To Pray, or Not to Pray….
I first published this in summer of '22 around the time of the mini-budget and the ensuing financial crisis, when prayer was back in fashion, particularly for those with risky investments...it remains relevant at a time when our uncertainties seem to be increasing, rather than starting to resolve themselves.....
Introduction
As is often quoted: ‘..there are only two certainties in life – death
and taxes…’.
In the UK recently we have all heard quite enough about taxes recently, so I’ll focus on the former in this article, if I may, as a diversion from our economic woes.
As we age, our thoughts naturally turn to the prospect of our own deaths – and what might or might not happen to us afterwards. Although death itself is a certainty for all of us, there is a surprising reluctance on the part of society to discuss its practicalities and consequences, both physical and spiritual.
In my view, this enduring taboo makes the subject more painful than it need be, for the individual nearing their death, and also for their relatives, both before and after their loved-one has passed. It also inhibits progress in the way we deal with end-of-life issues.
We need
to be more open in our thinking and be prepared to discuss what is, after all,
the culmination of all our lives.
When should we do this ?
A consideration of what is ultimately to befall us might seem premature for those in their early years, but is to be recommended nevertheless. Not only does it 'open the mind' to the world around us and our reasons for being here, but it can provide a positive direction to our lives in an increasingly chaotic world. We cannot foresee the exact time of our own demise, which in some cases, sadly, comes much sooner than the statistical norm. For those of more mature years, the question will come to the fore naturally as we approach our time. Another important benefit of an assessment in our earlier years is that such a 'life reappraisal' may encourage us to plan ahead financially. This in turn will help ensure that our dependents and relatives are faced with as little stress as possible after our demise when dealing with our assets.
In these uncertain times, some are turning to religious faith to provide
stability and succour in their time of need. On the other hand, recent census figures show that a sizeable majority of the population in the UK now profess to have 'no religion'. It’s therefore perhaps opportune
to take a close look at our varied belief systems to help us assess whether prayer is both useful and justified….and to what or whom we might usefully pray, if we feel the need to do so.
Before I start the discussion, however, herewith an important disclaimer:
This brief look at the ‘whys and wherefores’ of faith and religious
belief was originally intended as a personal synthesis of ideas for my own consumption.
It was designed to help me focus on and define my own thoughts on the subject, as I embark on what
may well be the final decade of my own life.
Having gone through the process of thinking things through, reaching some tentative conclusions, and then putting
something in writing, I found the experience a valuable one in helping to 'clear the air' mentally. I
decided to publish the finished product in the hope it might be a help to others going through the same process.
I fully recognise, of course, that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. I would also
defend everyone’s right to have a religious faith, and to be free of any 'undue
influence' when making their personal choices. This discussion piece was not (and still is
not) in any way intended to challenge the validity of particular belief systems,
or question the integrity or the relevance of any of the current religious
doctrines on offer.
Rather, it is to be hoped that the process of examining our own beliefs,
and how they might help to manage our current problems, may provide some peace of mind. The process may also give some direction to our remaining years, and perhaps make the prospect of our eventual demise a less fearful one.
The recent UK census figures show beyond doubt that we are becoming a more secular society, with an increasing number of people classifying themselves as having 'no religious beliefs'. Of those who still classify themselves as Christian, significantly more admit to being non-practicing. Only the non-Christian religions seem to be bucking this trend, and it remains to be seen whether their followers will start to decline as the older generation die out and the influence of a more secular society becomes more pervasive. It's perhaps an opportune time, therefore to re-examine our belief systems in the light of our own mortality.
I’ve structured the discussion as a series of key questions which I
think a naïve prospective adopter of a specific faith would need to consider before embracing its belief structure.
The most fundamental of all, of course is the question: ‘Is there a God
?’.
The short answer to this is: ‘Of course’….
Why might this be the case ?
Human beings have believed in deities of in one form or another throughout their existence. The desire for an afterlife, and an accompanying inherent fear of death, is hard-wired into our psyche. It is therefore perfectly natural to believe in some form of beneficent deity, who is capable of, and willing to look after us mere mortals while we are alive and provide us with a good 'home' when we die. Thus God exists within us all – as a spiritual concept in response to an inherent need. He could therefore be seen in evolutionary terms as an adaptation to help counter the fear of the oblivion death would otherwise represent. This was instilled in all of us during our evolutionary development as a self-aware species as an aid to self-preservation, and hence to our reproductive success.
What about the physical existence of a God, though ? Answering this one
is a much tougher nut to crack, and I can, of course, make no claims to be able
to provide a definitive answer.
