People have a desire to believe in ‘good luck,’ ‘angels’ of one sort or another, ‘devils’ of one sort or another – ‘mysterious forces’ which somehow link back to a ‘godhead,’ or a ‘controlling force,’ or a ‘masterplan,’ developed by some ‘All-Knowing Consciousness’ that LOVES THEM, and wants to make everything okay for them.
Why do people want that? They’re going to spend a lot of time trying to make things from The Real World fit that mold.
The minute something happens that doesn’t follow the formula, they start worrying. It makes some of them psychotic – like the guy with the sword, hacking up people on the Staten Island Ferry because Jesus told him to do it.
One reason people practice religion is that participation creates the illusion of belonging to an extended family. Whatever the Imaginary-Guy-In-The-Clouds won’t do for them (sometimes he’s busy – inventing crack; causing droughts; stirring up mischief here and there), their fellow parishioners might.
“My mother didn’t love me, my father didn’t love me, but my friends at church think I’m a nice person – so we’ll just climb on this really bitchen water-slide here, and love the jumpin’ be-jeezus out of each other while we whiz downward. . .”
If you want to stand on the steps of any building (or water-slide), all dressed up on a Sunday morning, for whatever purpose (a Christian business discussion, perhaps), great – go for it.
If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and CARES about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.
One of the reasons these evil industries have survived throughout the ages is that the big guys have always made sure that the customers confuse the ‘results’ of their ‘prayers’ with ‘the existence’ of The Guy On The Cloud.
What people call ‘prayer’ could just as easily be an unknown (or improperly described) psychic phenomenon which manifests a tangible physical result. Any group of people, focused on the same goal, might be able to aim an unknown amount of an unknown energy at some specific ‘target.’ Presto: “Prayer That Works.”