Does Prayer Really Work? Does God Even Care?

[Diablo]

Look at who does most work for charity. Prayer stimulates concern for others, and action fir others. Even people like Richard Dawkins have said that atheists need to find a way if galvanising themselves to do charitable work in the way theists do.

So you have a nice turn of phrase. But it's been rather mugged by a gang of ugly facts.

You're conflating the *act* of prayer and it's efficacy with the *actions* of humans and those action's associated efficacy.

The point being, the *act* of prayer is indistinguishable from doing nothing at all, vs. the very real and tangible results from humans actually doing something.

Quite right. prayer is a function of being religious, and is neither necessary not sufficient for the doing of charitable deeds.

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Seems to me that we're putting prayer on a pedestal in some way and saying, wow, it makes you feel good so it must be special in some way. There are lots of things that make you feel good: a brisk walk or some exercise will do that, a nice meal, doing a good act or achieving some task. Hell, getting laid makes you feel good! Prayer is just another man-made system of making people feel good, that's all.