What is the Problem when People Tell You They Pray for You?

The Christian has no respect for those who do not want to be targeted by forces they do not understand or that may turn against them at a time they do not expect. Witches believe you should not even perform a healing spell for a person without asking for their permission. It is trying to interfere with another's life or will and subject them to what they have no warning of.

"One of the most condescending things a theist can do to an atheist is to make a point of announcing that they'll be praying for us. Atheists don't believe in the power of prayer, but even theists can't think that prayer will be more effective for having announced. So what's the purpose? Some say that it's to express well-wishes, but people say that they'll pray for someone when the person is sick or having trouble. One way or another, the theist appears to be expressing superiority over atheists in a passive-aggressive manner. That suggests they weren't interested in serious conversation to begin with. "  Austin Cline.

If you tell somebody you are an atheist, they may pray for you or say they will.

When believers pray for atheists it is to show them an example and they hope the atheist will find that the prayer is answered and perceive that as a sign that God really exists and prayer works. Believers in God tell you to pray and imply that you are doing wrong or doing something harmful if you don't. But they set up their doctrine of the efficacy of prayer in such a way that nothing can disprove it. For example, if you pray fervently and with great sanctity and nothing happens they tell you that perhaps it did work but not in the way you expect. Or they say that God had other plans. This is actually a tactic for discouraging critical thought. The believers have something to hide. If prayer seems to get no response, they use guesswork to "explain" that. But science cannot accept such an approach. It needs tests and proofs that there really was a good reason why God didn't answer. A guessed explanation is not a scientific explanation. The believer is trying to manipulate you and get you to manipulate yourself.

God alone matters according to Jesus and the Bible and we must let him matter as much to us. Thus prayer is of supreme importance. It is the ultimate good work, nothing else compares to it. Evil comes in when there is no prayer. This totally insults atheists and even other believers and makes them feel they do not matter to you. If they matter to you because of God, that is a polite way of saying they will be treated as if they mater but they don't matter in themselves.

Most people do not help others. They walk on by when trouble happens. Thus we are entitled to be sceptical when people claim to pray for you on the basis that they want to help. Praying is an excuse for not doing much. Or it is an excuse for doing nothing. Do not pray for your neighbour to be fed. Go and take food to them. Praying will only make you more willing to walk on by especially if you think the prayer has had results.

Robert G. Ingersoll said, "The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." A Christian who prays for me and does nothing to help me is not really interested in helping me but likes to be seen as helpful.

If you feel that you have helped others by praying for them, that will make you less likely to roll up your sleeves. If prayer worked it would make you more anxious to roll up your sleeves.

Christians force their prayers on people who do not want them. They pray for atheists and Satanists. They do not care about permission. They pray specifically for atheists and Satanists. They pray for them also when they pray generally for everybody.

They like to tell those people they are praying for them.  They do that to indicate their superiority, to show off their "virtue", and also to make the atheists and Satanists aware that they are being prayed for so that things might happen that could make them think, "Maybe those prayers worked after all!" That is manipulative.  None of the reasons are really nice ones.  Perhaps they tell the atheists and Satanists they are praying for them as in a veiled threat.  "I am going to get God to deal with you and you will see I am right and you are wrong."  They are so passive-aggressive.

Jesus said good people pray in secret and hide their piety and that those who do it in view of others deliberately are hypocrites. Are those who tell me they pray for me hypocrites? YES!!!

Christians ostensibly praying for atheists is offensive when they are self-satisfied people who think God answers their prayers on a daily basis and who love to boast how God gave them the most trivial things not to mention the huge favours.

It might seem that their prayer is merely expressing a wish that good things will come to me. But what if it is God's plan that bad things happen to me? God is supposed to be good but as evil has ruined his creation he needs to use it for the greater good. And why not just wish? Why pray?

Do not insult people with your prayers.