Do you think prayer is real? Your opinion?

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When I say "real," I mean genuinely heard by supernatural beings, or a God figure. Yes, I included an extraterrestrial option because lots of people think corporeal beings with insanely advanced technology are messing with us. Please remember, whatever people post, try to be respectful. Make WP a fun place to discuss our ideas!

And one more thing- if you have a personal experience with prayer you'd like to share, or an opinion you're afraid will be ridiculed, either way, please PM me! I'm fascinated by this kind of thing. I'd like to hear from you.

Prayer can have meditation effect and thus can be beneficial.

I have certainly seen beneficial impacts of prayer in a clinical setting. But if pressed for a medical opinion I would opine that these come from a combination of stress abatement and placebo effect.

That doesn't make the beneficial impacts any less real, though. So if a patients feels better after prayer, then my medical advice to that patient will be, "by all means, pray."

If it is beneficial to the person, then you can say it is. I don't think it's a bad thing, it has been shown that parts of the brain light up during pray. Nothing wrong with that.

I'd say it's definitely can be beneficial in meditative sense, anything else I'm not so sure of. I'll start believing when god talks directly to me. He(or she!) can pencil me in between George W Bush and Sarah Palin.

Praying somehow makes me feel better, but feelings prove nothing: Whether or not any alleged supernatural beings hear my prayers is one thing; whether or not any alleged supernatural beings actually listen to my prayers is another; and whether or not any alleged supernatural beings ever see fit to act on my prayers is quite another matter entirely.

I'd have to place my vote in the no effect category, personally.

'But how do you guys explain Tim Tebow!

If you prayed enough, could you learn to separate the feeling from praying, and get the feeling without it?

Prayer is real. Does it do anything? No. Pray for things in one hand and s**t in the other and tell me which fills first

I think "prayer" is a lot like being "on frequency" with supernatural things -- kind of like having a radio turned on -- but then things after that are dependent upon whether or not I want to actually participate within the spiritual realm. I can, of course, just "listen in" and learn some things from that, or I can also "interact" if I wish and listen for response ...

... but then like in the realm of CB radio, not all responses are noteworthy and must be discerned.

I thought that if someone's an atheist, they won't believe in the affects of prayer, only theists will. But I've been proven wrong by this thread.

Prayer is heard by no one supernatural or god-like.