Agnostic Guide Chapter 10 - Hope and Action

Prayer

Prayer is the way most religions expect people to communicate with their creator. If a supreme being doesn’t exist then you are just talking to yourself. This is normally considered insane, useless, or both. Prayer could be considered harmless if it was just a conversation with a nonexistent deity. However, prayer is often an expression of our hopes and desires we are trying to share with a supreme being. This is done in the hope a supreme being helps us or someone else.

Hope isn’t a bad thing in itself, but to put our hopes and dreams with a supreme being which may or may not answer us is foolish if we do nothing else but pray. If you’re still holding on to the idea of the power of prayer then do yourself a favor and pray for the proof it works. I have honestly prayed for such a thing when I was a believer and I still haven’t seen or felt the proof.

Think: Why does all of the praying in the world not stop war or any other atrocities? Why are the innocent harmed and left to die with their loved ones praying over them as they pass away?

If every believer were to pray for the sun to turn blue for a day as proof of the power of prayer, do you really think it would happen? The Christian Bible says if you have faith then you can pray for a mountain to throw itself into the sea and it will happen. I have seen a lot of praying in my life and the effects of it are no different than the normal hope for something to happen. Both have no direct impact on reality. Fortunately, few people actually rely on prayer or hope alone to solve their problems.

The main problem I have with prayer is it transfers your hope to someone else. If I were to pray for a serial killer to be captured, then I assume divine intervention will step in and do this. There’s nothing I can do that will match God’s ability, so why should I do anything? However, if I have a personal hope for the same thing, I might remain mindful of the fact that I could actually help find a serial killer. I could be observant of my surroundings for anything suspicious or for the people or vehicles the authorities are looking for and actually help accomplish something.

Hope

Hope is a good thing. Hope is the general feeling a desire will be fulfilled. I hope for peace on Earth. This hope for peace, just like a prayer, does nothing on its own other than to keep that goal in my mind as something achievable. I may act on that desire to somehow promote peace whenever a time presents itself when I may be able to influence the whole Earth or at least some part of it to achieve this goal but that’s all hope can accomplish.

If a person were wounded and appeared to be dying I would obviously hope they would be healed. If I were to pray for the person's life to be saved then I would be asking for a divine intervention to heal that person. I would hope you don’t pray for me in such a circumstance. You may actually expect a deity to step in and fix my problem. Instead, I would want you to have hope as I would. A hope I can be saved should move you to action, just as it would swiftly move me to action to get you some real help instead of divine intervention.

Think: An infinite hope yields an infinite disappointment.

A prayer to an omnipotent deity should give you an almost infinite amount of hope since you’re placing your hope with an infinitely powerful deity. The obvious problem with that is you receive an almost infinite amount of disappointment when the random and unbiased universe doesn’t answer those prayers. I’d rather have a realistic amount of hope driving me to take action when I can.

Action

Any change in the world is brought about by real action by real people. We obviously fight against the powers of nature and the chaos of the universe, but fight we must if we want anything outside of the status quo. Prayer and hope alone do nothing to change our circumstances.

If a person were wounded you could just watch and hope (or pray) they stop bleeding or you could take action and do something to help them. You can personally try to stop the bleeding and try to get more help. I have seen society step in and help where a supreme being does not.

Doctors have not always existed. Primitive man had no doctor to turn to who could heal the human body. Doctors developed out of a need of society to heal our wounded and sick. If prayer really worked, then we would have had no need to have developed doctors. If there was a God really listening to us and intervening when we asked, then we would have no need for police, firefighters, or any other profession to help us and protects us from each other and the planet itself.

We have war because we collectively don’t take action to stop fighting with each other. We have famine because we don’t do enough to help feed everyone. We have any number of problems because we haven’t acted together for the good of society to overcome them. All of the prayers of the planet have done nothing to solve these problems. We’ve given prayer several thousands of years of trying under a variety of religions and it hasn’t impacted the world at all.

Freedom from Prayer

Crime doesn’t exist because everyone needs the same religion to guide them. It exists because some selfish people aren’t working in the best interests of society. There are plenty of religious criminals praying they don’t get caught and think they only need their God's forgiveness to absolve them of their transgressions. The true answer to this is society must take action to punish such behavior to have an impact on crime. Community-wide prayer will do nothing to reduce crime, but police in the community will definitely help.

Think: Would you rather have a doctor heal you or have prayers from a billion believers? Would you choose a society of non-theists with doctors, police, and other human intervention or a society of priests who would do nothing but pray for divine intervention for you?

A religious answer to those questions is that God works through people so we need both. That doesn’t help you at all if there aren’t any people around to perform God’s work. The rationalization that people are needed just shows us it’s only the people taking action which matters most in the whole scenario. It proves nothing about God’s divine intervention if humans are always required to make it happen.

The physical universe is full of action and people can take action in that construct. Religion is only a belief and hope in the power of prayer for a divine entity to overcome the physical universe. I prefer to rely on the proven power of action. It’s the only thing I've seen produce identifiable results. I’m grateful I’m free from the infinite disappointment of prayer and divine intervention. I don’t want to waste valuable time and effort praying to or feeling grateful to the unknown or unknowable.