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Abstract

This paper is an expression of the philosophical worries about the meaning, types and 
modes of prayer in juxtaposition with two major attributes of God: immutability and 
immensity; then a brief look at the psychological effects of prayer as well as existential 
responsibility and prayer. The objective of the essay is to show that prayer, first when 
looked at from the prism of divine attributes seems superfluous and indeed a 
contradiction to the meaning and nature of God. Secondly to argue that the awareness 
and promise of divine help that prayer brings weakens and dries up human existential 
responsibility energy, even as the magnitude of prayer-defying problems in the world 
today, despite intensive prayers against them puts a lot doubt on the efficacy of prayer. It 
is noted that even though prayer can have a calming effect on the psyche yet that is not the 
exclusive reserve of prayer. The methodology used is critical exposition of the 
philosophical problems of religious practice of prayer. The major contribution of the 
paper is the projection of the philosophical difficulties of reconciling religious practice of 
prayer with rationality, thus making imperative the need for more pro-reflections on the 
rational foundations of prayer and indeed religious exercises of theists.

 Keywords: Philosophical, Interrogation, Rationality, Religious prayers

Introduction

The Concept of Prayer
One common feature in most religions, especially the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, 
Christianity and Islam is the phenomenon of prayer or supplication. Etymologically, the 
word prayer is from old French prier and even modern French prière translated into 
English as "prayer, petition, request." It is also from medieval Latin precaria feminine of 
precarius (from precari "to ask, beg, pray" (from 'pie' root *prek- "to ask, entreat") 
meaning "petition, prayer, obtained by prayer, given as a favour."

 In the (Catechism of Christian Doctrine 141) of the Catholic Church, it is 
a communication-the raising up of minds and hearts to God.

To pray is to beg, 
entreat, ask for a favour and petition. Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, as shown in the account 
of prayer life of the prophets, Jesus and apostles, is an evolving means of interacting with 
God, most frequently through a spontaneous, individual, unorganized form of petitioning 
and/or thanking.

In religion generally, prayer 
means to talk to a deity or god; the act of praying is a method of changing a situation for 
the better. The word prayer can also be used in a non-religious way like in begging for 

A PHILOSOPHICAL INTERROGATION OF THE RATIONALITY 
OF RELIGIOUS PRAYERS

Stephen Azubuike Oguji, PhD
Department of Philosophy

Imo State University, Owerri



139

something. For example "I pray you'll really listen to my explanation. The concluding 
addresses or arguments of counsels in a law court before judgement is given are also 
referred to as prayers.

The concept of prayer to be examined here, however, is that of a devout petition to God or 
an object of worship, a spiritual communion with God or an object of worship, as in 
supplication, thanksgiving, adoration, or confession. Particularly, this paper is concerned 
with prayer

  

 Types, Modes and Contents of Prayer 
Religious prayer, which is the subject matter here may be verbalized in speech, 
demonstrated symbolically through singing and dancing, could be intrinsic as in 
meditation, could be a person praying wholly or partially. Prayers could be rendered in 
spoken prose or poetry or songs lent to the sentiments of praise, thanksgiving or petition. 
It could be vivacious, topical and expressive of the spiritual, psychological and emotional 
state of the petitioner. It can also be litanic, panegyric, praise poem, stylized ejaculation or 
short invocation. Prayer may take two forms: presentation and invitation. Prayers are 
tailored to fit the occasion and the current frame of mind of the one who utters the prayers. 
Hence prayers can be joyful, hopeful, despairing. Despite the tone, items mentioned in 
prayers have personal dimension, a community orientation and universal 
application.(Ndiukwu 243). For (Shorter 3) on types of prayer “prayer is basically 
petition, but thanksgiving is a further expression of man's conscious dependence upon 
supernatural powers. Finally, self-accusation and penitential prayer are used to buttress 
the petition and reinforce the plea, acting as a form of persuasion.”
There are four primary types of prayer in the West as delineated by (Poloma and 
Pendleton, 43) utilizing factor analysis: meditative (more spiritual, silent thinking), 
ritualistic (reciting), petitionary (making requests to God), and colloquial (general 
conversing with God).Further scientific study of prayer using factor analysis has revealed 
three dimensions of prayer. For instance, Ladd and Spilka's first dimension was 
awareness of self, inward reaching. Their second and third dimensions were upward 
reaching (toward God) and outward reaching (toward others). This study appears to 
support the contemporary model of prayer as connection whether to the self, higher being, 
or others.

