Prayer to God in Christianity and Islam
It is Useless and Satanic!

1. Praying is For Us, Not For God
   1. Prayer Tells (all-knowing) God Nothing
   2. Praying is Selfish: Meditation, Not Communication
   3. God Doesn't Need Prayer
2. Praying is Against God's Will
3. Praying is Magic
4. Christianity
   1. Biblical Rules: Pray in Private and Secretly, Not In Public
   2. Biblical Rules: Use Not Repetitions
   3. Those With Some Faith Will Have Prayers Come True
   4. Christian Prayer
5. How to Pray in Islam, According to the Qur'an
   1. Qur'an 7:55: Pray With Humility and in Secret
   2. Qur'an 3:191-4: Praying Posture
   3. Qur'an 3:43: Women in Prayer: No Segregation
   4. Qur'an 52:48-49, 73:1-7: Prayer Timings at Night
6. Satanism
7. Scientific Studies of Prayer
8. Conclusion

1. Praying is For Us, Not For God

1.1. Prayer Tells (all-knowing) God Nothing

When we pray, we are conveying our thoughts to what we think of as God. But, if God is all-knowing then it already knows anything we would want to say. If we pray because we are feeling insecure or frightened... God already knows how we feel. If we pray because we want God to make a friend recover from illness... then God already knows that we want it to help our friend. So what is the point of praying to God for these things? It is certainly not because it needs us to, or because we want it to tell it something that it already knows! Clearly, prayer is not because God has needs!

1.2. Praying is Selfish: Meditation, Not Communication

Given that prayer is irrelevant to an all-knowing or perfectly good god, why do theists do it? The answer is that praying is for ourselves. The standard Christian response to the above arguments is just that... that it is us that psychologically need prayer. But, however, the Christian response is narrow. The function that prayer plays is as the facilitator of introspective reflection. Theist religions call it "prayer", Eastern ones call it "meditation". Psychologically it is introspection and reflection. In all cases it is connected to the internal states of the person involved - it seems dishonest to call it 'prayer' if you admit it is just introspection and psychology. Calling it by a more magical name merely confuses impressionable people. So, even promoting the idea of 'prayer' is functionally abusive.

Prayer or meditation, be it Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Jewish, is all for the self, not for God, as God doesn't need it. But most Christians and others do not admit that it is an essentially selfish act.

In Satanism, my own religion, it is common knowledge that religious symbols are reflections of the self, nothing more. But those who meditate and those who pray delude themselves into thinking it is "God" that wants them to do it, rather than admitting they're doing it for themselves. Self-help works better when it is done honestly, "prayer" should be called "meditation" or "philosophical introspection".

1.3. God Doesn't Need Prayer

“If God is all-knowing then it doesn't need anyone to pray because it already knows what we're going to say and what we're thinking. If God is perfectly good and just, then any praying we do for others is pointless as it will not change the facts of whether it is right for a particular person to be benefited or left. If it is right, God will do it with or without prayers: if it is not right, God won't do it. What use is there for prayer? It should be admitted that prayer is self-reflective meditation - self help - and we should probably even stop the pretence of calling it 'prayer' for god.”

"God Does Not need Prayer, Prophets, Souls, Evangelists, etc" by Vexen Crabtree (2004)

2. Praying is Against God's Will

God Knows What Is Best
Of all the many courses of action or inaction, God knows which is best. An all-knowing God knows everything. No Human being can possibly change the facts: No Human can change the fact that God knows what course of action is best. As God does what is best, then no Human can change the will of God. If God wants to do something, God will do it. If God doesn't want to do something, God won't do it. An eternal being, all-powerful, and perfect, God knows what is best.

If you pray for a friend to miraculously recover from an inoperable brain disease, what will happen? If God wants to cure the person, it will. If it doesn't want to (because it is not the best course of action), it won't. It will cure that person when God knows is the best time; or, it won't cure that person. God knows what is best. God will be done! What are you thinking when you pray for God to change its mind? Is it possible to pray without doubting either god's all-knowing nature or its perfect choice of action? It seems not!

