In the largest study to date on the subject of prayer and its power to heal patients, or speed up their recovery, scientists found that prayer did not increase patients' survival rate. The study was conducted on patients who underwent heart bypass surgery. Ironically, prayer had the the exact opposite effect on the patients.
Researchers divided patients into three groups with six hundred patients in each group. Two groups were told they might or might not be prayed for. One of those two groups was prayed for, while the other was not. There was no significant increase in the recovery rate of those patients who had been prayed for. Herbert Benson, a physician at Harvard Medical School in Boston stated,"We were not studying the relaxation response in this study. We were studying the extension of that. Could external prayer perhaps do the same thing? In this particular study, we did not find that was the case."
The third group was told that they would definately be prayed for, and many of them suffered complications.Jeffrey Dusek, a Harvard Medical School psychologist told VOM "A single study does not answer the question. I strongly suggest that that not be the case. I'm hoping that family and friends will continue doing what they have done for years and pray for whomever they want to and loved ones before surgery."
Personally, I believe that prayer does have the power to heal. I am a Christian, and no study, even done by Harvard, will convince me that there is not power in prayer. What I have found when I pray for something and I do not get it is that maybe its not that God or Allah or whoever does not hear my prayers or does not exist, perhaps I am not granted my desires for other reasons. I believe God has a plan for each of our lives and he grants us wishes based on what he believes is good or bad for us. We still have free will, but he creates opputunities for us to do the right thing. Maybe it is some of these patients' time to die or learn a life lesson.
A prayer that is not genuine will have no effect.
I agree that I too believe in prayer no matter what this study said. There could have been so many factors as to why it didn't work.
I'm also a Christian and I believe that God does truly have a plan for us. We just have to put our faith in him and let him take over the situation. Science can't prove that prayer doesn't work, because prayer comes from the heart. You can't do that if you are being monitored constantly.
I don't think such a study can be done and be taken seriously. How can you prove such a thing?
What I always find funny is that when a study is done which says prayer has power, every religious Christian I know will toot on about the study. And when a study disproves that prayer has power, every religious Christian I know will rationalize the study away until it is ineffective. If you cannot accept studies which disprove prayer, you should also have the intellectual intergrity to not accept studies which support prayer too. This is hypocrisy. Regardless of what a scientific study says and what your personal beliefs are, if you are mentally honest, you should rationalize the studies which support your beliefs with the same devotion you use to rationalize studies away which don't support your beliefs. If you don't, you are being dishonestly selective about accepting scientific studies and about reality in general.
Citizen Press Revolution
Amen! As an ex-Christian (raised that way, but found my own path later in life), I know all about the doctrine of prayer--and not just within Christianity, either. The problem, though, is that within the concept itself is a rationalization of failure: God said no.
I'm unable to except any form of lifestyle (and, make no mistake, devout religious IS a lifestyle) where there is such ambiguous descrepancy. What if we treated modern medicine that way? "Sorry the heart transplant didn't work this time. Sometimes the medication just decides it doesn't want to work this time."
"Sorry the heart transplant didn't work this time. Sometimes the medication just decides it doesn't want to work this time."
which of course IS the case, not that medicine "decides" not to work.. but indeed, sometimes heart transplants fail because the body's immune system rejects it.. and the medicine used to suppress the immune system just didnt work.
in the end, no matter how much we want to debate either side, its all a matter of what you believe. please dont attack christians just because they have chosen to believe something opposite to what you have chosen to believe. (that goes for christians as well.) if you choose to believe that God doesnt exist, fine. but dont try to rationalize your choice by saying that it is just not possible for God to say "no" to certain prayers. it is equivalent to saying that i dont believe in the power of talking to quiller because quiller doesnt always do whatever i tell them to do.. its not a fair statement. believe what you want, just be aware of the flaws in your arguments, and the fact that you might be wrong
I think it is strange that there is a distinction between prayer and positive thought. It has been proven time and time again that positive thought is a key factor in recovery. I would be very interested in what the prayers of the patients were like.
Most Scientist are atheists. of course they are going to say that. But I have seen the proof. You can't see what you don't believe.
I agree with you. I did not think of it that way when I wrote it. I mean I have thought about that a lot before though. I have asked myself many times that if I became a scientist would I still be a chrisitian since science seems to have a logical explination for everything, that does not involve a super-natural power of course. But I think I still would be. There are still unexplainable phenomena out there and the way I see it is that scientist may find a logical way for everything to come about but created the particles that collided into each other in the first place to create the world? They were not just . . . there!
