With faith systems or religion, too many only talk about the good done. They will mainly mean the invisible good. They claim that their rites and prayers wash sin off and heal bad tendencies. That they can protect from evil. That they can hand you the word of God in a book. They say that they are about God and though they may tend say the sick for God wants it done, they are about God and not social work. An astrologer could say their readings miraculously or somehow spiritually improve clients - they essentially get the fee for nothing! The evidence is that it is probable that prayer is about trying to feel you have done something when you have done nothing. If what you prayed for happens, despite how you can give no evidence, you think you did a good deed. When we want faith and prayer and religion to be good we mean social work. Yet faith or prayer or religion is selling itself as good and clearly it is poor in that way. Social work should not be a secondary thing. Religion cannot talk about being good unless it can measure but it makes sure it cannot be measured. If it deserves no support, it should be able to tell if you if you are better without it or should be in another religion but it will not do that.
Prayer is always asking in the sense that you are asking for you and God to relate to each other. So even prayers of love for God are petitions in a sense. All prayer is petitionary and we must ask if there is a problem with petitionary prayer.
Some people believe prayer is not meant to do anything apart from make you feel better about somebody else's suffering or your own.
Some believe prayer only helps a person inside - God gives them strength. A change happens emotionally or spiritually or both. This pressures the person to pretend to have changed otherwise people will think they are not sincere when they pray.
Some believe prayer can also change what is going to happen on the physical level. A person who should die may live.
Some get a good feeling from prayer because they reason that when they pray for others’ needs and well-being, their own needs are answered! Praying for others can be a tactic for getting blessings yourself! No wonder it can feel good!
In fact if your or somebody else's suffering is terrible then feel bad as about it as possible so that you will do all you can about it. Be confident that the person may be enduring something that cannot be made up for not even by God. Be confident that if the person really is alone and no being is with her or him that you have to be and that it does not matter at all if she thinks god is or isn't with her. Nothing must water down these noble principles.
ARROGANT
The problem with any kind of belief is that we tend to forget most of the time that it is not a fact for you but just a belief. For example, if you believe Jesus rose you still don't know for certain if this belief is factual. You will tend to feel that it is a fact and treat it as such. Belief easily slips into such arrogance.
Prayer reinforces that arrogance. You feel sure that you have helped others when you should not be so sure.
When people hear about the bad things that happen in other areas or other countries they may feel that they are somehow picked by something or someone for special treatment. They may think the higher power regards them as better people than it does the unfortunate people who have poor luck. Or it may be random blessings. Both attitudes are very wrong. Yet the feeling of being blessed or that one can be - is what prayer is all about. The atheist does not want to be tempted.
If you pray for John to get better of cancer, and he does, you will end up thinking, "I did it for him. My prayers cured him." There is something stomach-churning about that. We sense you are using John's situation for some self-righteous benefit.
Hypocrites like to feel they are good people - the ultimate hypocrites engage in prayers and superstitious rituals in order to convince themselves and by extension others that they do the greatest works of all. Devotional ones. That is wrong in itself. Never think your saying a prayer for x matters, while your helping that person say get medical treatment does not matter in comparison. It is a short step from that to reasoning that you don't have to do anything for others but pray for them. Also, many believers say the real power of doctors and medicine etc is not in themselves but in the prayers that work underneath the surface. So that is just a version of that same idea.
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE
The idea that God always helps but through people means that if you are not helped you blame others or blame yourself for not getting the help. If a loved one is not helped you blame others or blame yourself. The main reason for blame is that the praying was not done or was not up to standard. Prayer is passive aggressive.
THE CHOICE
Suppose you had to make a choice - one or the other. You pray for a person who is very ill or you give them medicine.
If prayer is the best you can do then you have to pray. Religion says it is. You are not necessarily expecting a cure. You are merely open to the view that the person needs things that matter more than a cure.
The atheist will reach for the medicine bottle.
Do you see the intrinsic hypocritical passive aggression in faith now?
A baby needs tablets from you to get better from a terrible cruel illness. You have a choice, and it has to be one or the other. The choice is will I pray or give the tablets? If God and prayer come first then clearly praying is the choice. So you see the nastiness inherent even in the sweetest prayers! And if God does not come first for you then to pray for him to work with a person is to invite evil or the risk of evil into that person's life for they are asked to connect with a God who isn't good enough to matter.
VIRTUE SIGNALLING
Most praying people show it in some way most of the time. This is virtue signalling to others. Private prayer can be understood as trying to virtue-signal to God. People forget you can also virtue-signal to yourself! People who are prayed for need to see how offensive it all is.
CONCLUSION
There are many ways prayer can be feeling good about having done nothing concrete to help the person. If you are praying for x and not seeing what you can do for x then you are just a hypocrite.