Is prayer testable?

[Wiccan_Child]

You can see the cancer is gone. But you do not see God, nor you know God does it.

God, no. Prayer, yes. Remember, the OP is asking whether prayer works, not whether God does it. The mechanical explanation given by theists is that it's God, but the issue is simply whether prayer works.

 

[AtheistAlan]

You can see the cancer is gone. But you do not see God, nor you know God does it.

This is why, in scientific experiments, you try to have control and test groups. You don't always know WHY something happens, but you can test and record the results.

You have to have data in measurable units. Last I heard, there is no 4 metric Gods. You can measure cancer, thus you can observe the RESULTS of prayer.

Your statement about not being able to test prayer on non-believers is not logical, as you can measure the results. Medical science doesn't always know why, during experimentation, one drug has a better effect than another, but they can measure the results.

Also, I wanted to chide you for being antagonistic. It was not a simple, nor logical concept.

-Atheist Alan

 

[juvenissun]

God, no. Prayer, yes. Remember, the OP is asking whether prayer works, not whether God does it. The mechanical explanation given by theists is that it's God, but the issue is simply whether prayer works.

Experiment: Have 1000 people to pray for a case and compare it with a case of no prayer. Do it a number of times and compare the results.

Is that what you want?

Do you care who are the prayers? Pray without God or pray without faith?

 

[drjean]

I suggest you review a 2006 "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP)" led by Harvard professor Herbert Benson.

Questions do arise. One of which is if prayer is testable using today's understanding of science. The short answer is no.

-Atheist Alan

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times New Roman, Times]These studies have shown conclusive evidence of the power of prayer. Time after time the outcomes of these tests have shown the reality of the force of a higher being and our ability to communicate with Him.
We have also learned from viewing the results of these studies that the expectations we have while praying factor into the outcome of our prayers. Though the faithful will always believe that there need not be any physical evidence of the power and effects of prayer, science has come a long way toward showing just that-prayer is real, and it works.
Scientific Research on Prayer
[/FONT]

In a 1988 study by Dr. Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital, 393 coronary care patients receiving prayer with their medical care suffered significantly less congestive heart failure, fewer cardiopulmonary arrests, used fewer antibiotics and diuretics, and had less pneumonia. In a 1998 study at California Pacific Medical Center, a double-blind study revealed profound effects from “distant healing prayer” with advanced AIDS patients. They survived in greater numbers, got sick less often, and recovered faster than those not receiving prayer

An amazing study published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine showed how prayer could help even those who did not know they were being prayed for. The study was conducted at Columbia University in New York City on women having difficultly becoming pregnant. They found that even though the women did not know they were being prayed for, 50% of the prayed-for group became pregnant as opposed to only 26% of the control group that was not prayed for.

John Van Auken | Power of Prayer

Spirituality and Religion in medicine: Spirituality and Religion in Medicine - Prayer - Research


While I agree that not all research is double blind, when it is it shows good results. And if you think it does no good, why refuse it anyway, just in case you're wrong?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Experiment: Have 1000 people to pray for a case and compare it with a case of no prayer. Do it a number of times and compare the results.

Is that what you want?

Do you care who are the prayers? Pray without God or pray without faith?

We can expand the study to compensate for whatever you wish. Do you believe only white conservative Catholics in the US get their prayers answered? Fine, we'll focus the study on them. Do you believe on prayers to Lord Krishna at a certain time of the year get answered? We'll do the study on those, instead. Remember, I'm not the one making the claim, it's the theists.

The point is to study whether it's worth praying for someone, inasmuch as it's worth outing hope that the prayer will do anything. If you believe that prayer does something other than talk to God, if you believe it occasionally does succeed in encouraging or convincing God to change his mind, then however infrequently, we should see some people's prayers get answered. At this point, we don't care who's, only if prayers are answered at all.

 

[Davian]

I don't think I missed it, but did anyone explain why one would need to pray to an omniscient deity? Would not that deity know what what you wanted and needed? Or is it like a magic decoder ring, and has to be couched in just the right way in order to activate the magic?

 

[hedrick]

Prayer and Faith Healing, Proof that prayer works

I've seen a few studies like this. I've also seen some that give the other result. The ones where I've looked up the details (which I haven't for this) have two serious statistical problems. Both are based on the fact that you will see patterns even in random data. To avoid this, mathematical tests are done to see whether the result is larger than what you would expect by chance. But even so, you can get even large results by chance. So you have to pick a "significance level." E.g. you say "this is significant at the 0.05 level." That means that you'd get an effect that large even in random data, 5% of the time. A lot of social science data uses the 0.05 level.

