Ordinary Level exam results have been released by UNEB (nearly two weeks after PLE results came out) and some parents and their children are celebrating for the best of reasons.

Their children performed very well and some parents and the children attribute this to the power of prayer.

Parties will be organised and even more prayers will be said at these parties to thank the 'Lord' for answering the prayers. But is anyone right to believe that students can pray and get good grades in (national) exams? More importantly, do prayers really work?

Many people who have read the Bible – widely believed by millions as the literal word of God - would answer this question with a ringing, undeniable yes. The Bible, after all, has many verses that promise believers that when they pray, they can get what they want. We see this in Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19 and James 5:15-16.

Each of these verses tells believers that they can get anything if they pray. All they have to do is pray and they get what they want. Yet nothing fails like prayer. In fact, any time people spend praying is merely wasted. Students and pupils cannot get good grades just because they pray; people cannot amass wealth through prayer and no patient can recover from any illness because they have been prayed for. Prayers are not and cannot be answered because there is no one to answer them.

We can easily prove this by looking one more time at what the Bible says. Matthew 7:7 Jesus says: "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

And in Matthew 17:20 Jesus says: "For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."

In Matthew 21:21: "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."

Another verse in Mark 11:24: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

In all these verses, the message is clear: Prayer does work. The message is in the Bible and the Bible is the word of God, and God does not lie. But human beings have to deal with – and are often afflicted by - horrible diseases like cancer. No one needs cancer.

Man did not create cancer. It is a killer disease and its cure is, for the most part, elusive. Since believers and religion tell us God is loving, we can gather thousands of believers and let them kneel down and say a prayer or millions of prayers to God asking him to rid the world of cancer.

We have good reasons to pray because the verses I have just cited all promise people that when they pray, they can get what they want. The verses are from the Bible, the Bible is the word of God (or so we are led to believe) and God is all-knowing. He cannot contradict himself.

The verses do not make any exception. They say we can pray for anything, everything and get it. Yet we all know that even if we pray day in, day out for 365 days, cancer is never going to disappear from this planet.

We all know that if we pray for severely crippled people in wheel-chairs they cannot walk. And if, as Christians say, God answers prayers by saying "yes, no or wait", it does not make sense to pray because even if we pray to an elephant, we get the same outcome.

So why would God let students pass exams but refuse to answer a heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer asking him to rid the planet of cancer? The answer is simple: The student's prayers appear answered because of the power of coincidence, not the power of prayer.

Whenever we test the efficacy of prayer and there is no coincidence we see total failure. The 'cancer prayer', which is more important, goes unanswered because no one listens to prayers. How about God? God is imaginary. How do I know? Please read on. This article has been written to argue that we human beings are on our own, are our own saviours and hope.

We have already seen that the book that many millions of people believe is the word of God tells blatant lies. One needs just one lie, one contradiction, one piece of nonsense, one piece of mumbo-jumbo, one discrepancy in the Bible to conclude that such a book cannot be the word of an all-knowing God. But the Bible has many verses which are utter nonsense.

A book written or caused to be written by an all-knowing supreme being would simply be too great for words. The Bible is not, cannot be and will never be. The Bible is one book that has been read more than any other book but is hardly scrutinised. A rational person who reflects deeply and soberly on things cannot use the Bible as evidence of God's existence.  

It is the Bible that says in Psalm 14:1 that people who do not believe in God are fools. But the same Bible says in Matthew 5:22: "But I say unto you, 'That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.'" What a contradiction! How did that escape God's sharp eyes?

Sometime you wonder whether people who carry the Bible and read it almost on a daily basis understand what they read. An all-knowing and loving God cannot write a book that glorifies sexism. Civilised and decent societies respect women. But the Bible says "women should remain silent in the churches.

They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." - 1 Corinthians 14.

In Exodus 20: 8–9, the Bible says people should not work on Sunday and those that do should be put to death (Exodus 31-35) as the law of the Lord is perfect (Psalm 19:7). But life's demands dictate that people will work any day and time. Every Sunday millions of Christians go to work and some will be busy trying to save lives of those dying. Does anyone really believe that such words can come from an all-knowing God?

