PRAYER AVOIDS TESTING SO IT AMOUNTS TO SELF-DECEPTION

If prayer avoids testing or worse forbids it then that is a red flag.  Same with anything else that does that.

People are taught to pray to a higher power.  It is cruel if this power does not exist for the person wants something that will not come.  When prayer is not answered, it is often said that sometimes something is bad and you don't see how so the prayer is being answered when you don't get it.

What keeps people praying is how they think that if they ask for something good it sometimes happens.

A following b does not mean b caused a. It can mean it might have or it happened in spite of it. If people pray and what could be seen answers to prayer and miracles seem to follow that does not mean the belief had any role in causing the answers or miracles or allowing them to happen. Testimony has no power to help.
 
Repeat, a following b does not mean b caused a. It can mean it might have or it happened in spite of it.

Which should we assume if we have to assume only one of them?� It depends. Given that a miracle is uncommon it is better to assume it is b and only came about in spite of a.
 
You feel good because you make prayer untestable. Even when you get nothing you have asked for, you reason you got something as good or better for you forget that b coming after a does not mean b was caused by a. Anybody can imagine that something good has come out of praying or carrying the rabbit's foot. That is a worthless argument and is you trying to blind yourself to the fact that prayer does not work.

Making something untestable makes you feel in control. You feel you can be your own truth without regard for truth as it is. You feel stronger than reality for you use the untestable to protect yourself from it. You use the untestable to see reality the way you want to see it instead of how it is. That is about power. It is false control for truth is not about you which is why you have to be in line with it and seek it.
 
Those who pray for you are careful not to ask for anything too far-fetched - eg that their daughter will become the next world queen of pop. It is as if they pick out the causes that have a reasonable chance of happening anyway and they want to take the credit for it when they happen.
 
Rationalising is a form of attempted self-empowerment. You do it to cope with feelings of powerlessness. The religious person argues that prayer for her dying child's recovery has worked and she will say that whether the child lives or dies. She will see death as its recovery and has proof that God heals in ways you do not expect. She protects herself from seeing that prayer is nonsense and that she has not helped her child by engaging in it. Proof that she is kidding herself is plain from the fact that she would not say that if her doctor treated the child that the treatment worked even if it killed the child. She would not say if the child dies, "Doctor X is an incredibly good doctor. His tablets sent my baby to a better place. I can't thank him enough." She would not even say that if instead of a doctor it was a Catholic or Pentecostal or whatever healer.

It is better to keep well-informed and to try to be as rational as possible. Reason is a better way of self-empowerment than twisting reason which is what  takes place when you rationalise. Rationalising means you are giving some of your power away in order to feel empowered. You are twisting your mind.
 
Twisting your mind is not self-empowerment.

FINALLY
 
Prayer is bias for anything that cannot be tested is bias by default. Even when you do not get what you ask for you are told the prayer just worked in a way that was best for you. It is too biased to be about anything other than feelings. It is not right to use the suffering of others to make yourself feel good by praying for them. When you say you pray for them you are trying to look good at their expense.
 
You are a doctor and you will not give your patient antibiotics for a bacterial chest infection. When it is too late and you know it you come along then. Praying after a disaster is like giving antibiotics to a person who needed them but cannot use them now. To say, "Prayer does not prevent disasters but fixes them" is one strange piece of logic. If it cannot stop them then it might not fix them either!
 
Prayer seems to spring from how human nature does the same wise, bad, stupid and mad thing over and over thinking it will be different this time. It is trying to say you believe it can be different and for God to make sure of it. So it is like God rolls a dice randomly and will only take direction because you have requested it! It is insane. It is pure superstition. Go and help the person properly.

Prayer is choosing to do the least you can do...which is nothing!