PRAYER IS ABOUT TREATING INACTION AS DOING SOMETHING
 
Praying for somebody you will never meet or who you cannot help or won’t help such as popes and politicians often do is clearly hypocrisy. Then it is clearly only about feeling good about doing nothing. It is using a tragedy for selfish hypocritical piety.

Some people get the same feeling from saying a prayer as they do from having done something good. They may pray a lot because it is this buzz they want. They work for the buzz indirectly but they still work for it. Others will not get that feeling and hardly ever pray.

Prayer is bias for anything that cannot be tested is bias by default.  Even when you do not get what you ask for you are told the prayer just worked in a way that was best for you.  It is too biased to be about anything other than feelings.  It is not right to use the suffering of others to make yourself feel good by praying for them.
 
Prayer is for many - if not all - just an attempt to feel good about doing nothing. Even the believer has to admit that prayer is really doing nothing for another person. God knows what is best. We might pray for healing. And it may come. Did God answer the prayer then? That depends on his motive. Did he do it to answer the prayer or did he do it just because it was the right thing to do? If he did it because he was asked, then it was not because it was right. Maybe he did it both because he was asked and because it was right? That means he refused to do it entirely because it was right. In so far as God does not do it because it is right he is acting amorally if not immorally. As he claims to be good, he would be showing he is not perfectly good. Then prayer is saying, "I don't care if you are evil or not do what I ask!" How is that supposed to help us become more virtuous. No wonder there is nothing remarkable about the virtue of most believers. Any virtue they have is there in spite of their faith and their prayers.
 
Those who are encouraged to appreciate prayers are being manipulated.
 
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31, King James Bible).
 
Jesus said that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:29-31 which is commanded by the depraved prophet Moses in Deuteronomy 6). That is, God is to be loved wholly. We do not love him most and give the rest of our love to others. We must love him alone and love others for his sake. You pray them only for God's honour. If you ask for help for another, you are really just asking God to do what he wants be it helping or not.
 
To love God with all your heart means to hate sin with all your heart as well. Prayer is opening up to this principle - it is merely consenting with sincerity of heart to love God totally. That is what really matters. That is the true meaning of prayer - and the only meaning. To pray for health is a sin unless you are asking for the health solely that you can serve God. If you ask for health without much concern for God, really you are telling him that health means more to you than him. You are not praying but insulting. You are trying to manipulate him. Manipulation is violent in the sense that it tries to impose your will on others and trick them into thinking that is not happening. Freedom and truth go together. The happy person who feels free but because of a religion's lies is not free at all. He is not allowed to be his own person and is therefore a victim of violence.
 
Prayer then is really doing nothing for yourself or others. It is all about God.
 
Prayer urges people to sacrifice themselves on the altar of religion by being eaten up by hatred. The prayers of believers are not motivated by this intention so they are not prayers to God but to the image they have made of God. Prayer is not really about genuinely helping people.
 
Those who pray because they feel it triggers a motivation to help others are really praying to a good idol they have invented. It is the abuse of prayer that is doing this not prayer. And if their minds and bodies were not programmed by nature to respond that way, the prayers would not motivate them. It is the kind of people they that is helping - not the praying. It is their belief that prayer triggers feelings of compassion for others that is helping. It is not prayer as such. It is degrading how religion stresses prayer so much when it is worthless in itself.
 
What's wrong with feeling good about doing nothing? It makes you feel better about not trying to help. No wonder most Christians are weak on doing anything impressively good for others.
 
If you cannot help say your sick friend, you can help somebody else in their honour. Maybe give a homeless person a few pence or something. But do not pray. It is not right to feel you have done good when you have not. That is feeding self-righteousness and self-deception. Do real good and feel good about that. That is the real way to respect yourself and the other person.

Some Christians say that when disaster happens then you must pray as if only God can do anything at all about it. Then you must act as if only you can do it and as if God will do nothing. That is the most shameless admission of the uselessness of God and prayer I have ever heard. It is about how you feel not how you help.