What Is The Point Of Prayer?

[Sword of Christ]

Why do you give humanity that much credit?

Humanity being made in Gods image has a lot going for it. It's a much more positive view of humanity than the other alternative imo. Though I'm not saying believe anything you like as long as it's comforting, C.S Lewis said that all you would ultimately get from this approach is "soft soap and ultimately despair". So what matters is what you think is true.

There are thousands of religions dotted throughout the history of humanity. According to your theology, all of them bar yours were appealing to false, nonexistent gods that could do nothing for them, and yet they continued. So either the effects are imaginary and the idea of looking to a higher power is just a comforting, repetitive meme, or any physiological effects that do occur happen regardless of the particular god being prayed to, and can therefore be ascribed to praying itself, and not the deity being invoked.

Other higher religions may well come under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Most of them you'll notice are based purely on the what one man claimed to be or experienced. Judaism and Christianity though it has founder figures was a much communal shared experience that can be placed in a specific place and time in history. If you take the resurrection for instance that's something hundreds of people had claimed to witness it wasn't something specific to say Saint Paul though he had his own mystical encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He was very much a changed man after that experience.

Prayer of course isn't exclusive to Christianity I think it's a universal way of tapping into the ultimate reality/being regardless of religion or belief imo. There are still people who pray/worship the Norse gods or something like that but that would be idolatry and the kind of thing the Bible took great pain to discourage. Idolatry isn't the same thing as iconography before you mention that.