The Case For Prayer, Even If You're an Atheist

On the science of hope and hopelessness

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Editor’s note: I grew up in a Reform Jewish household where we celebrated Christmas and held an Easter egg hunt for the neighborhood. I was the last of all my (mostly Christian) friends to learn the truth about Santa Claus. My dad was atheist, to the point of being anti-theist. My mother, who insisted that I learn Hebrew and have a Bar Mitzvah, was more interested in Hindu notions of reincarnation than anything you’d find in the Old Testament. I’m not sure how a religious survey would categorize the religious mishegas that was our family. We were, paradoxically, all of the above and nothing at all.

Decades later, my Judaism sometimes plays little more than an ornamental role in my life. I recite Jewish prayers outside of the major holidays, but mostly out of reflexive fear or desperation. When I’m afraid that something terrible might happen, or desperate for something good to happen, my mouth will start moving, practically involuntarily, and the words of the Shema will materialize in a whisper. For years, I’ve wanted a deeper relationship with faith. But pining for faith in the absence of actual faith is like wanting to fall in love in the absence of love. And so, I have become that modern cliché, that hopeless paradox: the non-believer who prays to a throne that he suspects is empty.

For a long time I’ve wondered whether I should pray more, even in my ambivalence. Maybe it will make me feel better, I think. Or, maybe if I take the small steps of daily prayer, the solidity of belief will appear under my feet.

Today I’m happy to publish an essay by the bestseller author Nir Eyal, from his forthcoming book Beyond Belief, on the scientific case for praying, even when you’re not sure what you believe—or if you believe. It is a wonderful book and his chapter on prayer felt particularly appropriate to publish in December. Happy holidays.

- Derek

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Atheists Should Pray, Too

By Nir Eyal

When I was six years old, I talked to God.

My family was in crisis. My parents had been scammed out of nearly every penny they had, with no hope of getting their money back. Facing financial ruin, their arguments escalated to screaming matches that shook our house. To escape, I developed a ritual. Each morning, before anyone else was awake, I slipped outside to our concrete driveway, lay on my back, and looked at the stars. I spoke to God.

The voice that responded wasn’t audible, but it felt distinct from my own thoughts: calmer, wiser, more reassuring. This presence told me that despite the chaos unfolding at home, I would be okay. My family would find its way through this mess. I wasn’t alone.

These early morning conversations became my sanctuary. But along the path to adulthood, the connection faded. As I developed a more evidence-based worldview, prayer began to feel strange—if I couldn’t prove that anyone was listening, wasn’t I just talking to myself? What had once brought comfort now seemed suspect, tainted by what I perceived as magical thinking. This shift wasn’t sudden; it faded like a 1980s Polaroid of my youth, left too long in the sun.

By adulthood, prayer was a distant memory, shelved alongside other abandoned childhood fantasies. Yet I couldn’t shake the sense that something valuable had been left behind.

The Science of Belief

Decades later, I started research for a new book about how our beliefs shape our behavior. When I returned to the question of prayer, I expected little more than platitudes and comforting words. What I discovered instead was a wealth of research on how prayer and hope leave measurable fingerprints on the brain and body.

In the 1950s, the biologist Curt Richter placed rats in buckets of water to see how long they would swim before giving up and dying. Most drowned within 15 minutes. From above, Richter watched in silence, stopwatch in hand, recording the moment each struggle came to an end. Some rats, however, received a randomized miracle. Richter rescued them just as they were about to slip under the water. He dried them off, cradled them, and placed them back in the jar. The rescued rats did not just swim another 15 minutes, or 60 minutes. Buoyed by belief, they swam for an average of 60 hours.

In his 1957 paper “On the phenomenon of sudden death in animals and man,” Richter said the subject of his research was hope and hopelessness. A hopeless rat doesn’t paddle for long. But a comforted rodent who learns “the situation is not actually hopeless [will] become aggressive, try to escape, and show no signs of giving up.” Take two creatures of similar biology and physiology. The one with more hope will fight harder, swim faster, live longer.

Fifty years later, several dozen college students participated in a similar experiment involving water, pain, and the power of belief. The students were asked to immerse a hand in the icy water and hold it there until the pain became unbearable.

Weeks earlier, each student had been trained in one of three coping methods. One group practiced basic physical relaxation techniques. Another group modified their thoughts to reframe the pain as “challenging content,” or “I am joyful.” The third group recited spiritual phrases such as “God is peace,” “God is joy,” and “God is love.” For participants uncomfortable with the word “God,” researchers allowed substitutions such as “Mother Earth,” “the universe,” or “my higher self.” All participants practiced their method daily over the two weeks preceding the test.

On the day of the experiment, each participant began by repeating their practiced technique for twenty minutes before plunging a hand into the icy bath. As seconds ticked by, researchers recorded every grimace, every twitch.

Participants from all groups rated the pain as equally intense. But the spiritual group endured the cold hand plunge nearly twice as long as the others. Those who meditated on spiritually meaningful phrases reported feeling calmer, less anxious, and generally happier. Even participants who replaced the word “God” with terms of personal significance experienced the powerful benefits. This study, along with many others, reveals an unexpected truth about prayer. For a writer and researcher like me, these studies seem to offer a clear lesson about prayer. Its power doesn’t rest on certainty or dogma. The benefits are accessible, even without faith.

For many in the West, the idea of prayer without belief might seem absurd. Many people think that there are exactly three categories of worship—believers, agnostics, and atheists—and it’s nonsensical for atheists to pray. But in Singapore, where I lived for six years, I discovered a new perspective. On a residency form, there was a category I’d never seen before: “Free Thinker.”

