hinchley.net

This is the fourth part of a multi-part series. You can also read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

I’d say there are four kinds of prayer. Firstly, there are worship prayers, through which people praise God. This is where you tell God that he is one amazing and almighty dude. Then there are prayers of thanksgiving. This is where you thank God for helping you through that stressful job interview, or for introducing you to that pretty girl at the party last night. Thirdly, there are prayers of petition. This is where you say, “God, can i have…”. And finally, there are what i call “shouting” prayers. Like the Psalms, these are the sort of prayers through which you vent at God, shake your fist, and demand to know why he left you high and dry.

All four kinds of prayer tell us something about the christian god. They tell us that the christian god is a theistic god. This means, among other things, that he is a god that actually takes a personal interest in our lives and our attitude toward him. Furthermore, three of the four types of prayer tell us that in addition to taking an interest in who we are, God is in fact so involved in our mundane lives that he is willing to intervene in the events of the world - a kind of meddling hand that tweaks outcomes - in response to our personal requests. For if God did not intervene in the world, there would be no point in asking him to arrange matters in our favour, there would be no point in thanking him when we feel our requests have been answered, and there would be little sense in getting angry with him when we feel like he’s given us a bad hand. Through the act of prayer, christians are clearly asserting a belief in a theistic god that is willing to actively involve himself in worldly events.

As a side note, a deistic god - like the “force” in Star Wars - is a transcendent god, devoid of anthropomorphic qualities, that exists without interest or affiliation in the affairs of humanity.

I suspect most christians do not consider science and religion to be in conflict; claiming instead that science and religion are two non-intersecting domains that not only exist in harmony, but somehow, like good mates, lend mutual support to one another. I disagree. I think a belief in prayer makes it perfectly clear that science and religion are in conflict. For as we just discussed, a belief in prayer indicates a belief in an interfering god, a god that doesn’t only exist outside of the universe, as some would claim, but a god that is repeatedly reaching into the universe, into our day to day lives, to arrange matters on our behalf. And as soon as you acknowledge the existence of an interfering god, you must admit that the interference can be observed, and at this point, you provide science with the opportunity to study that interference. You can’t on the one hand claim that God healed your head cold, aided your memory in your maths exam, and blessed you with a safe holiday, unless you are willing to also claim that these God-enabled outcomes are actually identifiable as the work of God, and therefore open to the scrutiny of science. If the “outcomes” that are claimed to be the work of God cannot be distinguished from natural events, then how can we be assured that they are indeed the work of God? How can i be sure that my head cold went away because God pulled a few tricks, when it could also have been nature simply running its course (for all head colds eventually disappear)?

A typical christian response to this question, “How do you know God answered your prayer?”, is that they “just know”, or that they can “just tell”. It should come as no surprise that i find this a particularly naive answer. For if God is really interested in responding to our prayers, surely he’s not just going to answer prayers in such a way that we can’t actually tell they’ve been answered. I mean if God is really all-powerful, surely we could expect him to answer some serious prayers, and not just little things like head colds that may go undetected. I mean why is it that God is willing to answer our prayers about our back pain, headache, pimples, and tooth ache, but never the really big prayer requests, like “God, i’ve lost my leg in a bomb blast, can you make it grow back, please?”. Unfortunately god never answers these kind of prayers. If you pray hard enough, he’ll heal your cut finger (which will also heal itself), but he’ll never heal your arm when it is cut off from the elbow down in a chain saw accident. It seems God is only willing to answer those prayers that could actually answer themselves naturally. As the saying goes, why won’t God heal amputees? Is he biased? I could offer an explanation: God only appears to answer prayers that are self-limited, because God doesn’t really answer any prayers at all.

A follow up christian response may be that God does not answer the really big prayers, because the bigger the prayer, the more faith you need for it to come true. This fits with the passage in Matthew where Jesus says to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt… you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done”. I’m not happy with this response, as it makes God sound like a rather astute business man who is only willing to give you the expensive stuff if you drag together enough “money”, in this instance faith, to buy his favour. This doesn’t entirely fit with the idea of a merciful and loving god. I mean, seriously, how earnest does the amputee need to be until God considers him worthy of healing?

Finally, you may argue that i’ve got this all wrong. That God is as much a god of justice as he is a god of mercy. In other words, we’ve all rebelled against him, and therefore, in keeping with justice, God does not need to pay us any attention at all, and he certainly doesn’t need to answer our prayers. You may say that when God does choose to help us, he is actually demonstrating his great mercy. However, this argument still does not explain why God only answers self-limiting prayers. And it certainly doesn’t explain why we need to plead to God in prayer before he actually shows us mercy. Especially when we’re told that God only answers prayers that are consistent with his will (i.e. what he wants). Why is it that we should have to beg for mercy through prayer just so God can perform what he thinks is right? Does this mean that if i don’t plead, God will do what he thinks is wrong? It all gets a bit muddled.

In fact, when you start to look into the topic of prayer, you soon find that it is riddled with problems. For example, if God really loves us so much, and he knows everything that we are going through, why do we even need to ask him for help? Why does a dying person need to ask God to be cured of cancer? If God already knows they are suffering, and he has the power to do something about it, why does he need us to ask? And what about all those people that don’t even know they are dying from cancer, and therefore don’t even know they need to ask? It seems rather pathetic that God would just sit around and do nothing until the dying person, even a devout christian, actually asks for help. Could you imagine a parent idly standing by as a car is about to run over their child? Could you imagine a parent not willing to rush in and pick up the child until the child, who may not even be aware of the impending danger, has actually asked for help? We’d label that parental negligence. In fact i’d imagine any parent that allowed their child to come to harm just because the child didn’t specifically ask for help, may actually be locked up in the slammer. Isn’t it surprising then, that we should be willing to accept this behaviour from a god of pure love?

Then of course, there is the problem of prayer in other religions. I’ve already written about this topic in a previous post, but the mere fact that people of other religions are convinced that their god answers their prayers, in the same way that christians are convinced that God answers their own, only serves to confirm in my mind that people of all nations have wonderful imaginations. As a christian, to claim that you can tell that God has answered your prayers, but at the same time, to clam that anyone of another faith is wrong to claim that their non-existent god has answered their prayers, well that, in my opinion, is the real delusion.