I recently posted about how roughly half of all American sports fans believe that supernatural powers intervene in contests, affecting their outcomes. And a healthy dose of Americans also think that God hears prayers for victories (especially in football), or that their teams are somehow “cursed”.

This is amusing, for nothing shows up the inanity of religion in America so much as thinking that Almighty God cares enough about sports to grant victory or defeat to various teams. It must embarrass a believer to be asked the question, “Do you really think that God cares about who wins a game—and cares enough to affect the outcome? Doesn’t He have better things to worry about”?  And surely no real theologian believes this tripe!

Wrong. There’s at least one: the slick but odious William Lane Craig. Friend and reader Peter Boghossian (author of the superb A Manual For Creating Atheists) sent me a link to an interview with Craig about prayer and sports published in Christianity Today.  It’s simply bizarre, and in fact seems self-contradictory. Here’s an excerpt; the upshot is that Craig thinks that God does hear prayers about football games, and is actually affected by those petitions. The interviewer is the appropriately named Kate Shellnutt.

What’s the value in praying for God’s will to be done for the outcome of a game if God’s will will be done whether we pray or not?

Now that’s a question about prayer in general. What good does it do to pray about anything if the outcome is not affected? I would say when God chooses which world to actualize, he takes into account the prayers that would be offered in that world. We shouldn’t think prayer is about changing the mind of God. He’s omniscient; he already knows the future, but prayer makes a difference in that it can affect what world God has chosen to create.

Peyton Manning is a Christian, but he says he doesn’t pray to win games. He said, “I pray to keep both teams injury free, and personally, that I use whatever talent I have to the best of my ability.” Is it wrong or should we feel bad for praying for a win?

No, I think it’s fine for Christian athletes to pray about those things so long as they understand, as I say, that the person on the other team is also praying, and that some of these prayers will go unanswered in the providence of God. Ultimately, one is submitting oneself to God’s providence, but I see nothing the matter with praying for the outcome of these things. They’re not a matter of indifference to God. God cares about these little things, so it’s appropriate.

I do want to say that there are far more appropriate things that the Christian athlete ought to be praying for. He should be praying for his own character and development, to be a person of integrity, fair play, good sportsmanship, self-discipline, civility toward the opponent, and so forth. Those are the really important moral qualities that I think God wants to develop in a Christian athlete.

Well, Craig tries to redeem himself in the last paragraph, but the damage is done.  First Craig admits that prayer is more than an exercise in self-expression and meditation: it is designed to influence God, and in fact does. (So much for the Sophisticated Theologians™!)

But unless I’m misinterpreting Craig, there’s some confusion here, which is unusual for him. (He may be deluded, but his delusions are usually consistent.)

So God knows the future perfectly because he’s omniscient. That means, at time X, he knows what the outcome Z is at some Y in the future.  But at time X + t, where t is the interval between God’s foreknowledge and the prayer for the Seahawks, God can be influenced, and change the outcome at time Y from Z to Z’  (“prayer makes a difference in that it can affect what world God has chosen to create”).

I’m not sure how this makes sense.  Does that mean that God knows that he’s going to be influenced one way or the other, and takes that into account in his knowledge of the future? And if that’s the case, then what does it mean for God to be “influenced”? Further, what does this say about religious libertarian free will in Craig’s scheme? If the petitioner chooses not to pray, and thereby affects God’s actions, did God know that in advance, too? How can one know the future perfectly and yet still be changed by someone’s prayer?

And most importantly, how does Craig know this stuff? There’s nothing in the Bible about it, and not much about how God does or does not deal with prayers, so the readers who have explained Craig’s position below might surmise how he’d explain his knowledge of how God acts.

Now I’m sure that rhetorical eels like Craig have an answer that sounds good, but we secular Jews call this kind of reasoning bubbe-meise.

And even if Craig can explain this, the notion that God gives a rat’s patootie about sports contests, and can affect their outcome, should embarrass any believer. Craig, however, has repeatedly proved himself incapable of being embarrassed.