Prayer-cebo?

I've heard about placebos, obviously, but I had never heard that they often work even if you *know* they are a placebo? I recently heard this in this video and then again in an essay by Ramachandran. This paragraph really jumped out for me:

Her ability to hold mutually inconsistent beliefs seems bizarre to us but in fact we all do this from time to time. I have known many an eminent theoretical physicist who prays to a personal God; an old guy watching him from somewhere up there in the sky. I might mention that I have long known that prayer was a placebo; but upon learning recently of a study that showed that a drug works even when you know it is a placebo, I immediately started praying. There are two Ramachandrans—one an arch skeptic and the other a devout believer. Fortunately I enjoy this ambiguous state of mind, unlike Darwin who was tormented by it. It is not unlike my enjoyment of an Escher engraving.

If it's good enough for Ramachandran, then it's good enough for me. So I think I'll try an experiment and pray to Placebo Jesus for a month and see if it works or not. Here is a sample prayer:

Dear Placebo Jesus,

I know you don't exist and if you did it's not clear why you would be listening to my thoughts and care about my needs, but any hoo, please make me smart, give me good health, keep my family safe, send some extra cash my way, and generally make life awesome for me.

If there's anything I can do for you, just let me know.

Ramen (oops, I mean Amen, of course)

Dear Global Economy

A rationalist prayer of thanks:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-pr.html

Dear God, it's me, that one guy

One of the challenges sometimes made by Christians is that if you are willing to open your heart to god he will make his will known to you.

Well I really, really, really don't want to go to hell so I don't know why god won't give me a revelation or two. Of course the problem is I can't say the sinner's prayer with any honesty. I'm assuming god would know that I still believe he is imaginary and it would null and void my prayer attempt. And furthermore, what if the sinner's prayer is directed to the wrong god or otherwise has the theological underpinnings all wrong? So to cover my ass here is my open ended prayer I came up with that I can say and mean:

Dear any one or anything capable of reading my thoughts,

If you care whether or not I believe in you AND have some sort of plan for me AND there will be some benefit to me for having this belief AND following this plan is not going to hurt anyone else AND for some reason I've missed the attempts to contact me in the past, then please give me some sort of non-ambiguous sign.

I recommend everyone pray this now just to CYA. You can at least say you tried. If anyone gets a response please let me know what you hear.

[atheism]