When you prayed did it ever work?

[Brian37]

I hate the loaded question in the title of this thread. Of course the believer is going to say yes dispite that it is a superstition.

Prayer is merely the act of talking to yourself not Allah or Visnu Or Buddha or Jesus.

The evolutionary flaw that causes this placebo is that we seek patterns, but it is merely retrofitting an outcome to suit ones own desires. The flaw is that it is simply selection bias. The same person who thinks it works doesn't want to take into account all the times they prayed for things they didn't get, or all the humans who pray to the same god or different gods that don't always get what they want.

But this selection bias and sample rate error isn't just about prayer. I had a co worker who swore that customers would magically call in the middle of a smoke break. Even today the cooks I work with do this. The problem is they never notice all the times they get through an entire smoke without getting interupted. So the reality is that they get interupted for the mere reality that we are open and those things happen when you work at a business that is open.

Prayer does not work at all. It may stimulate the pleasure chemicals in the brain, but that is a neurological missfire and credulity and lack of biololgical understanding as to why placebos are falsely seen as real.

There are 5 million deaths worldwide per year that means 50 million in the past decade. From all sorts of things, mostely old age, but also through desease, crime and war. If prayer worked like people would like to believe you could set up control groups and find when it works it would not be the crap shoot life is in reality, it could be used as a scientific tool to maximize output to a greater accuracy than the reality we see.

So the reality is that it is nothing more than wishful thinking, and the only real thing about wishful thinking, just like a kid has pleasent thoughts and pleasent chemicals stimulating their brain at the thought of Santa giving them gifts. Prayer is merely false hope and is as useful as praying to the Egyptian sun god.

---

God's voice is not about timber

There is no "God's voice" anymore than Allah talks to people. The talk is you and the talk is merely wisfhul thinking in your head.

There is no such thing as a disimbodied magical being wispering to you. You are merely talking to yourself pretending to talk to a god.