In prayer, the people request such things as good health, healing, protection, safety in 
travelling, prosperity, preservation of life, peace, procreation, marital bliss, forgiveness 
of sins, and many others. Prayers are also made for deliverance from the devil's hold 
sometimes called exorcism; from sudden death and witchcrafts. The community at large 
may ask for reign of peace, the cessation of epidemics or pandemics and or other dangers, 
success in war or raids, acceptance of sacrifices and offerings, wellbeing of humans as 
well as animal and crops are also presented. For some mystics, prayer may just be a simple 
awareness of the divine. 

 as “the speech a man pours out before God which must primarily express – 
whatever immediate purpose the suppliant may have had in mind – the worshippers 
earnest desire for a revelation of the divine presence and express that presence 
dialogically. (Buber, 52)

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The Problem
The problem of this paper however is that the rational foundations of the phenomenon of 
religious prayer is always a source of worry to any discerning or questioning mind. First 
among the rational difficulties that agitate the mind is whether it makes sense to pray in 
relation to the theological attributes of God particularly immutability, immensity, and 
divine providence. Breaking down the rational difficulties of religious prayers provokes 
such questions as: Why pray if God by his nature of omniscience already knows and has 
ordained the future?” How does omnipotent God in answering prayers interfere with this 
complex and harmoniously functioning world-machine governed by eternal and 
inexorable laws?  
Also, from the existentialist perspective, the problem of how prayer coheres with 
existential realities is also difficult.

  A very fresh example is prayer for better health 

which does not seem to have paid off as the world has seen epidemics upon epidemic as seen in 

Ebola epidemic and Covid 19 pandemic. It doesn't seem that fewer accidents occur in air, water 

and land travels. There is no more peace in the world as more countries are in civil rife

On a kind of general note, the practice of religious prayer is also disturbed by the 
philosophical problem of evil which essentially can be put thus: If God is all-good and all-
powerful as is generally claimed about him: why is there evil (such as diseases, 
pandemics, injustice, abject poverty, moral weakness, political wickedness, etc.)? Why 
indeed are there situations that warrant or compel prayer?  God should want to prevent 
evil situations if he is all loving and be able to prevent evil situations if he is all-powerful.  
In this regard some philosophers, in the light of evidence,  after reflecting on the problem 
of evil, conclude that it is either God is not all-powerful and all-good (he is either one or 
the other) or he does not exist or he does not answer prayer. 

The Objective
The objective of this paper therefore is to interrogate the rational foundation of prayer and 
that way possibly cause or initiate more reflections and debate on the subject.  The paper 
first  interrogates rationally how prayer works in relation to the nature of God and 
secondly the place of prayer in the existential welfare or success equation particularly as 
is commonly presented in most religious languages or expressions, pointing out clearly 
how prayer encourages existential irresponsibility. Thirdly, the paper also raises some of 
the philosophically based questions that agitate the mind particularly about whether God 
actually answers prayer or not in the light of evidence.
It is important to note that essentially, this paper is not an interrogation on the existence of 
God or supernatural forces but is particularly whether human actions, wishes or intentions 
can move God to a particular direction as is usually claimed in prayers. The point is to 
understand whether an unchangeable (immutable) and ever present God can be moved to 

 According to Prayer statistics of 2021 as published in 

Statisca.com, in a study on Frequency of Prayer, average of 55% of those surveyed across both 

developed and developing nations (85% in developing nations and 25% in developed nations) 

noted they pray at least once a day. Despite many religions in the world and their many undeniable 

prayer sessions for a better world, the world has experienced less peace, more terrorism, more 

political instability and  generally degenerated or stagnated in many spheres of its existence 

socially, politically, economically and otherwise.

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act following prayers. Not only is God immutable: He alone is immutable, unlike every 
creatural being that is subject to change. But religious language and acts of prayer seem to 
have as its starting point, the presupposition that God undergoes change in one form or 
another; that he realizes his being successively through passage from potentiality to 
actuality in the process of responding to human prayers. The gamut of religious prayers 
presents God in a continuous process of becoming, so that some form of reality is always 
being acquired and lost through change in response to prayers. 

