“Atheists, pray anyway, in case there really is an afterlife, play it safe!”





For decades religious believers have resorted to a time-honored fallacy, the appeal to fear.

“What if you’re wrong? What if you refuse to pray all your life, and you’re on your deathbed, and then at the Pearly Gates, and you realize you should have believed all along? Hmm? Isn’t it safer to pray, just in case?”

So the aim is to play it safe? Let’s explore that.

A lot of these “just in case” arguments come from Christians, in an effort to get you to pray to the Christian god. The problem is that there are thousands of belief systems out there. Experts say that there may be more than ten thousand religions out there, but many of those may be sub-sects of larger religions. For the sake of argument, let’s say there are a thousand actual belief systems. So we begin with the notion that the odds on the Christian god being in heaven, running the universe, are a thousand to one against. So it is very likely that if you pray to the Christian god, you’re still not safe: you’re probably praying to the wrong god.

We can’t say that the odds should be better on the Christian god, just because Christianity is popular with more “civilized”, rational nations where people look more like you and me. A huge majority of the world has never set foot in a Christian church, and in key Christian areas of the world, participation in Christianity is in fact declining. And there is no reason to discriminate in favor of the bigger religions over the little ones: that’s like saying McDonald’s is the healthiest food because so many people eat it. And of course it is fallacious to argue that “people who look like me like Jehovah, so he must be boss after all!” So the odds that it’s Jehovah up there in heaven are, for our purposes, still no better than a thousand to one.

In fact, the odds should be longer than a thousand to one on Jehovah because, looking at it rationally, there is more doubt about Christianity than about most religions, regardless of how many adherents the faith has. Given that the only proof for the Christian god is the Bible, which is loaded with hundreds of provable errors, absurd miracles, and a lot of anonymous authors and editors, the probability is even higher that if there is a god up there, it’s going to be somebody else. With Allah, for example, we know pretty much who wrote his holy book and where Muhammad was when he did it, which is more than you can say about the provenance of the Bible. The eastern religions rely much less on dubious myth and legend than Christianity does. There are fewer doubts and clouds of fallacy hovering over Odin, Zeus, Vishnu and the rest, than about the Christian god.  But for our purposes, we’ll stick with odds of a thousand to one for Team Jesus.

A long shot. Even if you believe in gods.

So if the aim of belief and prayer is to be safe, just in case you find there is an afterlife to worry about, common sense would impel you to pray to all the gods, not just Jehovah. All one thousand of them.

So first, go shopping. You’re going to be praying to a thousand gods, so you will need a lot of tools. Holy oil, holy water, holy wine, bells, incense, candles, Buddhist amulets, prayer beads, totems, voodoo fetishes, a prie-dieu kneeler, Hopi prayer sticks. The Tibetan faiths will require a prayer wheel and a prayer flag. Shintos ring a bell and then clap to summon the spirits, and write their prayers on a tablet. Buddhists carve their mantras on Mani stones. Your house is going to look like Pier One Imports on inventory day. We won’t try to reproduce all the clothes that the people of the world wear to pray, because you’d need a warehouse to hold it all: it will be hard enough to get all the holy headgear, the yarmulke, the turban, and of course the spaghetti colander that you wear on your head to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Then the tricky stuff. You will need marijuana for the Rastafarian rites, shamans to talk to the central Asian and native American spirits, and a prostitute. I’ll get to her later. And round up some people you don’t like. I’ll get to them too.

You will need to straighten out some of your rituals, so you don’t anger one of the gods by mistake. Muslims must pray toward Mecca while the Bahai pray toward Israel, so you definitely can’t mix those two. Jews pray three times a day, Muslims five, many others once daily: you may need an Excel spreadsheet to schedule all your prayer times. Depending on the rite, you will pray standing, sitting, kneeling, laying flat on the floor. The mantras for the Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu and Jain faiths will all be different. Many prayers involve reciting a creed, and reading off one god’s creed is likely to irritate some of the other gods: the monotheistic gods are terrified of competition. You won’t want to keep your Satanist pentagram lying around when praying to Jehovah.

Next, begin plowing through all the prayers. Christianity alone has hundreds of prayers and Irish ceremonies have been known to invoke hundreds of saints. You will be praying, using hymns and incantations, assuming yoga positions, meditating, going into a trance, speaking in tongues, swaying back and forth.

And, truly annoying to your neighbors who are already suspicious of the ganja smell, you will be following the rite of the followers of Ekankar, who say “hoo” over and over. Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo. Second verse, same as the first. Passers-by will think they’re hearing a moo cow on meth.

