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I can never shake the feeling when reading stories like this that the person in question is in fact a hardcore devotee of the religion of empiricism or humanism with all the implicit metaphysical positions that come with that relief, gazing longing at other religious traditions but too rock-solid in his own faith to ever forsake the Enlightenment pantheon. I kind of get it, as a Catholic I look at the beauty and solemnity of the Orthodox faith, the strong communities of the Evangelicals, the relative seriousness with which some Jews and Muslims incorporate God into their lives, and I am envious and wish that I could partake in those communities. But my reason and faith lead me to Catholicism and no matter my issues with the Church I can't will myself to disbelieve in what seems to me to be the Truth.
All I can tell you is that I don't feel a God-shaped hole.
The stars wheel with no sign of a Creator's hand. Men kill and die and are lost to us--as far as I can tell forever. Beauty emerges from the interplay of a thousand million butterflies seething beyond our perceptions. So does suffering. I don't see all that you see.
The question, then, is whether the converse is true. Am I making conclusions based on the whole picture, or do I build on faith and call it reason?
I'm quite religious, and I don't feel a God-shaped hole either. For me it comes down to reason, faith, and personal experiences.
In particular, the single thing which most strongly leads me towards God is science (lowercase s). I have often in life come to a crossroads where I've essentially predicted "If God is real and I have a good understanding of who he is, I should do X. Otherwise, I should do Y." At times I've chosen X, at times I've chosen Y, and I'm personally satisfied enough with the design and outcome of those tests to be reasonably confident in my religious beliefs.
Of course, there's a chance that X is just a proxy for "what my gut says is the right decision" and Y is a proxy for the opposite, but I've tried to be quite thorough and rigorous with these tests, and after a certain point it's impossible to remove any possibility of bias. Sometimes my gut rebels against doing X and tells me that surely it won't work, but I do it anyways and it works out better than I could have imagined.
I'll give you the best recent example I can think of. LDS congregations are called "wards" and groups of congregations are called "stakes". Recently my (quite remote) ward was broadcasting stake conference. There were 3 2-hour sessions to be broadcast, including 2 which would contain highly-anticipated talks (sermons) from a church higher-up. Unfortunately, the broadcast wasn't working. So the wonderful members of my ward sat through 5 hours of screechy whines, the words of the talks only very rarely intelligible at all, and even then only for a second or two at a time. At this point there's only an hour left, everyone looks quite grumpy as they sit and bask in the sound of unholy microphone screeching, and I feel impressed to suggest that we pray for the sound quality to improve. This was very difficult--I was shy, I didn't know many people in the ward, wasn't a leader in any way, and really "calling for a prayer" is something I have never seen done except in occasional emergencies. I very much didn't want to do so, but strongly felt impressed to, and essentially also felt like "if my faith is correct, then of course this is the correct course of action. Therefore I should test it rather than living in uncertainty."
So, the congregation thankfully went along with the suggestion, and the static immediately cleared up completely.
Now, of course this example proves nothing on its own, but when these (and other) sorts of things happen over and over, I (with great reluctance) feel intellectually obligated to accept the gospel as the truth.
Sorry for the sermon, I just want to make clear that my faith has (so far as I can tell, and I've worked very hard to try and figure this out honestly) nothing to do with any disposition towards or need for religion. From my perspective it looks like God patiently gives me opportunity after opportunity to test his claims, because he wants me to follow his advice, and without thorough testing I could never feel sufficiently confident of his existence to make the sacrifices his advice demands.
The phenomenon you're describing is, in the Rationalist religious texts, called "confirmation bias" I believe. Of course more idealist metaphysics do not have this peculiar tendency to dismiss one's awesome ability to change their perception of reality through noticing synchronicity but I doubt there is much ecumenical gains to be made from pointing out such synchronicities because they can all easily be dismissed.
The magnitude of them doesn't matter either in my experience. People will dismiss getting dubs on 4chan as easily as Mandelbrot fractals. "It's only significant because you noticed it" they'll say, the great irony being that this is the very essence of the effect.
I find art works better. It did for me at least. It's much easier to quell the temptation to use the limited tools of reason when you are channeling pure intuitive feeling. And then you can reflect on what is indubitably a transrational experience.
It means nothing because there is no control group. Replace "prayer" with a drug, and you get a shitty observational study that does not mean anything. I wouldn't take this drug.
That's not much of a response considering that OP doesn't even mention prayer.
He was replying to you. You did mention prayer.
Replace "prayer" with a drug and you have a medicine taken by billions of people throughout the world, all of whom claim to benefit from it, and who on average seem to enjoy benefits such as increased happiness, life satisfaction, and longevity. The clinical studies surrounding this drug seem compelling, but that's not enough for me; I wanted to run some of my own as well. I worry the drug may be a placebo--still perhaps effective but not the truth. That's what my studies are for.
And to be clear, if it was just the one I would not place much faith in it at all. It's the fact that this sort of thing happens consistently that makes it hard to deny.
As you are claiming that the effect of prayer come from the truth of your faith (and not just on some psychological phenomenon) you cannot count the other religion as "the same medicine" as those religions believe yours to be false.
Anyway, the fact that people "claim to benefit" from something does not mean they really benefit from it. A lot of atheists also claim to benefit from atheism, don't they?
Religion increases longevity, it does not mean that prayer does. There is no proof that a religion without prayer would not also increase longevity as long as it promotes a healthy lifestyle.
Religion might increase the longevity of religious people, but religious countries are poorer and have a worse longevity than not-so-religious countries. So it seems religion increases the longevity of the religious people at the expense of the average longevity of the country. It's a bit as if religious people were vampires, killing everyone else to extend their own life. But as religious people show less altruism (see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/children-with-a-religious-upbringing-show-less-altruism/ ), they probably don't care.
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