The God theory collapses instantly when you use the so-called holy books as evidence of his existence. You cannot rely on books in a world full of illiterate people to relay such an important message as the existence of a supreme being. If you are all-knowing and all-powerful, you can find other effective and reliable means of relaying the message.

Yet we see that God does not even seem to know that many of the people he created cannot read. And even if all people were able to read, it would be pointless to have more than one book making a case for God's existence. To make matters worse, the 'holy' books say different things about the same God. They, of course, cannot be both right but they can be wrong.

This article is not going to turn theists into atheists. It does not seek to disprove the 'existence' of God. It only shows that belief in and worship of God is, by and large, nonsense.

There are more reasonable grounds not to believe in God than to believe in God. And while many people may disagree with me, the fact remains that theists, religious people, believers, faith-heads - call them what you will – tend to act in ways that strongly suggest that they know they are on their own; that God does not work. And if he does not work, he does not exist.

President Yoweri Museveni, for example, relies on the Presidential Guard Brigade to protect him. Museveni cannot allow anyone to take away officers and men in this brigade because his protection will be no more. When he has these men by his side he does not care a pin about what God can or cannot do.

His wife Janat, a deeply pious woman who sometimes comes up with bafflingly ridiculous solutions to problems, such as national prayer meetings to combat corruption in Uganda, never travels to Karamoja without armed escorts. Most Ugandans with the means to hire guns use them to protect themselves. The rich hire armed guards who provide security during day and night.

Religious leaders do not live austere lives in the hope that after they die they will go to heaven and enjoy themselves. No. They try to secure the good things money can purchase and enjoy them here on planet earth. Why do they not wait for the better life in heaven?

Whenever we talk about God and his supposedly boundless love, we ignore two bitter truths. The first is that there is absolutely no one who knows anything about God. God has never talked to anyone. If he did, as the Bible shamelessly lies, he would still be able to do so because there are people to talk to. Why doesn't he talk?

God cannot be contacted by telephone; he has no email account and does not interact with the universe. If he did then the effects of his interaction would have some physical manifestation. God is unknown and unknowable. The five senses with which we are born can and are meant to perceive things that exist, but they cannot perceive God's existence.

To talk about God is a bit like telling people about life on the moon when you have never been there; or even read or heard anything from people who have been there.

The second bitter truth is that there is plenty of evidence to suggest we do not need God, at least in practice. There is absolutely nothing that we fail to do that God can do for us or has ever done for us. The people in Haiti who have been ravaged by a devastating earthquake that they did not create or invite are being helped by Americans. God, if we are to believe he created the universe, went ahead and created earthquakes that cause death, destruction and injury. Why did he and who really benefits?

Some people with whom I interact hear my views and say I will get in trouble with God. But if we are to believe that God is all-knowing and created human beings and knew the sort of people they would be, he knew in advance that I would be a non-believer and is (probably) happy for me to be what I am.

It is profoundly silly to say that people get problems because of what they say about imaginary things. Church walls fall on worshippers and kill them, innocent babies die in the wombs of their mothers and many people have been shot dead under mistaken identity. If people can die under such circumstances, a rational person can only conclude that death is not caused by God. Why would God let church walls fall on worshippers?

It is, if I may recapitulate, pointless for us to pin out hopes on the so-called creator. A creator who has the capacity to make everything working fine and to protect people would be doing exactly that. Sad to say, those who are not selective observers see chaos in many places. Animals steal each other's lives to stay alive. Cats have a better sight than human beings millions of whom, including me, need eyeglasses to see clearly while others are totally blind.

Cows, porcupines, pigs, rats, foxes, baboons do not menstruate and yet they reproduce. By contrast, women have to menstruate every month, some of them going through severe pain and spending hard-earned money on sanitary towels. Does anyone see any reasonableness behind this kind of design?

Scientists are busy looking for an AIDS vaccine and if they fail God will never bring the vaccine. And AIDS is not man's creation. True, people contract AIDS mainly through sexual intercourse, but even babies who are too young to know anything have died of AIDS. We see planes crashing in oceans and relatives of the victims failing to recover bodies of their loved ones.

Why would God allow an accident to happen and even make it hard for the victims' bodies to be found? Doesn't religion tell us he needs souls, not bodies?

