The way this question is phrased implies that secular people can benefit from prayer. But it is not at all obvious that they can, whether as targets of religious people’s prayers, or as non-believers going through the motions of praying. So the wording of the question is question-begging.

As someone who was occasionally forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer at school, though an atheist, I am aware of how meaningless, and irritating that practice can be. Blaise Pascal in his Pensée addressed the question of how someone who really wanted to believe in God for pragmatic reasons (following the gambler’s strategy of avoiding eternal damnation and being in with a chance of eternal bliss) yet found the metaphysical belief difficult to sustain could cultivate a belief in God by going through the motions of taking holy water and reciting prayers - in a sort of reverse method acting the belief should follow from adopting the mannerisms of someone who already believes. I can see how that sort of prayer, used a psychological ploy for belief change, might benefit a secular person who desperately wanted to believe in God but found it difficult to do so. But apart from that, how could prayer possibly benefit an atheist or an agnostic?

Well, if theists turn out to be right, perhaps prayers for the souls of unbelievers like me will have an effect. But that seems so unlikely.

The best I can come up with apart from that is that perhaps some forms of prayer are akin to meditation and have neurologically beneficial side effects. But the value of that sort of prayer wouldn’t be a value as prayer per se, but as a form of meditation. I’d also question whether prayer for a non-believer is even best described as prayer at all- surely for prayer to be prayer you have to believe in the existence of the entity you are praying to - otherwise we’re back in the school assembly mouthing words about fictional beings.

Nigel Warburton

Written by Nigel Warburton

Edited by Nigel Warburton