To be fair, that is not a very valid argument, given that for any given King/Queen, they will be millions on the other side wanting this given person to die.

E.g when the Spanish Empire ruled the world, the British were not very happy about that. With the British Empire, the French and the Germans fought them with every opportunity.

That's true, for every prayer I say for my monarch I include a note asking for my enemy's monarch to die!

I can see this being true, but so many monarchs were related, it's kind of weird.

I don't believe it, but it could also be the case that the God is wiser than everybody praying for their monarch to have an unnaturally long life, and knows that monarchs dying in a regular sort of way is best for the kingdom.

I'm an atheist, but many of the arguments put forth by atheists seem very lame to me.

Aha.. because of course "God probably ignores prayers and does what She wants, but pray anyway" is a coherent message.

That is what people seem to believe, coherent or not. I think you will find few Christians who believe their god is just some sort of mechanism to be commanded as they please.

If you want to persuade them to believe otherwise, then you have to come up with arguments which are actually persuasive from their perspective. This is a problem I see with a lot of smug atheist literature. It's also a problem I see with all the arguments from Christians about why I shouldn't be an atheist. I guess I seem approachable to them, I get a lot of well meant but totally fruitless conversion attempts. They are arguments which doubtlessly seem very sound to them, one who already believes, but totally fall flat to me, somebody who doesn't. Like telling me how many different people claimed to witness Jesus resurrection... that seems like compelling evidence if you already believe that the bible is reliable. Christians tell each other these arguments at Church, find it very convincing because they are already convinced and find it hard to imagine the frame of mind of somebody who doesn't believe, then with great earnestness present these arguments to nonbelievers and are puzzled when it doesn't work.

Well that's exactly what's going to happen when you confront most Christians with "Your god isn't real because he doesn't do as you command him to with your prayers." Prayer failing any empirical test of efficacy is convincing evidence to people who already don't believe but totally falls flat with people who do.

> ... millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save ...

Plausibly quite true. But given (1) how often the succession turned violent after a monarch died, and (2) how very little power the average person had - I'd say such prayers were entirely reasonable. If they made "life in the lower 99%" just 1% more bearable, that'd be a worthwhile RoI.

Demon-Haunted World is a book worth reading...but Carl often seems to forget that 99% of humans are neither huge science geeks (as he is), nor rationalist robots.

Just think how young they would've died otherwise. ;)

>As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save their king/queen

Knowing how most kings and queens have behaved throughout history, I think Sagan suffered from a faulty premise. The queen everyone loved best made it to 96.

IIRC, European elites (nobility and royalty both, and royals more than lesser nobles) until something like the 17th-18th century overall lived shorter lives than the general population, largely because they spent more of their lives in cities, which were extremely unhealthy until fairly recently; more recently, though, British royalty has, for example, been living much longer [1] than the British population at large.

[1] https://theconversation.com/long-live-the-monarchy-british-r...

> millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save their king/queen, but kings and queens don't live beyond the average lifespans of humans

Have you seen the Sumerian King List?