How to Pray Books

There is a substantial cottage industry pumping out what I call “How to Pray Books.” Clearly there are people buying these books, so I must assume they are buying them because the way they are praying isn’t working. If it were, they wouldn’t be looking for help, no?

None of these authors seem to admit the context in which prayers exist. They claim their god is all-knowing, aka omniscient, so it would already know what you are going to say/ask for. Consequently it has no need to “listen” to your prayers as it has already heard them.

Many of these same prayers claim that this god has a plan for each and every one of us, so a prayer asking for change would be asking for this perfect god’s perfect plan to be changed … to something not perfect? Why would that be an option?

I must assume that all of these “How to Pray” books have a hidden agenda, that of selling the falsehood that “prayer works, you are just doing it wrong.”

These are the same people peddling “hope,” “consolation,” and “comfort” for those under duress or bereaved. It seems they are peddling “hope” in the form of “prayers that work” and thus confirm themselves to be scam artists, despicable scam artists. They may claim they are sincere but that just puts them in the category of being deluded by other scam artists and not recognizing that they are being used to further a scam. It is understandable that all believers would like to “know a guy” (Chicago-speak for “I gotta guy who can solve your problem”), a guy who can do anything with a snap of his fingers, even impossible things. I would love to have such a buddy.

If prayer worked, I would suspect at least one of these conversations with the god would include Old Yahweh/Jesus explaining what his plan for the prayer is and why he won’t change it because they want it to. And what have we heard along these lines? Answer: <cricket, cricket, cricket>. Thousands of years and not one prayer can tell us what god’s plan is/was.

Unlike the telephone system, there are no automatic messages along the lines of “This number has been disconnected” or “This number is no longer in service.” Imagine that, our phone companies are more considerate than their god. Amazing.

Stop Saying There is No Prayer in US Schools

In the past year President Trump has vowed to restore the right to pray in public schools—indeed to “champion” such prayer as a “fundamental right.”

Done.

You see, as long as there are algebra tests (or pick the topic you struggled in most), there will be prayer in schools. What is not allowed by the Constitution is school-guided prayers. Students are free to pray silently while in class and out loud between classes and during their lunch periods. They can pray after school on school grounds, even in the middle of the night. They can come by the school grounds on weekends and summer vacations and pray all they want.

They can pray in their churches, at home, on vacation, in the mall, at Costco, virtually anywhere and everywhere, but schools cannot lead them in prayer, they have to do it on their own and isn’t that what their god intended (see Matthew 6:5-13)?

What is not allowed is school-lead prayers, because the school would need to pick a prayer based upon a religion and that has been perceived as promoting that religion. Even if the schools chose prayers from all of the myriad religions, people would be dissatisfied as parents would object to prayers to Shiva, Buddha, and Allah, etc. So, prayer is left as a personal practice, not a school practice.

And how does current policy (of no school-lead prayers) restrict anyone’s religious freedom when they all can pray in the privacy of their own minds for hours on end? And with all this time they have to pray, how is it they do not have enough prayer in their lives? Gosh, do you think this is a play for favoritism, even power by evangelical churches? Gosh, how could that be?

And Trump? Pandering to his base? No, say it isn’t so!

The Flaw in Worshipping Gods

To worship is to:

“to honor or show reverence for a divine being or supernatural power” (Merriam-Webster)

I have oft argued on this site that to worship a god demeans both the worshipper and the worshipped but I don’t think I have ever clarified this position. As to the worshipper I am reminded of Michael Palin’s satirical prayer in the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life, in which he says:

Chaplain: Let us praise God. Oh Lord…
Chaplain: Oooh you are so big…
Chaplain: So absolutely huge.
Chaplain: Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here I can tell . . . you.
Chaplain: Forgive Us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.
Chaplain: But you are so strong and, well, just so super.
Chaplain and Congregation:
Oh Lord, please don’t burn us,
Don’t grill or toast your flock,
Don’t put us on the barbecue,
Or simmer us in stock,
Don’t braise or bake or boil us,
Or stir-fry us in a wok…
Oh, please don’t lightly poach us,
Or baste us with hot fat,
Don’t fricassee or roast us,
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don’t stick thy servants Lord,
In a Rotissomat …
(This was in call and response format and I left out the responses for clarity. S)

The point here is to worship is to minimalize oneself, deprecate oneself, diminish oneself, admit to unworthiness, etc. One lowers one’s head, either slightly or to the floor, so as to acknowledge that one is lower than the entity worshipped, etc.

Even worse, what does accepting worship mean to the worshipped? Why would a god need worship or even want it? Some of my favorite SFF books involve gods struggling to maintain worshippers because their power is rooted in the numbers of followers they have. But all-powerful gods, such as the western gods have no such system in place. Their powers are not dependent upon how many followers they have or if they have followers at all.

Christians often say that their god is motivated by love, for example “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (gJohn 3:16 KJV) There are a few catches here: for one, He created the world, so He has fallen in love with his own creation? Sounds needy and narcissistic to me. For another, the everlasting life is not conditional, everyone gets it, the only concern is the locale that extra life is in, Heaven of Hell? And how does this constitute love? He makes us all live forever, some worshipping him 24-7 in Heaven and the rest getting barbecued. Sounds needy and narcissistic again. This god is so needy of worship that He creates a sentient species specifically for that purpose, but instead of earning some of that worship by doing good things for his creations, he plays this devilish game instead. He gives us free will but punishes us far beyond the severity of our shortcomings might warrant if we don’t worship Him as He feels we should. WTF?

If you, as a person, felt that people complimented you, praised you because they feared what might happen if they did not, how would you feel? Most of us would be appalled, although there are people who would relish such praise, e.g. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, et. al. And what do you think of people who do relish people being humiliated in public? So, why don’t people feel this way about these western gods? Again, are we just afraid of the consequences? Even if you don’t believe in an afterlife, there are social consequences for not sucking up to these gods, e.g. the executions of French cartoonists who published cartoons of a Muslim prophet.

Even if definitive proof of the existence of a god-like entity were to be provided tomorrow, I would not worship it. Why would I demean such an entity that way?