How Should Atheists Respond When Others Ask for Prayers, Miracles?
Monday July 14, 2008
Many religious theists, especially Christians, will ask for people's prayers and express hopes for a miracle when they experience significant problems in their lives (such as illness and injury, for example). Other Christians will normally respond by promising to pray and actually doing so at some point, asking God for miracles and divine intervention. Atheists obviously can't give the same response because atheists don't pray at all, much less for a miracle from God. So how can atheists reply?
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Heres how I do it. I just ask, is there anything I can do to help? Just ask.
read a bible
I usually express my sympathy and tell them I’m sorry to hear their bad news. I then tell them I hope for a speedy recovery for the injured or sick person.
I handle it the way Melissa does.
Still, there is some small resentment that they just assume everyone believes like they do.
dookie:
I have read the Bible, in more than one mistranslation. Utter lies and cruelty.
Dookie - most of us HAVE, and it is the reason we are here as athiests.
For my part - I offer good luck and any advice I have that would be appropriate to the situation (from avoid a particular nurse to stop smoking to eat more vegtables).
Me again. 2 years ago, a friends wife was hospitalised for a week. His own health is somewhat frail. I cooked a gallon of spaghetti sauce and pasta and took it to him so he wouldn’t have to cook so much for himself while traveling back and forth to the hospital. After their ordeal was over, their children sent me a thankyou card. In the card they wrote a note telling me how so many people said they would pray for them, but I was the only one who did something to help. I say this: Don’t offer to pray. Look for something you can do, and do it. We are alone on this world. There is no big Daddy in the sky guarding over us. The only way we make it thru this life is by looking out for each other.
For me, this post is very timely.
My dad was just diagnosed with lung cancer. I was telling my in-laws about it, and they said that he would in their prayers. I will gladly pass this on to my dad. Not because I think that their prayers will work, but because you can’t pray for someone without thinking about them.
I usually tell people in difficult times that I am thinking of them. Often just knowing that you are not alone and that someone is on your side can make a big difference.
Curiosis. The best outcome for your father is hoped for. Question; When dealing with the prayerful, believing, what harm could a little white lie do, in saying that they are in your prayers, if you think it might give comfort? Just wondering.
Hi Ron!
Because it is a lie. If I was a devotee of Ganesha, and I asked a Christian, “I know you’ll offer milk to Ganesha in the departed’s memory,” would the Christian say he or she would?
Not the best analogy, but I hope the above made sense.
JeffXL You are right, of course, but telling little white lies once in awhile is one of the ways I manage to stay married.
I think that part of the reason some of us are bothered by the whole “you’re in my prayers” thing is that so often, that is as far as it goes. Pray, fine. But why not also offer some other form of help, such as a meal, babysitting, cleaning the house, whatever it is that the person(s) might need? Some do, of course, but in my experience, most don’t.
People like me to keep them amused when they are sick. That way they don’t have to cope with my cooking or housecleaning.
A gallon of spaghetti sauce and pasta is the best prayer you could give. My Italian mother-in-law is in hospice now.
She always made the best spaghetti sauce. I would take her place if she would make me another spaghetti dinner.
I have always lived by the saying that “Two Hands at Work Accomplish More Than a Million Hands at Prayer”.
I always give sympathy and compassion and if I am able I will send food or come over and help clean, I do that on a regular basis here where I live now, I have a neighbor who is legally blind and caring for her non-ambulatory husband who had a stoke years ago, my daughter and I go over and clean the house and vacuum the carpets as often as they let us.
I have never seen prayer accomplish anything, and it sure doesn’t feed people or clean their homes.
I let them know they are in my thoughts and I am readily available for them in this time of need.
Prayer: How to do nothing and still think you’re helping.
99% of the time, my response to such requests is “I hope your health/situation/whatever improves. Is there anything I can do to help at home/work/school in the meantime?”
Since the comments so far seem to have covered the situation, let me twist it a little.
What do you say when someone say “I will pray for you/your situation?”
I don’t mean this in “oh, your an atheist, I will pray for you” But more that something has happened in your life and a theist who is simply trying to be nice say “you will be in my prayers”??
I just tell them that I have them in my thoughts, and offer assistance. Using these sorts of occasions to talk atheism is rude.
Dookie - I have a M.A. in Biblical Studies (emphasis in exegesis of Hebrew Bible) from a prominent protestant seminary, and I’m an atheist now (and forever). Most of us here have read it and found it to be aberrant.
ee, I usually let it go. For most theists, it’s a coping mechanism. Moreover, this type of thing has not yet become a show-stopper with any of the relationships I have with others.
