Consider prayer from a deity’s point of view. My schedule hasn’t lightened up any — pandemic or no pandemic — in fact, it’s gotten busier. That means less time to stop what I’m doing to listen to another last minute “prayer request” from some religionista at the end of their tether.
This deity anyway, starts out already dubious about the value of the conversation we’re having.
Pilgrim, it’s a numbers game.
A few prayers get heard (acted upon is a whole different thing) but hardly any get answered. Humans are funny though. They’ll see answered prayers where prayers clearly weren’t being answered just to make themselves feel less shitty.
Dudes — haven’t your doctors told you how bad bullshit is for your health?
Trust me on this: the overwhelming majority of prayers absolutely do not get answered. In fact, except for prayers that get answered more or less by accident, none of them do. Who the hell has the time?
Those hawking prayer as a way to solve a problem will point at all the prayers they insist were answered. They can’t show you any receipts, of course — they can’t demonstrate how a specific prayer led to a specific answer. It’s an article of faith, don’tcha know. For every prayer that we could say was answered, there are… hundreds? thousands? millions? of prayers that did not get answered or even considered.
Prayers are often lumped in with thoughts — like bouquets of nothingness that stink of “not giving a shit”.
Just an observation from a deity with a betting interest in what happens — if you want to change anything, if you want to demonstrate actual interest in anything, first get up off your ass. Consider banishing wishfulness from your thinking.
Just think instead.
Mulligan Jesus: The Do Over Deity 