Yes. Prayer is simply our attempt to bend the unknown forces of the universe to our requests. People plead to different beings and entities, and employ ritualism in different forms, but that is the bottom line.

It helps us, as it focuses us on our true desires, expresses our gratitude, and comforts us with a optimism of the unknown.

People tend to pray for those things which they feel are beyond their control, and to express vulnerability in safety.

That's all there is to it.

Prayers have a number of logical flaws inherent in their very design, the foremost of which is lack of evidence that they are even answered. While some people claim their prayers have been answered in the past, obviously there is a multitude of other people who have not had their requests fulfilled, often for vital issues. Here are two extreme examples:

1. President George Bush praying for the people of New Orleans right after they were hit by hurricane Katrina, displacing thousands of people. Great load of good that did.

2. Madeline Neumann, an 11-year old girl, died of diabetes. Her parents opted for prayer instead of taking her to the hospital when she showed very noticeable signs of illness and weakening. For 30 days her insulin level dropped, dying as her parents prayed (knowing that she had diabetes).

Here's an article with some research done on the effectiveness of prayer: http://www.livescience.com/health/080410-bad-prayer-kills.html

Naturally, religious people have rushed to generate excuses for unanswered prayers. The most common excuses are:

1) There is no unanswered prayer; God just answers them in different ways than we expect them. If that is the case, what is the point of praying in the first place, especially if fatal consequences result? And even if you believe that God had answered the prayer in such a way that it appears he didn't do anything for you, HOW is that any proof that prayer is effective, in any way?

2) God chooses not to answer them. Obviously a convenient cop-out; if your prayer is not answered, why doubt the validity or effectiveness of praying when you can just assume God simply chose not to answer it? This also produces the problem that you essentially get a 50/50 chance at your prayer being fulfilled. That's the same chance you get if you were to just hope for something to happen, or carry a lucky object with you to somehow increase the chances of something good happening to you. This in no way indicates a divine power.

3) You don't believe deeply enough/ didn't pray hard enough/ lacked faith in the baby Jeebus/ etc. So only believers are able to use prayer, and if their prayers are unanswered then they just didn't pray hard enough? You think Madeline Neuman's parents prayed hard enough, considering they did so for 30 days straight? Once more, a cop-out.

For a bit of scientific research on how effective prayer is (yes, those pesky scientists are foiling religious dogma once more), check out this article: http://www.livescience.com/health/080410-bad-prayer-kills.html

There is no evidence that prayer does help. It's a 50/50 chance to get what you want, which are the odds you have if you do nothing. Thus, there's no reason to believe prayer works in the first place. If prayer worked for you, bravo, now explain how my prayers were never answered (back when I was a Christian and did have faith), or why Neuman's parents didn't have their prayers answer. Hell, tell me what makes you so special that the being who CREATED THE UNIVERSE spends his time and attention catering to your need?

Prayer is good for people who have nothing else to turn to and need comfort. Hoping that this theoretical being will take care of you does provide some solace (at least, to those who don't mind the possibility of it not existing in the first place). Then again, talking with a close friend or family member does the same. And one detrimental effect of prayer is that is erode's a person's self-reliance, putting his or her life in the hands of some unknown force, rather than taking control and responsibility themselves. For more on self-reliance, here's an interesting article from a book on Theosophy:

http://chestofbooks.com/religion/theosophy/H-P-Blavatsky/The-Key-to-Theosophy/Prayer-Kills-Self-Reliance.html

Before prayer can be considered valid, we need some powerful evidence, such as multiple prayers being answered of things that were incredibly unlikely if not impossible to have occurred otherwise (without any human influence). As it stands, prayer is indeed nonsense.

Either there is a god or there isn't. If there isn't a god, praying is nonsense.

If there is a god who reads your mind (hence hears your prayers), prayer is nonsense because god knows what you are asking before you put it into words.

If there is a god that doesn't care what you think (after all god has a lot to do besides listening to you) then prayer is nonsense.

If the only benefit of prayer is its meditation aspect, then prayer is nonsense: meditate instead.

Do a lot of people believe in a lot of different things that are nonsense? Yes.

