People seem to pray for almost everything: health, safety, security, good grades in school, job promotion, wealth, or for loftier goals like world peace and an end to human suffering. Prayer is also used for ill, calling upon "God" for conceit, fraud, or revenge.

But do these innumerable prayers actually work? Does prayer affect outcomes?

If a person contracts a disease, his or her family may pray for their recovery. When the patient gets better, the family may think that the prayers caused the healing.

If a woman becomes pregnant, she and her husband may pray for a healthy child. When the child is born in good health, the couple may believe that their prayers were answered.

If a hurricane threatens to destroy a home, the occupants may pray for their safety. If the house is spared, the residents may assume that the prayers protected them.

In each of these examples, however, it is unlikely the prayers had anything to do with the outcomes. Although some claim that prayers give comfort to believers in distress, this is hardly a reason to presume they actually affect outcomes.

When someone prays, even silently, it is assumed that the person is appealing to a "higher power" or an "Almighty God." Christians, for instance, claim that their "God" is all-powerful (an intrinsic contradiction) and responds directly to individual or collective prayers.

But not all prayers are answered, as many people who pray for healing or survival die nonetheless. Those who pray for safety and security are still robbed or beaten. Students who pray for good test grades often fail anyway. Employees who pray for promotion are still rejected or laid-off from their jobs. Even if prayer appears to work sometimes, it certainly does not work all of the time.

I will argue, however, that prayer does not work at all; that it is at best a superfluous mental exercise; a last-ditch attempt to escape from reality when control of a situation either is or seems to be lost.

Observe that prayer is only claimed to work under conditions where the desired result is probable within reason. In the three examples above, the absence of prayer would not have changed the outcome.

If a person's arm or leg is bitten off and eaten by a shark, no prayer will cause the limb to grow back. If a person dies and is buried, no prayer is going to bring the deceased back to life. If a house burns to the ground, no prayer will cause the structure to restore itself. If an airplane breaks apart and crashes into the ocean, no prayer will return the aircraft to the sky and safe landing.

Millions of believers pray for world peace, yet wars have raged around the planet unabatedly for centuries. Prayers for an end to human suffering have had no effect, as millions of children continue to starve to death every year.

Prayer does not affect outcomes anymore than animal sacrifices, astrological events, or voodoo spells. The fact that prayer never works in situations where the desired result is not already probable within reason, is either proof that prayer does not work at all or that "God" is limited in power.

In this matter, the principle of parsimony (Occam's Razor) leads logical minds to conclude that prayer has no effect on anything. Prayer is superfluous at best, but for some, prayer is a delusion, and in extreme cases may become a harmful neurosis.

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