As an ex-Christian (baptised with water and fire in a Pentecostal church that believes that the power of God and the Holy Spirit infuses every aspect of life) I am fully aware of what prayer is.
You are fully aware of what prayer is in relation to your experience of Pentecostalism.
It can be correctly said that there are many interpretations of ‘what prayer is’, even some of the comments posted in this thread have a particular angle on ‘what prayer is’, but is it wise to paint every practitioner with the same brush?
My point is that you have to ask yourself "what constitutes an answer to this prayer?" What events occur that you consider a positive answer? The range of such circumstances is immense. Very rarely does someone get a result that is specifically and unambiguously something that they prayed for. Either they don't pray for something specific, or they do and what they get is similar, but not identical to, what they prayed for. This is the ever-expanding Range of Conditions that can be Interpreted as Success (RCIS).
And this can be explained by the normal chance events occurring, and then being retroactively interpreted as answers to your prayer.
The RCIS is acceptable. It depends on the person’s subjective experience and ability to be honest with that subjectivity. (with their self)
It is unlikely that something prayed for and the answer to that prayer would then be rejected on account that it could be explained in other ways not related to the prayer itself.
Now, keep in mind that this is true despite my own experience of praying that my car door be unlocked - a specific prayer - and finding that indeed it was - a specific answer. That particular event was a very powerful affirmation of my faith at the time.
In terms of Memes, your ‘faith’ as described was Pentecostal, Christian, belief that the power of that particular god concept and the holy spirit which infuses every aspect of life.
Thus the prayer was a powerful affirmation to THAT particular belief system.
It likely affirmed for you that your god concept actually existed and strengthen your support of that Meme.
I don’t think Memes have the power to answer prayers but can take the credit for them which strengthens the Memes ability to continue being supported by its adherents.
When trying to test whether prayer works or not, you need to keep your RCIS as small as possible, to avoid the retroactive interpretation of random events clouding your results. In the case of my car door, my RCIS was very small - only my car door being unlocked could be interpreted as success - and still a better explanation is simply that I had forgotten to lock it.
The most likely explanation is that you forgot to lock it. However, does that really matter in relation to your prayer, or the fact that this example was a significant moment for you in relation to your faith being strengthened?
I can understand that in hindsight you might see it as a big mistake because you allowed it to have the effect it did and that effect was ultimately not good for you.
(I am assuming this of course, based on the fact that you say you are an EX –Christian (of the Pentecostal variety).
Praying can make you feel better about yourself, and when random events can be retroactively interpreted as success, it can support the idea of faith. Furthermore, the very act of praying is an act of worship, which is important to the church I was part of in and of itself regardless of the result. But the actual, real-world effects of prayer are all psychosomatic. Buddhist meditation works just as well, and for the same reasons.
What if, for example – someone who had no affiliation with religious institutions, no belief in any particular god concepts – drank beer and smoked and even use the ‘f’’ word, considered him/her self to pray, not even always aloud or even necessarily in their head, but also thought about life in terms of being in it and interacting with it and it was more sort of conversational, and not even so much always with words as with feelings, and regarded nature as a friend which seemed able to respond in a variety of ways - ways which confirmed for that individual that there was a definite connection with something which appeared to be intelligent, was not ‘god’ in any particular sense of the word but still was pretty darn awesome, AND this was not a stop start, sometimes on sometimes off kind of thing, but happened perpetually, even when the person slept and dreamed...
...AND it not only made the person feel good about themselves but about others as well, and life in general...
...If that person felt that what he/she was doing was kind of perpetual prayer, conscious interaction with an invisible Intelligence which was able to use physical reality as a means to interact...
...Would you regard this as ‘prayer’ yourself, or would it have nothing to do with how you learned to understand ‘what prayer is’ through your particular now defunct belief?
