Why I Stopped Praying
reverendhornibastard
Depraved Deacon of Degeneracy
I stopped praying when I was in elementary school. I was still at a tender age when it became clear to me that praying was, at best, a colossal waste of time and, possibly, a clumsy insult to any god that might be listening.
I was enrolled in a Catholic elementary school. We began every school day by attending Mass. At the time, Texas was suffering a prolonged and devastating drought. Consequently, we always recited a special prayer for rain.
I couldn’t understand why we were praying for rain. It made no sense to me whatsoever.
I remember asking the num who was our teacher why we were praying for rain. She looked at me as if I were an idiot and replied, “because it’s been incredibly dry around here and we need the rain!”
Her voice dripped with even more derision and condescension than usual for a holy woman speaking to an innocent child.
But I suspected that this sanctimonious bitch who was dressed as if she were trying to impersonate an automobile tire (black with white sidewalls) had seriously misunderstood my question. I knew it was dry as a bone. I understood that we needed rain for our lawns and for the local farmers and ranchers. My question was really “Why are we bothering Almighty God with this?”
I had been taught that the Supreme Being was omniscient. That being so, God already knew damn good and well that it had been a long time since it rained in Texas anywhere nearly as much as it usually did. Moreover, it had already occurred to me that the lack of rain was no accident. After all, everything happened in accordance with God’s “Devine Plan.” So our just and loving Heavenly Father was subjecting Texas to this devastating drought intentionally!
I couldn’t help but wonder, would Good God Almighty take offense at our prayers for rain? Would He, in His infinite wisdom, interpret our prayers for an end to the drought as evidence that we thought His “Devine Plan” was, far from being Devine, actually just a monumental fuck up that required urgent revision?
I knew it would rain whenever Our Heavenly Father thought the time was right in accordance with His Devine Plan and not a moment earlier.
Rather than join the other bleating sheep in their mindless prayers for rain, I just kept quiet and hoped God Almighty had a sense of humor and wouldn’t take offense at this profound display of arrogance and contempt for His painstakingly crafted Devine Plan.
I was enrolled in a Catholic elementary school. We began every school day by attending Mass. At the time, Texas was suffering a prolonged and devastating drought. Consequently, we always recited a special prayer for rain.
I couldn’t understand why we were praying for rain. It made no sense to me whatsoever.
I remember asking the num who was our teacher why we were praying for rain. She looked at me as if I were an idiot and replied, “because it’s been incredibly dry around here and we need the rain!”
Her voice dripped with even more derision and condescension than usual for a holy woman speaking to an innocent child.
But I suspected that this sanctimonious bitch who was dressed as if she were trying to impersonate an automobile tire (black with white sidewalls) had seriously misunderstood my question. I knew it was dry as a bone. I understood that we needed rain for our lawns and for the local farmers and ranchers. My question was really “Why are we bothering Almighty God with this?”
I had been taught that the Supreme Being was omniscient. That being so, God already knew damn good and well that it had been a long time since it rained in Texas anywhere nearly as much as it usually did. Moreover, it had already occurred to me that the lack of rain was no accident. After all, everything happened in accordance with God’s “Devine Plan.” So our just and loving Heavenly Father was subjecting Texas to this devastating drought intentionally!
I couldn’t help but wonder, would Good God Almighty take offense at our prayers for rain? Would He, in His infinite wisdom, interpret our prayers for an end to the drought as evidence that we thought His “Devine Plan” was, far from being Devine, actually just a monumental fuck up that required urgent revision?
I knew it would rain whenever Our Heavenly Father thought the time was right in accordance with His Devine Plan and not a moment earlier.
Rather than join the other bleating sheep in their mindless prayers for rain, I just kept quiet and hoped God Almighty had a sense of humor and wouldn’t take offense at this profound display of arrogance and contempt for His painstakingly crafted Devine Plan.
Got something to say?
Start your own discussion
40 comments
Yet that doesn't make all praying equally problematic. Prayers for others, prayers of devotion, prayers or respect and their like are IMHO perfectly acceptable.
As far as that "sanctimonious bitch" is concerned, you are talking about someone who has devoted her entire life to caring for others. She deserves better than that. Who knows how many people she has helped and maybe even lives that she has saved through her work over many decades. Even if she hurt your feelings once upon a time, as a grown man you should be able to look back on that time now with a more mature understanding of the world.
And it's not at all arrogant to think than an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent (it says so right here on the label) god is going to change his divine plan for the universe because you begged him to.
Note: those of you who use prayer to attempt to better your *own* understanding of the universe and your place in it, instead of trying to change that universe, or "help" others, have my respect. Even if your god isn't real (and in case there was any doubt, I don't believe he is), introspection can be a powerful tool.
Not nearly as arrogant as it is to believe that we can understand how such a being may work or think given our limitations.
Our understanding of this universe alone is about as complete as an ant's understanding of nuclear physics. Heck, we still cannot even fully grasp how babies and children grow at the deepest cellular levels and we have millions of examples in our faces every year. We cannot even conquer viruses that we see every day and have been studied to death. To think that we can even begin to grasp how an even deeper "divine" fabric works is ludicrous.