In contemplating this question further, another difficult and arguably more
puzzling question is thrown up:
If, as proposed by most of our current religious doctrines, God is
‘all-powerful’, why would He* not manifest Himself to humanity in physical form, visible to all ? Unambiguous self-manifestation would, after all, seem a
logical choice as a means to reinforcing His authority and power over us, and the rest of His universe.
In the past, the power of the Church, lack of technological and
scientific knowledge, and the relative ignorance of the population always enabled the religious elites to explain away the lack of material evidence of a divine presence using prevalent doctrine. Few
dared even to ask the question for fear of accusations of heresy and retribution by the religious authorities. It was also much easier for the religious elites to 'manufacture' credible evidence of existence.
In today’s evidence-based and more scientifically-advanced and secular world, however, the question is much more to the fore, and is being asked more and more often. It is also much more difficult for those in charge to answer, even in territories where authoritarian religious leaders still manage to retain power. The recurrent protests in Iran are a good example of this, and clearly demonstrate the younger generation’s dissatisfaction with their oppressive and overtly misogynistic theocratic regime.
In reality, the ‘evidence’ that can be put forward for the physical
existence of any deity is shaky at best, and would be unlikely to stand up in any modern court of law.
Does the lack of evidence for any obvious
physical form necessarily mean God doesn't exist ?
Not necessarily….
How
Might we Explain the apparent lack of a Physical Presence for our chosen Deity ?
As a scientist, I personally find ‘blind’ religious faith very difficult
to embrace without some form of evidence to support its inherent beliefs. Scientists
are trained throughout their working lives to look for hard evidence, and to use
this to confirm or refute their hypotheses about the real world, and so we probably
represent the hardest category of mind-set to convince.
The scientific method itself does, however, lend itself to one proposal as an explanation for the 'evidence dilemma'. An all-powerful God might, like an earthly scientist, want to perform an experiment with a ‘primitive’ species such as ours, by putting them on a habitable planet and seeing what they got up to when left to it (and in our case how quickly they ruined their environment once they had invented the technology to do so !). In a sense, the Garden of Eden scenario as put forward in the Bible’s book of Genesis could be seen as a the report of a preliminary 'Godly' experiment performed with this objective in mind. Some might argue that the experiment is still running....
To do such an experiment in the true spirit of universal science, God would need to
ensure no outside influence or knowledge was allowed to filter down to the
experimental subjects, and would also need to make outside influences effectively
invisible to them. (This might also explain why He was so annoyed with Adam and Eve for eating of the 'tree of Life’, the main issue there being the illicit acquisition of knowledge and hence the possibility of compromising the experiment, rather than their disobedience per se {ed.: I have to admit that the idea of a talking snake changing the fate of humanity always did seem a bit far fetched to me}).
The other question, and one that is often asked by doubters of their chosen faith is "..Why does the Almighty allow us to commit evil acts, when He is all-powerful, and could therefore easily stop it happening ?". A common answer is along the lines of "..it's God's will, and we as mere mortals are incapable of understanding or explaining His mysteries and purposes". Needless to say, this response does not always satisfy the more inquisitive of mind....
In reality a much simpler explanation, which would follow from the 'experimental' theory I've outlined, is that He simply doesn't want anything to interfere with His experiment(s) while they are running...
So we could all be taking part
in a longer term ‘godly’ experiment in terrestrial primate behaviour without
actually knowing it. If so, God looks to have successfully ‘blinded’ the
experiment from our point of view, despite Adam and Eve's (and the snake's!) best efforts, and the result, whatever it is, should still be a valid test of species 'competence' and of our suitability to avoid the evolutionary waste-bin of history.
Another possibility is that God has been there in some physical form all
the time, but we’re just not capable of perceiving Him with the limited range
of senses we have.
We pride ourselves as an intelligent species on having advanced
technologically in leaps and bounds since the Renaissance, and progress has
admittedly been striking. However as a scientist I’m acutely aware that the
more we learn, the more we realise how little
we really understand about the universe (or indeed universes if it turns out that there are
parallel ones). It’s therefore quite easy for us to accept the concept that super-intelligent
entities may exist in other planes or
dimensions that we simply can’t ‘see’ with our physical senses and /or current instrumentation.
One thing I do still think is highly unlikely, though, is that a more advanced ‘Godlike’
alien species in this or a connected universe has already physically made the trip to Earth, and is observing us from nearby in the solar system. This is often proposed as an
explanation for the many UFO reports in the literature – see my blog on the subject to find
out more about why this is so unlikely…
One further conundrum emerges from all this – if God’s reluctance to demonstrate his physical existence is meant to provide a test of our faith, why would such unsupported belief in His existence be important enough to Him to use as a selection criterion for entry to heaven ? Surely an assessment of moral rectitude and a good behavioural record while on Earth would be more appropriate to ensure a 'compliant' heavenly population ?
