Is Praying Before Football Games Cheating?

By Valerie Tarico ~

How many times have you seen football players – on the screen or just off the field—huddling for prayer before a game? You know what they’re asking for, right? They’re asking God to tweak the rules of biology and physics on their behalf: To make those fast twitch muscle twitch a little faster. To jack up a few hormones at the neurological synapses that govern visual acuity and reaction time. To shift the wind resistance on one side of the ball or alter the relationship between spin and trajectory. In other words, what they’re trying to do is to get a twelfth man out there on the field on their side—an invisible guy with superpowers who can play any position, like Mr. Incredible only better because he can go inside the other players and no-one can even see him doing his magic.

Is that cheating? My friend, Mary, a devoted soccer player with an interest in ethics and law would say no. Praying before games isn’t against the rules, and Mary says you play to the rules. Within the rules, it’s a team’s job to seek every advantage. During the World Cup quarter final between Ghana and Uruguay, Luis Suarez deliberately stuck his hand up to block a goal, which cost Ghana a place in the semi-final and bought Suarez a red card. Even then Mary said Suarez wasn’t cheating—that’s how the game is played. He made his choice and took his penalty, and that was his job. Seek every advantage—including extra invisible players.

NFL football doesn’t have a prohibition against or a penalty for pre-game prayers – even though they do penalize certain other attempts to enhance neurotransmitters and fast twitch muscles. Why? How come trying to recruit a magical number twelve right before the game isn’t against the rules?

The obvious answer is that nobody save, perhaps, a few defensive linesmen and a winning quarterback with Bible verses on his eyeblacks actually thinks that supernatural players joins the game in response to pre-game supplications. If people thought they did, there would be rules. After all, whose sense of fair play and sportsmanship would be satisfied by a game that pits eleven humans against eleven humans plus, say, Superman? Also, the bookies would be paying pretty close attention to which teams prayed to whom.

So why don’t refs, rule-makers, and fair-minded fans act like praying before games actually works rather than treating it like a lucky rabbit foot?

My favorite answer is that everyone knows God isn’t interested in football. He’s a nerd. We’re talking about the guy who coded the DNA for tree frogs and wildebeasts and echidnas. How many geneticists and programmers do you see playing pro ball? God is the kind of guy who is more likely to be found hanging out at Burning Man than the Super Bowl.

How come trying to recruit a magical number twelve right before the game isn’t against the rules? But my husband thinks something different is going on. He thinks people do believe in the power of football prayers – only not the same way that they believe in the power of a Mac truck coming right at them. It’s a fuzzy, iffish sort of thing, and if one team or the other can get it going, more power to them. May the righteous team win.

I’m not so sure. Post-prayer football isn’t anything like that Old Testament contest in 1 Kings when the 450 prophets of Baal kill a bullock, put it on an altar for burnt offerings and then call down fire from heaven and nothing happens, and then Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh kills a bullock and then douses the offerings with water and then calls down fire to burn up the wet offerings and it’s so impressive that the people then kill the other 450 contestants. Now that is a story with a god who is definitely on one team.

Maybe the people who pray football prayers, and those who watch them, and the rule-makers, have been conditioned by all of that woefully sad research about cancer prayers and heart attack prayers and such, where the most rigorous studies show no effect, and the ones that are less well controlled seem to show the hand of God operating at the margins of statistical significance. Maybe football is like healing. And maybe the risk of supernatural dabbling to the tune of a couple percentage points just isn’t worth regulating.

But is pregame supplication cheating? Can we say that if there’s nothing in the rule book it’s fair game—or is that the letter of the law winning out over the spirit? And what if a player thinks football prayers works even if they doesn’t, and so he tries to get his god or guardian angel or whatever spirit he channels to tweak the odds in his favor. Is that cheating? What are the ethics of taking pills you think are steroids but are only placebos?

I live near a Jesuit university with a deep, strong tradition of ethical inquiry. I wonder if their football team prays before games.

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog