How Does Prayer Work?

I don’t believe in God, but it seems like a pretty nice idea. Like having some omniscient, super-human dad who makes the world make sense and watches out for you to boot. But unlike your real dad, he controls everything ever. And you can ask him for stuff that your real dad can't give you. But that's where, for me, the metaphor runs into trouble.

How exactly does prayer work. From what I understand, God is the ruler of everything and he has a grand plan that your tiny, euclidean brain can't possibly understand. So you just follow along the path (ideally) that he has planned for you because in the end, he knows best.

So where does prayer fit in? If God has this great big plan for you and everyone you know and love (not to mention trees and rocks and bees and leeches) then what are you doing on your knees praying that your Dad's surgery goes well? If God has a plan and he knows better than you, then where does your will, via prayer come in? Why do we turn to prayer when things get bad and we feel like we could use some help from our super human dad? Weren't things going bad in the first place because it was part of his plan?

Or, are we praying to stay in the good graces of our tempermental papa? That's what history, and the bible would suggest. God delivered Christians and Jews because they prayed to him, and smote their enemies when they didn't get their way. Which makes since when its Christian verses pagan. Or good versus evil. Satan is trying to take your beloved father away from you, so you pray to God do he will save him from his clutches. Simple enough.

But, when you start universalising, it gets a little confusing. If God is the prime mover, and he responds to the prayers of his faithful, does that mean that through God, Christians are the masters of the universe? In that case, God is logically subordinate and Christians have usurped God as the prime movers (at least when it comes to the things that matter to us. No one really cares about how fast the grass grows, so he can handle that).

This not only creates a more subjective God than most Christians would like to admit, but it raises questions about which Christians are the prime movers. Catholics? Protestants? Mormons? I mean the formula is simple when its 'good v. evil' or 'Christian v. Hindu', but what happens when two equally faithful Christians are praying for opposing things?

Like when two Catholic priests are praying for opposing teams in a football game (do numbers count? is it some sort of holy democracy?). Or what if a monestary is planning and outing on Saturday and the nuns are praying for rain so they can stay inside and do crafts, and the priests are praying for sunshine so they can all take the altar boys camping (I just couldn't resist)? Who wins? Is it a numbers game? Or is it who has the cleanest soul?

The latter seems to coincide with Christian tradition. But, what about the four year old boy who prays that his father won't beat him anymore? What lesson could those beatings be teaching a toddler? What part of God's master plan involves child abuse? What about all of the unanswered prayers of the victims of genocide?

Maybe I am thinking too concretely. Christianity can be a slippery thing. For me, either God's will reigns or man's will reigns. And if man's will reigns, and the difference between suffering and bliss is a question of prayer then does the Holocaust mean that Christianity is the right religion? What about the Gaza massacre? Does holding a gun make your prayers louder?

The trouble with Christianity is that one set of questions just leads to a whole set of others. That is until someone tells you to shut up and have faitn.