Explainer
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Psychology
4 min read

The selfish desire of hopeful prayer

While waiting for a bus, Henna Cundill contemplates how prayer transforms the uncomfortable into imaginative hope.
A woman leans against the glass of a bus shelter while waiting, she clasps a bag.

“Try praying” suggests the bus as it pulls up. Ironic, really, given how much of my life I’ve spent in this draughty shelter, earnestly praying that a late bus would just turn up. Well, here is a bus, but it is not the one I’m waiting for. However, its slogan has lodged in my mind. Perhaps I should pray anyway, just to pass the time? What would I pray for right now, beyond the bus I want? Are any of my other prayer requests something that God is likely to countenance? I’m all too well aware that there are some things on my personal wish-list that the Almighty is definitely not going to grant.  

In 2022 a Church of England survey found that nearly half the population (48 per cent) claims to pray, and the numbers are apparently even higher among the 18-24 age bracket. In the breakdown of the statistics, it can be seen that the poll respondents prayed for all the ‘right’ things – for peace, forgiveness, guidance, and for those in need. So far, so pious. Would any of us really admit to a pollster that we pray for the other, slightly more selfish things – a convenient parking space, good weather on a holiday? Such prayers are suitably benign, but probably also pointless. God, surely, has better things to do. We still pray them though. Well, I do anyway. Maybe you are better than me, but I’ll go ahead and admit to all those little, probably pointless prayers – prayers revealing that inwardly I’m quite selfish, and a bit of a narcissist, a girl who just wants an easy life and an on-time bus.  

Perhaps the uncomfortable truth here is that a lot of prayer is born out of a desire for ease and comfort. Prayers for peace, forgiveness, guidance, and even prayers for others in need can be no less a response to a sense of discomfort or discontent than the prayers to get me out of this draughty bus shelter. But such desires are entirely natural. After all, as humans we are programmed to maintain homeostasis. Within that, most functions can happen internally – so when the individual body is too hot, it sweats; when the body is too cold, it shivers (like me in this shelter right now). It’s all about control.  

But sometimes the discomforts are emotional, and we are dependent on external factors to maintain or regain our homeostatic sense of peace – factors that are out of our (or any person’s) control. To pray is to make a cognitive response to that realisation, to seek some input from a higher power. There is nothing I can do to make the bus come on time, and in the absence of peace, forgiveness, guidance, or when contemplating the multifarious sicknesses and struggles of my fellow human beings – well, I realise that maybe damn near everything is out of my control. God, can you do something about this? It’s making me uncomfortable.  

Oddly enough, even the most well-known of Christian prayers, the so-called “Lord’s Prayer” (Our Father, who art in Heaven… etc. etc.) makes no bones about acknowledging this. Part way through, like hungry children who loiter in the kitchen whilst mother is cooking dinner, unashamed the pray-ers cry out: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is a daily moment of divinely sanctioned gimme, gimme, gimme. My selfish inner narcissist loves that bit.  

I’m not generally praying for bread; I have bread. But to me the bread is a metaphor for all my inner needs and appetites. I think one of the early Christian writers, Augustine of Hippo, grasped this uncomfortable truth also. Reflecting on the brutal honesty of the prayers which are found in the Bible’s Book of Psalms, he wrote: “Your desire is your prayer, your prayer is your desire.”  Augustine was not advocating that such desires should be uncritically indulged, but that pray-ers should be honest enough to verbalise their desires, to acknowledge them before God, and in that way allow sunshine to become the best disinfectant.   

There is, perhaps, no bleaker statement than the words, “I haven’t got a prayer.” Where there is prayer, there is imagination, and imagination is a sign of hope. 

How interesting that the Lord’s Prayer acknowledges this basic human need – this need to say, “God, life is uncomfortable, and I don’t like this feeling.” I wonder about the other 52 per cent of the poll respondents, the ones who said that they didn’t pray. What on earth do they do with their appetites, with their difficulties, or with their sense of malaise? Because I think Augustine was right: prayer is all about desire, and desire is about hope for satiety – be it physical, emotional, or cognitive. Prayer is anticipating that our desires can or might be met by someone or something, out there somewhere, and allowing ourselves to imagine how that might come to be. There is, perhaps, no bleaker statement than the words, “I haven’t got a prayer.” Where there is prayer, there is imagination, and imagination is a sign of hope. 

It takes a bit of courage, sometimes, to admit to what we imagine, what we secretly hope for. It might be a world of peace and prosperity for all, but it might also be for the demise of an enemy or for a successful and stress-free life. Psychologists Ann and Barry Ulanov observe that in this way, all prayer is confession, even the prayers where we are asking for stuff. By coming face-to-face with God, we also have to come face-to-face with ourselves, including our selfishness and narcissistic longing.  

So, have I got the courage to verbalise my personal wish-list? To take this idle moment and allow my imagination to present God with all my deepest, darkest desires? Well, it sounds like it might be good for me, whether God is listening or not. Prayer, it seems, is an opportunity for some gritty self-reflection and deep personal growth. So why not? Here goes:  

“Dear Heavenly Father… 

…Oh, never mind, my bus is here.  

Amen.” 

