John Halstead has written an thoughtful post on prayer from a non-theistic perspective. (John believes that the threat of climate change is going to lead to civilizational collapse but you don’t need to have any opinion on that subject to read this.) I had similar negative feelings about petitionary prayer for a long time after leaving Christianity. I’m still not a person who prays - because, thankfully, I’ve not had any great personal upheavals in the past few years - but I’ve developed an attitude toward prayer similar to John’s. The post is also interesting for its incorporation of the thought of SF writer Octavia Butler.