I don’t have an
answer to this question – one for the theologians to argue over, I think.
Why
are the World’s Religions all different ?
To me, this is another key question to which I have not found a satisfactory answer as yet.
One could be
forgiven for thinking that an all-powerful God, fresh from his task of creating the
universe, would want to ensure that it performed consistently throughout in the way He intended. To achieve this He might be
expected set universal standards of behaviour, and communicate these to all His ‘sentient’ creatures
as a foundation for their religious doctrines.
Assuming the founders of
our established religions on Earth all received God's message correctly, and had
continued to receive regular guidance on the subject from Him as they
claim they do, why do the various religious doctrines we are presented with today appear
so different ?
The only explanations I can come up with are either that the original divine messages were corrupted on receipt, with no correcting guidance being received or applied thereafter, or (perhaps more likely) that the interpretation of the divine message was different to that which God intended, due to 'human error'. If so, it’s not hard to imagine how further divergent modifications to the respective doctrines might have been made as time passed – presumably to adapt to local circumstances and without divine authorisation. (Perhaps the 'Devil' really could be in 'the detail' here, as the old quote suggests).
We should always remember that
all religions are essentially man-made inventions, and are often designed to
justify and reinforce the authority of
local rulers – the only question is what inspired them originally, and who has
modified them since then (and why). Since there is no verifiable ‘change
control’ documentation (on earth at least) for any of them, we may never know….
Are Atheism and Agnosticism Valid Belief Systems,
and what are their implications ?
The purist alternative to the adoption of a particular religious faith is
atheism. In its simplest interpretation the word implies a complete lack of any
belief system. In practice, most of us have some form of de facto belief structure which governs our way of living. We may tend more towards agnosticism (i.e. no current belief in a specific God, but uncertainty as
to whether one or more Gods might exist or not). In our ever more evidence-based and
secular societies (in the Western world at least), more and more people are
questioning the validity of the mainstream faiths as be-all and end-all ‘life
guidance systems’.
This tendency towards secularism is in part due to the rate of change we are all experiencing in the direction of world events, and our need to try and adapt to these changes. There is nothing wrong with atheism, or indeed agnosticism, per se, provided they are both practiced with reference to the appropriate moral codes – these are of course vital to prevent anarchy in our society, and are the foundation of our civil and criminal legal systems.
We can reasonably assume that religion is, in the majority of circumstances, still a force for good.....
Only when it is used as an excuse to justify acts of evil by their perpetrators does it get a particularly ‘bad press’. A good and topical example of this is the situation in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin no doubt still believes his current bombing campaign against defenseless Ukrainian civilians and their infrastructure is justified as part of his ‘holy’ war to re-unite the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches (see previous blog for details of Putin's religious beliefs). He will also be convinced that ‘his’ God remains 100% behind him. It is also a tacit admission on his part that his military has become bogged down and unable to win on the conventional battlefield, thus driving him to atrocities against civilians. (One hopes that this will be as far as he dares to go, and he won't become 'unhinged' enough to resort to nuclear strikes as he becomes increasingly desperate.) We may actually need to rely on his erstwhile principal ally Xi Jinping to stop this happening...
The jihadists who destroyed New York’s twin towers and killed upwards of 3000 innocent US civilians in 2001 will have used a similar religious justification for their actions. Iran's theocracy, faced with increasing dissent at home, has becoming increasingly aggressive in the Middle East of late by sponsoring numerous 'proxy' jihadist groups in a vain attempt to justify its existence, resulting in many unnecessary and violent deaths. Thus it is the evil in the minds of men (and women) that’s at fault, not their adopted religion.
Those intent
on perpetrating such atrocities should, amongst other things, perhaps consider the harm they will do
to their 'supporting' religion before perpetrating their crimes against humanity. Sadly, the ability to reason
coherently has often long since been lost in such individuals.
We should always remember the important distinction between regimes and their subjugate populations when criticising the religious beliefs of
others.
Are
there advantages in having a strong religious faith ?
One key advantage to practicing a religious faith is the nominal
certainty it brings regarding our own fate after death. All religious creeds offer
some form of spiritual ‘resurrection’ after death, thus satisfying a basic
human psychological need for continued existence of the life force or ‘immortal
soul’ when we die. This is missing for atheists, and the lack of it can drive people towards religion, particularly as they near the end of their lives. The other side of
the coin, of course, is the existence of a ‘hell’ or equivalent in most religions, designed for those who misbehave during their terrestrial 'stay'. Atheists and agnostics
(happily !) miss out on this one too.
