Alzheimer Dad

Was it Bill Maher who said that prayer doesn't work? A confirmed atheist, he tries to prove the lack of a higher consciousness.
He recently referred to a scientific study that said prayer doesn't work. I guess they prayed 100 times, and measured the dismal results. I felt like yelling back at the screen... ( I feel that way often, hopeless, helpless, insignificantly yelling at the tube, when dopey talking heads prate on about dumb shit. ) Bill Maher ain't dumb, he's just locked into that intellectual narcissism that tries to find God thru intelligence. God confounds the wise, Bill. That's part of his beauty. It ain't an intellectual exercise. Logic doesn't measure God's presence..it's like trying to gauge air pressure in your tire with a tape measure..
Seeing God is like reading an XRay. The eye has to be trained to see his/her work. Any medical student can look at the XRAY and nod his/her head gravely over the results..and I see nothing..their eyes are trained to see it. It's the same way with events moved by a higher power. One must be trained to see it...or to put it in comic book terminology..one needs to put on the special XRAY glasses of FAITH...
Dale Carnegie tested prayer, and found it to work 97% of the time. Wrote down his prayers, put them in a drawer, then took them out after a year. Ninety-seven percent of his prayers had been answered. What was the difference between the study Maher referred to and Carnegie's study? Barring the possibility that one (or both) of them were lying, I'd say that the difference was in the BELIEF in the prayer. Or FAITH that prayer would be answered. I think that's in Matthew, that when you come to the Lord in prayer, and believe in the outcome, it's already a done deal.
I'll bet faith was the missing ingredient in the Maher exercise. Confounding the wise.. I hate to use science to explain my understanding of the presence of God, but, I was raised on science, and here's how I came to understand...
Microcosm, macrocosm....there are galaxies and atoms...stars with planets spinning around them and protons with electrons spinning around them...(or were they neutrons? bear with me, it's been years since high school science_..) anyhow, the atom resembles a solar system..showing to me that there are greater and lesser material essences in the universe than humans..to think that we are the highest form of intelligence seems silly..microcosm, macrocosm..what appears in the universe in miniature is a small duplicate of something greater....there are lesser forms of intelligence that we know of..animals and insects...so why should we think that there aren't higher forms? We order around the things around us, create roads, buildings, wars, farms, etc., so who is to say that there isn't a higher intelligence ordering matter around? Sometimes people in AA struggling with an understanding of a higher power use the acronym GOD to mean "Good Orderly Direction"..this acronym only works for English speaking agnostics..but the presence of order in the universe does seem intelligent...as does...evolution...which I consider intelligent design...but that's another topic..i think