Answered Prayer Seems Implausible
Our universe is vast and mysterious. There is so much we don’t understand about what it holds, where it all came from, when or where advanced powers might have arise, and how they might travel. So I cannot confidently rule out vast powers out there somewhere, maybe even powers that are aware of and not entirely indifferent to humans. In this sense I am an agnostic, not an atheist.
I can’t even exclude the possibility that some such powers hang around our planet, keeping their existence mostly hidden, but weakly influencing the human trajectory through minor interventions that may add up to big changes in the long run. That is, after all, my best guess of what UFOs as aliens would imply.
But the common hypothesis that some of these powers listen to unspoken thoughts in human heads, and then tend to on average favorably change the local world around those humans to “answer their prayers”, that hypothesis I find far harder to swallow.
This practice of answering prayer seems to require far more knowledge and efforts than would be required to more strongly direct the overall human trajectory, which they apparently choose not to do. So what gains could result from all this extra effort?
By assumption, these powers could favorably change the world around those who pray, but instead tend to choose not to do so in the absence of appropriately “sincere” prayers. This gives advantages to humans who are more popular, and also to those who are richer, as it seems quite possible to pay money to induce more sincere prayers.
The act of prayer may cut stress in those who pray, make them more willing to cooperate, and give them joys of submission. But such gains seem also available if such people would just put similar faith into their local human powers. Which most humans in fact did through most of the farming era.
Such vast powers themselves could in principle just enjoy the praise and submission of humans, but then why not make themselves clearly known and get far more praise and submission? And why care so much about the opinions of such small creatures?
Yes, if you try hard enough you can probably come up with some scenario in which it all makes sense. But you will have to make a great many a priori unlikely assumptions to make all that work. As a result, I assign a very low prior to such scenarios.
In contrast, the idea of great powers who answer prayer seems quite likely to arise via superstitious wishful thinking, even if no such great powers existed. This seems to me a far more likely origin of this practice. Especially in light of the fact that randomized trials find no gains for people unaware that they are being prayed for.
(Yes there’s a vast literature on this, little of which have I read.)
The issue in a history was if medical doctors can save the life using surgery, then the faith God has absolute authority means that God makes this possibility to be so. This is why Unity School of Christianity departed from the dogma in Christian Science, that required healing by faith alone. Related to this modern Information Theory conventionally will debate around the saying, "Thoughts held in mind, produce after their kind." This hypothesis based on observation, is that the Olympic athlete who has focus, faith, discipline, years of training, and always affirms a new chance to enter the contest, is increasing the probability of accomplishing their award-winning experience of a goal in performance. A colleague of mine writes “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.” ― Richard Bach, (Jonathan Livingston Seagull); after the example in the history of an amazing talented circus acrobat. So, the problem is there unresolved by anything we can simply say, like God answers prayer. It is faith-based because the dynamics is a process we cannot predict any more than we can easily solve the three-body problem. Our 60-cycle-per-second brainwaves operate in five or six senses, real-time interfacing between self and environment, co-creating our reality between three places of mind-action, self, society, and universal-mind. We know where our body is, and by science where our brain is at, but information theory includes where the "mind" is at? So, where does the prayer come from and to whom, and how does the "other" answer to the one who apparently make the petition as in a relationship across some distance unto that location somewhere that is the other with the mind over there? Here is the one factor logical to see; even a single drop, once removed from the ocean, means the ocean no longer feels whole. So, we have no basis to prove God does not answer prayer. That is the one proof we do have even now, with all the science around us.
I could swear I remember reading a blog post from you saying it would be rational to regulate prayer, since the small probability of prayers making any difference must be balanced against the potentially large harm of answered prayers, but I can't find it now.