I don’t think creationists are necessarily stupid (just ignorant, misinformed, wicked, or … but let’s not start that again), but I do make exceptions for individuals. There are some that say things I find incredibly stupid. Here’s an example.
In WWII, there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing every night at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace. This had an amazing effect as bombing stopped.
And the brave pilots of the RAF, radar, cracking of the German codes, the shipment of war material across the Atlantic, the reorganization of anti-aircraft defenses, and the morale of the British people, etc., had nothing to do with it? A one minute prayer each night is going to get credit for England’s survival in the war?
So why didn’t England just ditch the other nonsense and set up non-stop prayer brigades? They could have prayed Germany right back into the Stone Age. Oh, and weren’t the German people praying for their pilots?
There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in America.
It’s completely ineffectual, but OK, prayer vigils, community support, that kind of thing … I can see where some people might appreciate it. But wait—
If you would like to participate: Each evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (8:00 PM Central, 7:00 PM Mountain, 6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our troops, our citizens and for peace in the world.
I had no idea the safety of the US was at stake. Are we in any way comparable to England in WWII? We’re not being bombed. We’re the aggressors here. We’re the ones blasting Iraq.
Shouldn’t we be worried that the Iraqis might start praying for the safety of their country, its people, and peace? Would we stop killing them if they all got down on their knees for one minute and said “Please, God, stop!”? (I imagine many of them have done that already, and that many in the US have joined them in their prayers. They don’t seem to be working.)
Someone said if people really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless.
But then you couldn’t pray aloud anymore!
Really, that is a stupid comment on so many levels. “Someone said” is not an argument for anything, and the creationists/theists already have a grossly inflated sense of what prayer can do…and I don’t think she’s claiming that they’d be dumbfounded at the discovery of how weak it is. But that might shut them up, too.
Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have.
Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have in the war on Iraq? We’re doomed.
The only hope we have is that if the creationists are all this delusional, we may well triumph over them yet.
I suppose this was why Scotland was left in ruins.
Even as a child something about prayer struck me as creepy. Not in a supernatural sense, but more like in the way you witness behavior in a mental institution that gives you the willies. Religious media portray prayer as a supernatural form of OnStar, but because it clearly doesn’t work, why do people keep doing it?
Maybe so, but all right-minded folk know that God is a Yorkshireman, so they wouldn’t have had any effect.
Bob
Silly PZ. The Iraqis are praying to Allah, and God hates that!
PZ, are you familiar with the site “Why won’t God heal amputees?” at
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
You might enjoy browsing around there in your spare time.
Bob Spencer
I think the author is missing the point. What’s truly amazing is that prayer worked when all the others did nothing to prevent the Nazis killing millions by overrunning most of Europe, invading Russia and perpetrating the Holocaust. The only conclusion is that God must be an Englishman.
Once again, and quite earnestly, I declare that there is not enough prayer. I endorse prayer enthusiastically. People who believe in prayer should be down on their knees or prostrate on their prayer rugs invoking the deity and pelting him with their petitions. Why wave “God Hates Fags” picket signs or strap bombs to your vest when you could be praying instead? If the believers would spend more time bothering their gods instead of bothering the rest of us, it would be a much better world.
Go pray for me. Knock yourself out.
What’s truly amazing is that prayer worked
uh, Ian, you are aware of the fact that the only grant organization to ever fund scientific studies to test the effects of intercessionary prayer have either found no, or even negative, effects of said prayer, right?
if not, I would suggest you visit the Templeton Foundation’s website, and take a gander at the half dozen or so times they have tried to prove intercessionary prayer has any effect and failed to do so.
In the latest study for example, not only was there no effect of intercessionary prayer on speeding healing of surgical patients, but there was a significant DELAY in healing if the subjects knew they were being prayed for.
doesn’t speak well for wasting time praying to non-existent entities.
addendum:
I’m going to back off and now assume Ian was being sarcastic, but one can never tell these days.
forthekids (if that is your real name),
Go ahead and tell everybody on the internet about weaponized military-grade prayer: now all our enemies know our super secret strategy! Good going! It’s only a matter of time before it’s turned on us, and then we will all be doomed DOOMED I tells ya.
Sheesh.
