Religion

Can Atheists Pray to God? A Philosophical Appraisal

Dualism sees prayer as exclusive to theists; yet Mirdamadi defends the possibility and desirability of atheist prayer, proposing a new path for dialogue between theist and atheist—a necessity in the wake of fundamentalism and aggressive atheism.

April 10, 20191 min read44K viewsفارسی العربيةPDF

Can Atheists Pray to God? A Philosophical Appraisal

A well-established dichotomy, shared by both theists and atheists, has it that in order to offer a petitionary prayer to God one must be theist, implying that atheists (including agnostics) cannot pray to God. A number of philosophers, from different doctrinal backgrounds, have recently cast doubt on this, taking it to be a false dichotomy. In this talk, Mr Mirdamadi reformulates the issue and defends a modified version of the possibility as well as desirability of atheist praying to God. He argues that this position opens the new avenue of theist-atheist dialogue –– a dialogue which is a desideratum especially after the new waves of religious fundamentalism, on the one hand, and the rise of militant atheism, on the other.