The Non Power of Prayer

I used to pray constantly. It's something that I actually sort of miss at times and I used to catch myself doing even when I became an atheist. It was a constant conversation going on in my mind when I woke up, when things weren't going my way, when I felt stress at work, when I felt sorry for someone, when I wanted something, when I wanted to have a better day. Since now I understand the "power of prayer," the gibberish is gone and is quite peaceful. I am not so dependent on talking about things in my mind but I am empowered to take action. 

I have heard Dan Barker, a former evangelical pastor turned atheist, say "nothing fails like prayer." I wanted to look more into the psychology and statics of prayer and what I have found is the likelihood of answered prayers is directly proportional to the likelihood of events happening without prayer. 

I wondered if God is omniscient and if he already knew what was going to happen and had things set, there wasn’t anything I could ask for that he didn’t already know, and he already had a plan for me, so why was I trying to put myself in the drivers seat? 

What I really needed to be doing was to find out what God’s Will was for my life. If he was omniscient then he had already given me all the tools I needed to solve whatever problem I had and it was my responsibility to find those tools for his will and for me to know how he wanted me to use them; not for me to tell him what tools I needed and how I thought I should use them. This idea was enough for me to dismiss intercessory prayer. 

I have read about studies in prayer where patients in a clinic, half of them were prayed for and the other did not. There was no found positive effect with prayers for patients.

I suspected that prayer at least had a positive psychological effect for the prayed for to know at least someone was praying for them, regardless if they did have metaphysical power. The people who knew they had people praying actually had more complications.

I have found that this is the validity of how god answers prayers in the forms of:

• Yes
• No 
• Wait

The hardest is wait. There’s a G.I.I. Video proving prayer is entirely psychological. For instance instead of praying to God, try praying to a jug of milk. The jug answers “yes, no, and wait” pray to it for $1,000 and it says, “wait and see what happens.” There are 3 answers in which you will receive: 

Answer Scenario

Yes            You get a check in the mail from the IRS you say, “see it was answered!”
 

Wait          2 weeks later you get a work bonus you say, “see I just had to wait.”

No            Nothing happens, why? “We have to trust that the jug of milk knows best.         Let’s be patient.” 

It’s clear how all these scenarios can be implied to a prayer to a god, jug of milk or anything, unfortunately as much as the yes, no, wait it can work with anything.

Prayer is something that has become quite silly to me.

What used to upset me when I was a Christian was I hated saying and hearing "I'll be praying for you." No you won't! It's just a one liner you say to remove some of the awkwardness, end the conversation, and avoid actually asking if there's anything to do. What I've learned if you are a Christian is pray right there immediately with the person, don't walk away and leave it at that, that's lazy. You'll forget and never do it. It's part of the Christian routine that is not genuine. Get real.

"You pray for me, I'll think for you." - the Thinking Atheist