The Many-Coloured Land SF/F series by Julian May has what I always thought was the best explanation of prayer. Within the setting of “metapsychic operants” with their psychic powers, which included telekinesis, “farsensing” and the mind-control power of “coercion”, massed prayer was described as the attempt to coerce God. Imagine hundreds of mortals all gathering together to bully God into doing what they want Him (or in this case, Her) to do. I like it!
Umm
It seems that there is a lot of very organized prayer going on in Iraq right now. Is it 5 times a day? They have towers with these prayers being broadcast all over the country. I’m going to guess that these prayers probably have something to do with protecting the people from evil and all that.
It’s not working very well.
phat
I’ve searched the web for evidence supporting this fantastic tale, and so far as I can tell, it never happened. Certainly good Britons prayed for the safety of their people, the health of their king, and the deliverance of their nation. Just as certainly Germans prayed for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland. And certainly none of their prayers had the slightest effect. Superior Allied air power in the final year of the war was what stopped the bombings.
Those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat seventh grade.
The power of prayer has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt by the English. With 12,000,000 people praying “God Save The King” (or Queen) every sunday, well, so far all the past kings and queens haven’t fared too well. Elizabeth II is hanging in there, so far, but the prayers of millions appear to have no life-prolonging power.
Let’s get this straight. If God did not wish the bombings to occur at all, surely they wouldn’t have. If God wished them to continue, surely they would have. What explains the duration of bombing? If we grant this interventionist God, then either he wished thousands of English to die, in which case the prayer had no effect, or he waited until the English fulfilled some prayer quota, in which case he clearly didn’t care much about the death and destruction. Which is worse? Which callous God is this fool begging?
PZ, you COULD conduct a very effective test of prayer right there at the University.
Select 150 students, and have 50 of them study hard, another 50 keep the work habits they currently have, and the final 50 do NO studying, but pray every night for good grades.
“In WWII, there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing every night at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace.”
Often times however, one of those men would slip in a prayer to get in the sack with that hot young gal from the typing pool and the whole thing would be shot.
What that paragraph sort of says to me is that it wasn’t just prayer. They picked the best men, figured out the best time, and said the best prayers for maximal efficacy in deity persuasion. This wasn’t just any Joe Schmoe getting down on his grubby knees and ad libbing in a generally ceilingward direction. It was combat-grade prayer. This is obviously the tactic we need for winning the War on Terror™. We need to determine God’s weak points. We need to be scientific about this.
“Someone said if people really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless.”
We could, dare we say it? Rule the world…
And by the way, the Award for Best Redundancy in a Blog Post Title Using Redundancy goes to…
Oh my. Has ForTheKids finally been tossed in the dungeon?
These types of stories really make the rounds in religious circles. If you think about these stories as memes and the believer’s brain as a good environment for these stories (they encounter no resistance, believers are happy to pass them on), then you’ll understand why these false stories spread as they do. A while back, I received an email about a storm in Iraq (2003) that stopped US troops from moving for days. They prayed that the storm would lift, and after a few days it finally let up – revealing a minefield in the path of the division. (See – God doesn’t always give us what we ask for, but He provides for what’s really important.) A little bit of digging revealed that the story was recycled many times for many different wars. Obviously, someone is inventing and rewriting these stories to make them appear as if they were real events and “renew” people’s faith through ostensibly real, but actually fictional stories.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/sandstorm.asp
and now a brief mark twain interlude:
“Ponder this -keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.”
yeah…
…from non-existent, smite-happy, disapproving, finger-wagging, omnipotent parental figures in the sky…
(quote snatched from ‘The War Prayer’)
Of course homosexual mathematician Alan Turing had nothing to do with helping to save Britain, it was prayer. He didn’t decode the Enigma machine, god did. Everyone knows that neither the military nor the government nor god would use a homosexual to save the country.
But the government did wait until after the war to charge Turing with “gross indecency”, force him to undergo hormone “treatment”, and cancel his security clearance, because, you know, such people aren’t to be trusted–unless its a dire emergency of course, but even that isn’t reason enough for Bush. I guess Britain didn’t trust Turing in the war against godless communism.
