All over this nation millions of Christians say "let us pray" every day. To these people prayer is a path through which something can be done to affect things which are to transpire. For some it is believed fervently. The individuals who believe fervently sometimes end up on the six-o’clock news. These are the families that forgo medical treatment for a family member and instead that family member is prayed over. Ending up on the six o’clock news has always meant that the family member has died of the illness, usually an easily treated illness, it has never been for the purposes of reporting a spontaneous and miraculous recovery.

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2006/04/nothing-fails-like-prayer.html

I support the freedom to pray. Even today students in school can bend their heads and pray before every test. (It is only organized prayer, paid for with taxpayer monies that is forbidden). Prayer can fill a person with a calmness, an assuredness, that all is as it should be. These gentle people are no threat to anyone.

Some people however, begin to receive answers to their prayers in the form of voices in their heads, or decide for God, what God wants. They go off and sometimes become a menace to society in an attempt to carry out what they fervently believe is God’s will. As an example: An abortion clinic bomber.

The problem with prayer is that unless you are certifiably insane you do not hear God’s voice in your head. You have to try to reason out what it is that is God’s will. To do so many consult a book that is millennia years old. This book, ancient and open to interpretation, is totally disconnected from today’s modern world. So, once again, you are forced to guess what it is that this "good" book says. Sometimes what a person decides the scriptures mean may determine whether someone lives or someone dies.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/relying_on_prayer_instead_of_medicine_pa.php