Recently I found myself in the car, listening to the radio (as one does) when I changed the station to a talk show. The topic of conversation this time around was the argument against ordaining women as priests within the Catholic Church. I for one don’t see why the Catholic Church won’t allow women into the clergy, but that is not the topic of this post. Maybe another one in the future.

At the time I paid no heed, but then news reports started popping up regarding a new Vatican press release. A quick visit to Atheist Ireland’s website showed me what, precisely was going on. Oh dear, Vatican, you seem to have really screwed up this time. Comparing the crime of ordaining a female priest to the crime of child sex abuse, and then saying that the sex abuse isn’t as bad? I didn’t like you before, Vatican, now I…wait a minute.

After some research and browsing across forums all around the internet and listening to yet more news, the truth slowly unfurled, and I realised yet again why I despise the media. The whole thing, it appears, is hype. What actually occurred was that the Church had released a document which detailed both crimes within it. However, nowhere is a comparison actually drawn between the two. Granted, the document was originally regarding the sex abuse scandal, so perhaps throwing in the female priest issue was a fantastically stupid thing to do. And after reading said document myself the Church does declare automatic excommunication for the female priest, whereas the sex offender isn’t automatically excommunicated. That seems insulting and highly offensive to me. But nowhere is a comparison made between the two.

I found two major schools of thought here. The people out to demonise the Catholic Church, and the members of said Church who were stalwartly defending it. Both sides were hurling insults and making futile and quite frankly pathetic arguments to defend their own viewpoint. Be it discarding entire Gospels because they mention female disciples, or declaring every priest responsible for the abhorrent actions of a few. The only people who were making any effort to remain diplomatic and calm were the people in the middle who had actually done the research and found out that the media had simply misrepresented the Church’s intentions.

The Church certainly does seem to have shot itself in the foot, but it hardly committed as grave a crime as people are making it out to be. They did something stupid, but they didn’t outright compare female priests to child rapists. Not a massive improvement from the falsified accusation.

But it’s an improvement.

Let us set my own religious stance aside for a moment, and seriously consider this question. For the purposes of simplicity, I shall utilise my own knowledge for this, which is of Christianity.

People come up with many different reasons for prayer. One of the first reasons I usually get told is to ask of their God(s) a favour. In the case of Christians, is this not sorely futile? It is mentioned numerous times in the bible, that God has a “Divine Plan”. This is a pre-written plan God has for us, for all humanity and all existence. It details everything which is going to happen to us during our time in reality. So why then would He change it because we ask it of Him? Why would God spend so long conceiving this plan, only to have it ruined when someone asks Him for something? Surely, then, He will not answer requests, for it will destroy his divine plan. Ergo, prayer for requests is futile and there is no need for it. Especially when people pray for a new car, or to wish someone harm, or to win the lottery. Can you honestly expect the Lord of Creation to answer such greedy and sadistic prayers? Such a thought is laughable.

Perhaps then, people pray for others souls. This is a little more reasonable, but it too eventually proves futile. Depending on which Christian church you are a part of, it is likely that God will judge a person’s immortal soul on their own actions. The good go to Heaven, the evil to Hell. Alternatively, some Christian branches believe in Predetermination, where one’s soul is condemned or saved prior even to birth. This comes from God’s omnipotence and omniscience. God knows a person’s future (which raises an interesting point in regards to Free Will, which I shall discuss later) well before that person even comes into being, and hence know where their soul is going. In both these cases prayer does nothing for a person’s soul. You can beg God to spare a person from Hell all you like, but if they are judged on their own actions your prayers are ignored, and the same holds true for pre-determination.

Then, perhaps, one prays simply to communicate with God? Yet God is held to be something we cannot comprehend, something which we cannot understand. It is so far above us that He is to us what we are to ants. Then how can He be expected to understand us? How, if He governs all of reality and watches trillions of stars and quadrillions of planets with billions of lifeforms, can we honestly expect to be heard?

We pray for forgiveness, which serves at least some purpose, assuming God can hear us. But as I mentioned above, God most likely cannot hear nor comprehend us, as we cannot hear nor comprehend ants. And in the case of the Christian faiths which believe in pre-determination, then prayer for our forgiveness does nothing for the same reasons prayer for another does nothing.

So we come to the final point.

We pray for ourselves. There is nothing else for it, no other logical reason. I can understand why though.

It’s comforting, to believe that your prayers have an effect. That your watching God can hear you, can comfort you. I don’t blame those who pray, and in fact I am jealous of them for having found something to comfort them.

I must find some other way….

I’d say, if you followed my blog you would know that by now. But just in case let me throw it out there for the world to see. As a side note, I wonder how many people will look at the picture for this post and scream “NAZI!”, thereby cementing their status as ignorant morons.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to be a good little boy. Always went to church, said the prayers in school and at our Christmas services. I even attended sunday school back when I was living in the Middle East. When I moved back to Ireland I went to a Christian school, learned about religion there, had my communion and confirmation. I said confession every week in church.

It wasn’t until first year of secondary school when I was about 13 that it finally clicked. I all of a sudden realised I didn’t believe in God anymore.

My secondary school was incredibly religious. A Catholic school to be exact. It had its own chapel, and we had services at the start of every year, every Christmas and at the end of every year. We had at least one hour of “Religious Education” every week.

I wish I could say my loss of belief came after some drastic event, or after weeks of confusion and self-turmoil. Because that would be so much more theatrical. Truthfully though, it wasn’t any of this. I just sat there listening to the priest give his sermon and I just realised…I didn’t believe in God. I don’t think I ever had really, I don’t remember back that far. I began to genuinely worry. I didn’t have faith, yet here I was in a Catholic school. I had often heard about atheists in America being treated badly and looked down upon, and I feared that I would suffer the same fate.

Fortunately that did not come to pass. In fact, for a religious school (which even flew the Vatican City flag outside its walls beside the Irish) there were an awful lot of atheists around.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t run by priests, the jesuits or nuns. It was just founded on Catholic principles. In fact, most of the teachers didn’t believe one way or the other. There were Buddhist’s, Jewish, Protestant students in our ranks. We were very tolerant. But I’ll get onto my school another day.

I don’t recall why, exactly, I stopped believing. But as time has gone my non-belief in the existence of God has prospered and grown. I always held onto a small piece of faith, and every now and then I’d wake up in the morning and just feel like there was, in fact, a God. But I don’t anymore. I can’t look at the evidence and honestly believe in a benevolent, omnipotent Creator who holds us close to His/Her heart.

I am a man of logic, science and mechancial reasoning. Many, many people have come to me and said “Prove there is no God.” I have no reason to. I do not believe in Him, simple as. I am not saying you shouldn’t, I’m saying I don’t. And besides, if I were to say I had a computer that was a sentient AI and could turn invisible, you would want me to prove it wouldn’t you? And would you take “Prove the computer doesn’t exist” as an answer?

I didn’t think so.