Some Philosophical Works on Prayer
The problem of how an immutable God seems to undergo some changes in response to 
prayer has been a subject of interest for many thinkers. A renowned Christian author in 
Mere Christianity (Lewis, 32) attempted a philosophical discourse on how the power of 
God relates with the natural world. He delved into how the power of God usually called 
into action in prayer relates with the laws of nature. He exalts the law of nature which he 
calls the law of right and wrong as being above and beyond the actual facts of human 
behaviour. This is where he locates the power of God which transcends the so-called 
natural laws. For him natural laws regulate the way things are, the power of God 
determines the way things should be. Lewis makes the point that there is a big difference 
between “the way things are” and “the way things should be” with regard to natural laws 
like gravity and what he called “human nature.”  He drew a distinction between “facts” 
and “reality.” He said that the Law of Nature was based on some reality that was “beyond” 
what we experience in this world. It is based on what he called “a real law.” In another 
place, he explained, “there is more than one kind of reality.” Lewis stated: 
When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature 
does, in fact behave in a certain way. The so-called laws may not be anything 
real—anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe...The Law of Nature, 
or of Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond the actual facts of human 
behaviour. In this case, besides the actual facts, you have something else—a real law 
which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.

In his thesis, “A Philosophical Analysis of Petitionary Prayer”, (Haas 78) presented a 
philosophical analysis of petitionary prayer, from the perspective of one who engages in 
petitionary prayer on a regular basis. His paper looked at the basis for petitionary prayer 
from the Bible and some traditional thoughts and practices associated with it from the 
church. Even though he delved into some philosophical problems or concerns that are 
usually raised against petitionary prayer, he did it with a religious bias hence he is caught 
in the work doing more of apologetics. He merely defended the Christian perspectives of 
the problem of free will/divine providence, the problem of hiddenness, and the problem 
of God's goodness. Again, even though he tried to show that these problems are non-
issues when considered from the Christian doctrine of grace of Jesus Christ, yet he failed 
to show how divine attributes can co-exist with prayers in general particularly traditional 
religious prayers which can fall into four types: Adoration: Praising God, Contrition: 
Asking for God's forgiveness, Petition: Asking God for a favour, Thanksgiving: Showing 
God gratitude. Haas scratched the basic philosophical problems in the practice of 

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petitionary prayer, such as: Why pray if God has already ordained the future? Does 
praying even make sense to an almighty transcendent God? And, why should one pray to a 
God who is invisible, silent, and unknown? He did not deal with the issues objectively 
given his religious and apologetic biases, appealing more often than not to the scriptures. 
It is evident that both Lewis and Lauren Haas subtly avoided the problem in question, 
even though they tried to display their ingenuity yet they succeeded in selling their 
Christian biases as the philosophical basis for prayer. Generally many reflections on 
prayer are usually either exhortations or apologetics and thus does not have much for the 
worries of the philosopher.
Similarly extracts from the writings of (Ahmad and Mahdi 230-232) on the power and 
acceptance of prayer republished from the second volume of Essence of Islam only talked 
about prayer from the human perspective. Ahmad generally discussed the effectiveness 
of prayer. He presented prayer more as primordially a human act that elicits a divine 
response.  In trying to show that to supplicate is human and to respond is divine, he wrote:

When a child being driven by hunger cries for milk, milk is generated in the mother's 
breasts. The child does not know what prayer is, but his cries draw the milk. This is a 
universal experience. Sometimes when the mother does not perceive the presence of milk 
in her breasts, the child's cries help to draw it. Then can our cries before God Almighty 
draw nothing? They certainly draw everything. But those sightless ones, who parade 
themselves as scholars and philosophers, cannot see it. If a person were to reflect on the 
philosophy of prayer, keeping in mind the connection and relationship which a child has 
with its mother, he would find it easy to understand. The second type of mercy comes into 
operation after supplication. Go on asking and you will go on receiving. 

