If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.
Interpretation
The quote questions the existence of a caring God and the value of prayer in a universe where divine plans seem hidden.
In this quote, Steven Weinberg expresses skepticism about the existence of a benevolent God who actively cares for humanity. He suggests that if such a God exists, they have made it difficult for humans to perceive their concern, making it seem disrespectful to petition that God through prayer. This reflects a broader philosophical inquiry into the nature of divinity and human existence, challenging the assumptions many hold about a personal deity's involvement in human affairs.
In practice
During a debate on the existence of God in a community lecture.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.
[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
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