Slate Magazine a few years ago had a satirical article about Bush’s faith-based defense program.
http://www.slate.com/id/101070/nav/navoa/
“WASHINGTON–President George W. Bush announced an initiative to develop a faith-based missile defense. “For too long, military planners have been denied the use of the supernatural in attempting to protect American citizens from attack,” Bush declared today in a speech to the National Association of Amateur Submarine Captains. “There is no reason why we cannot maintain a healthy separation of church and state while still calling on divine intervention for the Pentagon budget. Faith-based missile defense will be constitutional and fully consistent with the way the Founding Fathers expected this great nation to handle ICBM threats,” the president said.
The faith-based defense would be nondenominational and designed to protect Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Wiccans, as well as Christians, officials said. (For technical reasons, it is unclear whether nonbelievers can be protected.) Pentagon sources say the system is code-named Rapture.” . . .
“President Bush also authorized the creation of an Office of Faith-Based Research and Development at the Pentagon and named evangelist James Dobson to head the project. (Lockheed Martin will provide management services.) Dobson told reporters that he envisioned moving the Defense Department beyond tanks, fighters, and aircraft carriers into an entire new generation of faith-based munitions. “Lightning and swords will be the weapons of Armageddon, so America must begin to stockpile the most lethal, technologically advanced blades and energy-bolt projectors that our science can design,” Dobson said. “Saddam Hussein isn’t working on plutonium, he is trying to develop seven-headed dragons and gigantic armored locusts. We’re going to have a little surprise ready when he tries to use them.”
Finally, here is a message for red-staters who like nothing better than to show symbolic “support” for the war. How many of the prayers have joined the army?
Funny!
Hmmmmm, seems they aren’t allowing comments without approval. Bet no negative comments get approved, since I’m sure I’m not the first to comment and none have been approved.
I’m sure some of you have seen this. I wonder what they would make of it. IIRC there was some evidence that the patients got worse when prayed for.
So that’s who Churchill was talking about when he said “never in the field of human contact has so much been owed by so many to so few”, all this time I thought he was talking about the RAF.
You all don’t grasp the meaning of this all. This can mean only one thing: The church of England is the only religion who has it right! Convert America or you prayers will only make god very mad. COnvert before it is to late.
Long live the Queen!
“We’re the ones blasting Iraq.”
No you are not. The Arabs are doing all the killing and bombing now.
“I had no idea the safety of the US was at stake. Are we in any way comparable to England in WWII? We’re not being bombed. ”
More comparable to England in the 1930s. You have been bombed a few times so far.
C’mon this is ridiculous. It is the 21st century. Everyone should just get a prayer screensaver and let their computers pray when they are on standby.
Moslems pray 5 times a day by religious rules. Christians, in the USA anyway, go to work and are too damn busy to do that. In the battle between Allah and Jehovah, we are probably outnumbered in prayer-hours per day. Must be why the invasion of Iraq isn’t going so well 4 years on.
Honestly, if I was really made in god’s image, I can tell you what he is doing right now. Holding his head in his hands and going, “what is the argument against just starting over again and getting it right next time.”
if people really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer
It is actually a sin to think one has God’s power AVAILABLE. That falls under: “Thou shalt not use My name in vain”.
I’m just delighted to see the “religious right” acknowledging that Britain did anything for itself in WWII and that we didn’t just sit around waiting for the USA to come and save the day, even if prayer is all we’re being credited with!
but there are scientific proofs that it works! ;)
It was prayers! Not Churchill’s oratory, Keith Park’s leadership, the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the young men who flew, fought and died to keep freedom and democracy from falling to the Nazis in 1940. Silly us.
What a tool. Mind, They are prone to that kind of reasoning. A colleague fell into the clutches of Opus Dei, and one week her particular O.D. friend announced that the world was about to end. It could only be saved by a weekend of prayer, fasting (and possibly mortification of the flesh, but I forget) etc. They closed the curtains, spent the weekend in prayer and come Sunday night…the world was still there large a life and (being London) twice as smelly. Therefore, prayer works.
I have definite proof that God listens to us!
Yesterday I was waiting for the bus in a blistering 30C sun. I said “God, it is warm today!”. Suddenly, an old man with a white beard passed by and replied “Yes, it is!”. Coincidence? I think not!
No you are not. The Arabs are doing all the killing and bombing now.
Go read up on what happened at Haditha and then get back to us, ‘k?
