Prayer in Sports

• Showing their spirit: a look at athletes and religion

Dan Barker is a role model for the religious. A former fundamentalist Southern Baptist minister, Barker deconverted to atheism and is now co-president the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

"It's just plain silly. . . . When you throw a football and you pray, do the laws of nature change? Does the elliptical curve of the ball through the air suddenly swerve, or what? Is God blessing you for winning and is God cursing the other team for losing? Just the arrogance of that; it's one thing to be happy and thankful, but to put it on religion, it's so uncivil, because everybody has different religions."

I strongly recommend Barker's book Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist to any religious person who has doubts or questions about their beliefs. I know it has been instrumental in many deconversions.

religion, sports