Fermionic
Fireweed_honey
The fact that you describe people who pray as greedy, superstitious and uneducated says a lot about you.
Excluding "greedy" from the list, I'm not sure how praying can stop you looking superstitious and uneducated.
Took me a while to figure out what to say. Partly because I had some errands to run, and partly because you can scare the spit out of me, Fermionic.
I'm going to break this down into two parts: Superstitious and Uneducated.
As far as superstitious goes, I'll conceed. A lot of us are superstitious on some level. It's in the little things we do, sometimes unconciously. It can be prayer. It can be not wanting to walk under a ladder. It can be something left over from childhood, like not looking in the bathroom mirror until you turn on the light. Other then something concious, like prayer, a lot of us don't realize we carry any superstition in our everyday lives. Unless it's something on the level of high OCD where it interferrs with out daily lives, we don't think about it. So, if you want to call me superstitious, I'll take that. It's true.
Uneducated, however, brings about another picture to mind. When it's combined with superstitious, one gets an idea that the person being talked about has slipped back in the evolutionary track. One who is superstitious
and uneducated is very undesirable and would be lower than what the one making the assumption believes themselves to be. Prayer (and religion) does not make one uneducated. I, myself, am a very educated person. I've met many well educated religious people, and many very well educated atheists, and a number of people of both sides who have education but act dumber than dirt. Having a religion does not demenish my diplomas or my pursuit of higher learning, nor has it done that do others who have religion. To suggest that because one is Christian or Muslim or Hindu, they are uneducated is, in and of itself, an uneducated statement.
So, if you want to say that I and anyone who prays is superstitious, fine. I'll take that. But do not suggest prayer makes me uneducated.