There are basically two kinds of prayer, one of which is active and the other of which is passive. We could further categorize and sub categorize ideas of prayer, but for simplicity sake, understanding the difference between these two kinds of prayer is necessary for understanding whether prayer has a real world effect, or whether it is mostly just a lot of hot air.
The first kind of prayer is prayer that is offered as a substitution for having to do anything. This kind of prayer happens when people get together to "pray" for the president, or to change abortion laws, or for world peace.
Such prayers allow those who are offering them to buy into the illusion that, from the comfort of sitting around their own living rooms, they can actually help to alleviate the troubles in the world, by helping to empower and all powerful God, to do something about all those troubles. This is essentially how prayer becomes a way of purchasing world peace the same way someone might purchase a pair of shoes from QVC.
Like the witches stirring their pot in Macbeth, chanting "double double, toil and trouble," so people chant their incantations to an all powerful God, in the hopes that their efforts will move the "unmoved mover" off of his own couch in the sky, in order to help fix the same world he had allowed to murder his own son to try and "save." That God can only get off of his own couch when all those praying from their own couches get off of theirs, is too uncomfortable a thought for those praying for the improvement of the world from the comfort of their own couches to bare.
This kind of praying is a substitute for action. It may, however, at least make all those who enjoy the comforts of their couches feel like they are contributing in some way, even if they are not. At least, in other words, it makes people feel better about themselves, which is a placebo effect worth its weight in potential health benefits, both physical and emotional.
The other kind of prayer is more active, and is used as a catalyst for taking action agaisnt great odds. It is what Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, for example, or what Martin Luther King did to muster the courage of those who marched for Civil Rights.
This second kind of prayer is a kind of self talk, and self encouragement, to face great obstacles, and to have the fortitude to overcome great ignorance, especially of the sort so often grounded in organized religion. Such prayer serves as the catalyst to change a world addicted to the ignorance of ideas that have all too often become sacred, for no other reason than that time has sanctified them as traditions.
Understanding the difference between these two kinds of prayers is necessary for understanding how a "believer" can insist that prayer has real world effects, since in the second example it can and does, while an atheist can equally insist that such prayer has no real world effects at all, other than perhaps providing people with an opportunity to feel good about themselves for trying to improve the world, by doing pretty much as little as is humanly possible for them to do.
Amen.
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