nakedpastor

Toby Selwyn, the young and articulate atheist over at A Load of Bright, has written an article and posted it recently on his site. The post is called A Humanist Lesson: The Prayer of Serenity. He has kindly invited me to respond to it. Rather than just leave a comment on his post, which I have, I want to post about it myself.Toby rightly points out that the great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr created the now famous “serenity prayer”, used by Alcoholics Anonymous for years. Here it is in full:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and (the) wisdom to know the difference.

Toby believes it is “one of the most deeply profound maxims ever to emerge from Christianity, or any religion for that matter.” He goes on to say, though, that he must “reject, for obvious reasons, are the first three words, ‘God grant me’.” He believes that this “prayer” can be accomplished without God, and, as a humanist, he believes we can “strive to achieve these traits for ourselves, without any divine intervention, simply by making an effort each day.” Toby applies the prayer to the hopeful decline and eventual elimination of religion because of its Read More