What is the difference between answering a child's prayer of their parent and answering a child's request of their parent? Would this quality you speak of in a parent (associated with prayer), therefore, be absent in Buddhists?
The quality is not necessarily absent in a follower of Buddhism. If you see the value, then prayer to a higher father, like a great grand-father, is no different.
Sounds to me like it's an action of your own will when it's all said and done. Can you give an example of when you've done something that's been entirely someone else's will and not your own?
As I said earlier, sometimes my kids' will aligns with my own. But when it doesn't, I don't follow their will, I follow my own.
The question is, will you become like a child and align your will to theirs, for their benefit to learn, even as you think you know better? You ask for an example: I have two daughters. Right now one of them has it in their head that they wish to be in a beauty pagent, and the other wishes to try it too. As a college educated parent, I have in mind better activities for them. I have expressed to them that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that in my eye there are better activities for them to do, than to chase the eye of those particular judges who never really get to know them. They are asking myself and my wife, to help them. We have to invest time and money into this. It is not beauty in my eye, but if they can bare the discussion with me, then we will do it.
It could be drugs, gambling, pre-marital sex, or even criminal activity. I don't have to partake myself, but I can't prevent others from disobeying me. If they came to us telling us that they really wanted to try an illicit drug, which I have never done, but they wanted to do it in our home which they view as a safer environment to do it in, what do you think my answer would be? What would your answer be? If they can bare my rebuke, which will be lengthy and detailed, yet they still insist on doing it, then they can do it in our home. I will challenge them, but the reality is, only the people who have done those drugs, truly know about their susceptibility to addiction.
That's pretty vague, care to elaborate as to how exactly you think humans are connected and how we aren't?
You are looking for a physical dependence. The degree of physical dependence and control is variable. The further two people are physically away from each other, the less they can physically affect each other. If a person is living on Mars, the potential for them to physically affect the life of someone living on Earth, is less. The more that someone knows about you, the greater power they have in affecting your life, either for, or against, your will. There is a physical time lag, and a loss of control, with distance. With God this limitation apparently does not exist.
Each one might be minutia in and of itself. But the cumulative essence of millions of these actions is anything but minutia, and affects all of our lives whether you "afford" it or not.
Does the blind, deaf, and dumb minutia seek to willfully affect your life? Do you seek and pray to the blind, deaf, and dumb minutia, to willfully affect your life? If your relationship is with the minutia, then so be it. Is your relationship with your wife similarly that disconnected?