Perhaps it was Eleonore Stump's essay (81) that came close to feeling my pulse in terms of 
how prayer is a contradiction in terms to the meaning of God. In her essay “Petitionary 
Prayer: is a belief in the efficacy and usefulness of petitionary prayer consistent with a 
belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God?” Stump constructed a thirteen 
part argument to show the difficulty in reconciling petitionary prayer with divine 
attributes. Stump's argument begins with the notion of God's goodness, and works with 
the notion of God's providence to produce an argument that seemingly destroys the 
validity of petitionary prayer. It begins with like this.
1.A perfectly good being never makes the world worse than it would otherwise be if he 
can avoid doing so. 2. An omniscient and omnipotent being can avoid doing anything 
which it is not logically necessary for him to do.3. An omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly 
good being never makes the world worse than it would otherwise be unless it is logically 
necessary for him to do so
The argument continues to these premises concerning petitionary prayer: 
If what is requested in a petitionary prayer is or results in a state of affairs the realization of 
which would make the world worse than it would otherwise be, an omniscient, 
omnipotent, perfectly good being will not fulfil that request. If what is requested in a 
petitionary prayer is or results in a state of affairs the realization of which would make the 
world better than it would otherwise be, an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being 
will bring about that state of affairs even if no prayer for its realization has been made.

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And finally, she ended with these conclusions: .Petitionary prayer effects no change. 
Petitionary prayer is pointless. Eleonore indeed struck the bone of contention by showing 
that an omniscient God does not need to be reminded of the best things he would do for his 
world or an all loving God would do good things for his creature without a request. 
Reconciling this with prayer is my problem. The few available literatures in this area have 
left many of the questions unanswered.

Prayer and Divine Attributes
The philosophical problem with prayer, commonest forms of prayer: petition, worship or 
praise, prayer of penitence etc is that there is the conscious belief that prayers can dispose 
the Supreme God and that way tend to contradict the attributes of the metaphysical God. 
(Aquinas, 1,2,8) defines an attribute as that which follows by natural necessity upon a 
fully constituted essence. Given the essence, the attribute is also given. The attribute 
always characterizes the essence, since it flows necessarily from the essence. Another 
term for attribute, practically synonymous with it, is property. As the word indicates 
(i.e.proprium, one's own), a property belongs to an essence in such a manner that it is 
proper to this essence. Thus the power of speech is an attribute or property of man as a 
rational animal, only an animal can have organs capable of emitting articulated sounds; 
and only a rational being has ideas which can be communicated to others by means of 
speech. Attributes reveal the underlying essence. Since the attributes flow necessarily 
from fully constituted essence, there exists an intrinsic connection between the attributes 
and the essence, and so the mind of man naturally goes from knowledge of the attributes to 
knowledge of the essence itself. When speaking of God, we understand by the divine 
attributes all those perfections which flow necessarily from the divine and which are 
found in no other being but God. Some attributes of God pertain to his being or essence, 
and some pertain to his operations. These attributes are absolute, in the sense that they are 
present in God irrespective of any creatural being. In the context of this paper, among the 
various divine attributes the ones that are of interest are immutability and immensity.  

God's Immutability and Prayer
One attribute of God that is difficult to reconcile with prayer is immutability. As the word 
indicates, immutability is the negation of mutability. Mutability (Mutation) means 
capability of change. A thing is said to change when it passes from one state to another. 
Every change involves two things: a subject who acquires or loses something and a reality 
which is acquired or lost by the subject. Theists generally maintain that God is in no way 
changeable. God is immutable; he does not change as a matter of fact, he is incapable of 
intrinsic change, he cannot change his mind because he is complete. This immediately 
comes into conflict with prayers that tend to ask God to change his mind and have mercy, 
heal the sick, attend to a situation and so on. Most prayers generally try to prevail on God 
to change his mind. In prayer of penitence, that is asking God for forgiveness, for 
instance, God is asked to change from being angry to being happy just as in prayer of 
petition, God is made to move in the direction of the petitioner and grant his request. In 
responding to prayers of penitence or petition there is an intrinsic change in God from 

