A POINT
One sign of the danger of prayer is how long it took Christians to do much good. Think of religious wars. Religious genocide. Slavery. The oppression of women. The holding back of science - leaving millions to perish of disease.
The good was really done by heretics and those who "polluted" their religion with humanism.
That is Christianity. Think of Islam which prays far more and is still way behind.
In general, prayer affects performance badly when it comes to bettering society. Results are too mixed and take too long to manifest. And even then, good following prayer or people of prayer may have been going to happen anyway.
THE ARGUMENT
Prayer often arises from self-doubt rather than confidence. When people feel capable and prepared, they typically rely on their own skills and effort. By contrast, prayer is most common when individuals feel uncertain, anxious, or afraid of failure. In this sense, prayer can function as a response to perceived inadequacy: it expresses the hope that an external power will compensate for one’s doubts or limitations.
Praying to do well in an exam illustrates this dynamic. If a student fully trusted their preparation and ability, there would be little reason to appeal to divine intervention. Prayer, then, may subtly signal to the individual that their own effort is insufficient. This can undermine confidence and reduce motivation, even slightly, by encouraging reliance on supernatural help rather than sustained focus, revision, or problem-solving. Any such reduction in effort or confidence can negatively affect performance.
For this reason, prayer can make self-doubt worse rather than better. Instead of addressing uncertainty directly—by improving preparation, seeking help, or building skills—prayer may externalise responsibility and foster passivity. If prayer appears to help in some cases, this is likely due to indirect effects such as reduced anxiety or placebo-like comfort, not because the prayer itself improves outcomes. When prayer helps, it does so in spite of its tendency to encourage dependence, not because it provides reliable support.
More broadly, habitual reliance on prayer can reinforce a mindset in which authority and power are located outside the individual. This can discourage critical thinking and self-trust, and in group settings it may contribute to intolerance toward those who question or reject the practice. While prayer may offer emotional comfort, it is not a substitute for confidence grounded in effort, evidence, and personal responsibility.
In this way, prayer is better understood as a symptom of self-doubt than as a solution to it.