A lot of people have used William Paley's argument to make a case for God's existence. Paley said that if you found a watch in a field you would be forced to assume the existence of a designer, a watchmaker. And there is also Blaise Pascal's Wager, which I will discuss first.

The French mathematician argued that people lose nothing if they believe in God. In fact, he said, there is much more to gain because if it turns out that God exists, you can go to heaven. But you can only go to hell if God exists and you are a non-believer. The problem with this argument is: If people decide to believe in God, not out of conviction that he exists but because that is what most people believe, then God already knows they are fooling him. They cannot go to heaven.
 
As for Paley's argument, it does not make much sense, especially to people who reflect deeply and soberly on things. It does little to convince them that the 'manmaker' acted in the same way as the watchmaker.

Watches are made by human beings whose intelligence does not bear any comparison with the infinite intelligence that religion claims God has, but it is rare to find watches on sale that do not work. Yet a good number of the supposedly designed humans do not function at all, and are not even aware of their own existence because they were born severely mentally retarded. Can any sane person call that intelligent design?

There are no compelling reasons as to why an intelligent designer could let such 'products' off the assembly line seeing that he was not under any pressure to make them. Watchmakers do not let rejects (badly made watches) leave the factory. They are recycled or discarded. Can anyone tell us why the designer of human beings deems it fit to design faulty beings and put them on earth?

I have never seen Siamese twin watches because no watchmaker can spend his precious time doing such a stupid thing. By contrast, human beings whom we are told are designed just like watches (if we are to believe Paley) sometimes begin life as conjoined twins. Doctors sometimes try to separate them and succeed; other times they fail - and the conjoined twins die.

Once a woman becomes pregnant you just have to keep your fingers crossed because you do not know what you will get – and you take what you get. Sometimes you can end up with something you do not quite understand: a baby without an anus, for example, or one that is totally blind. Wrist watches cannot go on sale without straps because no one will buy them.

Some watches, of course, have defects but it is not hard to see why. Watchmakers do not have boundless capacity to make great things. But if you believe religious literature, God has everything it takes to make great things. Yet we see too many repulsively ugly people in this world. The few beautiful people we see managed to get their beauty by sheer chance. An all-knowing God who is able to design humans like watches would only fill this world with stunningly beautiful women and handsome men.

Watches - even cheap ones or those with leather straps - do not stink. Many people whom we are told are designed like watches do stink, and have to wear deodorants and perfume to stave off unpleasant smells. How did an intelligent designer (God) fail to make humans that do not stink? Bad breath, farting and snoring – all of these things point to a process that is not guided by an intelligent designer.

If you went to a store that sells watches and the sales assistant tells you that the watches on sale need winding for eight hours to be able to keep time properly, you would leave instantly and look for better watches. You would wonder whether such a watchmaker knows what they are doing.

The supposedly designed humans need eight hours of sleep to be able to function properly. And sleep does not come automatically, of course. You may fail to sleep because you are sick; because your child is suffering from malaria and is crying all night and, if you live in lodgings, because the wife of your neighbour is making loud, appreciative murmurs in the course of lovemaking.

Why would a designer make people waste eight hours in sleep yet he had/has the capacity to make - like watches - humans that go on and on without resting? Science has sensible answers to most of the questions raised here. But religion, which is the sole creator of the intelligent designer, cannot provide any decent answers and, worse, it even discourages people from asking probing questions.

The God theory raises more questions than it answers, and that is its greatest weakness. I do not know how the universe started, but anyone using the God theory to answer the question of our existence had better begin by answering the questions I have raised in this article.

Some readers may say I am under the influence of Satan and I need a prayer, but I take the view that people who should be assisted – they do not need prayers because we have already seen that prayers do not work – are the ones who believe that imaginary things can work for them.

And to those who say that there must be at least some power in the universe which controls life even if it is not the same thing as the God of the Bible, the question is: Does that power think at all and act in a rational way all the time?

Of course, many millions of people believe and will continue to believe in the Bible and God, but as the philosopher Russell Bertrand observed: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."

Over to you believers.

END

Musaazi Namiti is a journalist based in Doha, Qatar. Email address: robymusaazi@hotmail.com