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state of being angry to being happy. God is made to change from emotions of anger to that 
of mercy. The picture presented of God is that of a person who gets angry with his 
creatures when they behave in ways he does not like (even though given his all-knowing 
nature, he must have known what they would do even before they did it) and feels better 
and forgives them when they are remorseful. But an absolutely simple God 
metaphysically speaking is incapable, despite claims of his absolute power, of moral, 
physical and intellectual change. Prayer of petition claims or tries to inform or remind the 
God who cannot undergo any intellectual change or acquire any new knowledge of their 
problems.  This is a big contradiction. Furthermore since God is infinitely perfect, 
ignorance, whether antecedent or subsequent, must be excluded from Him. God therefore, 
can neither acquire nor lose knowledge, it follows that God cannot be informed of 
anything as claimed in prayer of petition

Another disturbing twist to the issue since God is all-loving and knows what is best for his 
creatures, is the difficulty for him to answer one of his creature's prayers of petition 
without offending his love for another of his creatures. For instance between the prayers of 
the sick who is asking God for medication–less healing and the prayer of the medical 
doctor or pharmacist who is asking God for business growth, which one should God 
answer? While the sick needs healing to be happy and feel loved by God, the medical 
practitioners, the physicians and the pharmacists need to attend to the sick to make money 
and have a business growth. Similar difficult situations will God have in dealing with the 
prayers of the living who is praying for long life or against the so called untimely death and 
the prayers those businesses revolve around death: coffin makers, mortuary workers, 
undertakers. Again who will God answer between the prayers of the unmarried young 
lady who earnestly desires to be married to a loving young man and the young catholic 
seminarian who is asking God to protect his vocation to the celibate catholic priesthood or 
the barren couple who needs 'fruit of the womb' and the universal fear for the geometric 
rise in population and its survival consequences for humanity or the farmer who needs 
maximum rainfall for his crops and the people living in erosion prone areas who don't 
need rain at all. There are of course many of such difficult situations where God will find it 
difficult to demonstrate his love and yet answer to someone's petition. 

The worst seems to be prayer of exorcism or deliverance which seems to present an 
almighty God as engaging in a conquest with a lower being, the devil over a soul which 
properly belongs to God. Since God is the only and ultimate principle, (with apologies to 
the Manichaeans), even if he didn't create but at least he knows the origin of the devil. 
How then will he allow 'his creature' to, against his divine will, possess his creature for 
destructive purposes and  then engage in fight with the devil to free this his creature. In 
deliverance prayer, the devil appears unwilling to free its victim, hence the military nature 
of such prayers.

Even prayer of thanksgiving to God for the good he did equally seems redundant because 
God by nature is all good and cannot act otherwise. It appears unnecessary to thank 
someone, a being for acting according to his nature; for doing what he is supposed to do, 

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what he cannot even decide not to do given his necessary goodness, and an action that is 
inexorably his nature. God cannot decide not to love; to hate, not to be a good God. It is 
essentially in his nature to love and be good to his creatures. Even the prayer hypocrisy is 
most evident when as heard, in some religious gatherings, people are asked to thank God 
for the good things he did for them which he didn't do for others. We hear such things as 
'thank God for keeping you alive as some are presently languishing in hospitals; thank 
God for this feat you accomplished which many could not even when they put in more 
effort. In this case, God is presented as a being partial in his love, limited in power and 
timed by human events all of which are contradictory to his nature.

God's Immensity and Prayer
Immensity is taken here as that intrinsic attribute of God in virtue of which he is 
necessarily present wherever any being exists which is not God. This attribute is eternal 
because it is really identical with God's eternal essence and is independent of whether 
creatural things exist or do not exist. Even if no creatural beings existed, the attribute of 
God's immensity would be intrinsic to Him and would require that he be present to all 
creatural beings as soon  as  they began to exist. If God is everywhere and in all beings 
then he does not need to be informed in any way about any situation in any of the creatural 
beings. The omnipresence of God contradicts the acts of prayer where God is told, say, 
the political crisis in a country. Hence, what is being established here is not only that God 
is in every being; but that it is redundant to inform him about any being where he already 
dwells. 

