By Andrew L. Seidel

Staff Attorney

Freedom From Religion Foundation

[Note: portions of this article were posted earlier on the author’s Facebook page.]

By now you’ve all seen this sad, yet somehow refreshing headline: “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.”

Refreshing is perhaps a controversial word to apply to this situation, but I’m only applying it to the headline. It’s nice to see the media state the obvious. Nothing fails like prayer. This headline is not “prayer shaming,” but a simple statement of fact. Prayers do not work.

“The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray,” as Ingersoll said. Prayers do nothing. And actually, praying may be worse than doing nothing because prayers allow a person to feel like they are doing something, when they aren’t. Prayers assuage negative emotions that give us the drive and motivation to change the world before we’ve actually done anything to foster that change. So it’s not just that prayer doesn’t work; prayer can actually hurt.