Thanks for the post.
The link was informative.
I might check out some of the groups when I'm big enough.
The only answered prayers come from the great spaghetti monster in the sky.
If you don't hear him, then you are not a TRUE believer.
"By simulating talking to a therapist, you really get therapeutic benefits."
"Prayer is one of the ways you become godlike. It is a way of transforming your human mind into a divine mind."
I would say those extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I avoid any religious metaphors if I can. It's hard. When people say "in my prayers" they never actually pray. If someone says "how are you?" and you actually tell them, they'll never ask that again. Figure of speech. It was that way with the deities back in Plato's day. Don't only small children actually pray to God? I can't imagine that people actually believe there really is a God but I guess some do. How silly!
I guess meditation distills out the worthwhile parts of prayer from the supernatural malarkey.
Not sure contemplating the Mysterium Cosmographicum [en.wikipedia.org] is a particularly worthwhile focus of meditation. Kepler was a dude and his laws a planetary motion were spot on. The value of the platonic solids in planetary science, not so much.