Complex Numbers

Pray Tell

By random coincidence, hot on the heels of yesterday's recapitulation of a philosophical blog entry from the noughties, we have a philosophical question from Big Think:

     Everyday Philosophy: Is praying fundamentally egotistical?  
God is not a vending machine, but is it wrong to treat him like one?

Based on the subheadline there, the article's focus would seem to be Western Christianity, not one of the many other religions that involve prayer. Being an English language website, though, I'd expect most of their target audience to be familiar with that religion, so, okay, I can ignore the lack of universality in this case.

To answer this week’s question, we look at the work of Sigmund Freud on religion and the theologian Friedrich Heiler on prayer.

And already, I spot red flags. Freud was, famously, the prototypical psychoanalyst; while psychology and religion are necessarily intertwined, pretty much everything Freud actually said was later debunked, so it's worse than citing Wikipedia (which is usually factual but needs to be checked). And while I'd never heard of Heiler, the entire field of theology is suspect because, unlike with psychology (for instance), you can't design experiments to support or falsify the hypotheses.

I'm not saying the question isn't worth examining. Just that I'd probably have looked elsewhere for inspiration.

The whole thing starts with a question purportedly posed by a reader:

Is it egotistical to think your prayers will be answered or that what you wish for will come true?

The question itself is framed in a way that bugs me, but I can't quite put my finger on why. Is the implication that "egotistical" is necessarily bad? Do a lot of people hold the worldview that what they wish for will necessarily come true?

Mostly, I hear about people who claim their prayers were answered in an unexpected or twisted way, meaning they didn't get what they wanted but were okay with that on some level.

It’s 1590, and two armies stand in the fields just outside Ivry in France. Both armies are a rag-tag shamble of children, old men, cripples, and foreign mercenaries. After 30 years of civil war, that’s all that’s left. In this latest, macabre chapter of the French Wars of Religion, priests walk up and down the lines. They tell everyone standing that “God blesses you,” “This is all for God,” and, most importantly of all, “Please God, give us victory this day.” Protestants and Catholics are praying to the same God to give them both victory. God will have to disappoint a lot of people.

I don't know enough about history to know who won that battle, and can't be arsed to look it up. But we all know that religious wars happened, and they happened with alarming frequency, and in each case, both sides thought that the Supreme Being was on their side, and at least one of those sides were apparently wrong.

Still, I might have used a different example. A football game, say. A few months ago, a bunch of 49ers fans fervently prayed to God to make their team win. A bunch of Chiefs fans fervently prayed to God to make their team win. And yet, after the Chiefs won, as far as I've been able to tell, the 49ers fans didn't suddenly become atheists en masse.

Sure, that's lower stakes than an actual fighting war, but it's probably more relatable to an audience. You could also use the example of elections, where presumably people are praying for their candidate to prevail, while only one can win. My point being that it's blindingly obvious that it's impossible for [deity] to answer every prayer. Unless, of course, [deity] is actually the interpretation of quantum physics that splits the outcome of every probabilistic event into different, separate universes, and elsewhere outside of our spacetime, there's a universe where San Francisco won—but that's irrelevant, because that's not visible in our reality.

Not only that, but because it's demonstrably impossible for [deity] to fulfill every desire due to inherent contradictions, anyone who thinks [deity] does isn't egotistical, but delusional. That, or extremely, unbelievably powerful.

I look at it this way:

Does [deity] grant your every wish? Then [deity] is your bitch, which makes you the true ruling force in the universe. Please don't smite me.

Does [deity] grant none of your wishes? Then why bother wishing? Alternatively, you can use that to your advantage by praying for the exact opposite of what you want. Please smite me.

Does [deity] grant some wishes and not others? Then how is that distinguishable from random chance operating within the structure of physical laws?

So I won't quote the rest of the article. It does provide different perspectives, but, as with all philosophy... draw your own conclusions.