Praying Is Against God's Will
To pray for something to happen is to say to God that you know better than it! It is to say that you do not agree with the course of events that God has lain out. To pray for something is to go against God's will, to ask God to act at a time when God knows it is not the right time to act. If it is right, God will have already planned to do it. If it is wrong, God won't do it. Your prayer will not change these facts. To pray is to oppose God, to harass it, to make a statement that you think you know better! To pray is insolent, ignorant, misguided, confused but most of all arrogant.

Jesus said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" to an apostle who thought he knew better than God's plan even though the apostle was bemoaning suffering and meaning well! By trying to sway God's mind through prayer, you are behaving in the same way as that apostle - with Satan beside you! Think about what it means to pray, hope or wish for things, you might find you're not doing what your God wants you to be doing!

3. Praying is Magic

When you pray, the words and thoughts are believed to achieve potential results. This is no different from a wizard or a pagan casting a spell: It is no different to any other supernatural event. It is supernatural because the effect is not achieved through the physical laws of nature that can be investigated through science. If Thor raises a magic army to fight for him, God reanimates the bodies of the dead, a Hindu god makes a statue cry, a Pagan fertility rite has an effect, it is all magic. If a group of pagans perform a healing ritual, or even a solitary pagan burns a statement of healing on a piece of paper, and it works, theists will no doubt say that it only worked because their God wanted it to work. Many others would call it magic. The actual method by which the ritual worked is unknown. It is the same with prayer: When people think that prayer has been successful, they ascribe the cause and effect of it to God. But this cause and effect could by any supernatural phenomenon, such as telekinesis, etc.

It could be that the spirits of the dead carry out the wishes of a Christian who prays; it could be that everyone, including Christians have spiritual animal guides, and these oversee people's wishes and prayers, and go forth and make some such wishes actually happen. We simply do not know what happens; hence, it is not only supernatural but it is magic.

Assume there is a God and that that God chooses to act on someone's prayer. God has to then break the chain of cause and effect if it wants to change the course of events. This unnatural act is no different from any other supernatural magical event: all such events break the natural laws of cause and effect as understood by science. God's methods, when it intervenes in the world, are magical. Miracles are magic. When miracles occur, we never know which god makes them occur, or which method. We don't know if spells, prayers, rituals, and wishes are made effective by quantum souls, gods, fairies, demons, dead spirits, etc. No matter which one of these potential beneficiaries carried out our will, it is a magical result.

4. Christianity

4.1. Biblical Rules: Pray in Private and Secretly, Not In Public

Matthew 6:5-6 lays out some rules about praying. It says that you should pray in private, "but thou when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy father in secret, and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee".

Christians are to pray in private, with their room door closed. Matthew implies that Christians do this because Christians trust that God knows their secrets, and rewards their trust in it. Matthew precedes this with a description of how hypocrites pray in public where other people can see them praying, "that they may be seen". Praying to God in order to appear good is a way of wearing the "good guy badge" to gain social esteem - a term Satanists use to ridicule self-serving behaviours of white light religionists.

Many Christian scholars and, most of all, most Christians plainly and simply ignore these instructions₁. They pray in public, for display, on television and in the media. How ironic is it that a Christian prays in public, displaying their affiliation to God, yet they ignore the instructions they believe their God has sent them? They are rebelling against God, whilst pretending to be serving it!

In case there is any doubt about the instructions to pray in private, they are also repeated in Matthew 6:1-4 and Matthew 6:16-18:

“The three passages, with their obvious formal similarity framed into the same speech, show that Jesus considered prayer, almsgiving and fasting as being matter between God and man, and that these actions should be performed without witness. He does not only tell his disciples what not to do, he says quite explicitly what he expects them to do.”

"Jesus Versus Christianity" by Alfred Reynolds (1993)₁

Reynolds goes on to point that Matthew did not merely write down Jesus' teachings, he also wrote down his actions. And not only Matthew, either, but Mark, Luke and John all have Jesus pray exclusively away from the public. "We read that 'he left them', 'he departed', 'he went a little further', 'withdrew himself' to pray (Matthew 26:39, 26:42, 26:44; Mark 1:35, 6:46, 14:32, 14:34-35, 14:39; Luke 5:16, 6:12, 22:41). He also prayed, not publicly, but in the presence of his disciples in John 11:41-42, 12:27-28 and 17:1-26"₂.

