Prayerful Petition is Demeaning

Prayer is communication with God. It is union with God and believers say it is two way. God unites with you when you pray and you unite with him.
 
Prayer is not necessarily vocal it can just be an attitude you carry around in your heart. It can just be an intention that you don’t put into words.
 
Petitionary prayer, prayer that asks for something, either influences God or it does not. Or it is meant to influence God or it is not. All prayer is intended to be petitionary for even when you don’t ask for a favour but just want to be with God you must necessarily intend that he helps you be really with him.

All prayer asks for a response.  All prayer is a petition though it is common to make distinctions between prayers that ask for something and other ones that do not.  The real difference is in how one type just asks and the other asks in a more indirect way. 

Prayer always asks for God to affect your heart at least implicitly. For example, you cannot expect God to give you a bike and not change your heart so that you become a better person who say confesses reliance on God and love. So it moves God to act that way and moves God if he wills to give you the bike. All prayer then is all about petition in one or two ways.  Yet even then it is ultimately making you live as a proper friend of God.  If it is all about the kind of person you are then the kind of person that you become after sincere prayer is the only thing worth considering.

If most people who pray are nothing special then that refutes the value of prayer and shows believers are not really that much about being good in the sight of God.

Prayer is not about asking God for anything but about having a relationship with him. You talk to him to build this relationship and you hope he will talk to you. There is no relationship with another person if it is all about asking them for x or y or z.

Christianity says that prayer comes from a loving heart so if there is a God then your prayers connecting with him and reaching him depend on your spiritual and humble and virtuous disposition.  To tell somebody you will pray for them is to tell them how great you are!  And to say that God will listen to you for you are holy enough!!

Prayer is about seeking meaning in a specific happening. You are not trying to give it to the person you are praying for. You are using them and their predicament to get meaning for yourself.

JESUS SAYS PETITIONARY PRAYER WORKS!

As God is the source of all only God truly matters.  Prayer that is not about giving yourself 100% to God is not prayer at all.  It is magic for it would take great magic to fool a good God with your fake intentions.

Jesus forgot his core doctrine that prayer is about accepting all that comes as being from God in honour of God and endorsed the idea that the more praying the more likely the result.  "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him." And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs." (NRSV).

It has been declared that to say you submit to God in all he wants or sends to you that you are in fact still petitioning God.  You are asking him to do what he wants.  You are asking him to let you continue accepting this.  Gratitude is petition in the sense "Thank you for giving me what I want."  Gratitude is like asking after the event.  But there is a difference between petitioning somebody to do his own will and to do yours.  You are saying he must do his will even if yours is violated.

WHAT IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE PRAYING TO?

What is wrong with praying to God when you are not sure what you are praying to and hoping there is something to hear your prayer?  People will not care what listens as long as something does.  And even more so when they are desperate.  The prayer then could end up in Satan's lap.
 
SO?
 
Prayer is bad because religious belief is.
 
Atheists have a right to see prayer as an evil activity. It conditions people to prefer God’s rights to human rights and to deepen the religious hold on the world with all the terrible disasters that brings. Prayer insults people. The view of God that it proposes for us is vile and has resulted in the vile hypocrisy that is so common in people of faith. One wonders if people who are unaffected by its poison really believe or only imagine that they believe. Prayer implies God should let good people suffer for he has the power to save them and won’t. It can only lead to trouble. If people didn’t see the need for praying they wouldn’t see the need for believing in God so prayer must be exposed.
 
The benefits of prayer do not come from prayer at all which is why we should challenge people’s faith in prayer and have no regrets. The benefits are nothing compared to the damage that is done.

The WEB
 
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.
  
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