And now some more irritation for the neighbors. I know you’ve all been waiting for the prostitute. The Raelians use sex as part of their meditation, and the Crowleyites also perform “sex magick”. So, definitely keeping the blinds down.

And then we’ll save the messiest bit for last, just as the neighbors are thinking of calling the police. The sacrifices. Some gods are satisfied with food sacrifices; it will be agonizing to smell all that burning meat because you will also be fasting for some of the religions. But the Aztec, Norse and other tribal gods will demand human sacrifice and human blood. Which is where the people you dislike come in.  If you’re going to be doing this regularly, finding a good bail bondsman is in order. And lots of cleaning products.

With the police rolling into your driveway, this might be a good time to scoot out the back door for a road trip, because your religious observances are far from over. There are some faiths which require prayer in a particular temple, or climbing on a roof with the augurs to study the flight of birds, for guidance. Eventually you will have to travel to Mecca; don’t try visiting the Oracle of Delphi on the way back home, because the ancient Romans shut down the oracle and stole everything in the temple.

A central rationale for the “pray and be safe!” argument is that when you’re on your deathbed, you’re going to want your ticket punched for the afterlife – the correct afterlife. So you need to follow all the religious rules for luck, health and safety. This theory seems to have a streaky track record in real-world trials: Christian Scientists who try to heal illness through prayer end up going to a lot of premature funerals, and in England, although millions have prayed for long life for the kings and queens, they kept on dying anyway.

In this regard your biggest pain in the neck, by far, will be the Irish. Their rites for luck and health go on for pages. According to the Irish, you will meet with divine retribution if you knock over a chair, let a girl whistle, give your lover a lock of hair, turn off a light during dinner, hand someone a knife, do anything on Friday the 13th, leave a shoe on a chair, point a bed toward a door (but point the bed north-south when its owner is sick), wear green (surprise!), pray while facing a full moon, knit at night, carry fire out of the home of the sick, and on and on; following all the Irish rules is a step away from OCD. Don’t let a whistling girl be your ticket to hell!

If you ask the Irish, God will fix your toothache if you refrain from shaving on Sunday or if you shave the jaw of a haddock; God will cure fever if you keep a spider in a bag; walk around a flame on midsummer’s eve to avoid sickness for a year; close a wound by holding two fingers over it while praying; wearing mint cures disease; cure arthritis with an iron ring; put seeds in a woman’s hand to cure barrenness; cure epilepsy by putting hair and nail clippings under the bed; cross a stream to escape a pursuing ghost. God has you covered!

And anything that might offend or irritate God’s deputies, the fairies of Ireland – another long list of dos and don’ts. Bring divine wrath down on someone else’s head by nailing their picture to an oak tree or putting it upside down in front of a pitcher of water. And if you want to take a pass on God in favor of Satan, you can sell your soul to His Royal Darkness by walking counterclockwise around the Black Church in St. Mary's Place. The Irish rites can be exhausting, but you never know which god is the right one, so don’t cut corners!

Perhaps up on Mount Olympus, the whole bunch of a thousand gods is all actually there together, comparing notes to see who gets the most prayers, like webmasters hoping their sites get the most "Likes". Perhaps the God with the most prayers gets to wear the crown for the day: Allah seems to win every Friday, and Jehovah bounces back on Saturday and Sunday (particularly Super Bowl Sunday). Once in a while a dark horse like the Virgin Mary sneaks in at Number One for the day. If all the gods are really up there, the strategy of praying to all of them could really pay off!

Which afterlife should we be hoping for? That’s easy. The best are the Norsemen who promise reunion with your loved ones over beer, and then the Muslims who promise all those virgins. I reluctantly put Islam second, because it can be an exhausting nuisance having sex only with girls completely lacking in technique, night after night. The crying, the bloody sheets….I’m told that Muslims, culturally, love virgins because they dread comparison, but that may be yet another myth.

After that, the Greeks who promise Elysium for the pure, and nastier places for sinners. Not so pleasant are the Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, who make you go back to earth and live all over again until you get it right, like Groundhog Day but you don’t get to sleep with Andie McDowell at the end, virgin or no. The Wiccans send you back into the game again also, but they give you a vacation in “The Summerland” first.

The worst are, of course, the Christians, who tell us that even the tiny minority of people who please God get an eternity of…standing around worshipping God. All day, all night, forever.

Any sex?...No.

Do we get cable up here? Sports Center?...No.

Can I get a beer? Even a domestic?...No.

Just praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him….

…Yuck! Just kill me dead now!