Prayer as a Disservice To Existential Responsibility
Existential responsibility is the full awareness and control of one's life without any or 
serious recourse to the outside world. One is existentially responsible, according to Jean-
Paul Sartre and most other existentialist philosophers, when he becomes aware that the 
natural concomitant to human freedom is personal responsibility and acknowledges that 
he is responsible for his failure or success in life. Nothing else, including God, is 
responsible. Once this kind of awareness settles in someone, he responsibly pursues the 
right values of life, makes careful choices or does the right things with full and proper 
scientific (cause and effect) attitude. . But since different forms of prayer as have been 
shown seek for divine help purportedly at the end of human ability, then prayer makes 
those praying lose the sense of being fully in charge or responsible for their lives and that 
way provides room for existential irresponsibility. Prayer does a disservice to the 
existential responsibility of the praying person, because believing that there is a ready 
divine help in a situation, instead of tasking his mental resources to deal with the situation 
believes and expects God to help. 
It is no surprise then that today, according to statistics released by Gallup in 2014, 
societies that privilege science over religion make more progress as members generally 
act as if they carry their fate in their hands, not in God's hands. In a study “How Religion 
Affects Children's Judgment of What Is Real and What Is Pretend” (Kathleen 
Corriveauet al,65) found among other things “that religious children cannot tell fact from 
fiction….”  because they  are taught to think that miracles are possible — and so for them, 

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a story that includes a miracle is not obviously fictional. Non-religious children, that is 
non-praying children by contrast, receive less encouragement to think that miracles are 
possible - and so for them a story that includes a miracle is likely to be made up. They are 
thus unaware and unexpectant of any divine assistance and tend to approach life 
pragmatically while the religious ones, aware and expectant of divine help, live their 
lives expecting a miracle. Many scientists have regarded the history of miracle in religion 
as history of superstition, gullibility and fraud.

Prayer thus deceives those who pray into believing that wellbeing in many areas of life – 
finance, relationship, health, fruitfulness is more of a function of divine activity than the 
existential choices made, life styles, economic priorities and general cause-effect 
existential processes. Prayer distorts and in fact destroys the sense of respect for the laws 
of nature by misdirecting the energy of expectation from the individual to something 
outside of him and in that way fertilizes mental laziness, dwarfs the person's 
development-consciousness and reduces the ability to reason scientifically and assume 
responsibility for his life. (Anele 34) argues that religious or praying minds quickly lose 
the foundation capacities for fostering human and national development in the following 
words:

Are Prayers Answered?
The next problem with prayer is that it appears a waste of human time, energy and 
attention in comparison with its outcomes. On the efficacy and potency of prayer to 
change human conditions to the better, my experience and feeling is that prayers are not 
usually answered as much as man prays. The magnitude of evil and discomfort in the 
human world does not in any way attest to the amount of prayer against such. God does 
not seem to respond to prayers, at least as compared to the amount of prayers made to him 
in different religions in different parts of the world.  In 1872, Francis Galton, as reported 
by (Richards 337) used statistical analysis of empirical patterns to refute the belief that 
prayers evoke miracles. His studies showed that in spite of their prayers, the clergy lived 
no longer than physicians or lawyers; that ships with missionaries sank as often as others; 
and that religious lands had their full share of evil.

Galton's studies conclude that there is no good evidence to hold the position that prayers 
make any difference in the outcome of human affairs, that those who pray more have 

Again on what prayer can do to the psyche, Your Reality Scans in the fields of 
Neurotheology and neuroscience show that people who spend untold hours in prayer or 
meditation go dark in the parietal lobe, the brain area that helps create a sense of self. 
Researchers -Andrew Newberg and Richard Davidson - say these people may be 
rewriting the neural connections in their brains — altering how they see the world.  
Newberg and Davidson 45 have scanned and imaged the brain of  a Methodist minister 
McDermott, some monks of both Christian and Sikh religion and some Franciscan  nuns 
when they engaged in intense prayer for more than a decade and found out  according to 
Newberg “that the more you focus on something whether its maths… or football or God – 
the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural 
connection of your brain.” He noted that there is increased brain activity during prayers.

