Articles
A Skeptic's Argument Against Prayer
The argument
Prayer would be unnecessary if there were an all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful God. Let's suppose that the most gifted doctor in the world happens to be your friend. This doctor has the ability to cure any sickness known to modern medicine. Let's also suppose that this doctor is living with your family, which includes a six-month-old baby.
Now if this infant were to become violently ill in the presence of this super-doctor, what would you expect from him? If the baby is choking, for example, you would expect him to use techniques that will relieve the baby's problem. You would not expect him to ask you first if you believed that he could cure your child before he was willing to help the child. You would not expect him to require you to show how much faith you had in him before he would help your child. What you would expect is for this super-doctor to act as soon as he sees the child choking.
Similarly, an all-good God would not want anyone to suffer. An all-knowing God would know who would suffer ahead of time, and an all-powerful God could prevent suffering before it happens. Thus, if there were an all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God, then there would be no need for prayer in the first place, especially if the prayer is used to alleviate illnesses or any other type of suffering.
The response
Emotional analogies like this are a staple of the skeptic’s case against God. But notice some places where the analogy breaks down:
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It is a distortion of relationship to equate God with a “friend” living with our family. God is our Creator, and we are completely dependent upon Him for every moment of our existence (Ps. 95:6-7).
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God is not a visible presence in our lives like the doctor in the analogy. The very essence of our recognition of Him is on the basis of faith: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
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Unlike the portrayal in the analogy, God has not demanded that we believe in Him before He will help us. God has been helping faithless, rebellious mankind throughout all our existence (Acts 14:15-17).
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The analogy falters because what the doctor is offering (saving a child’s life in an emergency) is something everyone would want. But what God is offering – eternal life based on forgiveness – is not what everyone wants, unfortunately. God created us with free will so that we would choose Him out of love. When we have no love for or belief in God, there is no basis for a relationship. Without faith in Him, we reject His salvation.
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A human doctor with a moral obligation to cure disease does not cover the scope of our relationship with God. God is our lawgiver; He is our judge; He is our sustainer. He is also just, and the violation of His laws demands eternal separation from Him. However, He loves us so much that He offered His own Son in our place to save our souls. It is the ultimate tragedy that we turn a cold, indifferent shoulder to God and avert our eyes from the cross. And it is a travesty to advance a trite, one-dimensional analogy to suggest that God is an egotistical, detached being who won’t lift a finger to save a “choking child” without being asked.
- The analogy presents suffering as some pointless, cruel circumstance that God doesn’t care to alleviate. But suffering is something we sinners invited into the world, and not only did our sins introduce it but they call for its continued presence. If we were stronger and more motivated to righteousness merely as a response to God’s loving and benevolent nature, suffering would be unnecessary. But it serves an important purpose in reminding us of our misplaced priorities, of the consequences of sin and the cost of atonement. Choking to death has no value, but often our suffering does.
So is prayer nothing more than a slavish God demanding us to beg at His feet before He will bother to help us in our need? One can understand the skeptic’s shallow view of it, for it is apparent that he has never experienced meaningful communication with God. God wants us to pray to Him for the same reason parents want their children to ask for things – to forge a relationship of recognition of and submission to God’s authority, and to impress gratitude and dependence upon our immature minds.
