This has been on my mind a few days, so maybe writing it out and posting it will help shape it better.

Christians say, “God is in control.”

When shit happens, Christians say, “God has a plan.”

Christians say, “God’s timing is always perfect; God is always on time.”

Christians say, “God’s will is always done.”

So, what the fuck are you praying for?

If someone is sick, isn’t that God’s will?  If it’s not God’s will, then God’s will is NOT always done.  If God wants to “use” the sickness for some greater good or important lesson, what sick fucked up mind allows people to suffer in order to teach a lesson?  And if you think God is using the sickness for some larger purpose, why the fuck are you rushing to doctors and hospitals to get OUT of God’s will??

And what about other prayers?  Would it be appropriate to pray for someone to die?  Maybe put out a contract on someone – pay $50,000 to a person to pray for someone to die.  If that person does actually die, did the person praying commit murder?  Did the person who paid the contract commit conspiracy to commit murder?

Of course we know that praying for someone to die has no effect, beyond the inevitable fact that everyone does eventually die, but not at the direction of, or as a direct cause of someone praying for it to be done.

Nobody with an ounce of empathy, compassion, humanity, morals, or ethics, would pray for someone to die, even if it did work.  But we know that it does not work.

So, because we know that prayer for negative results does not work, no matter how hard you pray or how much you “believe”.  So knowing that prayer does not work, why do people pray for anything anyway?  Either God’s going to do what God’s going to do, and your pathetic little whining won’t change anything, or there is no God involved because no God exists, and praying still won’t change anything.

Prayer, in the manner of asking favors of a deity, DOES NOTHING.  EVER.  Never has, never will.   Prayer, as a form of self-hypnosis, might change your attitude and the way you cope with things.   But that’s not God doing anything.  That’s just you talking yourself into or out of things.  That’s why prayer is just self-hypnosis.