Prayer can have a positive effect on the person praying or the people with them. Group prayer seems good in terms of sharing problems and counseling. I wonder how much this is like meditation or in Buddhism Metta Bhavana (practicing feelings of compassion). As long as you don’t start praying for thunderbolts to hit certain people. I have talked to someone who was approaching that kind of praying, or at least praying to God to ruin someone’s day on the basis that they are not Christian.

Concerning your logic – the conclusion would be that the person should not have got ill in the first place. Why go through the trouble of making them ill then healing if you can avoid it? Unless it was for a point.

If a god is omniscient then he/she should know the full state of your mind and your desires at any point. Christian hymns talk of this. Just feeling for the person in that instant should be enough to indicate that you wish them to be better. Prayer must therefore have an entirely psychological purpose, even in the presence of a god. It can only be to cause change, humility perhaps, in the person praying.

Perhaps I could’ve made this more clear in my post. I included this assumption as it is made by those who offer prayer as a means of healing. I’m not saying that I think it’s possible for prayer to heal, as the rest of my post should make clear; I consider it as a hypothetical situation for the sake of argument.

Re: Assumption (2). Praying for the patient to be healed can cause miraculous healing of that patient.

Q: Are you basically saying here that it is not impossible that praying could miraculously heal that patient?
sub-Q: if so, does the phrasing, do you think, change the perception of your premise?

Actually, thinking about it I suspect prayer really “works” in the same way as tossing a coin “works”…

Yes, that’s the only real effect I can believe prayer having, similar to meditation etc. My friend does claim that it helps in those situations, although I’m not sure he’s thought about the reasons behind that claim. However, he is making a stronger claim also, namely that it helps the recipient or “prayeree” (his word, I would have said prayee?).

I’ve heard a better solution to your argument against prayer. It says that the purpose of prayer isn’t to affect god, it’s to affect the believer and improve the connection between god and him/her.

That way, prayer becomes very similar to positive thinking. If you’re praying about someone’s health, you might go over and do something nice for them. Pray for patience in some situation, pray for wisdom in solving some problem, you’ll get it.