I, too, have been chasing through the stories of Winston Churchill’s life to see what it was that saved the English people. Churchill himself said it was the English people, with their grit and determination — Churchill said England was the lion, and Churchill simply had the privilege of being the roar. But I digress.
Churchill had a habit of consuming vast amounts of Scotch whiskey, starting often before noon.
If creationists everywhere would take that up, a shot of whiskey before noon, in conjunction with their prayers, the entire world will be better off — maybe sooner than we had hoped.
God won’t heal amputees because if He did, everyone would start praying to the lizard god.
“God heard the embattled nations sing and shout
‘Gott strafe England!’ and ‘God save the King!’
God this, God that, and God the other thing —
‘Good God!’ said God, ‘I’ve got my work cut out!'”
– John Collings Squire.
Sheesh. While it sounds like a legend, if true, and they had recruited many many more Prayer WarriorsTM, they might’ve prayed the UK into the stone age.
I wonder about the mor
mons – if prayer really worked (and of course they invite you to prayer when theyinvadevisit) why not skip the visit and just pray for conversion? Pinheads.Oh, and weren’t the German people praying for their pilots?
Well, duh. They were praying in German and everyone knows that God speaks English.
God doesn’t what we ask if enough ask and in the right way but only if it his will.
Apropos of the title of this post; I was referred to this post – The Idiot’s Guide to the New Atheism – the title is more revealing than the author intended….
“and the creationists/theists already have a grossly inflated sense of what prayer can do…”
How can you inflate something that isn’t there? It sound to me a bit like multiplying 0.
Why is prayer always their first resort? Have they no faith in hex signs or the evil eye?
How close-minded they are!
Here is their prayer:
Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,
Don’t let anyone bomb me.
You can read the lot from the acerbic pen of Sir John Betjeman at:
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/6203-Sir-John-Betjeman-In-Westminster-Abbey
FtK doesn’t need proof when it comes to Christian beliefs, but that’s just as well, because when she’s provided with evidence of something natural, it doesn’t convince her. I am always amazed at how much people believe that prayer has power, even though its success rate is nonexistent. I just posted about an anti-abortion group on my blog that wants a specific number of rosaries said because that number will eliminate abortion. Now, I have a very visual imagination, and I know that prayer is just as powerful as silly childrens’ songs, and I cracked myself up picturing a bunch of protestors singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” outside a clinic. . .
Just when did these prayers become effective?
Because according to my history books the last V-2 rocket to hit London was launched in March 1945.
If they started praying during the blitz in 1940 it took their magic man five years to clean the divine wax out his ears before he heard them.
“So why didn’t England just ditch the other nonsense and set up non-stop prayer brigades?”
If prayer or magic worked, the first army that set up an effective prayer/wizardry department would take over the world.
Had Napoleon or the Turks been able to simply obtain clean water at will, or to heal foot sores, that alone would have been a significant advantage over every other fighting force, given the level of losses to disease.
And that’s not even stretching to the point of praying for outright victory or smiting with plagues or casting fireballs.
While this story infuriates me, for reasons PZ has already made clear, I did find ironic humor in the sentence above.
If “people really understood” that prayer has no physical effects at all, the individuals promoting such placeboes “might be speechless” ;-)
re: Mormon missionaries: “why not skip the visit and just pray for conversion? ”
I bet if you turn them away at the door they jot your name down and later baptise you as a Mormon in absentia.
They do it for Holocaust victims, why not the living?
A meditation on the power of prayer.. Here are some stupid things I used to pray for when I was a Christian-f_ck:
– To not get caught when I did something wrong
– For report cards to get lost in the mail
– For a girl to desire to have sex with me
– For broken locks, cars, Xerox machines, etc. to magically start working
– For my brother’s soul when he listened to the secular radio station
– For someone to “bear witness to”
I got better…
Jon H, I am sure they are. The mor
mons have a fantastic geneology project going. I’m pretty sure it’s with the intent to baptise the dead,lyingclaiming greater membership. It’s never really about the truth, it’s about the power.Well, if everyone just stood around praying all the time, that would certainly put an end to all the bloodshed. It wouldn’t be because of a god answering the prayers, but because everyone would be too busy talking to themselves to do anything else. I’m afraid that’s the only way that praying can ever have any affect at all, though.