First, let's make the proposition that god is all knowing, so can hear your prayers, and all powerful, so can change things in your favor. Now, obviously the most obvious fallacy straight of is that if he knows the future is he powerful enough to change it? But let's assume that this is not a fallacy. Let's assume he can answer it. But again, only because you prayed. Is this to say if you didn't pray he would have changed the world? Again, runs into the same omniscient omnipotent paradox that we had to ignore in the first place to come to this; if he changes, then he is not all knowing. Also, i find it very egocentric to think that god will change anything because a mortal, one of six billion, asked him to. And obviously if he heard but did not answer, then what's the use praying?

It's impossible to say for sure, but in all likelyhood, prayer is B.S..

First, lets look at the basic claim of prayer. According to advocates, there's some kind of super-powerful being, and that being is listening all people at all times, and it (at least occasionally) grants people's requests. Somehow, using means our science can't understand, it intervenes without detection to, say, cure your nephew's cancer or protect Kenyan refugees from enemy soldiers. This same being, according to prayer advocates, chooses to intervene much less frequently (perhaps never) on the behalf of people who aren't prayed for.

If such a being existed, you would expect people who are prayed for to be significantly more fortunate than people who are not prayed for. You would also expect that this being would occasionally help people in ways that could not happen without intervention; say, teleporting a kid out of a war zone, or giving an amputee back his legs.

This, however, does not seem to be the case. There's no reliable evidence that hospital patients who are prayed for heal at a faster rate than those who are not (see link). And there's no reliable evidence of people being saved or healed in ways that can't be explained be explained by science; there are, for instance, no reports of people miraculously getting back their lost limbs.

For prayer to work, there would have to be an elusive, super-powerful being who can hear everything we say; a being that intervenes in our lives, using unknown means, without detection. This same being doesn't help people who are prayed for significantly more often than people who aren't, and only helps people who have problems that have a chance of being fixed naturally.

Either that, or such a being doesn't exist, and prayer is just a superstition.

The latter is vastly, vastly more likely (and plausible, and logical, and consistent with observation and what we know about the universe and Occam's Razor) then the former. And without any real evidence of the prayer working, it makes little sense to believe in prayer.

If god is all knowing, all powerful, etc, then what does he care what a bunch of people close their eyes and ask for?

Praying amounts to wishing, but people actually believe that it will happen. I like it even more when people ask others to pray for something, as if god is a democratic leader listening to the majority voice.

I am not religious, just because I find it too funny to take seriously. I have wished for things, but I know that only I have the power to make things happen. but maybe, if I kneel just right, and fold my hands just right, and think really REALLY hard about something, it will come true.

I prayed for money once and it didn't work so.... I think it's pretty much nonsense.

While I believe prayer itself is simply another form of wishing and hoping, and do not intend to discourage its use, I do want to make clear that it has no practical application, at least within a religious sense.

For example, as Richard Dawkins notes in his book, "The God Delusion," a well-known (and rather religious) scientist, Russell Stannard spent $2.4 million testing "the efficacy of intercessory prayer in medicinal settings was mounting" (if prayer does anything).

The results, reported in the American Heart Journal of April 2006, were clear-cut. There was no difference between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not. There was, however, a difference between those who knew they were being prayed for and those who did not; but it went counter to all hypotheses. Those who knew they had been prayed for suffered significantly more complications than those who did not. The experimenters described the cause as ‘performance anxiety’, attributing the increase in complications to the fact that the patients experienced severe stress wondering why they were being prayed for, and subsequently "freaked out" if you will.

While this is slightly off topic, the reactions to this study seem to somewhat mirror this debate. Once published, these results were hotly contested by religious scientists, just as those in this debate assure us of the necessity and effectiveness of prayer. Let us entertain the idea, then, that these results had instead PROVEN the efficacy of prayer. Do you think they would have been contested for one second? Of course not! But when shown that prayer has no true bearing on reality, those entangled in religion have no choice but to rely upon their own experiences, easily explained by the theory of intermittent reinforcement within behavioral psychology; the thought that an action, such as wearing your lucky underwear (or praying, in this instance), when reinforced intermittently (getting a good grade on a test every other week that you wear them), creates a conditioned belief in the effectiveness of that action.

