How do prayers work?

I know, I know, everybody knows how prayers work. You say them, preferably in a church, maybe under the Virgin Mary's feet or something, cross your fingers and hope God listens, cross your fingers again and hope God listens and will act to bring about what you ask. But really how do prayers work? Nobody's written a book called "prayers - how they work for dummies" yet. I just find prayers confusing.


I'm not talking about the textbook prayers like "hail Mary", I'm talking about prayers that's more like Christmas wishes but people just do it anytime. You know, the please-let-me-win-the-lottery kind of prayers. Those prayers just don't make sense. Not that I'm saying the textbook prayers make any sense.

Why don't they make sense? Because they're kinda contradicting God. You see,assuming there is a god, he supposedly had this "divine plan" to create the universe. And he did put a lot of thinking and planning into this divine plan of his. The divine plan is supposed to have everything planned, including the apocalypse the Church's been telling us for thousands of years. He liked it and he put it into action. And that is why humans, and their annoying prayers are on Earth.

What I don't get is how do prayers fit into this "divine plan". If God actually makes prayers come true then what's the point of the "divine plan" when anyone can change it with a sloppy request? Then again, not all prayers come true. Maybe it's because some of them fit into the divine plan and some don't. Hence the ones that fit work and the rest of the prayers just go to hell. Which means God would not change his divine plan prayers or no prayers. Then what's the point of praying when God's gonna do what he likes anyhow, with or without your request?

See? It's all very confusing. In the past there has been claims, from religious folks, that the collapse of communism was an answer to prayer. How can religious people be so sure about that? Doesn't that mean God had intended to have communism in his divine plan but due to popular prayer to boot communism from his plan he actually ditched his plan in favour to that of the what people want? Then God wouldn't be omniscient. What kind of an omniscient being that planned for something that went so horribly wrong that all his "children" had to ask him to ditch his plan?

So this is how prayers work:

Link
prayer experiment

Which is quite callous and too much like reality TV if you ask me. Wait a minute, reality TV might be modeled on God's prayer system for all we know. He might has the idea when he was brainstorming his "divine plan" that human should be able to decide some Idol contestant's future in a similar way to how he decides which prayer to come true.

Anyhow, why should I care? There is no God and prayers are just time-wasting sentimental.