A old guy is at the back of a plane. He’s opened a door (old story, old plane, before pressurized cabins), and is periodically tossing out squares of toilet paper. A steward rushes up and tries to get him to stop. The old guy says he can’t, that it is absolutely crucial to the safety of the flight that he continue his task. The steward asks him what on earth he thinks he’s achieving by tossing little bits of toilet paper out of the back of the plane. The old guy answers that he’s keeping the flying elephants away. The steward calls him crazy. The old guy waves his hand at the horizon and says, “Do you see any flying elephants?” Says the steward, “Of course not”. Says the old guy, “So it’s working.”
#20 – the stories aren’t just recycled across time, they’re also recycled across religions. Shortly after 9/11, I saw a horribly offensive story floating around about how God had stopped alarm clocks from working, creating traffic jams, and concocted family emergencies to keep people out of the Twin Towers, out of harm’s way. Some time later, I saw the exact same story float by, only tweaked with neo-Pagan references to “the gods.”
The gods must have really hated those 3,000 people who made it to work on time.
Here’s a variation on that email. Prepare to puke at the theological egocentrism of it all.
I used to be a Christian f-ck too but I don’t know what the f-ck I was praying for because I was praying in tongues. It could have been any f-cking thing. Jesus H., I could have inadvertently destroyed all mankind!
Every entomologist knows the story of how prayer exterminated the Rocky mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus). In the late 1860’s-1870’s huge migratory swarms of locusts devastated crops all the way to the Atlantic coast. In Massachusetts there were special prayer days. . .and by 1902 the locust was extinct. North America and Antarctica now share the distinction of being the only continents without any species filling the niche of ‘migratory locust.’ Never mind the 20 year delay in effectiveness of prayer or the extermination of buffalo herds and so buffalo wallows as egg laying sites and never mind the plowing up of primary breeding grounds in riparian habitats of western Montana. . . musta been prayer.
Previous poster’s list of prayers reminds me of my favorite prayer (which is probably the most honest of the lot)
“O Lord, if you get me out of this, I swear I’ll never do it again.”
– Ray Wylie Hubbard
I’ve read a fair amount about Churchill’s life, and I’m aware of no such advisor. The one advisor in whom Churchill reposed a great deal of confidence was a scientist named Lindemans, who Churchill referred to as “Prof”, and for whom he obtained a knighthood.
53: “Well, if everyone just stood around praying all the time, that would certainly put an end to all the bloodshed. ”
In about 5 minutes someone would decide that their way is to pray through acts of violence towards the unbeliever.
“The gods must have really hated those 3,000 people who made it to work on time.”
Reminds me of The Bridge of San Luis Rey; a bridge over a high mountain pass collapses, killing several people. A local priest, assuming it was “God’s will” meting out punishment on those people, investigates their background and in the end determines there was absolutely no reason for those people to die.
(Or something, like that, it was a long time ago that I bluffed my way through that story in high school)
I can’t help but think that this was uttered by some sly atheist who figured this would go over the heads of the devout. I read this as saying “if people really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, they’d stop praying.”
I don’t understand why all you heathen evilutionists are so dead set against prayer. If you simply accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior when your mortal flesh dies your immortal soul will fly to heaven and spend eternity with James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell and D James Kennedy and… er, uh, never mind.
Uh, the first two words in the title of this post are unnecessary.
Someone said I am the Eggman, I am the Walrus. Wait, they weren’t saying that I am the Eggman and the Walrus, but that they were, but in the first person, so when I say it it, it sounds like I’m saying it, but I’m not. Then, apparently, someone (it may have been the same person) said that the Walrus was Paul. Paul is one of my middle names, so I know that that person was speaking directly to and about me. Look, the point is that can any of you so-called atheists say for certain that this isn’t true? I know it’s true because I saw a walrus in the zoo, and you can’t tell me it got there due to random chance. It’s ridiculous!
A long time ago, an Eggman fell off a wall. Won’t somebody take a stand for him?
I second that Brownian Motion
“O Lord… Ooh, You are so big… so absolutely huge. Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You. Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and… and barefaced flattery. But You’re so strong and, well, just so… super.
Amen.”
Pinky: “Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
The Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – Try to take over the world!
Now let us pray …”
Best. Episode. Ever.
