How to Pray If You're an Atheist

[longship]

3. Sheesh, yet another "why atheists should be more like believers" article.

Sorry. The solution is simple. Atheists don't pray. Why would they even want to? Arguing that they are somehow missing something is just more theist rubbish from a professed former evangelical who still cannot entirely let go of the culture he was brought up in.

Sorry, my friend. I went to church for the first thirteen years of my life and I never believed it. Not every atheist insists on keeping such religious cultural baggage in their lives. I guess I have no problem with those who do such things, but I will not entertain anything like an argument that this makes atheists somehow incomplete, which is almost the inevitable argument.

I never pray. And I never miss it from when I attended church and recited the prayers out of politeness.

Thanks, rug. Another chance to chime in on why atheists are not the same thing as the religious in spite of the seemingly never-ending articles stating the contrary. They are kind of a set piece, a memetic story that gets retold over and over again.

Different story, same lesson: atheists are really just the same as believers. They pray. They really believe in god after all. There's something missing in their lives because they don't have god, or Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or whatever. I almost never hear some variation of these arguments.

It used to piss me off. Now, I am just amused by it. This is the spell we have to break. The one Dennett writes about in his "Breaking the Spell".