Why Pray When You Don't Believe?
Friday, July 1, 2011 at 7:29AM | by Otter 
Schöedinger's Cat Under Your HatThis is a short version of something I've been looking into a lot lately.
A lot of my friends these days are losing their belief, or sitting down to have a quiet meditative Scotch after burying their faith in the back garden.
And a lot of them have a hard time letting go entirely.
There's a reason for that: faith isn't bogus.
The reason why most people give up on faith seems to be that they can't square it with epistemological certainty, or even epistemological respectability.
But then, only a very few really come to believe in God in the first place because "God" makes the most sense of the evidence. (When I hear that somebody has come to that conclusion, I'm usually a little uncomfortable. It's like hearing that people believe in Elven kingdoms because children go missing.)
Still, the brain is a funny thing, only vaguely understood. Scientists can talk very easily about "quantum neural networks," an idea that really does challenge the belief in a discrete self that is not actualized in some way by the activity of others. That is, love and faith have a property that is measurable in terms of its ability to create new realities, not merely to observe them.
Those who pray certainly show distinctive brain activity, which is no argument that "spirit" or "mind" exist independently of the brain; one can certainly stimulate the religious experience "artificially." But the idea that the brain itself enfolds itself in quantum states under certain conditions, some of which are by nature not friendly to observation, suggest that there are limits to the capacity for science to tell us about ourselves.
Let me say here that I find the "god of the gaps" to be a dull god, a sort of metaphysical worship of a Zippo lighter. But I do think that prayer engages an experience in the mind that dissolves the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural." There are states of mind, often created in prayer and meditation, that do change reality at times, and more often change our relationship to the world in significant ways, not merely in terms of psychological orientation.
But I'm not trying so much to redefine God. God might be some extra-existant, supernatural thing (for all I know), though I don't think so. What I'm sure about, because I've seen it, is that the praying mind differs substantially from the non-praying mind, and in positive ways.
If you have seen freaky shit when you pray, you ought not to leap on the agnostic bus too rapidly.
If not, I couldn't say why. But sometimes it's enough to pray to you know not what. Sometimes that sense of presence that can be stimulated in your brain might be something trying to emerge as much as it is something we stroke into existence.
Atheism, Brain, Faith, Love, Mind, Prayer, Spirit, Spirituality in Science, Spirituality 
Reader Comments (4)
It *is* difficult for some to let go of prayer and I think that what you say about prayer changing our relationship to the world is true. We can and do change reality through the transforming act of attention, or love. I think some people pray because they need to liberate desires that still remain, or because they want to feel that their love for the world is not unrequited, maybe because they want to stave off death and they find proof of life there, and I know for many there is nothing "final" in letting go of belief. I'm not sure if prayer is always a search for God or a search for ourselves and I'm not sure that it always matters. Anyway, just some thoughts on yours.
(One of) The hard thing(s) about having faith in The Officially Licenced Big-G God is the fact that He chooses to work most often through people. People, no matter how much they try to hide it, aren't capable of Godly love, and they are certainly incapable of Godly perfection.
Separating the Artist from His work is tough. And, art interpretation will never be an exact science, so we are left with the choice: we can attempt to have faith, and we can try to get to know God. This is prayer. If faith grew into certainty, then God would just be selling insurance. I don't like the idea of having a prudent insurance salesman God. I rather like the exasperating passionate I'm-all-in-even-if-it-don't-make-a-damn-bit-of-sense-God. He's worth the risk.
I've never experienced anything "freaky" from prayer per se, but meditation (and some music) can stimulate feelings of euphoria or oneness with all, which is certainly worth continuing whether atheist or not. For we certainly are one with all in the most meaningful way. Prayer, on the other hand, seems to create the opposite effect, in that prayer is usually pointed, seeking something from a deity that typically does not respond. So prayer has the effect of disconnecting me from the sense of oneness.
Annie, I really like that comment about music. I think though that your description of prayer may be my real target: when we pray to the God of power, we are in the position you describe. Maybe not so much when we pray to the unseen love we feel in music.