I pray, but unless I know the person I am talking to prays too, I usually say, “I will keep you in my thoughts.” That’s what I would reply if I were an atheist and someone asked me to pray for them - a time of crisis is a time to help, as others have pointed out. So, getting in a confrontation about whether or not you pray wouldn’t be the best.
If it is for someone I know or am concerned about, I will usually say something about hoping for the best and seeing if I can help them in any way. If it is someone who says they will pray for me, it depends - lately, I’ve started to just look at them and shake my head, even when I know that they want to help but don’t know how, so they fall back on their magic spells. If I think they are not that way, I have been known to say “no thanks, I don’t need it”. In cases of actual illness or injury, I haven’t answered “I’ll think for you”…yet.
Dookie - have you read the Rig-Veda? The Tripitaka (sp? - always mess that up)? The Quaran? The Popal Vuh? The Eddas? The Doe De Ching? There are a lot of texts out there to choose from. Why limit yourself to one little backwards corner of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Alexandrian, Roman and other empires?
http://www.truthbeknown.com/prayer.htm
“Hands that help are far better than lips that pray.”
Robert Ingersoll
To be honest, I’ve never really encountered that situation before in real life. The closest is a prayer at the beginning of a meal, but this would only ever happen at a grandmother’s, whom I do not visit very often. For the first couple of years of my atheism I just went along with it but always avoided saying grace. However, eventually I told that side of the family that I am just not Christian. I often bow my head and/or claps my hands in respect, though.
I tell people that I will be thinking about them. If there is something I can do to help I will, or send a supportive note. If someone tells me that they will be praying for me or a loved one, I just let it go. Although I don’t think that prayers themselves have any effect, the bottom line is that someone is thinking of me and showing concern, and that is fine with me. In that context, it is an act of kindness (as opposed to someone hoping to change my atheism by praying for me). For example, when my mother was sick and then died last year, people quite often said that we were in their prayers. I simply thanked them. Then was not the time to debate, either for me or for them.
I just had to respond to this (Ron’s) comment:
Ron wrote:
2 years ago, a friends wife was hospitalised for a week. His own health is somewhat frail. I cooked a gallon of spaghetti sauce and pasta and took it to him so he wouldn’t have to cook so much for himself while traveling back and forth to the hospital. After their ordeal was over, their children sent me a thankyou card. In the card they wrote a note telling me how so many people said they would pray for them, but I was the only one who did something to help. I say this: Don’t offer to pray. Look for something you can do, and do it. We are alone on this world. There is no big Daddy in the sky guarding over us. The only way we make it thru this life is by looking out for each other.
(emphasis mine)
This is easily one of the sweetest and truest-ringing things I’ve ever read. Whenever someone I know is in distress, I do what I can to help them. If I can’t help, I usually express the wish that I could, and offer my sympathy. Recently, cancer took the life of a friend mine, and all I could really do was get her other friends together to let her know what a positive influence on all our lives hers had been. I know in my dying hour, that’s what I will want - to know my life was worth living.
What actually confounds me is when people specifically ask people not to trouble themselves over the problem. I simply have a hard time not trying to help. It seems interesting to me that when such requests are made, the religious still tend to pray. It’s almost as if even they realize that prayer is, indeed, no action at all.
@Michael
On the rare occasion that I eat dinner with religious folk (entire family of atheists (goes back like four generations on my dad’s side) with exception of deist grandfather who loathes organized religion), I tend to make the completely honest ‘mistake’ of diving into food the second it is placed on the table.
This has happened… maybe three times in my entire life. One time, though, I held a sort of impromptu secular “grace” at my grandparents’, in which I thanked them for going to all the trouble to make the meal. Actually, I think this might be a good thing to do regularly at family meals.
I always thought it was rather rude to thank some imaginary deity for work performed by real people. Seriously… “Thank you, God, for this chicken, which evolved naturally, was raised by a rancher here in California, was prepared, packaged, shipped, and sold by several different companies employing thousands of people who make their livelihood off the work we are summarily dismissing and attributing to magic, all of this being performed in accordance with food safety laws enacted democratically through humanity’s best attempts at government in the interest of keeping us all healthy, and eventually prepared with care over the course of several hours by my own relatives, who are sitting here at the table right now, and are even so having their work ignored, despite how much care and effort they have put into making us this meal, oh, and let’s not forget that they paid for it all. Amen?”
When my parents died, my co-workers signed a card and took up a collection, which I thought was very nice. Almost without exception, the signatures were preceeded by “god bless you”, “my prayers are with you”, etc. I doubt very much if anyone actually prayed for me at all, but I am sure they meant well. Both times, I sent a “thank-you” card simply acknowledging their thoughtfullness.
Usually, if someone hears that you are having a problem, they mean well when they say that they will pray for you. I think the best thing is to just thank them and leave it at that.