people still pray to personal gods to this day, expecting them to prioritise their petty little lives while others are suffering/dying of things that could be trivially solved with a bit of knowledge and technology.
Praying to gods has a correlation with better medical outcomes, thats why they have chapels in hospitals. Same thing with visits from friends and families. Its not like everything can be solved by "advancing" technology.
The article you've linked describes multiple medical benefits of prayer. By "they don't work", do you mean "the observed benefits are explicable without divine intervention"?
Having the confidence to believe that you are able to do something almost certainly makes it more likely that you'll do it. Its bullshit but it probably works unless its for basically impossible things. You can manifest a promotion if you believe in yourself and work hard (and have an idea that your boss maybe likes you). People are also not so bad at predicting things, you aren't going to manifest something that you have no hope is actually going to happen. But of course with something like a lottery ticket its stupid.
Oh I'm all for people having confidence in themselves. That's what religion is all about (except for the population control aspect).
If someone uses religion (or manifesting) to go down the path of "god helps those that help themselves", all the power to them! (as long as they don't make me believe in it)
I really am talking about people like that one radio moderator I was thinking of when making the comment: was "manifesting" all day yesterday so that someone would win the x-thousand dollars in the contest on their show this morning. Was "manifesting" getting tickets for Taylor Swif as well recently. Stuff like that. Like you said, all just manifesting "lottery ticket" type stuff. Magical thinking basically. Just "sit around and manifest and it'll happen". That's the :facepalm: stuff.