In this context, the atheist endpoint of complete oblivion without the
possibility of reincarnation once brain death has occurred may at first sight
seem unbearably final. It does, however provide a reassurance of its own in
that there is no question of any ‘eternal suffering in the fires of hell’ – this is a
definite 'silver lining', and one which many, particularly those who have already
accumulated a bad record here on earth, are quite happy to accept. If we do accept
physical brain-death as the real end of things for us, then the only real hurdle left to us is
navigating the process of death.
Fortunately, medical advances have (hitherto) provided us with effective pain relief
and palliative care systems to ease us on our way at the end of life. Assisted
suicide ‘in extremis’, although still illegal in UK, is already available in a
number of (arguably more enlightened) European countries, and pressure is
building for its acceptance here. Provided adequate regulation is applied, this
option will, when it comes, add further reassurance on the availability of a dignified and
painless death when our time comes. This is, in my opinion, a 'must' for any civilised society in the 21st Century. Recently, however, problems with our UK healthcare system have surfaced which are threatening to compromise our ability to achieve these aims for our elderly citizens. This must be corrected if we are to retain our reputation as a 'civilised' country.
Our population is ageing rapidly, and unfortunately we haven’t found any
way of slowing down the degenerative processes that go hand-in-hand with
ageing. The very success of modern medicine in keeping people alive effectively 'beyond their time' is adding to the burden on our healthcare system. Managing extreme old age is one of the fastest-growing industries of
our era, and we need a radical re-think on how we cater for its 'victims', from
the point at which they become unable to look after themselves in their own
homes, right up to the end of their lives. See my recent blog for some suggestions on NHS reform.
Widespread bed-blocking is now, sadly, a fact of life in our NHS hospitals, and is effectively paralysing the whole system. The result is that many of our seniors approaching their life's end are unable to get the care they need and are suffering unnecessarily - a poor indictment indeed on any civilised society, particularly one which, despite the financial 'shenanigans', of recent years still boasts the sixth richest economy on the planet.
A properly integrated and funded UK Adult Social Care system is a must – and soon, whatever 'the Markets' think.....
Where, then, does that leave us with the question about prayer I framed
in the title ?
The short answer is – the jury is still out, and there are plenty of
unanswered (and potentially unanswerable) questions still outstanding.
Hard evidence for the physical existence of any God or God-like entity is
still notably lacking, so if we stick resolutely to this as a pre-requisite for
our belief in a God, then atheism is our only logical option (at least pending the arrival of valid evidence.)
I prefer to keep more of an open mind, however, and remain prepared to
accept that there may be things beyond our perception and even comprehension that
govern our terrestrial existence (and that of the rest of the universe). This
would probably constitute ‘atheistic agnosticism’ in the accepted terminology.
The good old legal verdict of ‘Not Proven’ in Scottish Law would seem to sum up the
position quite well, implying as it does that the evidence does not support a
conviction (i.e. denial of God’s existence), but does cast doubt on any
presumption of innocence (i.e. unconditional belief in God). [As an aside, I
notice that the Scottish SNP government are preparing to abolish this verdict option from
Scottish Law, bringing it into line with English Law – a surprising surrender
of legal flexibility on their part, given the previous first minister’s predilection for staying one
step ahead of Westminster !].
Reverting to the question in our title, would I therefore recommend
prayer to anyone considering it ?
Yes, certainly - provided it not substituted for more obvious practical self-help and maintenance of personal safety.
Praying to the Almighty for deliverance, for example, while remaining standing rooted to the spot on a
level crossing in the path of an oncoming train, would not be the
most sensible course of action to follow if one had aspirations for a
trouble-free afterlife. St. Peter might well deem you to have been simply 'too stupid' to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven, and send (what was left of ) you packing to the ‘other place’ if you did !
Joking apart, the mental reassurance and calming influence that prayer can provide can certainly be valuable, and has real physical benefits which may well help prolong life by reducing worry and stress. There is now reliable evidence that an individual's belief in an afterlife and the power of prayers offered by others can aid recovery from physical disease, although the mechanism for this has yet to be established. Communal worship can also
provide the additional psychological benefits of human contact and mutual empathy.
I would sum it up by saying “…If in doubt, pray....”.
It’s unlikely to do you
any harm, and may well give you welcome peace of mind in these stressful times. It could also aid your recovery if you health is compromised. Also, by 'hedging your bets', even if you aren’t 100% convinced
of 'your' God’s existence, you'll have some additional spiritual reassurance for the future. Who knows, it might even help you secure your ‘ticket to heaven’…
Final Thoughts
As stated already, the main aim of publishing these ideas is to
stimulate thought in others who may themselves be wrestling with the same
concepts. By all means keep practicing your chosen faith - but at least be prepared to think about its implications.
If this introduction to the process of introspection provides peace of mind to a few, it will have served its purpose.…...
Viv
Version Date 11.2.24
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