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more advantage over those who don't; that those who are religious suffer less evil than 
those who are not. Evil befall both the religious and the non-religious alike. When large 
scale earthquakes happen in an area, it does not select its victims. Churches are not spared. 
Religious and non-religious societies experience bad leaders; citizens of both societies 
die in accidents. They slip off to their passion if unchecked, they fail their exams if they 
refuse to prepare well. Praying ladies do not find love if they are asocial and do not 
enhance their feminine appeal, businesses of praying people fail if they do not work hard, 
criminals attack them if the society is bad, epidemics visit both the praying and the non-
praying ones if they are not vaccinated, they divorce in their marriages if they refuse to 
work on their relationships, they go childless if they are impotent, they die in childbirth if 
the pregnant women refuse to follow doctor's advice and so on. What difference then does 
prayer make?

th
What Francis Galton did in the 19  century was modeled by Templeton Foundation in 
2005 as reported by (McGee 67) when it funded a study by providing $2.4 million to see 
how large scale praying might affect patients recovering from heart surgery. About 1,800 
patients at six different hospitals were divided into three groups at each hospital. Two of 
these groups did not know whether they were going to be prayed for or not. One of these 
two in fact did not receive prayers, the other did. A third group was told they were indeed 
going to be prayed for as they were. Three large religious groups, two of the Catholic and 
one protestant were enlisted to pray for 14 days for two of the three groups totaling 1,200 
patients, 600 of whom knew the prayers were being offered for them. At the end of the two 
weeks, the relative health of the members of each group was evaluated by teams that did 
not know who was to have received prayers and who did not. When the numbers were all 
properly crunched, the outcome was rather unimpressive. Those who were prayed for 
fared no better than those who were not. One odd result as (Barnes 117) noted those who 
had been told explicitly that they were going to be object of prayers did slightly worse than 
the others. Perhaps hearing that a massive number of prayers were to be made on their 
behalf, some have speculated, made these patients more fearful that they were in the direst 
need of prayer, which in turn made them more pessimistic about their health.

ost times prayers are blatantly not 
answered, even the ones from the most beloved of God. Any honest person who prays will 
attest to this. There are many very religious people who are extremely poor which is a 
complete anti thesis to their wishes and prayers; many of such who are childless or who 
want certain sex of children - boy or girl - who cannot get it. Many survivors of auto 
crashes or air crashes have shared their stories of the amount of prayers made as the 
accidents were about to happen and yet they happened. God most times seems to be absent 
when he is most called upon in prayers. When prayers are not answered, as is most times 
the case, we philosophize: God knows the best; who knows what would have been the 
case if…', we did not have enough faith, we are not tithing enough, we prayed in sin and so 

It is yet difficult to establish that praying for something has an effect on its specific 
outcome, whether it be for health, prosperity etc.  M

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on. Yet all around us we see those who do not care about God and consequently who do 
not pray enjoy most of the goodies of life sought in prayer: 'sinful' prayerless couples 
having children as they want, and the sex they want, non-tithing people getting richer just 
by observing simple financial rules. Certainly, there are claims of prayers being answered 
or miracles happening, but as Hume and others would say, these may be mere 
coincidences, claims that would disappear when subjected to critical scientific analysis.

 Prayer appears to have 
health implications on the psyche. Empirical studies suggest that mindfully reading and 
reciting the Psalms (from scripture) can help a person calm down and focus. Three main 
pathways to explain this trend have been offered: placebo effect, focus and attitude 
adjustment, and activation of healing processes. When people pray with focus they 
become more centered and gain better view of the world . 
This makes them feel calmer and in some people it lowers their blood pressure,

He who supplicates God at the time of difficulty and distress and seeks the resolution of 
his difficulties from Him achieves satisfaction … from God Almighty provided he carries 
his supplication to its limit. Even if he does not achieve the purpose of his supplication, he 
is bestowed some other kind of satisfaction and contentment by God. (McGee, 67)

However the argument that prayer plays an important psycho-therapeutic role, gives 
assurance, calmness and serenity of mind which helps the praying person not to surrender 
in the face of the distressing circumstances of life can still be challenged because there are 
also other ways one can get the same calming or 'opiate' effect kudos to Karl Marx. Drug, 
yoga, committed sexual intercourse, meditation, good human relationship, counseling 
and so on can produce the same effect even though momentary just as the calmness that 
prayers brings is also momentary. The American psychologist James H. Leuba 
(1868–1946), in A Psychological Study of Religion, accounts for mystical experience 
psychologically and physiologically, pointing out certain drug-induced calming 
experiences. William James was also interested in mystical experiences from a drug-
induced perspective, leading him to make some experiments with nitrous oxide and even 
peyote. 

