Prayers are useless. Murdered victims were in a church.

Wil Wheaton, an actor, is getting criticism for this Twitter tweet that was in response to a call for prayers by House Speaker Paul Ryan following the murder of 26 people in a Texas church. 

Wheaton apologized to offended religious believers, but the points he was making really don't deserve an apology.

 

First, it is absolutely true that prayers are useless.

There's no evidence that praying changes anything in the absence of some physical action. The most scientifically rigorous study of prayer showed no effect on the recovery of people who had heart surgery (prayed-for people actually had more complications, not less).

As Wheaton said, the 26 people who were killed by Devin Patrick Kelley were sitting in a church. If they weren't praying at the exact moment Kelley began shooting, almost certainly they had been praying beforehand.

Yet politicians love to call for "thoughts and prayers" after every mass shooting. So do the anchors on cable news shows. It's a ritual that does more harm than good, as an atheist, Hemant Mehta, cogently argued in Prayer is Useless and Has a Downside.

While the main purpose of prayer may be to help others, it never demonstrably does that. Prayers benefit only those believers who say or hear them. Prayer gives them comfort. It lets them think they have some control over a situation that may be out of their hands. It’s the last resort of people who have run out of ideas, and the first resort of people who never bothered to think about how they could actually fix the problem at hand.

This is not harmless. There’s a very real downside to praying.

It lulls believers into a false sense of accomplishment. We cannot solve our problems – much less the world’s – through prayer. We often see people with good intentions praying for victims in the wake of a tragedy, but prayer is useless without action, and those actions make the prayers irrelevant. To paraphrase the great Robert Green Ingersoll, hands that help are far better than lips that pray.

I have no problem with “prayer” as an act of meditation. In fact, many atheists can tell you the benefit of silent self-reflection. The delusion occurs when you think someone else is hearing your thoughts and acting on them.

When it comes down to it, prayer is illogical, even in religious terms. If God has a plan, why try to thwart it? If God can be swayed by prayers, what kind of God would allow the horrors we see in the world? And if two devout believers pray for different things, how does God choose the winner? (I'm sure the San Antonio Spurs would love to know the answer to that.)

Prayer is nothing but a powerful placebo. We’d all be better off accepting that.

So Wheaton was completely justified in taking Paul Ryan to task for calling for prayers rather than some sort of action that would actually do something to stop more mass shootings. Here's some of what we know about the killer.

The US Air Force has said it is investigating its apparent failure to enter information about Texas shooter Devin Patrick Kelley's criminal history into the national database.

Ex-airman Kelly was court-martialled for domestic violence in 2012, and was barred from owning or buying guns.

But last year he was able to purchase a rifle he used in Sunday's attack on a small church outside San Antonio.

He killed 26 people and fled the scene. He was later found dead in his car.

The killer was able to buy an AR-15 assault rifle and other guns. He took 15 30-round magazines into the church and fired all of that ammunition at the people sitting in pews, along with the assistant pastor giving the sermon. 

I don't believe in God.

Those who do have to come to grips with the fact that being in a house of worship and offering up prayers didn't prevent 26 people from being killed. Given that fact, how could anyone conclude that more praying is going to do anything to help those at risk of a future mass shooting?

Wil Wheaton's tweet may have been politically incorrect, but it also was politically right-on as regards the reality of gun violence in this country. The reason we have more gun deaths than other advanced countries is because we have more guns and we fail to regulate them properly. 

Columnist Eugene Robinson spoke truly in "The blood of innocents is on our hands."

“Thoughts and prayers” are fine. Locking arms “through the tears and the sadness,” as President Trump prescribed, is all well and good. But none of this does a damn thing to stop, or even slow, the carnage.

...Why did he do it? We may never be certain; the assailant, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, is dead. But we can say with certainty how he did such an unspeakable thing: with a gun designed for warfare, a weapon that has no business in civilian hands.

...The United States is alone among advanced countries in having gun policies that facilitate, rather than obstruct, deadly rampages such as Kelley’s. The Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that the Second Amendment permits reasonable gun-control measures. This crisis is political, not constitutional.

You and I have the power to elect leaders who will reduce gun violence. The blood of innocents is on our hands.