While prayer is a natural part of Christianity, and may be effective in "communicating with God", there is no reason to suggest that it can or does have any bearing upon reality. Indeed, rather than providing a scientific explanation, believers resort to "faith". And this is true of all facets of Christianity, or any religion. While scientific studies can disprove many of their claims, these studies are shunned unless they provide results that support the Church (as they seldom do). Indeed, this is precisely the reason that many theories, such as those of Freud, have faded into the background; they made assumptions and based theories upon untestable hypotheses, thereby blocking any sort of empirical test, and subsequently isolating themselves. It's the equivalent of the church plugging its ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA".

There you go, I stayed up until 2:09 just for you guys. Good night.

Positive thinking is proven to be beneficial to health, not hard to see why. You're better off (in all forms) being happy than miserable.

But prayer is not positive thinking, it's wishful thinking, it's the acknowledgment of powerlessness.

You are no better praying than not, well except for the lost time and false hope.

Prayers are definately nonsensical and useless in every way you look at it.

You cannot wish your problems away nor can you wish for no problems.

If prayers do work, i guess everyone will be god right now.

Prayers are definately nonsensce and i don't see how they work.

The Law Of Karma condemns the very existance of the god that creates everything in 7 days.

If there is a creator then there sure is bound to have a creator of the creator.

So when god isn't true and is just a myth, so does prayers and holy water.

If holy water and prayers truly work, i am already in heaven...

In the world of psychology, prayer is the same as the self-fulfilling prophecy... that is, if it happens. If it doesn't it's got a whole other term (I dunno where my psych book is). Point is, by praying, (you can convince yourself you're actually talking to God all you want), but you're actually just talking to yourself in a sense that boosts a chance of your mind preparing to make it happen. For instance, pray that you want to ace a test tomorrow, your mind will start to do everything it can to make sure you pass that test because you're desperate enough for it. Of course, this applies to internal issues. As for outside issues, like, praying for the baby next door to be OK, or praying for your brother in Iraq to come home alive, it's really all just chance. Because then, what if the opposite happens? People that pray just choose to ignore the negatives that happen throwing off the ratio of praying working pretty massively.

Even from from a theist point of view, prayer makes no sense. If God knows everything, then what good does prayer do? If god wanted something to happen to you, then it would be part of his plan, if not, then you're wasting your time.

And from an atheist point of view it certainly doesn't make any sense either.

Prayer does not work. It only appears to work when you ask for things that could happen by chance anyway. If you ask for something that cannot happen by chance, such as healing an amputee, you will see prayer always fails.

Yes, without a doubt. No prayer has ever come true without a person making an effort to fulfill his/her own wish.

yeah, can't you just think something in your head and have god hear it? what if you're mute? why are you so fucking prejudice?!

If God created a divine plan, what is the point of praying?

because if he truly planned the divine plan well before man existed, then there is no point in praying because he thought out the divine plan very carefully many years before especially on Sunday when it is his day off.

Also, if he created a divine plan, then there is no such thing a free will.

Therefore, murder, poverty, starvation, inequities, destruction, war, hate then all contribute to his divine plan. Seems like God has sick humor if this is his divine plan. So, if you say that the devil causes these atrocities, then free will exists and there is no divine plan.

Can't have both divine plan and free will.

Some people make divine plan and free will seem that they are connected.

They can't because if made this divine plan, free will can't exist because he knows what you are going to do. So, if someone is going to commit a crime, he knew about it because it is part of his divine plan.

A common saying is that "there are no atheists in foxholes", meaning that all soldiers pray to survive battle. However, soldiers still do die, many in horrible, painful ways. If prayer did help, none of the soldiers would die, or "God" would prevent the battle altogether.

The frequency with which prayers are answered seems strikingly similar to what we would see with random coincidence.

"a personal communication or petition addressed to a deity, esp in the form of supplication, adoration, praise, contrition, or thanksgiving"

-dictionary.com

Yes. Because that deity is yet in question.

In any experiments, the efficiency of prayer is at random just as simply wishing for the outcome of your choosing.

Of course, how is praying to an invisible man going to help anything or anyone?

Yes, trying to psychically connect with your invisible imaginary friend is utter nonsense.

Prayer is nothing but an addiction. If you are into it and works for you, good for you. Don't force your beliefs on others though. For those who r not into it take a smoke. Definitely makes you feel good. Dont get ADDICTED!