complaints about Christian displays on government property, they aren't attacking Christianity directly they are attacking the notion that government not be in the religion promoting business.

2.  Just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's always been right.  This argument gets thrown about when someone wants the government to take down the Ten Commandments in a school that's been there for years or mangers at city hall or any other religious promotion on government property or overtly Christian prayers by government officials on taxpayer time for decades or more.  I like to counter this argument with the notion of slavery in our country.  I know its an extreme example but the basic idea applies.  In the United States, slavery was considered a social norm that almost everyone in the early years of our country supported.  Yet, today someone owning a slave in modern society is considered abhorrent even by the most staunch conservatives.  If it was a tradition for so long, then why did we get rid of it?  Because we realized as a nation that slavery was wrong.  It didn't just happen to be right for hundreds of years and then suddenly become wrong.  It was always wrong and the oppressed people had little to no power to change the status quo.  That's why as a country, in my personal opinion, some traditions are very overrated.  Also, the amount of misinformation about how long something has been a tradition isn't even known by the general populace.  The main example in this case is the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Most people age 60 and younger have been taught the pledge with the phrase "under God" since childhood.  But what about the generation before them?  They grew up in a country where the phrase "under God" in the pledge didn't exist.  "Under god" wasn't inserted into the pledge until 1954.  So, what the younger generations know as tradition now was not really a tradition at all to begin with. 

Those are the main two myths about church/state separation that I think get perpetuated and reinforced so much that there's no room for debate on these issues.  This entire post is to just educate what us Non-Christians on the other side think on this particular issue.