Its ridiculous to think that a god has the power to heal the little baby who got poisoned ....but he won't because not enough prayers were said. Of if later, lots of prayers start being said on behalf of the poisoned child....so this omnicient/omnipotent god, Architect of the Universe decides to change his mind and heal the child.
I couldn't worship such fickle and petty god.
I'm not surprised by the results of this study. If we could push God's buttons by prayer, then none of us would ever have bad things happen to us and our loved ones would never die.
Bad things would not happen to good people, or if they did, they would be miraculously fixed by pious prayer.
Instead, we see the wicked prospering and good people dying young, just as much as we see the opposite.
Prayer may be beneficial to the person praying, but I don't think there's any evidence that it affects God's behavior in the least.
Did the extensive prayer thread here for TexasCowboy prolong his life? It surely doesn't look like it did. And there's no doubt he was a fine man and the prayers were numerous and sincere.
My feeling is that God interferes almost never. In the overall scheme of things, we're all insignificant and we're all going to die. It matters not at all whether we die early or late in life. The only thing that matters is how we live that life while we have it.