Editing Prayer (section)

===Direct petitions===
There are different forms of prayer. One of them is to directly appeal to a deity to grant one's requests.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Kurian|first1=George Thomas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dk4G-52QT-8C&q=The+most+common+form+of+prayer&pg=PA137|title=The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature|last2=III|first2=James D. Smith|date=2010-04-16|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-7283-7|language=en}}</ref> Some have termed this as the social approach to prayer.<ref>Greenberg, Moshe. Biblical Prose Prayer: As a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1983 [http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8b69p1w7/] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060627012528/http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8b69p1w7/|date=2006-06-27}}</ref>

[[Atheist]] arguments against prayer are mostly directed against [[Supplication|petitionary prayer]] in particular. [[Daniel Dennett]] argued that petitionary prayer might have the undesirable psychological effect of relieving a person of the need to take active measures.<ref>{{cite book|first=Daniel C.|last=Dennett|author-link=Daniel Dennett|chapter=Thank Goodness!|title=The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever|title-link=The Portable Atheist|editor-last=Hitchens|editor-first=Christopher|editor-link=Christopher Hitchens|year=2007|publisher=Da Capo Press|location=Philadelphia|isbn= 978-0-306-81608-6|oclc=156811900|quote=Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they {{em|really}} wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about.}}</ref>

This potential drawback manifests in extreme forms in such cases as [[Christian Scientists]] who rely on prayers instead of seeking medical treatment for family members for easily curable conditions which later result in death.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/06/us/in-child-deaths-a-test-for-christian-science.html?pagewanted=all |title= In Child Deaths, a Test for Christian Science |first= David |last= Margolick |date= 6 August 1990 |newspaper= The New York Times |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20141104202219/http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/06/us/in-child-deaths-a-test-for-christian-science.html?pagewanted=all |archive-date= 2014-11-04 |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Christopher Hitchens]] (2012) argued that praying to a god which is omnipotent and all-knowing would be presumptuous. For example, he interprets [[Ambrose Bierce]]'s definition of prayer by stating that "the man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right."<ref name="Hitchens 2012 n.p">{{cite book |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |author-link=Christopher Hitchens |title=Mortality |title-link=Mortality (book) |publisher=Twelve |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4555-0275-2 |place=New York |oclc=776526158}}</ref>