Casting Candles at the Sun

It has always struck me as odd that we must constantly nag the most powerful being imaginable, in order for that "being" to have any power in our puny little world, or our even punier little lives. Christians call this nagging "prayer," which they believe is to ask God for help, even though their God allegedly is "all powerful," and even knows what they need before they ask, but almost never has the decency to respond.

Hordes of praying "believers" the world over simply ignore the fact that this is like requiring a child to cry before you decide to change the diaper you already know they've soiled, or only considering helping someone who you know is in pain only after they have complained long enough, and complained with the proper gratitude for the assistance you are considering to give. 

True, like meditation, prayer may provide some significant degree of peace for the person engaging in it, and there is no doubt that it helps to further dupe the "believer" into believing in the fantasy that a father figure exists in the sky that cares and is earnestly hanging on their every word. But there is no proof that any God exists at all, let alone that he would have any greater concern for our travails than any of us have for the travails of an ant or an amoeba.   

What is so striking about those who pray, and go to church, and read their Bible so incessantly, however, is not only how much they convince themselves they are doing it all out of "love" for a father figure who, in his own "holy scriptures," threatens to send them all to hell for failing to do so, but that they are quite convinced that they are actually contributing to increasing God's ability to intercede in the world, and improve it. Put another way, the "believer" believes that by praying (i.e., nagging) they are helping to empower the most powerful being imaginable.

This is like convincing people they should cast candles at the sun every night, in the hope that by doing so the latter will burn only all the brighter the next morning, and for centuries to come. Or like shipping glasses of water to the ocean, to help ensure the ocean will continue to stay wet, and full of fish for us to feast upon during Lent. It is like launching empty boxes into space in order to expand the universe and keep it from contracting back into its point at the big bang, or trying to fix the hole in the ozone by continually releasing balloons filled with helium.

Or to put this in more human terms, it is like blaming a starving child for their hunger for failing to ask, or even beg, their parents for food, or to blame the sick patient for their disease because they failed ask, or even beg, the good doctor for the cure, even though the doctor is fully aware of their condition. And when that doctor is asked ‘why did you not administer the cure for the terminal illness you knew your patient was suffering from?’, he clothes himself in all the mercy, love, and righteousness of God but answering: “Because they did not ask for it. And if they did, they did not ask for it sincerely enough, or for long enough, as far as I was concerned.”

The skeptic is left befuddled by all of this, of course, since the idea that we must all pray to help God improve the world, means that the very same God who is so powerful that he is said to have simply "willed" all of creation into existence from nothing, is now powerless to do anything in the world, without sufficient numbers of people groveling to just how all powerful he truly is. 

But the believer never waivers in their "beliefs," of course, since to do so would be to rise from the cross of faith they are quite sure they nailed themselves to out of a love for, and an earnest desire to be like, their Christ.   And in the same way that their Christ was abandoned by his father "who art in Heaven" - crying out from the cross, as he did, "Abba, why hast thou abandoned me?" - so the Christian feels only all the more like their sweet Jesus when the father in heaven simply ignores their pleas and their suffering. 

And to prove to that apathetic Father that they are worthy of a seat in his eternal heaven, rather than the blast furnace of the eternal hell that He alone is responsible for creating, they will continue to incessantly cast candles at the sun, and proclaim the "good news" everywhere that only by doing so, can we hope to make the world a brighter place.