Correlation does not equal causation.  Just because one event happened after the other it does not mean that it was caused by the first.  I'd happily put money down that you'd have experienced the same series of events had you prayed to Danny DeVito.

I'm going to sound like such a dick here but studies have shown - I hate that phrase so much - that people are more likely to see/assign patterns to things when they're under stress or in situations where they feel a lack of control over their lives.  I did have a link to a recent paper on this.  I'll try and find it and edit it into this response later on!

If the God you believe is like most gods he has omni-powers and is the supreme being, right?  So he would probably have some sort of plan, no?  Isn't asking a deity to alter his plan to help you out, someone forming 1 part of over 6 billion from one species on a tiny speck in space, a tad bit conceited?  I'm glad your life took a good turn, but I must insist you think hard about what actually caused your change in luck.

I play a game called Team Fortress 2 on the PC and the game designers recently released some rare hats for the characters you can play.  Many of the players use an alternative program to 'fake' playing in order to have a higher chance of receiving a hat.  Some players have 6+ hats, while others like me have none.  Every second I don't get a hat I don't blame anyone, and if I ever get a hat I sure won't thank anyone.

Sounds like you're looking to give God credit for the effort you put in.

As long as they are within the range of possible, even if of low probability, they simply do not remotely challenge "reality" - I presume you mean a reality without any sort of God.

To even start to make a case you would have to take a random sample of people, list all the times they prayed, count how many times it was followed by an improbable improvement in their life versus the number of times nothing happened or things actually got worse, and also the number of times similar improvements or happy events occurred when they had not recently prayed for something like that to happen.

You have to look at all the times truly terrible things happen to people, much more serious than your troubles. Unless you make the assumption that most or all of those people never or rarely prayed, or weren't sincerely religious, which is extremely unlikely, especially if we look at countries like the USA, then that completely negates your experience as evidence about the effectiveness of praying to God in influencing events.

Every plane crash disproves prayer, especially if it is one where there would have been significant time for people to realize they were going to crash, and it is not so serious that no-one survives. How likely is it that none of the victims prayed, with every desperate pleading and honest repentance they were capable of, as the plane fell out of the sky? The best the Christian could claim is that at least the praying victims would have a better chance of getting into heaven, but I find it extremely unlikely that none of them would have been praying for God to let them survive the crash. 

EDIT: It would actually challenge a naturalistic reality if unlikely but not impossible coincidences never occurred. Individual experience doesn't count, any more than that the winner of a lottery can claim a 'miracle', since it was so unlikely that he would win. The fact that one such individually improbable win was going to happen for someone was 100% certain.

I can believe that this is likely.

This seems to be a recurring theme. People just have good luck.

I agree with this, I just had doubts and the coincidence of asking a God for something. 

That would be the scientific methodology.

I'm an atheist now, no need to mock me. The cultural influence of faith in my family is overwhelming at times. These coincidences re-inforce my view that life is a simulation or causality is the driving force of our existence.

I could argue that I am the only "real" person in the world.

To a certain extent, that's true. I've been very lucky. I was born to a good parents, with decent siblings, in one of the greatest places to grow up in the world: a small logging camp in Southeast Alaska. My school got an Apple ][ when I was 12 years old, and I was allowed to go into the school unsupervised during the weekends so I could program.

I have been extremely lucky.

But: I have also taken steps to ensure I will continue to be lucky. I attempt to foresee issues and take steps to avoid them. When life gets sucky, I do something to drain off some of the suck. Sometimes that means drastic measures, like quitting a job and moving somewhere else. I'm not afraid of taking big risks.

So in other respects, though I have been extremely lucky in life, I have also made my own luck.

I suspect when people get to the point they earnestly pray for something to change in their life, they are starting to make changes themselves, whether or not they realize it. Perhaps they aren't addressing the real problem (an issue I have with prayer), but they have changed at least their attitude.

They are making their own luck, to a certain extent.

True. That means you'd only be arguing with yourself, though. The biggest problem with solipsism is that it's so damned lonely.

Ugh, I apologize.

I keep thinking you're taking positions that you're not actually taking after reading your opening posts. In the other thread, I thought you were claiming that debate was pointless and that you thought the RRS wanted to engage in actual warfare against the religious.  

I'm not sure what that means, but okay.