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!
