I've got sort of a counter example to the praying to god getting answered thing, where I essentially made an entreaty to a known fictional god and got an answer.
So basically I was playing Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube and or really old TV and we were currently having a lot of difficulties beating the Summon Spirit of Lightning, Volt. After a few times losing to it I jokingly picked up our cat (who was a great sport for this sort of thing) and lightly tossed him onto the top bunk bed that was placed right over the top of the TV while saying "I make this sacrificial offering to the great god of lightning, Volt!". Instant the cat touches the bed there was a sudden power surge that made both the gamecube and tv turn off, along with all the clocks, radio, etc. (nothing was fried, they all just either turned off from the surge or did a reset). After laughing at it for a bit my brother and I restart the Gamecube and stomp the guy we were having so much trouble with without any of the problems we were having in previous fights against him showing up at all.
The experience didn't really effect my later choice of belief in life (which is atheism), but I'd guess you could say that it definitely stands for me as an example that sometimes crazy coincidences do happen, and just because they happen to occur right after you entreat some sort of a supernatural entity doesn't necessarily mean that said entity actually heard you and responded. (Alternatively I need to get in touch with the Tales of Symphonia dev's and find out which one of them has got an in with the powers that be.
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