Continued................... Perhaps God/gods are myth and fantasy- I really don't know- except that prayer is a gift in good times and bad for I do think there are too many incidents and challenges in life where reason cannot provide an answer or solution and humans simply have to "give it up/over" to a force/wish beyond themselves. rig
Perhaps they are, no one really knows for sure. Still I'm looking at the lack of immediate or direct action or influence by a god. People exhibit extraordinary effort in times of struggle and need; it doesn't have to be on account of a belief in anything. The giving it up to a higher power thing merely expresses one's exasperation in dealing with a situation, the acceptance that one does not have any say in or any control over a situation. It is like letting whatever is going to happen happen. Let's say your dog runs out the front door and takes off, you go in and pray that he'll return and then 2 days later he shows up at the door. Was it the prayer or did the dog just find his way home? Again the prayer served as a means of pacification but we have no way of knowing if there was some higher power that guided the dog home or if a higher power wanted you to be happy instead of sad. The strange thing is that life is full of sadness, misery, suffering, anguish and uncertainty but for some reason we want to endure through it all and through what we perceive to be a very short time, as they say "life is very short" and late in life we all wonder "where did it all go".