One component of prayer that brings calmness and hope, that requires further comment, 
is the meditative component. Meditative prayer causes momentary shifting of attention 
away from habitual or customary modes of thinking and perception, in order to permit 
experiencing in a different way. Meditation can induce an altered state of consciousness 
characterized by a loss of awareness of extraneous stimuli, one-pointed attention to the 
meditation object to the exclusion of all other thoughts, and feelings of bliss. But since 
there are also drugs, as noted earlier, that can bring the same calming effect, then it is not 
the exclusive reserve of meditation. 

However, one benefit that has been attributed to prayer from experience, as some studies 
suggest, is psychological health benefits, even if momentary.

and the prevailing situations
 makes 

them feel better, feel hope or feel loved as it calms the brain by increasing frontal lobe 
activity, focus and intentionality. The feeling of release that comes with prayer is 
articulated below:

A recent study by Medical News Today found that 
religion activates the same reward-processing brain circuits as sex, drugs, and other 

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addictive activities. It is not necessary therefore, following the principle of parsimony of 
William of Ockham therefore, to invoke extra ordinary solutions, such as prayers for what 
has natural solutions.  

Conclusion
The philosophical problems of prayer is that it is difficult to explain how God answers 
prayers without losing his nature; without passing from one state to another state 
acquiring or losing some reality. If God hears my petition for instance, it simply means he 
does not possess it (the knowledge of what I told him) already and acquires the 
information by means of change from ignorance to knowledge. Hence if God could 
acquire some reality, He would of necessity, have to be mutable which is a contradiction to 
his nature is. Since he is immutable, he cannot acquire any knowledge hence he cannot 
hear prayer, nonetheless answer it. The same consequence follows from the infinite 
perfection of God. If God could acquire reality by means of change, he would not be 
infinitely perfect before the change; He would certainly be more perfect if He did not 
acquire it but possessed it already.  This same argument holds with the necessity of God's 
immensity. His presence is not to be conceived as a potentiality of some sort, but as the 
fullness of the divine being required.  This negates in every sense, the practice of calling 
the attention of God to a situation, say to heal, to help and so on. The mysterious nature of 
his presence everywhere and in every being says this. Again, it has also been argued that 
the practice of prayer shifts responsibility as those who pray tend to be existentially 
irresponsible as they expect help from God. Even though it has been acknowledged that 
prayer calms me down, gives some sense of spiritual anchor, a sense of hope yet it is also 
argued that there are other ways of inducing such feelings. To wrap up while this paper 
does not discourage prayer as such, yet it calls for more reflections on the content, types 
and modes of prayers. The work should generally elicit modifications of the words and 
content of religious prayers in order to straighten things out in the relationship between 
rational self and believing self. 

Works Cited
Aloysius Ndiukwu, Authenticity of Belief in African (Igbo) Traditional Religion: A 

Critical Appraisal in the Light of Christian Faith, Wurzburg: European University 
Studies, 2012.

Ayyam-us-Sulh, RuhaniKhaza'in, vol. 14, Eng. Trans in Essence of Islam, Vol.2

Clive Staples Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Scribner, 1952

Anele, “How Religion Underdeveloped Nigeria”. Retrieved from             
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/12/religion-underdeveloped-nigeria-1/ 

Elenore Stump, “Petitionary Prayer,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2 
(April 1979): 81, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20009745 (accessed 15 April 
2012).

Daniel 

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Glenn McGee and Arthur Kaplan, “Playing with God: Prayer is Not a Prescription”
The American Journal of Bioethics. 2007

Catechism of the Christian Doctrine, no.

Martin Buber, Thoughts on God, London. Oxford, 1945.

Michael Horace Barnes, Understanding Religion and Science, New York: Continuum, 
2010

Paige Haas, “A Philosophical Analysis of Petitionary Prayer” Unpublished Thesis 
Submitted to the Faculty of Religious Studies, Baylor University in Partial 
Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Honors Program

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Rome.UUP, 1975.

Robert Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and 
Behaviors, Chicago:  university of Chicago, 1987.

……..The Journal of Speculative Philosophy Vol. 16, No. 1 January, 1992.
Poloma Pendleton, Psychology of Religion, New York: Urwin,1999

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