As I came to understand it, a free thinker could be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or none of the above. What distinguishes free thinkers isn’t their faith tradition, but how they arrive at their convictions. Free thinkers test ideas against reason, evidence, and experience. They adopt what proves helpful and set aside what doesn’t. Perhaps I didn’t need to abandon prayer entirely. Approached as a free thinker, prayer didn’t have to involve declarations of certainty or proving God’s existence.

In this oasis of religious coexistence, I designed a personal experiment. I would visit each of these traditions and pose the same direct question to their spiritual leaders: “How do I pray to God if I’m not sure He’s real?”

Five Traditions, Universal Wisdom

Rabbi Mordechai welcomed me through a door located in the kosher grocery store attached to the synagogue. When I asked whether one could pray without certainty about God, the gray-bearded Orthodox Rabbi didn’t respond with theological arguments or scriptural defenses. Instead, he offered something unexpected: permission to question.”Yeah, sure,” he replied casually. “We’re minute little specks of nothing. You pray to a God that is precisely above intellect and transcendent by very definition. So how can anyone be certain about such an unknowable thing?”

Rabbi Mordechai pointed to a fundamental concept in Jewish tradition, drawn from the moment at Mount Sinai when the Israelites declared “Na’aseh v’nishma”—”we will do, and we will hear.” Practice first. Understanding follows. “Everything is about practice,” he said. “A person’s psyche is impacted by what he does, not just what he thinks.”

At the mosque, Imam Alattas explained Islam’s approach. “Islam is a simple religion. We pray five times a day,” he said. “Just like how we eat—breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, supper.” Each prayer corresponds loosely with natural breaks in the day. “It’s always the same verses,” he added. There’s no demand for eloquence, no pressure to invent new words each time.” Prayer is to be conscious that God is watching whatever you do,” he told me. “If someone makes you angry, prayer is the time to calm down, to leave everything in the hands of God.” In a world full of triggers and temptations, prayer interrupts the momentum of emotion. It’s a reset, a re-centering. By making prayer short, familiar, and non-negotiable, Islam builds remembering into the rhythm of forgetting.

At the Hindu temple, Swami Samachittananda gently tapped his chest. “God is not outside somewhere,” he said.”Within me is what? That is our consciousness, that is the eternal presence of God, and that is the Kingdom of heaven.” Prayer,the Swami continued, “is for something subjective. Prayer should be for that experience within you.” He explained that anything objective—money, health, relationships—is transient. “The only thing to pray for is truth,” he said simply. Not truth about how the world might change, but truth about how it already is. Perhaps the real value of prayer is not to change life’s circumstances but to see them more clearly.

When I met Father Adrian Danker at the Church of the Sacred Heart, he leaned forward with a knowing smile: “Doubt is actually a blessing. It invites reflection, deeper questioning, and ultimately, a richer understanding.”He observed that when people pray, they bring conflicts, anxieties, hopes, and griefs and leave with fresh perspectives and renewed commitments. But the most striking aspect was his emphasis on community. Every week, parishioners submit petitions. “Yet people keep coming,” Father Adrian explained. “Maybe God’s answer isn’t immediate or obvious, but in returning week after week, they find community. They discover others who listen, support, and offer solutions. Through that communal support, their prayers are often answered in unexpected, tangible ways.”

At Singapore’s Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, I met Venerable You Guang. Before he had donned the saffron robes of a monk, he was a soldier in Singapore’s honor guard, required to stand motionless in sweltering heat during five-hour shifts. His coping mechanism was prayer, reciting the Great Compassion mantra. “Even something simple like standing guard duty becomes meaningful when I chant,” he explained. “It keeps my mind grounded and focused, helping me handle long periods of standing and physical discomfort.” Many Buddhists engage in prostrations, full-body bows performed hundreds or even thousands of times. By willingly embracing difficulty within a meaningful framework, practitioners discover they can endure far more than they imagined. Buddhist prayer does not eliminate suffering—it reframes it, turning hardship into a path of strength.

Despite their differences, these practices seemed grounded in fundamental aspects of cognition and experience:

• Action before understanding (Jewish): Ritual practice shapes us even before we fully grasp its meaning.

• Simple repetition (Muslim): Short, familiar rituals reset our emotions and bring us back to what matters.

• Looking within (Hindu): The deepest prayer seeks truth and clarity inside, not external change.

• Answering through community (Christian): Prayer’s power often comes through one another.

• Transcending suffering (Buddhist): Ritualized difficulty turns pain into resilience.

Permission to Practice

This journey began with a six-year-old boy lying on his driveway, talking to God in the pre-dawn darkness. That child didn’t question whether God was real—he simply needed someone to talk to. The practice itself provided solace, regardless of theological certainty.

When we pray or engage in ritual, we’re not merely thinking about our values or hopes. We’re practicing them. This act reinforces neural pathways, emotional habits, and psychological resilience. The doing itself becomes transformative, regardless of our certainty about the metaphysical dimensions of the practice.

Inspired by what I’d learned through my exploration of various religious communities and the scientific literature, I began my own simple ritual. Ten minutes each morning: closing my eyes, focusing on my breath, expressing gratitude for being alive, and asking for strength to meet the day’s challenges.

The changes were subtle but undeniable: less anxiety at work, more patience at home, sharper awareness of beauty in ordinary moments. Did divine intervention cause these shifts? Neurochemistry? Expectation? I no longer worry about the answer. The benefits are real, whatever their source.

As a free thinker, I’ve come to embrace prayer not as submission to religious dogma but as a practical tool for psychological well-being. Simply put, I pray because it makes my life better.

If you count yourself among those who cannot claim the certainty of faith but find the emptiness of pure skepticism equally unsatisfying, I offer this permission: You can pray anyway. You can speak into the silence, lean on rituals that people have found meaningful for millennia, and find strength without certainty.

This essay is adapted from Eyal’s forthcoming book Beyond Belief. You can subscribe to his Substack here.