It's true that I lack a good understanding of religious thinking, thank you for helping out there. > That is all true even if there were nobody listening becau

It's true that I lack a good understanding of religious thinking, thank you for helping out there. > That is all true even if there were nobody listening because they believe it to be true. I absolutely agree, whatever contributes to the patient's positive attitude helps. As does the involvement of friends and family. This is why I felt that I shouldn't criticize the perception of the overall effect so much, because I do agree that there is a positive mechanism at work here. It is with the metaphysical aspects themselves where I have trouble, and in a sense that's how this whole thread got started because it seems a stark contradiction. But coming back to your explanation, I agree, if your god wants to see signs of compliance from you and your social circle, it does stand to reason that people would believe this would cause him to intercede in the universe's processes in order to spare your life when he would not have seen the necessity to do so before. SuoDuanDao's point then was that the idea that your god would change his mind on account of prayers is not theologically bankrupt (in hindsight this was a very poor choice of words by me) because it works. My thesis however, was that even if prayer works that doesn't mean the specific reasoning behind it is automatically valid.