SOME HARMS THAT PRAYER DOES

Prayer is casting yourself on the help of God who makes all things and from whom all things come.  It is about God's will not yours.  You hope to want what God wants.

The devout say that God does the good works they do, not themselves. This is a sinister denial of human goodness though it is a clear endorsement of prayer. When you do good don’t be afraid to take the credit at least in your own mind. Don’t be duped by schemers who want you to think you have nothing to offer without God. They want you to be addicted to their understanding of God to get false sense of self-esteem. Self-esteem that comes that way is dangerous and fragile and is not the real thing.  It is a way of controlling you through their fake charm.

How anybody can say that religion is a justifiable thing or a justifiable evil is a mystery!  Eespecially when they and their religion believe that people are more likely to abuse something than respect it. As religion puts it, because we have had original sin we are more likely to sin than to avoid sin. Prayer gives religious people the desire for gratification through religion. This is a subtle form of selfishness and not just selfishness but unbalanced and unreasonable selfishness. Since not everybody in a religion can expect to get their own way all the time, it is necessary for leaders to decide what is required for belief and to lay down rules for the flock.

Prayer encourages suspicion and division between people with different views. It causes antagonism. Prayer makes the devout look down on the good works of those who do not pray. The devout say you need grace - magic from God that helps you do what good is not natural to you - to do really good works for we are all infested with sin. So the more religious a person is the more likely it is that their good works are really good and done with a good motive. Prayer then is intended to curtain the devout off from “inferior” people.

Jesus said to love your neighbour as yourself is like the commandment to love God with all your heart. That clearly shows that the God dogma implies we should all become fundamentalist fanatics for God said that no work that is good in his sight (though it may be good in the sight of men) can be done without prayer. The result is that we end up as one of these fundies in our attitude even when this attitude does not spill over into fanatical acts. The message prayer gives is that humanity was made for faith and not faith for humanity which is a clear invitation to the world to be full of poison disguised as sweetness.

God is said to answer all prayers that plead for the enlightenment of the atheists and others for wisdom is one of the most important gifts. So prayer accuses atheists and agnostics and believers who barely believe of resisting his light if they don’t convert to theism or convert properly or to whatever faith the one doing the praying thinks is the true religion. Prayer is insulting and arrogant.
 
If God is not influenced by prayer then what he is going to do he is going to do and prayer serves no purpose. God as a belief and prayer give unrealistic comfort. And there is nothing you can do to guarantee happiness for God might send depression on you or kill all your family in a car crash. Prayer then would not comfort you. If comfort came, it came not because of prayer but because God decided to give it irrespective of whether you prayed or not. You might as well never say a prayer then. It would be more realistic not to seek comfort in prayer. It would be a sin to look for comfort in it for that is making a demand of God who chooses to do what he likes and whose total autonomy must be upheld.
 
People like praying when it reminds them that the religion says there could be a Heaven waiting for us when we die - a state of permanent and everlasting happiness. Wise people know that we will have to face pain and suffering in life. What makes it worse is mulling over the pains of the past and fearing the pains and sufferings of the future. What you need to do is focus on now and keep your attention fixed only on the present. It is that skill you need and the more you practice it the more success you will achieve. It is not prayer you need therefore prayer is only going to get in the way. Even knowing that focusing on the present eliminates at least some suffering is liberating.