Atheism and prayer
A lot of people seem to believe that agnosticism and atheism are incompatible with prayer. This is not only not true, this is what we in the common sense business like to call hella not true.
Here's the low down; people benefit from prayer, and an atheist believes that these people are benefiting from prayer even though there is no god. Once you start viewing it from this angle, the benefits of prayer are easy to see -- in fact much easier to see. If you believe that prayer is something akin to writing a wishlist to Santa, it looks pretty foolish when adults do it. Removing this false belief lets anyone, atheist or believer, to make better sense of the whole matter.
Praying as ethical metacognition: One of the most obvious benefits of prayer is simply making the explicit statement, "here is what I want. What would a perfectly wise person think of it?" Hopefully, this sort of framing highlights the benefit of the veil of ignorance, of universal consideration, and steers your thoughts away from the purely selfish. Both the true believer and the atheist would say that if your prayers are always selfish, you are doing it wrong.
Prayer as meditation and ritual: Stopping to think about how your life is going and what would make it run better is a good thing. You should do this. Some people do it through journaling, some people do it through visiting a therapist, and some people do it through prayer. It is tempting to label this as simply metacognition, and it would be fair to do so, but the calming and recentering aspect of prayer is a central aspect of this form of metacognition. I would also lump things like thought stopping and coffee breaks as general forms of self-calming and self-moderation akin to prayer.
Prayer as community building: Prayer and other forms of giving thanks -- before meals, during social gatherings, and during significant life events -- give recognition that coming together as a unified group is special and noteworthy. Just as the idealized 'perfectly wise' person is important, and you yourself are important, this form of prayer confirms that the community is likewise important.
As you can see, all of these aspects appear in activities other than traditional religious praying, but can be subsumed in prayer, and can be assumed to be part of the reason any person prays. Being religious is not necessary to pray, and prayer is not necessary to be religious; but these are the types of things that humans do, by whatever name they call them.