I’m watching a replay of the Democratic debate on C-SPAN. For some inexplicable reason the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, asked a question about whether the candidates believe that prayer can avert or lessen the impact of catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina. All the candidates, except Kucinich, said that they pray, that prayer is important, etc. Edwards and Biden were fairly clear that prayer cannot stop a Hurricane. But their answers aren’t very important. What’s important is the candidates get asked these no-win questions.
I don’t pray. The last time I prayed it was because my cat disappeared and I wanted him back. I was probably about eight years old. I felt like a hypocrite asking God to find my cat. I never wanted to feel like an idiot again, so I stopped asking God to do me favors. How would I answer such a question if I were running for president?
I’d probably try not to alienate people that pray. So I’d say that prayer is important to many people and that it provides comfort and strength to people that are in pain. But it can’t stop or weaken a hurricane.
The reality is that prayer can be defined in a lot of different ways. But when prayer is actually nothing more than a request to God, it is an infantile practice. But your job as a politician is not to debate theology or epistemology or even physics. Your job is to represent people and provide good governance. Teaching people about prayer doesn’t enter in to it.
So my problem is that asking the candidates such a question is a giant waste of time. It just invites them to give dishonest and pandering answers and it tells us nothing about their qualifications.
A big part of the problem in this country is that we keep setting the wrong standards for our politicians and we keep asking them the wrong questions.
did your cat come back?
Nope.
That question is like the one someone asked Hillary Clinton if she could see herself working with the pro-life camp “with the goal ultimately in mind of reducing the decisions for abortion to zero.”
The catch being, the goal is impossible, because it ignores the multitude of reasons that women have abortions, some of which cannot be prevented or avoided, ever. It’s the wrong question, and it has no right answer — but a much stronger statement could have been made if she had talked instead about why the question ignored the reality of the issue, and what the achievable reality was. (She didn’t.)
The same with this question — one could interpret it as a question about the candidate’s faith (which is, or should be, irrelevant, especially given this context). OR one could choose to focus not on the prayer part of the question, but on the response to natural disaster part — which is in truth far more relevant to the office and duties of the President.
The responsibility of the President isn’t to pray about a clearly oncoming natural disaster like Katrina. The responsibility of the President is to ACT, to make the call that mobilizes FEMA and the National Guard and the whole range of resources this country has, including the incredible courage and generosity of its people, to make whatever preparations are feasible and possible, do everything possible to evacuate and protect people’s lives, and then put in the full effort on repair, recovery and rebuilding afterwards.
Prayer is well and good, and those who feel moved to pray, that’s fine — but to rely on prayer alone when more immediate physical and material assistance is within one’s own power is abandoning your own responsibilities towards your fellow citizens. I can’t imagine that God would look too kindly on that in a President. Certainly those fellow citizens won’t.
They have to stop ANSWERING these questions, and start addressing the underlying issue, if at all possible, and say what REALLY needs to be said.
I’m a Nichiren Buddhist; have been for over 30 years. I believe that prayer can either stop or lessen the effects of catastrophes.
However, that’s no excuse to do nothing. We usually pray and take action until the prayer is answered whether conspicuously or inconspicuously. That may mean the hurricane is headed away out to sea and not in populated areas. Or if the effects are lessened, then populations ready themselves effectively so that there are fewer deaths, plenty of transportation away from the coastline and plenty of food and water and medical care provided (as with Cuba during the Katrina summer) or that the hurricane is diminished from a Cat 4 to a Cat 1.
We also pray to do the right thing or to be in the right place at the right time in life or death situations. I see few people praying to do just that. All they want to be is beyond dealing with suffering or catastrophe, which is trying not to deal with reality.
Okay, beyond that, I think that discussions of this kind during a presidential election is LUDICROUS. Religion–or spirituality–is still a personal and a private matter to millions. The level of faith or belief is not something that is easily gauged. One can always front for a cult and be a puppetmaster in real life.
If the rest of the world is watching these debates, they must be laughing their asses off as they pop corn. Because other countries don’t debate bullshyt like this.
We’re back to the age of Billy Sunday. I thought we were in the 21st century.
Speaking of the rest of the world watching the debates…yeah the various articles I’ve read show they are if not rather appalled at these type questions they certainly are giving them the impression we are a rather backwards country. The one that had republicans raising their hands if they believed in creationism not evolution was reported on most definitely in foreign press and not to our advantage.
Next question will be if any of the candidates are going to visit that new Creation Museum…which also has been written about in the foreign press.
And I can’t begin to articulate how ignorant the question on praying was.
I know that you brought up abortion to make a different point. But it made me want to share my standard reply to the anti-abortion crowd, namely that God is not pro-unborn life. God is the great abortionist since an incredible percentage (close to 50% but I can’t recall if it’s just over or just under) of pregnancies get terminated naturally, a lot of them before the women is aware of being pregnant. If an unborn child dies through a natural miscarriage before the mother is aware of it, is it a life to be cherished and preserved? How is the mother to cherish andd protect that of which she is unware? How is this mother to be judged when her unborn child is washed away with not one single instance of recognition that it existed? How can God be so shitty?
