Praying for Evil Monsters when prayer itself is toxic anyway!

Prayer is communication with God. It is union with God and believers say it is two way. God unites with you when you pray and you unite with him. You can pray for others.

When terrorists murder innocent people, the ministerial sycophants step smugly into their pulpits and remind the congregation that the terrorists need its prayers. They need its prayers. That is they have a right to be prayed for. Do they? The Church says we do not deserve grace or help from God to live a holy life and we do not deserve to be forgiven our sins. The purpose of praying for them is that God will change their hearts. That he will do whatever it is that will impress them best so that they will change. So if that means making them get away with it, decide to give up terrorism and start a happy family life or turning themselves in so be it. Also, if somebody does something bad, Christianity and Islam would say that they hope the person was insane for the sake of her or his soul which is in danger of everlasting punishment. So praying for them can amounts to several things. One of them is wishing that the terrorists are insane. Clearly then the concern is not really for the evil they have done but for the evil they intend. If they are insane they don’t intend evil properly for they are sick. So it is okay then if the terrorists keep killing people as long as they are insane.

Do the terrorists need prayers then to keep them from getting their come-uppance in Hell even if it means wishing that they might lose health and limb in the process? Yes. Praying for them is therefore more important than praying for the innocent victims or their families. If there is a choice, it is the terrorists that should be prayed for.

Praying for the terrorists is fanaticism. It is just another quieter form of the exact same fanaticism that impels terrorists to maim and murder. The praying is hypocrisy. It insults the victims. Prayer is indeed a declaration of ones attitude that dogma has value and people do not. Religion makes people so irrational that they might not be able to let themselves see this.

People don't mind using prayers and magic to control others as long as they tell themselves it is for the benefit of those people. Or in the case of praying for wicked people, you hope to stop them and change them. Religion says God controls us apart from how we use our free will. How can it expect us to believe that it does not hope to control people by praying for them? They are asking God who controls others to control them - period.

If prayer is about getting something to interfere with the free will of an evil dangerous person that does not fit the religious notion that respect for the person is so important that they must be allowed to use free will even to do harm. It is obvious such prayer is passive-aggressive and dehumanises the harmful person. It is a human thing to try and use anything you can think of to stop somebody harming. But the religious person has no right to pretend that praying for enemies is a graceful dignified thing. It is a sweetened up channel for your toxic corrupting attitudes.

Religion contradicts all its sermons about the grandeur of free will by saying that God causes all things and thus how they will behave. You have free will then because of God and not in spite of him which means there is no getting away from his control. A God who permits you to act is still controlling.

Religion teaches that pure evil is impossible. It argues that only something good can do evil or make it possible for evil is an abuse of good and is a nothing in that sense. So something that manages to be pure evil would not be a something at all, it is a nothing. Religion says Satan is smart and preserves himself and abuses these good things to do harm. Rather than being wholly evil, Satan cherry-picks the evil he favours and would wield vengeance against any evil he does not like. Selfishness reigns there. So he is able to be wholly selfish without being wholly bad. It is because of good that he is able to be so selfish.

This makes no sense. If evil is a non-thing then the more evil one is the less of a person one is.

And also, even if pure evil is impossible who cares? A being that keeps 1% good in order to be 99% bad is virtually pure evil. Why split hairs?

The nonsense around this subject shows that thinking of a person as dangerous or evil unavoidably objectifies them.

Thus praying for them is based on lies and pretended love.

FINALLY:

Jesus said to expect the unexpected with prayer and with God's mercy. He commanded not suggested that you pray for those killing you and those whom you love. That weakens your sense of danger. You expect the perpetrator to stop and repent. Despite the evidence, you think it is not the way it seems to be and the person is actually surrendering inside to God. Jesus used religion and psychological trickery to get the sheep to let the wolves in.
The benefits of prayer for evil people do not come from prayer at all. They are either down to a placebo, an irresponsible one that in the long run is only for the worse. Or they were good things that were going to happen anyway. That is why we should challenge people’s faith in prayer and have no regrets. The benefits are nothing compared to the damage that is done.

The WEB

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.

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