Warning! Snarky, sacrilegious post. Easily butt-hurt Evangelicals should not read this post lest they lose their religion.
Prayer . . .
Evangelicals talk a lot about prayer. However, when pressed on their claims, ultimately they will appeal to faith to justify their claims. Never answered are questions such as:
- Who is God? Yes, there’s more than one.
- How do you know God answered your prayer?
- What evidence do you have for God answering your prayer that can’t be explained any other way?
- How do you know your answered prayer is due to anything other than luck, chance, or some sort of human intervention?
When pressed, Evangelicals appeal to their peculiar interpretations of the Bible and personal experiences. Evidence for their claims is never given outside of appeals to faith. You would think that a prayer-answering God would want everyone to know he answers prayers. Instead, God hides behind subjective experiences and claims of faith.
Let’s put this idea to the test.
Go to the grocery store and buy yourself a premium baked potato — one that weighs one pound. The next time you get the urge to pray, hold the potato above your head and pray, asking the Great Potato to hear and answer your prayer. Do this every time you want to pray for thirty days.
At the end of the test period honestly ask yourself:
- How many prayers did the Great Potato say YES to?
- How many prayers did the Great Potato say NO to?
- How many prayers did the Great Potato say MAYBE to?
- How many prayers did the Great Potato say curly fries or shoestring?
Here’s what you will find: there’s no difference between the Evangelical deity and the Great Potato when it comes to answering prayer. Answered prayers are solely the result of circumstance or chance — no God (or potato) needed.
During the deconversion process, my partner, Polly, and I gave a careful accounting of our prayers. We concluded that we could give a human, natural explanation for every one of our answered prayers save for a couple of unexplained circumstances. The paucity of supernaturally answered prayers led us to conclude that God does not answer prayers; that most of our answered petitions were either answered by self or other people. We might as well have been praying to a potato as God for as much good as it did.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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