4.2. Biblical Rules: Use Not Repetitions

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathens [nations] do. For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking”

Matthew 6:7

“Jubilantly, Protestant theologians use this injunction as a stick to beat the Roman Catholic with. The endless litanies of the Catholic ritual, the rosary repetitions, the prayers recited as penance - all these practices are condemned by these words of Jesus.”

"Jesus Versus Christianity" by Alfred Reynolds (1993)₃

4.3. Those With Some Faith Will Have Prayers Come True

John 15:7 says that if Jesus' words remain within a Christian, then, his prayers will come true. This sounds a little odd and maybe difficult, but thankfully there are many more versus that clarify when it is that a prayer will come true; it requires simply that you ask in the name of Jesus, and that you have a tiny bit of faith - a mustard seed size's worth - in order for prayers to come true.

“Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

Matthew 21:21-22 (NIV)

Given the amount of praying Christians in the world, it seems that surely by now all diseases would be cured, all hatred gone, all people would be converted to Christianity, and God's will would be done everywhere. Clearly, either Christians are not praying for these types of things, or, prayers are not actually coming true after all. Some might say that because the verse above says if you have faith and if you 'do not doubt', then all of us imperfect humans have some doubt and therefore prayers don't come true. But multiple versus state that all you have to do is ask - it doesn't say that the bar is placed particularly highly so that this is difficult or impossible for the average Christian. All four of the gospels in the New Testament tell exactly the same story:

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Mark 11:24-25 (NIV)

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9-13 (NIV)

“[Jesus said:] You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

John 14:14

Matthew 18:19-20 says that wherever two or more Christians gather, Jesus will be in their midst, granting whatever they wish for. In fact, the Bible says that you only require the smallest amount of faith for your prayers to come true:

“He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.”

Luke 17:6 (NIV)

“... if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:20

Versus that say similar things include John 15:16, 16:23-24.

4.4. Christian Prayer

In Matthew 6:5-6 Jesus says you should pray in private so that others cannot see, behind closed doors, in secret and not in public. All four gospels describe Jesus as practicing what he preached: always praying in private or sometimes just amongst the disciples. Matthew also says that Jesus instructed that prayer not be repetitious, with 'much speaking' 'as the heathens do'. The criticism is made many times of those who bring attention to their own prayers: Prayer should be private. These instructions occur in no less than 18 places in the New Testament. Christians who make vocal their prayers for others are rebelling against God's wishes, as are those who prayer in repetitive chants or routines, something which is fairly common in Christian liturgy in most of Christendom.

There are many more versus about praying in the Bible. According to Jesus if Christians have just a tiny bit of faith, their prayers will come true, including such miracles as moving mountains and trees. For an example from each gospel, see Matthew 17:20, Mark 11:24-25 , Luke 17:6 and John 14:14. Critics do not have to do much work to find that these verses seem to be untrue. It shows us that the Bible is not a literal text full of literal truth. You could conclude that when the Bible says that prayers will come true that perhaps it means in the afterlife, in heaven, except that Jesus specifically states that he is talking about prayers physically coming true in the real world (e.g. regarding moving mountains and dunking fig trees). It is not therefore even full of symbolic truth; it appears in the cases of the 17 versus involved to actually be pure fantasy. It is easy to imagine how verses like these make believers very happy about the power of their religion, but I would hazard a guess that this source of happiness is rarely taken seriously by the believers themselves.

5. How to Pray in Islam, According to the Qur'an

5.1. Qur'an 7:55: Pray With Humility and in Secret

“Call on your Lord humbly and secretly; surely He does not love those who exceed the limits.”

Qur'an 7:55

This is the same as the Christian Bible's instructions to pray in private, as Jesus did. It seems that the monotheistic God - being omniscient (all-knowing) - does not require or endorse mass displays of piety, which too easily become bombastic public dramas rather than genuinely-felt acts.

