By now everyone has heard about the tragedy that occurred in Paris. You also probably have noticed the endless “Pray for Paris” hashtags on every form of social media. While those who have perpetuated this obviously have good intentions and can be praised for at least their rallying together in support for Paris, ultimately this is a meaningless effort. Paris actually needs for actions to be taken, not just the invoking of whichever of the many gods you may believe in. Prayer makes little sense regardless of what your perspective is. It is easy to look at prayer from an atheistic perspective and disregard it, but the truth is even from many religious perspectives, the idea of prayer does not make much sense.

Many religions believe in an “all-knowing” God. This includes Christianity, the most prominent religion in the United States. If this is true, then that means God knows literally “all” — as in everything. If this is true, then why is it necessary for an individual to pray? If God already knows what you are going to pray about or ask for, then why is it necessary for you to express those thoughts in the form of a prayer? God should know them the moment you think them, if not before. If you are thinking that it is more of a ritualistic practice rather than one that is done for some kind of actual effect, then why does Paris need us to do it so badly? Is God not going to help the people of Paris if we don’t all complete this ritualistic practice?

Another aspect of many religions that seems to conflict with the idea of prayer is the concept of the divine plan, or predestination. If you believe in the idea that God has a predetermined timeline for everything that has happened or will happen, then how can prayer fit into this worldview? If there is a divine plan and what is going to happen is going to happen no matter what you do, then why pray? If what you ask for isn’t in the divine plan, then it isn’t going to happen. If what you ask for is in the divine plan, then it was going to happen anyway. Your prayer doesn’t change anything.

The biggest problem I see with the idea of prayer has to do with the relationship between God and the people living today. Take the example of Paris’ situation. Everyone in the United States has seen the “Pray for Paris” hashtag and many of those people have probably actually taken time to pray for Paris. Imagine if this wasn’t the case. Imagine that no one in the United States prayed for Paris. Do you think that God would not help the people of Paris? If He would, then why bother wasting your time praying? If He would not help them without you asking for Him to, then doesn’t that raise some moral questions about God? Why does God need us to ask Him to do the right thing? This is the biggest issue I have with the idea of prayer. If God needs us to ask Him to help people in need, then God seems more like an enemy than an ally. We should use our time to actually help these people instead of tricking ourselves into believing we have done something to help by asking for an intervention from our gods.