Like RHB, I went to a Catholic school. It was attached to a convent and mostly nuns teaching K-4. Some were kind and Christlike, amazing people. Others unkind demeaning wretches and had no business being in a classroom with children despite being adept at teaching ABCs and arithmetic and despite whatever good works they might have conducted outside the classroom. In other words, just like the real world and its human frailties. No reason to not call a spade a spade.
I’ve known people who spent a lifetime caring selflessly for others.
Trust me, the sanctimonious bitch I refer to was not one of them.
She was “all halo but no wings.”
The business practice of some people to profit from training other people’s mind to ignore evidence, logic, and reason, while being able to believe in absurd fairy tales based on faith alone... and being proud of it, rather than ashamed.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
- Voltaire
And for 4 straight years in early 90s He really hated the Bills. Marv Levy must’ve said something unpleasant about nuns.
Can someone who spends his whole life isolated in a single room, with little to no external communications, even understand the existence of the national government? Imagine him arrogantly assuring the next person that he meets that it does not exist because evidence, logic, and reason, as he understands these things, do not support that conclusion.
Organized religion is a business practice that has inarguably been responsible for many wars, atrocities, and injustices throughout history.
The business works on the concept of the non-believer as an "out-group" member who, for profit, must be converted or destroyed.
Many if not all religious and businesses claims can be disproven by science and common sense.
You’re not supposed to be so blind with religious belief, patriotism, racism, arrogance that you can’t face reality.
Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it, who does it neither where or when it is done.
As a very astute and acerbic uncle of mine once put it, “If there is no God, then who the fuck pops up the next Kleenex?”
But, on a serious note... there's a reason it's called FAITH 🙏
Religious people all around the world have faith. All Christian sects have faith. The same can be said of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhism, Sikhs, Baha’i, Scientologists and every religion that has gone extinct.
Faith led all of these deeply religious, sincere people to a bewildering array of contradictory beliefs.
What better evidence could you ask for indicating that faith is worthless as an intellectual compass?
(Such butter fingers I have today! Fortuitous, perhaps...lol)
Isaac Newton
When I was a kid, I recall getting excited when the science teacher said we were going to learn why things fall to the Earth. She then told us the story of Issac Newton in the apple orchard and ended up telling us that things fall because of gravity.
I was immensely disappointed. I had learned NOTHING about why things fall. Even as a child I realized that giving something mysterious and unknown a name is NOT an explanation.
It is a weak and empty intellectual dodge.
The same applies to looking up at the starry night sky and asking how did all this come about and being satisfied with the answer “God did it.”
It’s the same empty, intellectual dodge.
Endlesssummer,
You got my point exactly! Faith has NOTHING to do with intellectuality or a compass for finding truth. But some people follow faith expecting it to lead them to the truth (despite the obvious evidence of how faith has led billions of people to a welter of conflicting beliefs).
but i suppose prayers and preaching the words do serve a purpose for several that i've witnessed. i've seen it in the streets, public trains and buses. when they pray/preach they are locked in, have a purpose and are self-fulfilled.
i look at at this way-if those several people are happy with whatever they are doing just let them. they aren't harming anybody.
In today’s world education and information help people to learn about religions predatory business scams.
We have all heard the phrase “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Deeply religious people praying and acting upon their faith are not harming anyone (unless they are lynching people who have the temerity to have been born black, are bombing Planned Parenthood clinics or flying airplanes into buildings).
I appreciate that most religious people don’t behave in such outrageous ways, but that’s only because their faith is not absolute. They set limits on where their faith can take them.
Unlike religious folk who believe in a vengeful, bloodthirsty God, atheists have nothing to fear in death.
The way I look at it, I was not alive for billions of years before I was born and I survived THAT!
I don’t recall saying my way was the only way.
What I did say was that faith is useless as an intellectual compass because it can lead you literally ANYWHERE. This much should be self evident given how people of faith around the world believe such a welter of contradictory religious doctrines.
By contrast, EVERYONE who uses empiricism instead of faith, no matter what views they may have started with, eventually comes to the same conclusions . . . the formula for water is H2O, the atomic weight of cobalt is 58.933194 and E=mc2.
Meanwhile, if your faith is sufficiently deep and strong, you can believe ANYTHING (and, sure enough, that’s precisely what happens)!
I generally reject stupidity and don’t respect anyone that thinks they know everything. There really are some things that cannot be explained, scientifically and when they become explainable I believe that explanation fits in with my theory of faith.
Christ preached tolerance, forgiveness and humility before God. There is none of that in what comes out of the mouths of these charlatans.
Every religion has its share of these types, people who at best have forgotten that we exist to obey God serve God and our fellow human beings, not that God exists to serve our ever desire. At worst, these callously corrupt people leverage peoples's faith to relieve them of their money, or even their lives.
Every one of these, whether it's pedophile priests, con men or just intolerance of LGBT individuals or other faiths is a corruption of what Christ taught.
Damned autocorrect🙄😖