@ Kate
Actually, you got it backwards in reference to what I was saying.
By no means is it reasonable to assume that a person praying for their cancer to be miraculously cured is a negative thinker. They don't have any control over their cancer. Positive thinking won't help their cancer. Medicine will go some way to help, and prayer does nothing but provide a supplemental factor to ease their mind.
But for someone who IS capable of controlling an outcome, like finishing an assignment or what have you, is selling themselves out by relegating the responsibility of providing motivation to achieve their goal to some external deity.
Placebo or not, this conditions a person to not see worth and ability in themselves and creates a dependency. Regardless of the outcome being positive, the methods of achieving it are just as important because self-confidence and esteem play major roles in a person's life and having the ability to stand on your own legs in all those areas affected is more important than simply thinking you've got a "life-line" in case things get tough. A big negative of that is the fact that if a person is dependent on god to help them achieve goals, then their behavior can be a negating factor if they start thinking that maybe their deeds have put them out of favor with god or made them less deserving for their prayer to be answered... which may cause them to not attempt to achieve their goal at all because they doubt their "support" will be awarded.
Ideally, in motivational aspects, yourself is your best bet because it's the one thing you have the most control of.
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