Pray for Chennai, Pray for Paris... The convenience of prayers and the irrationality of it!
- Arindam Chaudhuri
For days now on various Facebook profiles, WhatsApp groups I have been seeing good-intentioned display pictures. Pray for Paris. Pray for Chennai. If I would have written on it just the day after the Paris attacks or Chennai floods, many would have branded me inhuman. Plus as I said I believe these DPs are good-intentioned.
But today let me share a few thoughts on this illogical concept of prayers the way I have written on gods and religion earlier. So that at least before praying for anyone or anything next time you at least know you are doing something very convenient and something totally irrational.
Though the picture I have put above is self-explanatory, yet I urge you all to think a bit more.. I mean face it.. apart from sitting and doing nothing and making others feel that you are doing something and trying to give yourself a fraud sense of humanity, what else does a prayer mean?
The only reality of this word prayer is, how to think you are helping without helping. Everytime you pray. Yes..exactly that. You do nothing!!! However good your intentions might be... it's so illogical too.. for example, we already know what causes rains, but let's assume rains don't happen due to science but due to our prayers. Imagine god listens to prayers and gives rains... so much of it.. that it causes floods!!
What surprises me more is that those of you who believe in God believe that the "good god" has a plan for all of us. And knows everything that is to happen way before it happens. And yet you think you need to pray to him? Why? To make it happen or to question his plan's goodness and change it? That's ridiculous isn't it?
While believing in god itself is an attempt to purposefully suspend your critical thinking ability and do things that have no rationale, yet assuming you believe in God, still. I wish you do that at least rationally. And the rationale is, is what you pray for a part of gods plans? If yes, your prayers are useless. It will happen in any case. And if no, then also your prayers are useless too!! It won't happen in any case. Of course if I were to go back to my basic logic on god, needless to say, even then you shouldn't be praying.. not because god ignores your prayers.. you should simply not pray because there exists no God.
Prayers are at best like what Barbie dolls are to little girls. Gives them comfort without any actual serious ability to change things. And as adults doing such futile things and wasting time to me so damned senseless.
I think it's Peter O'Toole who had said, that he realized "he himself was god", the day while praying he suddenly realized he was doing nothing but "talking to himself"!! Yes that's what you do at best during prayers!
So, next time instead of telling someone "I will pray for you", say or write "I will think for you".. that is if you can't say "I will help you" or "do for you" or "bring change for you"(which I admit is not always possible, though two working hands can anyday do far more than a million clasped hands) . And when you think for others and don't pray you must not have any guilt. Contributions are not always about on ground work. At a macro level contributions come in form of just carrying on doing what you do daily and paying taxes, protesting and making govt accountable to using those taxes properly, writing, teaching, inspiring or even waiting for the right time to jump into action as long as you are thinking about the mysery of someone or its existence in any form in the society.
At a micro level your contribution comes by your sheer presence in the lives of the people affected.. ideally physical presence and doing as much as you can for them with two working hands (instead of two clasped ones).
But yes, please try to avoid saying this utterly meaningless and fraud word called prayer, and stop saying I am praying for you. It's like saying I am holding the Barbie doll close to my chest tonight so that you become ok. It's ridiculously meaningless. Either do something real - directly or indirectly , or don't and and know you did nothing though you should have. And let the guilt inspire you to do something greater soon.
I have never heard a doctor come and say hey, guess what!! We don't need to put the plaster on your broken leg, your family's prayers have taken care of it!! Thankfully so!! Yes, true. There are lots of scientists and doctors who believe in something as unscientific as God but amazingly they do not use God's power to cure illness or go to Mars. A doctor's job is to disprove god's existence by increasing life span and eventually take mankind to a stage - that will be achieved very soon - when he will live forever.. have written far too much on it in past so won't get into that.
But researches are often done by religious apologists to try and prove prayers have an effect on health. Yes positive spirit has an effect (though researches have conclusively proven for eg. that positive spirit has no scientific role to play in surviving cancer) in certain cases . But that has nothing to do with any god's existence. That's due to the chemicals the brain releases. So if that positive spirit comes from a Barbie or intelligent self motivation both have same effect. That's the only truth. Adults with intellect comparable to those of kids, choose the Barbie, while self motivated scientific adults choose their brains power. At times I fear a survey amongst astronauts might also reveal they believe it's god that took them to moon and space and got them back safely (and ended up actually proving there is no God on our "chanda mama" to the displeasure of many, I guess).
One of the bigger research findings actually totally debunks the concept of prayers. On the contrary it proves that post surgery complications increase hugely when people know that they were being prayed for due to build up of expectations (I pity the intelligence of such people who have expectations from prayers though) ! Isn't it soooooo logical in any case!! Pity we have to do researches to prove the obvious!! Here are doctors and scientists helping you recover from a suffering and there we have some one else taking away credit. Sad that prayers to Jesus by people of Botswana give them an average life of 42 while those of developed nations 84! Must be Jesus in developed nations is more developed!!
Also most such researches are around curable health issues. No research ever is done on say healing of amputees!! That seals the debate actually. Anything that's clearly measurable.. like an amputation.. on that it seems god has no power to help. But when it comes to health problems more vague with chances of recovery like heart ailments etc we have all researchers doing their researches.. the question is why don't they do their researches when it comes to amputees or for cancer reversal??
The fact is "every answered prayer" is absolutely nothing and nothing but a "coincidence" ,an illusion. All we have to do to prove it is do simple scientific tests like a double blind test involving something concrete and measurable (for example healing a broken arm or healing people with cancer). And we would realize there is zero effect. Irrespective of the god you pray to, irrespective of who is praying and irrespective of what we pray for!!
So unless next time you want credit for being very caring without making any efforts, never use prayers as a part of what you are doing for anyone.. for Paris or for Chennai or your parents or your loved ones..
Remember always that for every prayer in the universe if there was a good deed done, the world would be a far better place!! Of course I know praying saves you from living with guilt! Don't visit your parents when they are ill, pray for them.. do any wrong and pray for forgiveness. Convenient indeed!
Will end by repeating what's written in the quote I put in the picture above ...stop fooling yourself into believing that your prayers are giving you protection from scrutiny and making people feel that you are doing good while in reality you are doing absolutely no good!!
Grow up. Your parents, loved ones, friends are intelligent to know the difference between real care and fraud care through prayers.. so are people right now suffering in Chennai/Paris. They don't need prayers. Think for them. Work for them. If nothing do your work better and harder while thinking for them.
I know this article will again fetch me a lot of criticism and abuses, but as long as some think I have a logical point and the rest are forced to think, I will consider that as a good achievement! Because success with kids who believe Barbie doll is the reason they get good sleep, is extremely tough to achieve. However, that obviously doesn't mean that Barbie is required for a good sleep.
Cheers!
Know more about Arindam or get in touch with him:
https://youtube.com/c/DrArindamChaudhuri
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https://www.ft.com/content/57cb97bc-f3db-11da-9dab-0000779e2340?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6
https://elitedelhimagazine.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/the-mega-disruptor-and-godfather-of-private-education-in-india/
https://www.abillionleaders.com/media-feedback.html
https://m.businesstoday.in/story/best-b-schools-iipm-arindam-chaudhuri/1/188870.html
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