Atheist Prayer

By By Martin J Willett --

The next time you're asked to pray over a family meal or at some special event...

Let us take responsibility for our own actions, inactions, strengths and frailties and not project them onto ghosts, spirits, stars, portents and gods unseen.

Image by Stuck in Customs via Flickr

Let us have the courage to accept that one person's faith is another person's bloody-minded pig-headed refusal to accept the obvious.

Let us have the courage to accept that the person at the front of all crowds, including this one, doesn't know all the answers.

Let us have the wisdom to accept that if our ancestors had fared differently in wars our communities would be holding different absurdities up as sacred truths, and the willingness to accept those absurdities would be seen as the badge of social trustworthiness or even the right to be allowed to draw breath.

Let us accept that the difference between a prophet and a madman is not what they say but whether the crowd accepts the story and tells their children to believe it.

Let us have the courage to accept that wanting to believe in something with every fibre of our being does not and cannot make it true.

Truth needs no help, no believers, no bowed heads and no amens.