In my experience, a good number of scientists are religious. The only real conflict between science and religion happens when you structure some belief on some scripture to be the way the things work in the physical world. Many of these scientists acknowledge that in their search for truth, they have to let go of preconcieved intrepertations of scripture. And some also acknowledge that the Bible is not infallible and that it was written by men who used their own historical, cultural, and scientific context they lived in to explain things. This doesn't necessarily mean they must give up the Christian faith though.
Things have always existed. Even if you believe in God, how can you explain God's existence? If God is required to create the universe, how did he exist himself? He just existed, right?
Really, if you can explain God's existence in that manner, then an explanation that the universe has always just existed is equally as valid, if not more so, as it doesn't bring in an unsolvable debate about whether if God exists or not on top of it.
Now, the thing that I do NOT agree with is these results from these prayer studies. Whenever a study says prayer has power, Christians jump up and down and claim validation. However, when a study says prayer does not have prayer, Christians say that such studies could never prove such a thing anyway, that science has an "axe" to grind with religion, that they question the manner the study was conducted.
However, the thing that aggravates me is that it seems hypocritical to me to always open embrace any study or anecdote that proves prayer has power without putting it to the same scrutiny that they do for studies that DON'T support that prayer has power to heal.
I think that if you REALLY care about the actual reality of prayer, you would also put results that support prayer under the same scrutiny as results that do not support prayer.
In my massive experience with this though, I rarely see any Christian do this.
And that, to me, just seems to rub off as intellectually dishonest to both accept "prayer can heal" results without the same scrutiny as "prayer cannot heal" results.
If you (and I use "you" in a general sense, not you specifically) want to accept the scientific conclusion of a study, you must put its layout and context under scientific scrutiny as well -- regardless if it supports or does not a preconcieved idea you hold.
And if you are unwilling to put a study's results under scientific scrutiny, you really have no intellectually honest business in hoo hahing when a new study says prayer can heal.
This is what aggravates me. And its not unique to Christians alone, but in many groups and in many issues.
Citizen Press Revolution
I would be lying if I said that I have never wondered how God was created. But I have come to the conclution that he is so amazing that he was always there. Nothing created him because he is all powerful. Its not something I can put into words. Its something thats hard to believe too. I guess you, as in people in general, just have to have faith. If I could ask God one question, that would be it. However even if he explained it to me it would probably be like a parent after they get tired of playing the "why" game with their child; BECAUSE I SAID SO! lol
I agree. Plus, He being omnipotent, we probably couldn't even fathom His explanation. Because we are so small compared to Him, it makes more sense for us just to agree because we have faith and trust in Him. There is NO POINT in trying to figure out God. Just trust, believe and OBEY.
I totally believe that we need Christian scientists in this world. There is a lot of unbelief out there, and I believe that you would help to reduce that.
If I were lying on a hosptial bed after a major surgery of some sort, whether it was open heart or cancer surgery in the brain, and I heard that I was to be prayed for, my worst nightmare would come true. I would immediately believe I was being prayed for because there was no chance of my survival. No wonder a lot of patients don't get better! I believe in God, I am a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan for all of us. If a person dies because of cancer, obviously God wanted them with Him.
Sigh. The problem is that nobody bothers to read Hume any more.
You cannot prove that God exists. Not even if a voice like thunder echo'd from the sky "I am the almighty, down on your knees and be afraid", not even if Armageddon comes true precisely as described in Revelations, sea of blood and rapture and all, would it prove that God exists in the sense of scientific "proof". As Arthur C. Clarke once remarked (IIRC) "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". To "prove" true deity the proof has to extend over all time and all space through all realms of existence, and even a God over a trans-temporal Multiverse with far greater complexity than most people imagine could NEVER be certain that there did not exist disjoint Multiverses with their own, independent Gods, at any scale of recursion you can imagine.
By the way, you cannot "prove" the law of gravitation either, or Maxwell's equations. All one can do is construct experiments that offer a preponderance of evidence sufficient to reduce your degree of disbelief. Even to do this requires AXIOMS (unprovable assumptions) such as the axiom that the universe is a causal, temporally ordered, persistent phenomenon, the axiom that conclusions based on inference are logically or scientifically "valid" (they aren't -- dropping a penny a thousand times and seeing it fall every time does NOT PROVE that it will fall the thousand and first for all that we tend to conclude that it will, without many axioms). Ultimately, it is all about faith, whether that faith is in God or in Causality.
