Borden Applegate, this area’s favorite regularly corresponding atheist, favors us in a recent edition of the Tri-Town News with another of his interesting screeds directed against God-based religions in general.
This particular one starts off with a denigration of the value of prayer, trotting out the usual stuff about the existence of wars and volcanoes and diseases and death and topping his argument off with the powerfully convincing statement that the young Mark Twain once prayed dutifully for a piece of gingerbread but didn’t get it and had to steal one instead.
However, the efficacy of prayer is neither provable nor disprovable by the observation of physical phenomena and human behavior. We know that many things completely unexplainable by physical sciences have occurred and continue to occur.
That those things have occurred as the result of being prayed for is of course unprovable in material terms, just as it is unprovable that they have not resulted from prayer. We in the gullible group can say they are miracles, and those in Mr. Applegate’s non-credulous crowd can call them simply unexplainable at this time or, as is their more common tactic, deny or ignore that they ever happened.
Mr. Applegate seems to fear that a nationally acknowledged day of prayer is going to lead eventually to laws forcing the populace into churches for worship sessions, to the horror of his staunchly atheist conscience. His fear is unfounded.
Despite his highly selective concern about the violation of consciences, our federal and state governments are currently much more actively engaged in offending the consciences of those in God-based religions, requiring them to be taxed to support the murder of babies and to assist and participate in celebrations of same-sex “marriages.”
Maybe the best all-around compromise would be for the government to distinctly specify in its annual declaration that no prayers of any kind be offered for the Mr. Applegates among us. Would that be acceptable?
Neal Pronek
Farmingdale
