Bones buried with religious amulets or caves with religious paintings are considered proof that we are dealing with human beings and not just with apes (“humanoids,” in polite lingo).

In fact, Aristotle’s contentions that the human species is distinctive for the use of reason (homo sapiens) or the ability to laugh (homo ridens) are not as strong proofs of humanity as is prayer (homo orans?).

After all, science keeps finding more and more use of reasoning in animals – including the ability to speak and use symbols – so that it is pretentious for us to suppose we are the only species able to reason. Animals also laugh, so we might chalk up Aristotle’s confusion to never having seen a chimp. On the other hand, except for some apocryphal stories in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, animals have not recently been observed praying.

Thus, the statement that “only humans pray” is unassailable. It would be far more adventurous to state: “We are only human if we pray.” Even when safely avoiding clichés like “There are no atheists in a fox hole,” to equate humanity with the practice of prayer entails multiple metaphysical subtleties. Yet, examining the immense course of human history, the conversion narratives of great leaders, and common sense conclusion about the behavior of most people who now exist or who ever have existed, it is reasonable to conclude that humanity and prayer are linked in a prolonged embrace.

Admittedly, not every believer prays, nor does every suppliant pray well. If we lend credence to Jesus Christ’s comparison of the Pharisee and the publican (Lk. 18:9-14), there is a lot of hypocrisy generated in religious prayer. But these considerations do not alter the fact that only humans pray, regardless of to whom they pray.

Examples of praying stretch back 20,000 years or more and include all religions, as long as we don’t get hung up with recent definitions of prayer that exclude all but private meditation. Ritual song, dance and eating, in fact, are more common expressions of prayer than a retreat into mental isolation to commune with the spirit world. Communal prayer, I would suggest, helps define the parameters for human expression. Music, dance, art, communion with others, symbolic solidarity with nature, fictive family relationships with strangers – each in its own way is an essential component of the human experience.

As Carl G. Jung stated to Sigmund Freud, (here I am paraphrasing for sake of brevity) the human psyche must first encounter and then journey through humanity’s common spiritual processes in order to achieve full development. Jung directly refuted Freud’s idea that mental health requires all feeling and emotion be reduced to rationalistic premises. On the contrary, wrote Jung, learning how to incorporate such embedded yearnings into one’s everyday rational thought makes a person psychologically mature.

If the Jung-Freud dispute is too arcane, we always have television. Once more, in the same episode of Star Trek, I watched Captain Kirk prove to Mr. Spock that even if a thing is “illogical,” it is a necessary part of the human equipment for survival.

Buoyed by both Carl G. Jung and James T. Kirk, I would say that those who don’t pray have not achieved the fullness of their humanity. Of course they are entitled to choose their own life style and, hopefully, succeed in doing good for themselves and others. But since their human experience is either incomplete, or stunted, or both, they should consider that those of us who pray just might have chosen the better part.