Hume's basic conclusion is as correct today as it was when he formulated it. All you "know" is what you are knowing (present tense, active). Everything else -- your memories of the past, your inferences about the present, your beliefs about the future -- is subject to doubt, shadows cast on the walls of Plato's cave.
If this is so, then where can one possibly find God? The same place you find anything -- at that cusp that is your awareness. It is really all that you know, all that you have ever known.
With that said, note well that it isn't true that "most scientists are atheists". To my experience, many scientists are agnostic, many (perhaps most) scientists are deists (whether or not they participate in the rituals of one religion or another), and a few scientists even manage the fairly incredible act of intellectual juggling required to be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim while scientifically accepting the Big Bang and Evolution and the invariance of natural law.
I'd actually say that atheists are a significant minority, since one cannot disprove the existence of God any more than one can prove it, since arguing that "there is no God" on the basis of "scientific" evidence is so chock-full of fallacies that most scientists reject it (and the alternative) out of hand.
In terms of science, the current study "proves" nothing. What it seems to indicate, what it reduces our degree of disbelief in (or should, if we accept the precepts of experimental science) is that having strangers pray for you under the circumstances of the trial had not discernable effect on outcomes. This doesn't disprove God's existence, any more than a 100% cure rate would have proven it. If anything, it suggests that individuals who PAY others to pray for them, who give money to faith healers, now have a concrete reason to not do this. It changes this from "it can't hurt and might help" to "it won't help". This is a VERY IMPORTANT RESULT -- I have a very ill relative (with cancer) and there are LOTS of folks out there selling snake oil psychic cures, prayer healing, and much worse. To someone with little hope from the medical community, what these individuals sell is hope.
Prayer has two forms. One is all about hope -- it is "praying for something". Praying to be healed. Praying to get rich. Praying for love, for sex, for happiness. These are HOPES. This is what might be called "magical prayer" -- prayer asking God to intercede in the progression of natural law and probability on your behalf. These are attempts to CONTROL God. They assume that the future has multiple possible forms and that it is up to God to determine which branch all of Reality takes, one branch point at a time. By praying, by rubbing blue mud in your belly, by sacrificing a chicken at just the right time, God chooses a track that is to YOUR advantage while still preserving the illusion of natural law everywhere else. This is all about "the secret name of God" as something that has power, invoking demons or spirits. It is basically asking the Cosmic Referee to cheat on your behalf in the game of Life.
The other is much simpler -- meditative prayer. This form accepts the Universe as it is, period. It is not about hope, it is about compassion -- understanding that the world is filled with pain AND joy, good and evil, that it is controllable (by ACTION) and forever beyond our control. This form of prayer looks at the cusp where awareness resides, the only thing we really know, and seeks God there at the point that defines our own existence and experience of the world. This point is SHARED by the major world religions -- I Am, the Atman, the Self, the state of awareness itself, is the only possible point of contact with God in a Universe where we can doubt the evidence of our senses, where those senses provide at best a distorted and limited window into what appears to be an structured and real external environment based on natural law.
To conclude, let me offer up a line from one of my favorite Christian Apologists -- C.S. Lewis -- from one of the Narnia tales. Aslan (God as Lion) asks "Do you think that I would break the Law that I made?"
If one truly believes that the answer to this is no, then of course magical prayer is a bit of a problem. God will not, of course, break the course of deterministic natural law just for anyone's personal benefit. Reality is real, which means that reality will sometimes hurt -- hence the need for meditation, for compassionate prayer. The element of hope in compassionate prayer isn't asking God to break natural law, it is more an expressed wish that the universe, as it unfolds, all works out for the Good, that in the end Joy wins out over Pain. It appears that sickness and death are part of the inevitable progression of life -- no miracle, no intercession on behalf of the aged, the ill, will suffice to sustain them young and alive forever in THIS Universe.
So perhaps the real benefit of prayer is that it can help one attain the state of grace where one is aware of, and accepts, the inevitability of pain in the very real world in which we live and yet find the wonder and joy that we are alive at all to experience it. This state is universal to all major religions -- it is Enlightenment. The cancer patient that yearns for their health and their youth to be restored to them is likely to spend a lot of time in hell, a hell that prevents them from enjoying and fully living every instant of every moment that they ARE alive. And of course we all suffer from the same terminal disease -- life itself. Fear is, ultimately, related to attachment.
Attachment is all well and good -- we are bound to the wheel, might as well see where it takes us. It never hurts, though, to live each moment as if we are standing on a mountaintop, in the very center of all that exists, with a sense of wonder at the incredible view...