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Atheism
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6 min read

Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 2: The making of rage against religion

In the second of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper explores the roots of science and religion, and a manufactured rage.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

Part two of Stefani Ruper

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.  

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.  

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too.  Read part 1 here. 

____

“Idiots,” I mumbled under my breath. 

I was fourteen. I was in the local library, spending the day with a stack of books about evolution. I walked past a conference room where a small group church meeting was taking place.  

“Idiots,” I grumbled again, a little louder this time. 

Rage began to simmer in my blood. Religious people swore allegiance to an invisible entity for which there was absolutely zero evidence—actually, that demanded their fealty against evidence! It made me so mad. I was studying science because we needed to stick to the facts! If society was to move forward, we needed to leave our religious superstitions where they belong… in the past.   

Twenty years and a PhD in Religion & Science later, I cringe at what I used to think and feel. I’m not upset with my former self—it wasn’t my fault. But today, instead of fighting in the war between religion and science, I am fighting to end it.   

Here’s what I learned that changed my life. 

Science came from Christian Theology 

Many assume science and religion have always been at odds. But science grew out of the soil of Christian thought.   

To medieval Christian thinkers, nature was God’s Creation. They studied nature to glorify God and to nurture their own spiritual health. As William of Auvergne put it in the 13th century, studying the “book of Nature” led both to “the exaltation of the creator and the perfection of our souls.”   

They also saw God as an all-knowing, all-powerful source of Order. This predisposed them to look for overarching, universal patterns that would later become known as natural laws.  

Contrary to the common assumption that medieval thinkers were dogmatic, they were extremely humble about their truth claims, because they compared their ability to know to God’s and found themselves wanting. So when Aristotle’s systematic methods of observing nature were re-introduced to Europe in the 12th century, they seized the opportunity to enhance the rigour of their studies. As they began implementing Aristotle’s techniques, they realised they could combine them with the Platonic mathematics they had already been using for centuries. This was a powerful combination that resulted in uniquely accurate theories and predictions. It illuminated just how much Order there was to Nature—in fact, more than ever previously demonstrated. It also provided a way to formalise the study of Nature into the methods we today recognise as science. 

It is often said that over the next few hundred years scientists (then called “natural philosophers”) fought against the Church for the sake of science (“natural philosophy”), but this is an anachronism. Philosophers did begin to debate the best sources of knowledge. There were some major conflicts. But the vast majority of these people continued to study nature as a way to know and glorify God as its Creator. 

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo.

Shots fired!   

The supposed conflict between “Religion” and “Science” only really emerged about 150 years ago. In Victorian England it was becoming increasingly acceptable to criticise the church. Most wanted to reform it, but a few began to want to defeat it entirely. 

At the same time, various areas of natural philosophy were proliferating into specific disciplines becoming known as “sciences.” Some people, including influential scientist and public intellectual Thomas Huxley (who hosted an exclusive dinner club for advocates of naturalism called the X Club), saw this as an opportunity to discredit religion.   

One strategy was to unite the growing pool of various scientific disciplines under the umbrella of a singular “science” that could be defined as oppositional to religion. Science was rational, so religion became irrational. Science embraced facts, so religion entertained superstitions. Science honoured truth, so religion enabled wishful thinking. The success of theories such as evolution helped lend credence to such claims. These naturalists began to argue that science doesn’t just disprove specific notions (such as that the Earth is 6,000 years old) but all beliefs in the life beyond entirely.  

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo. In Evolution and Ethics Huxley declared, for example, that “’scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia.” And he described naturalism as appearing wherever in history “traces of the scientific spirit” were visible. 

Finally, Huxley used his considerable influence both in the UK and the USA to push religion and religious people out of the sciences. As a member of the Devonshire Commission and having several other prestigious roles and memberships throughout his career, he strategically placed his naturalistic protégés in influential university positions, and he re-wrote science textbooks and exams to exclude religious ideas, motivations, and people. In a very short amount of time, Huxley and others succeeded at pushing religion to the margins of the sciences (not entirely of course, but enough to make a difference) and making it seem anti-science. 

Overcoming rage and hate with humility 

I used to think that religion was silly and weak. I thought this view was rational, and I was intellectually superior because of it. I now know I only had these perceptions because I was born into a specific worldview in part manufactured by Huxley and others. By the same token, many fundamentalist religious people—while influenced by many sociopolitical factors—are anti-science in part because their forebears were derided as irrational and intentionally alienated from the sciences. 

Both “sides” of this supposed war have inherited simplified views of one another and are taught to fear and to hate. Without learning this history, most never realise what has biased their enemies--or themselves. And virtually everyone in our society carries misperceptions about there being some kind of intrinsic conflict. When I tell people I have a PhD in the relationship between Religion and Science, most laugh and say: “but is there one?!” 

There is, and it was once beautiful and harmonious.  

The truth is that science is a way of investigating the order of nature, which can be done with or without belief in God. Today, many scientists eschew faith, but many others continue in the medieval tradition of studying Nature as God’s Creation with great integrity, rigour, and depth.  

We don’t all have to return to such beliefs. But one medieval practice we may all do well to reclaim is to approach the world, ourselves, and one another with deep humility concerning the limits of our knowing.  

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