Even the nicest and most caring religious people are often unaware of quite how rude they are being. For example, it's extremely impolite to ask me how, if I don't believe in your personal god, I can possibly have any sense of morality. And it's also rather presumptuous, as well as illogical, to suggest that, now that I know of a nasty change in my physical condition, it's surely time for me to be thinking of an alteration in my mental and intellectual state as well. Leaving aside those who have thanked god for giving me cancer and a future in the eternal inferno, the offer of prayer can only have two implications: either a wish for my recovery or a wish for a reconsideration of my atheism (or both). In the first instance, a get-well card - accompanied by a good book or a fine bottle - would be just as bracing if not indeed more so. In the second one, a clear suggestion is present: surely now, at last, Hitchens, your fears will begin to vanquish your reason. What a thing to hope for! Yet without this parody of concern, religion would instantly lose a vast portion of its power. If I was to be wrong about this, then the faithful would have been praying for me to see the light when I was not dying. But this they mostly did not choose to do. The deity whose intercession is being implored is claimed to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. It is fully aware of the situation. It can make me a believer if it chooses, or wave away my carcinoma. Why should it be swayed by the entreaties of other sinners? My provisional conclusion is that those who practice incantations are doing so as much for their sake as mine: no harm in that to be sure and likely to produce just as much of a result. Writer Christoper Hitchens contributed this to the On Faith blog at www.washingtonpost.com, which is featuring a week long video series with Hitchens about his diagnosis and his beliefs. 