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In response to the comment that some prayers aren't answered because God has better intentions for you. Has anyone ever heard the song "Unanswered Prayers"? A verse of it says, "Some of God's greatest gifts, are unanswerered prayers." He talks about a girl he "loved" in high school and prayed to marry. They moved on and lost touch and he never understood why God didn't answer his prayers. Then, years later, he met his wife and he loves her more than anything else and he realizes how thankful he is that God didn't answer that prayer. No matter what research is done, many doctors, scientists, and philosophers will never admit to any "proof" of any God. They will call them miracles or luck. But, as a Christian, I know who did it.
I think that is ridiculous. How can scientists actually conduct a study on whether or not prayer actually works? There are many Christians out there who have prayed during life or death situations and have survived. Just because these people prayed and did not live doesn't prove anything. What it proves is that it was simply their time to go.
Thanks for the comment. I totally agree
Just because you prayed and it "worked" does not prove that prayer is right or helpful.
I'm sorry, but I don't remember ever saying that prayer is either "right" or "helpful" in any way. And did you notice that I did not put myself in the example I was giving? Being a Christian and a member of a Baptist church, we all share our stories of active prayer and how perceived outcomes from third parties usually turn into something greater.
"Just because you prayed and it "worked" does not prove that prayer is right or helpful."
Just because you think prayer is neither right or helpful does not mean it doesn't benefit anybody else in that way. Just like because scientists from "Harvard" conducted a study on prayer and claim it does not work does not mean we can all take their word for it.
"Be absolutely clear about who you are and what you stand for. Refuse to compromise." -Brian Tracy
I apoligise for the misconception -- I was using "you" as a universal, not an attack on your person.
In addition, I do think that prayer can be helpful, but not because of a higher power. Our minds have great potential and we don't fully understand it all just yet. But I feel that constant "happy thoughts" can reflect inward on the body and actually change your outlook -- mentally, emotionally, and even physically.
Personally, I think the study was flawed because of this. To have prayer affectively "work" you would have to pray for yourself, not another. My outlook on your recovery will not matter, but your own positive outlook concerning your recovery is going to make a difference.
home equity line of credit
I agree a lot with what you are saying. There are a lot of querks in science, and we need to be careful what it is we believe in.
I am also a Christian. Even though I haven't seen prayer work any instant miracles such as suddenly heal someone with a tumor, I have seen God work miracles in families through years and years of prayer.
I'm sorry but Harvard really doesn't know what they are talking about, and prayer is not something that can be scientifically proven anyways. God works in His own way. His ways are not our own ways. Although He wants us to explore and learn about Him, He doesn't want to be scientifically tested to see if He really works in peoples lives.
And prayer does not really work unless it is genuine prayer. Most people can tell if they are really being prayed for, or if they are really not being prayed for.
i beleive that it does. you have to belive in it
I can do all things through Christ which streghthens me.
Amen. You know why those studies didn't work because God don't like to be played with on any level. Not thing that God does can be fully understood by man so we just have to have faith in Good's will.
Prayer has absolutely no effect if faith does not back it up. Anybody can pray; it is up to the person (that is being prayed for) to accept the words being petitioned of God. Also, the person that prayed to God must believe that God will answer that prayer, but it must first line up with Scripture. Period.
Joshua S.
http://sjenterprises.blogspot.com/
I never did believe in prayer, when I was younger everytime I remembered to say my prayers I had nightmares, thats why I began my search for a new religion, leading me to Wicca.
Funny thing, whenever I did ask for something though I never mentioned the word god or any other things of the sort I simply would look up and say "I swear if this does not go my way I am going to be pissed" or "I am getting sick and tired of this fix it NOW" I always got my way.
Wicca gives me a new way now I still do the same except I directed at the universe or the Goddess, same result, I figure its all the power of the mind. People in my family don't generally have sicknesses if they do its easily taken care of.
Change is emminent lets face it the world is in for a serious awakening
Sometimes, the human realm, the human mind has its own powers. Remember that it's always FINITE. The natural body has no patience so will go ahead at its own strength to make good things happen for it and its benefits. Exercising this natural power over and over again will lead nowhere and will lead to stress. so I ask that anyone be careful when forcing things to go their own way because there may be an advantage for them, but it does not last long at all.
jshephard.
http://sjenterprises.blogspot.com/
I do believe in human mind and its power. Sometimes you need no generic lipitor or any other drugs to feel better. It’s the way of the prayer that counts a lot. If those patients pray using negative words, it’s what they will get, so no improvement is possible. Positive thinking will make him better. I know it because it helped me a lot.