Do prayers work?

[[serious]]

If "Does prayer work?" means "Can I manipulate God via talking to him?", then the answer is no. If it means "Can I say something that brings about outcomes I desire?", then you are really asking "Are there magical words?" and the answer again is no. If you are asking if God hears and responds to people that seek him and his participation in their lives, then, yes, prayer works.

Of course, it doesn't lend itself to silly statistical studies.

third party studies should still be doable unless God is intentionally hiding the impacts of prayer for some as of yet unknown reason.

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Form experience in my own life I would have to say yes prayer does work. Not 100% of the time but a lot of the time it does. I have collated a list of times prayer has worked at Know God Personally and even listed one or two times it has not, so all is fair.

 

[Salo]

To summarize the opinions in this thread, as I understood them:

1. In your eyes, prayers don't "work", God makes them work. I understand the difference, but I regard it as irrelevant. In the end, the question boils down to "if you pray for a certain outcome, will this outcome occur?". Whether the prayer itself creates this outcome, or whether God does it after you prayed to him doesn't matter.

2. Some of you said that prayers work only under special circumstances, for example when you pray for things that are in accordance to God's will, and some of you also said what essentially boils down to "God will always answer prayers that are in accordance to his will, but he will not necessarily do so in the exact same way you asked for it". However, if that's the case, then you can't determine whether God answered your prayer at all, simply because the occurence is too detached from your prayer.

3. You gave me some anecdotes as evidence for the effectiveness of prayers. However, none of the outcomes you described would have been outright impossible without God's interference, only impropable. This means that there might have been other, in some cases unknown factors which influenced said outcome, which means that you can't say for sure whether the prayers worked or whether something impropable happened. So it's no irrefutable evidence for God, especially because there are also a lot of situations where the prayers should have worked - because the ones who prayed did so for reasons that are in accordance to God's will - but didn't.

For example, one victim of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious contract killer, was allowed to pray for 40 minutes before he died. His prayers were ineffective. Now, you might say this has happened because this man was praying for selfish reasons, but many patients suffering from diseases pray for the exact same reason and, as you say, get healed. How do you explain that?

I would also like to have some of the statistics that you mentioned which show that prayers work.
EDIT: I also ask you to consider the placebo effect. If someone knows he's getting prayed for, he has a higher chance of getting healed, and you don't know whether it's because of the placebo effect or the prayers. So in a good study, the patients wouldn't know if someone was praying for them, and if this study would show the effectiveness of prayers, then the patients whom others prayed for would get healed, while the rest wouldn't.

 

[razeontherock]

To summarize the opinions in this thread, as I understood them:

1. In your eyes, prayers don't "work", God makes them work. I understand the difference, but I regard it as irrelevant. In the end, the question boils down to "if you pray for a certain outcome, will this outcome occur?". Whether the prayer itself creates this outcome, or whether God does it after you prayed to him doesn't matter.

This attitude alone will INSURE your prayers don't "work!"

You are completely avoiding the whole point, which is that the outcome needs to be in God's will. Otherwise? Fuggedaboutit

2. Some of you said that prayers work only under special circumstances, for example when you pray for things that are in accordance to God's will, and some of you also said what essentially boils down to "God will always answer prayers that are in accordance to his will, but he will not necessarily do so in the exact same way you asked for it". However, if that's the case, then you can't determine whether God answered your prayer at all, simply because the occurence is too detached from your prayer.

How does it escape you that merely by being in your position of needing to ask the question in the first place precludes you from being in the position to draw this conclusion?

 

[sk8Joyful]

Do prayers work?

in short: Yes

The question you can ask yourself: How soon am I
experimenting with praying, so I too can Testify...

Be Saved and well.

 

[Salo]

This attitude alone will INSURE your prayers don't "work!"

You are completely avoiding the whole point, which is that the outcome needs to be in God's will. Otherwise? Fuggedaboutit

Then why pray in the first place? If it's in God's will, it will happen. If it isn't, it wont happen.
Unless you can convince God to do something, but considering he's God, I don't think that would work.

How does it escape you that merely by being in your position of needing to ask the question in the first place precludes you from being in the position to draw this conclusion?

You say that, because I'm in a position where I have to ask whether prayers work or not, I can't draw the conclusion that I drew. Yet, I drew said conclusion, so your statement is false.
Unless my conclusion was false, but nowhere in your post do you state that, which obviously means that it isn't false.

 

[razeontherock]

Then why pray in the first place? If it's in God's will, it will happen. If it isn't, it wont happen.

This completely ignores all the relevant concepts. Begin with God giving mankind dominion.

You say that, because I'm in a position where I have to ask whether prayers work or not, I can't draw the conclusion that I drew. Yet, I drew said conclusion, so your statement is false.
Unless my conclusion was false, but nowhere in your post do you state that, which obviously means that it isn't false.

Dream on isn't just a song written by Steven Tyler

 

[Volokh]

This completely ignores all the relevant concepts. Begin with God giving mankind dominion.



Dream on isn't just a song written by Steven Tyler

so God do what is not in Gods will because humans pray

 

[lucaspa]

To summarize the opinions in this thread, as I understood them:

1. In your eyes, prayers don't "work", God makes them work. I understand the difference, but I regard it as irrelevant. In the end, the question boils down to "if you pray for a certain outcome, will this outcome occur?". Whether the prayer itself creates this outcome, or whether God does it after you prayed to him doesn't matter.