I thought this debate on Sunday was the least interesting of the Democratic debates so far. And last weekend’s Republican debate with George Snuffiluffigus was also just as dull and I think it’s the host and his “gotta control everything” format. I didn’t learn anything new and I actually had trouble staying interested. The BEST debate so far was the CNN/YouTube debate.
And the “praying away disaster” bit was just ridiculous. I know I know. Some religious nuts might feel left out if we didn’t discuss everybody’s “faith” but I felt somewhat offended that they even went there. I wish somebody up there would have flat-out refused to answer the question and told Snuffiluffigus to go and ask his own religious leaders why it’s innapropriate to put people on the spot about such private matters. As a non-believer/doubter myself it offended me as much as if they had asked the candidates about their personal hygiene regiments. Really. Just inappropriate.
Sorry about your cat.
Didn’t Pat Robertson teach us about the effect of prayer back in 2003, when he tried to deflect Isabel from Virginia?
It seems to me that the effect of prayer, just like religion is a matter of perspective.
The problem is that nobody expects a politician to be honest, so we’ll let them put on a show and then critique the performance.
I tried to watch the debate when it replayed on C-SPAN yesterday afternoon. I watched with growing disgust as the candidates tried to answer one gotcha question after another. After each one tried to tiptoe around that power of prayer question I gave up and turned it off. There was no debate. All I saw was a sick, perverted game of jeopardy.
The debate moderators and the candidates forget that we’re not ALL idgit voters.
Actually, I think it’s more that they assume that the non-eejit voting bloc will be otherwise accessible, and not really wasting time watching the frog and phony shows, so the televised debates must be aimed at the eejit-level voters.
The answer to this question was simple: If you believe in Christianity, then you know that Jesus instructed his followers how to pray, and that his instructions did not include a prayer for God to divert hurricanes. One Christian tenet says that God helps those who help themselves. This nation is a community, and the righteousness of our community is determined by how we act to help ourselves in times of need. The victims of Hurricane Katrina have gone without their daily bread for too long. It’s a stain on our integrity as a country. And no politician should face the citizens of this country, much less God, with the record of stinginess, incompetence, and selfishness with which this Republican administration has responded to the catastrophe of Katrina. And for those who believe that prayer has the power to avert catastrophes, I ask you this: What do you do about the people who don’t pray to divert a hurricane but who instead use their time to help others evacuate, or to bring them food? Is their decision not to pray causing harm? Is it unpatriotic, or even treasonous? Our founding fathers were wise beyond their years when they established the separation of church and state, and we ignore that principle at our peril.
There are no no-win questions.
One Christian tenet says that God helps those who help themselves.
Actually, no. The quote “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible – not in the new or the old testament. It’s usually attributed to Ben Franklin, but was probably a little aphorism known by a lot of folks in his day.
“God helps those who help themselves” actually runs counter to a lot of Christian teaching which is about surrendering yourself to God’s will and trusting God to do what is best for you.
That doesn’t make the question any better, though. Only in bizarre American heterodox evangelical “fundamentalist” theology is God some kind of a “magic wishing fairy” who will do things for you if only you pray hard enough. Most Christian religions suggest that the mind of God is unknowable, and if he wants to drop a bridge on your ass he’s going to drop a bridge on your ass. The last guy who got to bargain with God was Abraham, and even he couldn’t come up with his end of the bargain in the end.
Then how about something along the lines of “By your work you shall be known”? There must be something like that in the book. I admit that I’m not a Biblical scholar.
Jesus, like Gandhi who is the 20th embodiment of the teachingsof Jesus, was not a Christian.
I’m not sure I get your point. I don’t believe that I said that Jesus was a Christian, although obviously the teachings of Jesus are theoretically central to those who believe in Christianity.
The sad fact of the matter is that in this country there is no litmus test of greater importance for a large segment of the population than for a candidate to demonstrate their Christian bonafides. And what the Democratic candidates refuse to recognize is that all they will accomplish by even trying to answer a question such as this is to lend fodder to the frame, not just in the right wing world but in the mainstream press, that somehow their religious faith is a prop and not genuine.
I really don’t give a rats ass if someone prays or if the don’t pray. If praying is something that gives one comfort, hope, strength and peace then by all means, have at it. But why oh why does our press persist in throwing up questions such as these? After all the ridicule and scorn heaped on the Snowman question in the YouTube debate, could a question such this one posed by Stephanopoulos be considered any less worthy of derision. I mean, at least the Snowman had a real question based on a relevant issue. What relevance did this question have to do with any issue related to governance?
I have no doubt that the Christian faith of those Democratic candidates who are practicing Christians is closely held and a very important part of their lives. But what difference does it make if they believe they can pray away a hurricane? There is no winning answer a Democratic candidate can give for such an irrational question.
Shouting NO RAIN, NO RAIN, NO RAIN at Woodstock didn’t keep the rain off the hippies. But all those hippies were destined to become bloggers so that probably explains why it didn’t take.
What’s next, asking candidates if they believe you can pray away “THE GAY”? Or male pattern baldness? Or erectile dysfunction?
Speaking of erectile dysfunction, when I was young I prayed to make the damn thing lie down to avoid one embarassment after the other. Now I pray to be embarassed by one of the side effects of boner pills.
Prayer is ineffective in both cases. However, I think God laughed his ass off each time. That He did laugh is the only thing I like about Him.