> a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is.

These are all incredibly subjective concepts with a multitude of meanings to different people. Plenty of people are confused about them, because they simply cannot be universally defined and are therefore by their very nature confusing.

For better or worse, large numbers of humans believe in a literal, conscious deity who can read their thoughts and then act upon the real world to make physical changes in it, provided they shape those thoughts 'just so'. There is no hard evidence these kinds of beliefs are true, and at least some evidence that they can be harmful.

I am not opposed to prayer. I even still do it myself sometimes. However, I think people should be more careful about making strong claims that anyone is actually listening to those prayers, let alone acting on them. Marshall Brain's website helped me to much better understand and articulate this in simple, concrete terms.