I’m with James, Kay. The very concept of effective intercessory prayer offends me; it means that wishing really hard impacts the reality of the universe. (I’m not saying it doesn’t, just that it offends my sense of how the universe ought to work. This is why I’m an agnostic, not an atheist.) But ineffective intercessory prayer is very necessary to a lot of people. It makes them feel like they are doing something when there is not a damn thing else they can do to change events. So long as they are not praying when they could be doing something to improve events, I’m fine with whatever people need to do to feel better.