Comments

[777]

Do you see the enormous consequences
that 'insight' of these procedures
would have :

-personal
-social-
-ethical
-global and more
-free will

and the colossal power that would be freed

and this for a humanity that commits a million / 30 billion ( humans/ animals )
killings already

Brian you might not have 10 days to enjoy this earthly life

777

-

[vinny]

The nearer the church, the farther from God. Law of karma / action reaction is brutal law . No-one is above it . Only way to escape it is Samadhi .

[pooh bear]

Living outside of the US, it's difficult to understand the idiocy of the gun culture and laws that prevail. Even accepting the argument of the right to defend oneself with a handgun or rifle, there is no need for an assault rifle anywhere in civilian life.
When selling an assault rifle to someone, the shop owner should know that it is likely to be used for its designed purpose. Something needs to change.........

[Be.Jim Sutherland]

In my opinion, being involved in ANY segment of guns, i.e Ownership, Sales, Manfacturing, etc. , considerng that the ONLY end purpose of guns is too to KILL, is the same as being involved in any part of the meat business Industry..

I don’t own any guns. The only reason I would ever buy one, if planning self defense, would be with intent to kill.

The only way I would be willing to do that, is if War broke out, and we would have to defend our selves against ANY invader.

Than, Karma is actve and accptable.

I’d prefer to be a live killer than a dead Pacifist..

[Jen]

This comment by 777 is very puzzling:

"Brian you might not have 10 days to enjoy this earthly life"

777 are you judging Brian? You think you are so pure and spiritual and yet you still haven't given up lust and think its okay for the Master to talk about butts and 69s. Remember lust, anger, attachment, greed and ego? The five deadly sins according to Sant Mat. Seems like the Master has not risen above these and yet you still worship him?

[Spencer Tepper]

Difficult to say what the effect of prayer really is on an individual. It's an internal thang, you wouldn't understand.

But we do know that trying to judge the personal benefit others derive doing something as innocuous as prayer (or alternate sexual practices, or loving a color you hate, or believing in magic) has actually caused a bit of gun violence and most of the warfare and massacre in human history.

[tucson]

"The reason we have more gun deaths than other advanced countries is because we have more guns and we fail to regulate them properly. "

--Only an infinitesimal percentage of guns are used to commit mass murder. Guns already are regulated. It is only because there were good guys with guns at the Texas murder scene that more people weren't shot.

"When selling an assault rifle to someone, the shop owner should know that it is likely to be used for its designed purpose."

--The term "assault" is used mostly by alarmists and gun opponents to describe a semi-auto rifle that has a military design. Actually, there are many semi-auto rifles and hand guns out there that do not have the military design and look but have similar capability as those dubbed "assault". It is a statistical absurdity to imply that these guns are "likely" to be used for mass killing. If that were the case there would be many millions of people killed in mass shootings by these guns each year.

I would pray to be understood but it probably won't help.

[Joe]

Kind of a contradiction here: "First, it is absolutely true that prayers are useless.There's no evidence that praying changes anything in the absence of some physical action. The most scientifically rigorous study of prayer showed no effect on the recovery of people who had heart surgery (prayed-for people actually had more complications, not less)."

How can it be true that prayers are useless if prayed for people had more complications?

Larry Dossey wrote two book on this very subject - that there is evidence for prayer having both positive and negative consequences.

Of course praying instead of acting when action is clearly needed is what Catholics would call "a sin of omission." and I tend to agree with them on this score.

[Brian Hines]

Joe, I neglected to mention in the post that the heart patients knew they were being prayed for. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times story I linked to:

"Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested."

[Joe]

Brian, telling the patients they were being prayed for pretty much eliminates any chance of that being any kind of legitimate test of prayer. I think the subject of prayer is much more complicated than any common, religious understanding. I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that we effect each other with our thoughts. The question is to what extent generally, and to what extent can we intentionally do that?

[Spencer Tepper]

Claiming prayer has no effect is simply invalid. The study of prayer Brian cites, from 2006, was a test of the effect of people praying for other people they don't know. And the people who were prayed for were not known for their religious affiliation or beliefs.

And these validity flaws were pointed out after this 12 year old study.

It might be interesting to note that the Principle author, Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard, pioneered meditation research proving the positive effects of meditation on health. That evidence has only grown.