WHY YOU SHOULD NOT FEEL CHARMED BY BEING PRAYED FOR!

We want people to find us lovable. If we think we are causing people to love us say by magic or prayer that love will not satisfy us. It is manipulation that is thought to be causing the love. To think the love is magic is to look upon the love as if it isn't real for it is not us that is found lovable but magic making people think we are lovable. It is about the magic and not us. Christianity teaches that God enables his true followers to love one another and that this love is not natural but a supernatural gift of God called grace. It is another way of saying that real love is magic. The Church says love needs to be a gift from God and not our creation for we are so bad and stupid and imperfect. This wouldn't be love. God and love are irreconcilable. Prayer is basically asking God to help us love him and others far more or to start loving others as God wants. The Church says that prayer is about love above all things. Prayer is evil. To derive satisfaction from it is delusional.
 
Prayers are never really answered when they steal your soul and mental balance for some seeming answer to prayer. What you get is not worth the praying for prayer is inherently demeaning and has bad psychological effects that outweigh the psychological benefits.

If you request a birthday cake in prayer, will God minutely tamper with the universe to make sure you will get one? That would be against the laws of physics. Believers might say it is not for rather than tamper he sets up the universe in preparation for your cake. But that would be against physics as well. Why? Would it be as bad as or worse than tampering?  It is worse for it is still tampering and it won't admit it.
 
Suppose prayers do not work. To tell a person they did not get a bike for they did not pray for it is terrible.  It is bad for the same reason as saying, "Pray for somebody to pay your tax bill for you by next week and don't worry for somebody will" is hideous.  We all agree but oddly enough if prayer works then it must be their fault if things go wrong for them.  But it is far worse to say that prayers are answered in ways you do not expect and you get something better or as good as what you asked for.  Getting a good thing instead of the good you asked for specifically is far more important than getting it.  Nobody would pray if nobody told them to pray.  The person who tells you to pray feels responsible for your good fortune so you boost their ego by praying.  Prayer has this indirect dark side.  The prayer for humanity to become more virtuous is certainly never answered!

You can’t just say that God answers prayer for good reasons. You need examples and need to present the evidence that the good reasons were evident. The more serious the thing you pray for the more evidence-based your prayers need to be. There is something terrible about somebody asking a god to cure a baby's cancer without caring about evidence that it will significantly help. There is something terrible about ignoring evidence and giving people false hope.
 
Atheists have a right to see prayer as an evil activity. It conditions people to prefer God’s rights to human rights and to deepen the religious hold on the world with all the terrible disasters that brings. Prayer insults people. The view of God that it proposes for us is vile and has resulted in the vile hypocrisy that is so common in people of faith. One wonders if people who are unaffected by its poison really believe or only imagine that they believe. Prayer implies God should let good people suffer for he has the power to save them and won’t. It can only lead to trouble. If people didn’t see the need for praying they wouldn’t see the need for believing in God so prayer must be exposed.
 
The benefits of prayer do not come from prayer at all which is why we should challenge people’s faith in prayer and have no regrets. The benefits are nothing compared to the damage that is done.

Prayer is loaded with "explanations" and excuses when no results come.  It ensures that the one thing that should test for God cannot be done or work.  It shows that belief in God opposes testing and thus is totally anti-science for science is about testing.  Prayer is insulting to the intelligence and believers have no right to turn the good and bad things that happen into responses from God to prayer. People's suffering is not to be used in that way!!  The arrogance of prayer shows it is spiritually and morally bankrupt.  A non-testable doctrine is not worth the ink it is written down with.  A God who is against testing is good for nothing.
 
The WEB
 
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.
 
Books Consulted
  
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