5.2. Qur'an 3:191-4: Praying Posture

The Qur'an says little else on how to pray. Although some prayers, daily routines and the like are hinted at, there are few specifics. Just before praying, Qur'an 3:191 mentions that those who remember Allah' while 'standing, sitting, and laying down' (some translations say 'laying down on their side') are 'men of sense'. It doesn't here mention women who pray. This gives a lot of options as to posture! An example prayer is then given in Qur'an 3:191-194:

Our Lord! You have not created this without purpose, glory to You! Give us salvation from the torment of the Fire.
Our Lord! Verily, whom You admit to the Fire, indeed, You have disgraced him; and never will the Zalimun [polytheists and wrong-doers] find any helpers.
Our Lord! Verily, we have heard the call of one calling to Faith: 'Believe in your Lord,' and we have believed. Our Lord! Forgive us our sins and expiate from us our evil deeds, and make us die (in the state of righteousness) along with Al-Abrar [the pious believers of Islamic Monotheism].
Our Lord! Grant us what You promised unto us through Your Messengers and disgrace us not on the Day of Resurrection, for You never break your Promise.

Qur'an 3:191-194

5.3. Qur'an 3:43: Women in Prayer: No Segregation

Some say that Qur'an 3:43 gives instruction to bow down. But this is clearly just part of a sentence being addressed to Mary, "Mary, be obedient to your Lord; bow down and worship with the worshippers", or in most translations "with those who bow down". Although according to Qur'an 3:191 they could be standing, sitting or laying. If Mary represents women in general, Qur'an 3:43 at most instructs women to bow down with worshippers. Yet, against the Qur'an, many Islamic institutions separate women from men rather than have them pray with them.

Just to add to the confusion, don't forget that Qur'an 7:55 instructs believers to pray humbly and in secret/private. So perhaps women - and men - shouldn't bow down with anyone and Qur'an 3:43 does indeed apply only to Mary. What you do depends on which verses you choose to follow.

5.4. Qur'an 52:48-49, 73:1-7: Prayer Timings at Night

Qur'an 52:48-49 hints at some timings, "Give glory to your Lord when you awaken, in the night-time praise Him, and at the setting of the stars" (Dawood translation). Or: "So wait patiently (O Muhammad) for thy Lord's decree, for surely thou art in Our sight; and hymn the praise of thy Lord when thou uprisest, And in the night-time also hymn His praise, and at the setting of the stars" (Muhammad Pickthal translation). This has various interpretations as to when you should pray:

• Three times at night: Once when you awaken and/or arise (whenever that happens to be), once "in the night-time" and once at the setting of the stars, which must be during daybreak. Or:
• Once at night, once in the morning: As "when thou uprisest" might refer to the same occasion as "at the setting of the stars".
• None: Most translations show that Qur'an 52:48-49 is addressed to Muhammad himself and not to anyone else. So perhaps it is a trangression to presume that you can pretend to be Muhammad; and these verses are not for anyone else.

Qur'an 73 opens with commentary that the recital of the Qur'an is to be a chant. And, at night-time voice impressions are strongest and more eloquent than during the day, when daytime business distracts people (Qur'an 73:1-7). Although, Qur'an 73 may well be addressed solely to Muhammad, as it warns "We are about to address to you words..." (73:5), so it may just be night-time was the best time for the angels to address Muhammad, the Qur'an is nonetheless asserting the general principal that, despite tiredness and the like, night-time is a clearer time to chant the Qur'an. Or perhaps, Muhammad was an epileptic (or he suffered from a form of sleep apnea), and had more frequent visions at night-time, hence, the belief and assertion that the night-time was the best time for receiving and reciting the Qur'an.

6. Satanism

“The Satanist shuns terms such as "hope" and "prayer" as they are indicative of apprehension. If we hope and pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist, realizing that anything he gets is of his own doing, takes command of the situation instead of praying [...]. Positive thinking and positive action add up to results.”