So here are the problems:

1) If people do these kinds of tests a lot, 5% of the time they're going to get positive results even if there is no effect. But they're only going to publish the ones that work, because journals are normally not interested in tests that failed. Unless you know how many people tried it and failed, you have no way to know what the actual significance level is.

2) Many of the experiments check many different variables. You'll often see studies saying things like "while survival wasn't improved by prayer, the level of pain control was better." It's pretty clear that they asked a number of different questions. How many? If they asked 20 questions, you'd expect one of them to come out positive.

Controlling for these problems is really difficult. Most social science work doesn't do it well, and in this case I'm not sure it even could be done well. It turns out that even medical research has problems like this. Retrospective studies have suggested that a lot of things we think we know about social science and the effects of drugs are wrong. I've started seeing articles indicating concerns about this, but as far as I know there aren't effective approaches in place to prevent the problems.

I'm a bit concerned that even courses about statistics don't get these points across effectively enough to students. While there are strong enough pressures to publish that some people will publish meaningless results knowingly, I'm concerned that a lot of scientists using statistical methods don't understand their limitations.

Yes, I used to teach statistics. I have no idea whether my students came away from the course understanding these issues.

 

[juvenissun]

We can expand the study to compensate for whatever you wish. Do you believe only white conservative Catholics in the US get their prayers answered? Fine, we'll focus the study on them. Do you believe on prayers to Lord Krishna at a certain time of the year get answered? We'll do the study on those, instead. Remember, I'm not the one making the claim, it's the theists.

The point is to study whether it's worth praying for someone, inasmuch as it's worth outing hope that the prayer will do anything. If you believe that prayer does something other than talk to God, if you believe it occasionally does succeed in encouraging or convincing God to change his mind, then however infrequently, we should see some people's prayers get answered. At this point, we don't care who's, only if prayers are answered at all.

That is not the point.

For a faithful person, he will pray again regardless the result. For a person of no faith, he will not pray (for a perfect reason) even the result is clearly positive.

 

[juvenissun]

I don't think I missed it, but did anyone explain why one would need to pray to an omniscient deity? Would not that deity know what what you wanted and needed? Or is it like a magic decoder ring, and has to be couched in just the right way in order to activate the magic?

It is a training to one who prayed. Just like a student tried to answer an essay question of a test. (I skipped the explanation. If needed, please ask)

 

[Wiccan_Child]

That is not the point.

I refer you to the OP.

For a faithful person, he will pray again regardless the result. For a person of no faith, he will not pray (for a perfect reason) even the result is clearly positive.

Irrelevant. The thread is to discuss whether intercessory prayers for healing can be shown to work through scientific studies, and thus whether it's worth encouraging people to pray for the sick and the dying in the hopes that there genuinely will have a better chance of surviving.

There are those Christians who genuinely believe that, by praying for someone, God is encouraged or convinced to come down and divinely interfere in the healing of that person, thus ensuring their survival. We've all heard of people going to churches and having manic bouts of xenoglossia, and who come away with their ailments miraculously cured. These people exist, and it is their claim that I want to test.

You don't seem to grasp what I and everyone else is talking about, and instead insist on telling us what we should be discussing - have you considered that you simply don't understand the question?

 

[juvenissun]

I refer you to the OP.


Irrelevant. The thread is to discuss whether intercessory prayers for healing can be shown to work through scientific studies, and thus whether it's worth encouraging people to pray for the sick and the dying in the hopes that there genuinely will have a better chance of surviving.

There are those Christians who genuinely believe that, by praying for someone, God is encouraged or convinced to come down and divinely interfere in the healing of that person, thus ensuring their survival. We've all heard of people going to churches and having manic bouts of xenoglossia, and who come away with their ailments miraculously cured. These people exist, and it is their claim that I want to test.

You don't seem to grasp what I and everyone else is talking about, and instead insist on telling us what we should be discussing - have you considered that you simply don't understand the question?

Something will be shown by the study. But the result is subject to interpretation. So, you can do the test, and you will have results. But you will learn nothing.

In contrast, I do not have to do any test and I don't need to see any result. But I know it works.

That shows the fundamental flaw on the design of your experiment. I understand the question (very easily). But it is a wrong one. So, in you poll, all four choices are correct.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Something will be shown by the study.

Brilliant! What?

So, in you poll, all four choices are correct.

Nonsense - you've just openly admitted that the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'.

 

[Davian]

Are there any gods?

So, no prayer, doesn't change a thing.

So, prayer works as if there were no gods?