Since we (and you) are postulating that an intelligent being (God) is answering the prayers, then your idea that a certain outcome will always occur is not valid. God has to consider this 1) a valid outcome and 2) the consequences of providing the outcome.

Think about when people ask you for things. Sometimes you provide what is asked for. Sometimes you don't. If someone asks you for a million dollars, you are probably not going to provide it, even if you can.

OTOH, if a friend asks you for time and emotional support, then, yes, you are going to provide it. Now ask yourself: why would we think God is any different?

If we think of God as a vending machine, where we put in our prayer "coin", no matter what the prayer is, and we always get what we prayed for, then that loses sight of the fact that God is an intelligent being with free will. When people say "God's will", all they are saying is that God has free will to answer prayers with "yes", just like you have free will to answer the requests of your friends with a "yes". But many times, when the request is unreasonable or material, you answer with a "no". So does God. So yes, the prayer was answered, but the answer was "no".

3. You gave me some anecdotes as evidence for the effectiveness of prayers. However, none of the outcomes you described would have been outright impossible without God's interference, only impropable. ... So it's no irrefutable evidence for God,

And here is the atheist's "out". Yes, you can always say that what is prayed for would improbably have happened anyway. But is such an "out" true? You don't know. When the person presenting the testimony says "I could not have forgiven/loved/done this on my own, but did receive divine guidance/help.", what basis do you truly have to say the person is either lying or mistaken? None, really. At this point you are merely providing excuses to keep your own faith alive.

For example, one victim of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious contract killer, was allowed to pray for 40 minutes before he died. His prayers were ineffective. Now, you might say this has happened because this man was praying for selfish reasons, but many patients suffering from diseases pray for the exact same reason and, as you say, get healed. How do you explain that?

What was the person praying for, that Kuklinski would not kill them? In that situation, knowing that God was not going to interfere with Kulinski's free will, I would have prayed for the courage to face the death that was coming, forgiveness of Kulinski, and perhaps that Kulinski could eventually see what he was doing and be able to repent. THAT prayer had a good chance of being answered. You see, it depends on what you consider "effective". THAT prayer would have been effective. But you seem to think "effective" means that Kuklinski would kill. God messing around with Kuklinski's mind to change his decision to kill me? No, that wasn't going to happen. Nor would I want it to. I don't want a god that messes around with people's minds like that, not even to save me.

I would also like to have some of the statistics that you mentioned which show that prayers work.
EDIT: I also ask you to consider the placebo effect.

The placebo effect was considered in all the studies. That's why you have the control group that was not prayed for BUT the patients were not told what group they were in. Standard scientific procedure to eliminate the placebo effect.

Ironically, the only paper on intercessory prayer that had a flawed methodolody is the one that all the atheists quote -- the Benson et al. paper, reference 21 below. Overall, this paper showed no effect of IP on the overall undesirable outcomes in coronary artery bypass surgery (cabg). As I noted in a previous post, they didn't have the power to detect an overall effect. So the negative result means nothing. However, within a subset of serious undesirbable outcomes, IP did have a statistically significant effect in lowering those outcomes.

If someone knows he's getting prayed for, he has a higher chance of getting healed, and you don't know whether it's because of the placebo effect or the prayers.

Actually, the Benson et al. study (ref 21 below) showed that is not the case. They did have a group where the patients were told they were getting prayed for, but really weren't. That group did worse. Why? The authors speculate it was due to anxiety: the patients figured they should do better, and that expectation not to let prayer down set up a biofeedback mechanism that actually hurt their health.

So in a good study, the patients wouldn't know if someone was praying for them,

And that is what all the studies had. One of the studies -- Harris et. al -- set it up so that the patients (both getting intercessory prayer and not getting intercessory prayer) didn't even know they were in a study! Talk about being "blinded"!

You also have to remember, Salo, that in all the studies there is a lot of uncontrolled intercessory prayer: by the patient's family, friends, and church. What is being tested is the effect of an additional group of people performing intercessory prayer. This too, has a lot of precedence in medical studies. For instance, in all the studies on the effect of morphine on pain, there was always the endogenous morphine-like endorphins present in each patient. So what got tested was the effect of additional pain medication.

No, Salo, the studies on intercessory prayer were all done correctly (except for the last one). You can look them up for yourself. Here is a list:
14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population Page 1 http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj.doc
15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 Arch Intern Med -- File Not Found
15. BBC News | HEALTH | Heart patients 'benefit from prayer' A study at North Carolina
17. http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270 IP for infertile women
18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.
19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.
20. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/324/7344/1037
21. Herbert Benson, MD,a,4 Jeffery A. Dusek, PhD,a,4 Jane B. Sherwood, RN,y Peter Lam, PhD, Charles F. Bethea, MD,b William Carpenter, MDiv,c Sidney Levitsky, MD,d Peter C. Hill, MD, Donald W. Clem, Jr, MA,f Manoj K. Jain, MD, MPH,g David Drumel, MDiv,g,h Stephen L. Kopecky, MD, Paul S. Mueller, MD,j Dean Marek,k Sue Rollins, RN, MPH,b and Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhD Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, Volume 151, Number 4, 934-942, 2006.