The Satanic Bible, Book of Lucifer 1:paragraph 4

My comprehensive website on Satanism notes that 'prayer' is one of those words that Satanists have a particular dislike of:

• "Words that Satanists Don't Like: 2. Hope, Prayer" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) (2003)

7. Scientific Studies of Prayer

There have not been many good scientific investigations on the power of prayer₄. The Nobel-prize winning physicist scientist, Victor Stenger, has researched the possible effects of prayer on the real world and presents some of his results in "God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist". He says that "the effects of prayer should be readily measurable [...] but, once again, we find that none of the reports is convincing. [...] Every published claim of a positive effect of which I am aware fails to satisfy one or more [sensible] methodological conditions. [...] With all the publicity that attends to prayer studies, it is highly unlikely any good quality study has been missed"₄. The biggest studies on prayer that have satisfied good investigative methodology have turned out to show that prayer does not have any (positive) effect. One of the largest was called the "Great Prayer Experiment", and is reported on below by Prof. Richard Dawkins:

“An amusing, if rather pathetic, case study in miracles is the Great Prayer Experiment: does praying for patients help them recover? Prayers are commonly offered for sick people, both privately and in formal places of worship. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton was the first to analyse scientifically whether praying for people is efficacious. He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn't they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us, who are prayed for only by our nearest and dearest? Galton looked into it, and found no statistical difference. His intention may, in any case, have been satirical, as also when he prayed over randomized plots of land to see if the plants would grow any faster (they didn't).

Valiantly shouldering aside all mockery, the team of researchers [from the Templeton Foundation] soldiered on, spending $2.4 million of Templeton money under the leadership of Dr Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. [...] Dr Benson and his team monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals, all of whom received coronary bypass surgery. [...] Prayers were delivered by the congregations of three churches, one in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts and one in Missouri. [...] The results, reported in the American Heart Journal of April 2006, were clear-cut.”

"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins (2006)₅

The patients were divided into 3 (double-blind) groups:

• Group 1: Received prayers, but were not told about them. This tests if prayers helped them recover more than normal patients. Their recovery was average.

• Group 2: Received no prayers, and were not told so. This tested if there was something about the experiment that was affecting the results. Their recovery was also average.

• Group 3: Received prayers and were told so. This tested the psychosomatic effects of knowing that one is being prayed for. This group "suffered significantly more complications".

What amazing results! Prof. Dawkins continues:

“Was God doing a bit of smiting, to show his disapproval of the whole barmy enterprise? It seems more probable that those patients who knew they were being prayed for suffered additional stress in consequence: [...] Dr Charles Bethea, one of the researchers, said, 'It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?' In today's litigious society [will they] put together a class action lawsuit against the Templeton Foundation?”

"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins (2006)₆

Kenneth W. Krause in the Skeptical Inquirer (2008)₇ highlights some more studies and also refers to the Templeton study: MANTRA (Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training) and the MANTRA II studies published by Mitchell Krucoff and others in 2001 and 2005, later published in The Lancet, involved 748 angioplasty or cardiac catheterization patients. The experiments confirmed that prayer had no effect. 'More hilarious was the study sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, the stated goal of which is to advance the Christian ideology. In any case, 1,802 patients recovering from coronary artery bypass surgery' took part; but 'the well-intended prayers had absolutely no effect'.

Of course, it makes no sense that prayers would help. If God wanted people to get better, God is all-powerful and will make it so if it is for the greater good. If God doesn't want to, it won't. This is related to the argument above that praying is against God's will. Also, if there was a good god, it would automatically pray, itself, for the full recovery of all victims, and as God's prayers are not only to itself, but they are also the result of an all-powerful being, it holds that if God wants people to recover, then all people will recover. It can be no other way, unless god is not all-powerful. Unfortunately, as there is much suffering, some argue that this is proof that god is evil.

8. Conclusion

God knows everything - everything we say in prayer, God already knows. The point of praying is definitely not to reveal things to an all-knowing God. God acts only when God knows it is good to act, the wishes of prayer can only ever be against God's will, as I have elaborated on above. So, when prayer works, how does it work? If prayer works, then it is either coincidence (you've prayed for something that was going to happen anyway) or, you knew what was best better than God did, and God intervened! The latter is impossible. Magic, or prayers, when they are effective, must be against God's will. If you ask a Christian or a Muslim, what will they say is the magical force that acts against God's will? Satan's will. If a supernatural affect such as prayer goes against God's will, then it is Satanic. As such, prayer is either useless, or Satanic. What business, then, have theists got in praying? This is a warning to all god believers that they must be very careful of their own motives when they get together and pray for things!

The Great Prayer Experiment, and the fact that the Royal Family are not miraculously fit and healthy compared to other rich people, provide evidence that prayer does nothing, and it even makes things worse to tell someone that a team is praying for them!