“Someone said if people really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless.”
Two thoughts:
Obviously, people must not understand the power of prayer ’cause I still here them yammering.
If we were hypothetically speechless then how could we harness this awesome power since we could no longer pray.
(Ya, I know, it’s possible to pray silently but has that ever been good enough for the prayer in school crowd. They always want to be heard.)
I sent a comment to her that won’t get posted over her reaction to this post.
She said that the darwinist atheist attack dogs go nuts at this kind of thing (paraphrasing, obviously) because they hate god and prayer and yadda yadda.
My reply to that:
“I think it was because prayer has never been proven, and, more importantly, you grossly, grossly misconstrued the actions and workings of the German bombings in WW2.
As someone who finds the hollywood idea of USA-saves-us-all parroted constantly in films (the single worst offender I’ve ever seen is U571, where it credited Americans with the capture of the enigma machine, which was actually done by, if my memory serves, Brits, Poles and possibly Canadians) disgusting and wholly disgraceful to the lives of the men lost in those wars who had more of an affect than the US soldiers, I found it deeply insulting as well.
Attributing the actions of the superb multi-national airforce (including Poles, Norwegians, Brits, some Yanks and Canadians who wanted into the war earlier, French and many, many others) along with the general ineffectiveness of the campaign on damaging British morale to prayer is a true disgrace.
I don’t care whether you think prayer works or not, but I’m sorry, that was disgusting. I’m by no means a patriotic person, but when the memories of brave men who fought, and many died, to save this country and the peoples within, including many immigrants from countries already overrun are insulted like this, I get annoyed.
Oh, and who, exactly, was the prayer advisor? I can find no mention of anyone remotely like this anywhere. I’m sure this wont get put up, but next time you want to bang on about how wonderful God is, spare a thought for whose graves you’re pissing on.”
Probably someone somewhere in the distant past has referenced this, but here is Ambrose Bierce’s definition.
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
FtK censors comments heavily. There’s no point in even trying to say anything contrary to her prejudices on her blog.
Isn’t it spelled materiel in this context?
I promise, this is the only kind of concern trolling I do….
Coming to this late.. I pray y’all won’t be offended!
Brownian @65: Obviously in your cups, old boy. I’d pray for your soul, but I really can’t be bothered… Maybe in the morning.
Stogoe @ 67: sounded homoerotic to me…. so probably works really, really well!
And if prayer *really* worked: well, let’s just say there’d be a few more cases of bandy-legged women in the world and leave it at that.
As a boy, however, I used to pray for really mundane things (like a new red crayon). Like I said. Mundane.
I do remember *one* prayer, and being very pissed when it consistently failed…. I wanted to read a particular book (forget which one, now), and prayed for months that my local library would get a copy…. they never did (and wouldn’t transfer it for me ‘cos I was a minor — you couldn’t request a transfer if you were a minor)
Bah!
Mike Haubrich FCD in #42 was too verbose:
It’s enough to say “God doesn’t what we ask.”
I was raised a Christian, and remember at one point in my youth praying for God to show me true knowledge.
I am now an atheist.
Whose fault is that?
I prayed for rain once. I ended up in Portland Oregon.
Oh God, What have I done?
You know what this really makes me think of?
That beautiful piece on Surgeonsblog about the little girl with cancer and the family that was organizing prayer meetings to cure her. The bit that really stuck with me and that I think is relevant to this discussion:
“There’s something perverse to the point of revulsion in the idea of a god that will heal the girl if enough people pray for her. What sort of god is that? To believe that, you must believe he deliberately made her ill, is putting her through enormous pain and suffering, with the express plan to make it all better only if enough people tell him how great he is; and to keep it up unto her death if they don’t.”
Bingo. And it applies perfectly here. God has the power to do whatever he wants, but won’t stop the Blitz until he gets enough prayers, massed together at the right time of day?
Theologians love to talk about how prayer doesn’t work that way, it’s not like waving a magic wand. But there are clearly plenty of people who obviously look at it exactly that way.
Voldemort in ’08!
” “the shipment of war material across the Atlantic”
Isn’t it spelled materiel in this context?
I promise, this is the only kind of concern trolling I do….”
You’re probably right. I have to point out though, that wasn’t the main thrust of my argument…