I'm a Christian, so I was wondering if I could get an opinion from an atheistic viewpoint. I have this agnostic friend, and a lot of stuff just seems to go wrong in her life. Anytime she tells me about something happening to her, I want to tell her that I'll be praying for her. I know that if I was having a hard time, it would help me to hear that I'm in someone's prayers, but I don't know if it'll mean anything to her. She believes in God, she just isn't religious. Anyways, thanks for your time
So, I feel obliged to establish some definitions here for clarity.
Agnosticism isn’t a middle position between atheism and theism. Atheism and agnosticism deal with two separate concepts. Respectively, belief and knowledge. If she’s agnostic as you say initially, and believes in god as you say secondarily, then if I understand correctly, she’s an agnostic theist: believes in a god but doesn’t claim to know one exists.
Secondly, atheism deals only with a single issue. Specifically “I do not believe god existence claims.” Atheism isn’t a worldview or a set of principles or beliefs, and it doesn’t tell you how to get through life or hardship. It is common, but by no means obligatory, for atheists to prefer a more scientific approach to the world around them. Particularly as lack of evidence is commonly a significant reason for lack of belief.
Whether prayer has any meaning for her, only she can tell you. However, I would suggest not praying for her if it doesn’t mean anything to her. You’re trying to help her, not make yourself feel better.
With that in mind, I can only give you my own viewpoint as someone who is an atheist, rather an “atheistic viewpoint.”
Humans are notoriously bad at detecting and understanding randomness. If you flip a coin 20 times, 20 “heads” results in a row is just as likely as any other specific sequence. Researchers studying randomness are able to detect true randomness from fake randomness, because humans anticipate randomness to consist of different results, and a lack of what they perceive to be patterns. Try it and see:
https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~hildebr/fakerandomness/
Humans are also prone to confirmation bias. That is, only seeing what confirms a pre-existing idea, not looking at all the data in its entirety, including the “misses.” An example of this is in religion, associated with prayer; specifically, believers only counting the “hits” and ignoring the “misses”. “Five of my prayers were answered!” Yes, but what of the six that weren’t? What you’ve got is probably statistically indistinguishable from random chance.
http://www.scottclifton.com/prayer-and-confirmation-bias/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKA4w2O61Xo
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567
I’m not going to dwell too much on the prayer aspect, because I bring up confirmation bias in relation to her state of mind rather than your beliefs… aside from mentioning the irony that the study on the efficacy of intercessory prayer in the last link was called a “waste of time” by the religious organisation that funded it in the first place, because they didn’t get the result they expected/wanted (i.e. itself confirmation bias).
Blah, blah, blah… so, what am I getting at here?
From my perspective, what’s been happening with your friend is probably just a combination of randomness and confirmation bias. It may simply be that life is flipping a series of “Tails” for her at present. It may continue to flip “Tails” or it may change. This is just how things are in life. We know that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to bad people. Seeing a sequence of Bad Things may seem like a pattern, but it doesn’t mean it’s not random.
Meanwhile, she may also be dwelling on the “misses” and discounting or not noticing the “hits.” You have only her description of events, with no independent access to them yourself, nor any way to see what details she may have missed or forgotten. This doesn’t mean she’s being dishonest or anything, it just means you’re only getting her point of view, and it may be coloured by her state of mind.
None of which is to suggest you shouldn’t be a good, supportive friend, which is the most important thing of all.
Study after study after study indicates that, all things being equal, the outcome of prayer is indistinguishable from chance. The religious die of diseases at the same rate as atheists, for example. A devout Xtian’s home can be knocked down by a storm while their atheist neighbor’s is left unscathed. Where it’s worse than chance though, is where prayer encourages people to not do what is necessary. Relying on prayer and not taking their cancer medication, for example.
Putting it bluntly, thoughts and prayers are worthless - do something actually and practically helpful, and that means investing your own time and effort, instead of simply sending a wish out into space in order to feel like you’ve contributed. (And need I point out that Jesus supposedly went out and got his hands dirty, instead of simply staying at home and praying.) So, from my perspective, there are a few things I would suggest you do, either instead of or in addition to your praying, if you must, because they will be demonstrably more effective than prayer alone.
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? [..] faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” - James 2:14-22
There are things we have control over and things we don’t. Try to encourage her to take positive steps in areas where she does have control, even if they’re small things. There’s a reason therapists recommend people with depression try to tackle just one or two small things - it gives you a small sense of accomplishment and success, and before you know it, you’ve done two small things. And tomorrow maybe you’ll find you’ve done three small things.
You may be able to help her out with this. e.g. if she’s having job problems, sit down with her and take a look at her resume and Google some ideas for sprucing it up; decide in advance with her that you’re going to just make two small improvements - that’s it. Or do some practice interviews with her, and you’re just going to do 4 interview questions. And see where that goes.
Similarly, you can also encourage her to look for the existing positive things that she may have missed or discounted. For example, through all this she’s kept her kids fed and healthy, or looked after her pets, or…..?
A few small successes can help to establish a “good” confirmation bias, if you will, which helps to disrupt “woe is me” victim-mentality thinking, as well as creating more opportunities where life can flip a “Heads” in areas she doesn’t have control over. As the saying goes “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” If she’s opting out of trying, things will never get better. When one thing gets a bit better and easier to deal with, other things start to seem more manageable, even the ones you don’t have control over.
And of course, if she actually is depressive, please encourage her to get help.
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