Most of the people thinks that we pray because our forefathers have been praying and told us to pray. We pray because God has asked us to pray and therefore we tell our children to pray in a same way. But for many people who are sincerely searching for a more meaningful answer this may not be satisfactory. First of all, God has given us freedom of choice for everything including prayers. So we do not have to pray if we do not want to. In fact in propesperity most of us don't. Only when some personal tragedy strikes or when we reach old age that many of us start praying regularly. To understand this with example; consider a plane full of people about to crash and in this helpless situation where everyone realize that they are going to loose their lives they all start praying for God's mercy, forgiveness, His pleasure and personal salvation in the hereafter. But nevertheless, everyone will be trying his/her best to survive until the very end. This instinct of self-survival is inherent in every living being, including us. The traditional concept of praying has started long ago when humans find themselves helpless and defenseless against natural catastrophes. They supplicate to various natural objects that threatened or benefited their survival. But once human beings developed tools for self-defense and gradually advanced in science they tended to drift away from religion. They found security in science rather than prayer because science gave them control over the forces of nature. Priesthood considered this attitude as an attack on religion itself. This led to a continuous battle of religion with science. History bears ample testimony to this continuous struggle.
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