Evidence for Believing

[Belacqua]

Right. But that doesn't mean you expect God or Santa Claus to hand it over.

Not long ago, the Pope said, "You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That's how prayer works." 

Kierkegaard, though not Catholic, would agree with this, as would many modern Christians. It doesn't involve supernatural presents.

If prayer's that useless, you don't adhere to it. You cut out the useless middle ritual and do the proper work that gets results.

Where I live it's common to visit a shrine before you take the college entrance examination. Everybody knows which shrines specialize in that kind of thing. You throw a little money in the collection box, write your prayer on a piece of wood, and hang it on the plaque that's provided.

If you ask the kids and the parents who are doing this "do you believe that a divine spirit will help you," they usually say they don't know, they never thought about it. It has value as a ritual. It's more like a "speech act" than a statement of fact -- the fact that you do it is what's important, not that anybody's listening to you. These are well-educated people, by definition, yet it has value for them. None of them would do the prayer instead of studying. 

Popes tend to be big on tradition, so I'm sure the quote from him isn't something he dreamed up on his own. And of course Kierkegaard lived a while ago, and he thought the same thing. The theology I'm most familiar with is that of William Blake, and I know for sure that he would also agree about prayer. He mocked Christians who ask for presents from "Nobodaddy." Blake isn't in the mainstream, but he's part of a strong minority tradition that has deep roots. All the English antinomians are on his side -- Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians, etc. And the family tree goes back to Eriugena, Cusanus, Jacob Boehme, etc. (They would say the family tree goes back to Jesus, of course.) Currently Pope Francis would disagree with Boehme on about everything else, so the fact that they agree on this subject shows it's not so strange. 

If you say that prayer is meant to be a request for wish-granting Nobodaddy to give you presents, then all of these Christians agree with you that it won't work. That you have to pass the college entrance examination using your own brain.

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This makes me wonder about the idea that a God would only be good or relevant to the extent that it satisfied our individual desires. Give me what I want or I won't believe any more. 

Who said that? Right, you strawmanned that. Its the christians (largely) by the way who protray their god to be 100% benevolent and not 0.0000345%.

Lets assume god exists, for the sake of the argument. If the success rate for prayers is 0.0000345% like explained above, id certainly not waste my time worshipping/praying to this motherfucker, his existence notwithstanding. Your mileage may vary.

You seem to be saying that a 100% benevolent God would give everyone what they asked for. I don't see why that's the case.