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Permalink Reply by matt.clerke on January 4, 2012 at 5:03pm

I recall watching a few youtube videos regarding the scientific method and in particular, that in order for an experiment to be considered, it must be based on a theoretically plausible mechanism. The problem with these prayer studies is that instead of telling us "prayer works <blank> percent of the time by the process of <blank>" they tell us that "prayer works <blank> percent of the time by the process of magic".

Until there is a theoretically plausible mechanism of how prayer works, it's just not science... regardless of the results.

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Permalink Reply by erik112358 on January 5, 2012 at 1:41pm

Not necessarily.  For example, the study I linked to earlier wasn't studying the effects of prayer directly so much as the effects of the patient knowing they were being prayed for.  Most people seem to think the patients who knew they were being prayed for tended to have higher anxiety than the others, which led to them having slightly more complications.

That is a plausible mechanism, just like the claim that prayer can have a calming effect like meditation.

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Permalink Reply by anti_supernaturalist on January 4, 2012 at 6:08pm

** Redefining 'prayer' to save god-proxies their jobs

In the good old days, people heard gods speaking to them. But that won't wash today. To hear "God" speaking to you makes you a likely schizophrenic not a saint.

Jesus cleverly admonished his followers against prayer as asking-for-stuff -- "consider the lilies of the field" -- or prayer as public performance -- "they have their reward." Even in a backwater like 1st century Judea, Graeco-Roman philosophy had quashed "do ut des" prayers -- I’ll do this for you and you’ll do that for me -- as a communication channel, public or private.

If prayers were testable, they would turn out to be false. Thus it is very important that no empirical test could ever be applied -- right-wing xians practicing witchcraft should follow Jesus' advice. Prayer is not "my will" but "thy will" -- supposedly God's but really to some religious institution right here on Earth.

Prayer amounts to a purported alignment of your intentions with "the will of God." Or YHVH, Allah, Ahura Mazda. Pick your favorite 1-god from the Big-4 near eastern dysfunctional family. (Deists, pantheists . . . can align with necessity. As Spinoza cooly notes, "If you love God, do not expect Him to love you in return.")

Prayer, basically, is one fat red herring. The word 'prayer' simply gets redefined until the action it points to becomes attitude adjustment -- supposedly, openness to the will of some god. Just how one explicates the concept of "god's will" and how one would know it are other matters altogether.

All that matters is your attitude -- are you prepared to cede to some authoritarian god proxy: priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, evangelist? Will you follow authoritarian institutions "guiding" your life? Are you prepared to submit? ('Islam' by the way means 'submission' to "God" of course.)

Well, if not it's your problem. Or better yet, you are your problem. Yes, you have a problem with adapting to a schema of institutionalized authoritarianism -- and the religious diagnosis is always the same -- the problem lies with you, not the 1-god of the Big-3 Monster Theisms as represented by "his" proxies.

Xianity and Freudian psychiatry are one in creating fictitious "illnesses" (sin and neurosis) for which each offers sham cures at premium prices.

the anti_supernaturalist

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on January 4, 2012 at 6:27pm

Victor Stenger once remarked what he thought would be convincing evidence with respect to these either failing or flawed (or both) prayer studies.

His answer was to the effect that it would be convincing if there would be a clear (statistical) signal that Catholic prayers would work but Protestant prayers wouldn't or vice versa or that Mormon prayers would have slight effect but Sunni Islamic prayers would be hugely effective, while Shi'ite prayers fell on deaf ears or some other configuration because that would defy an explanation in terms of some systemic flaw in the experimental setup and simultaneously identify which of them Gods to add some credibility to.

Alas for brave experimenters, but all Gods seem to be Heisenberg entities.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Gibbs on January 4, 2012 at 6:39pm

Do they pray for individual rye planted in the same patch? How do they divide up the prayed for and not prayed for rye without somehow changing their location and therefor the soil, water reception, etc. of the rye to where we can be sure that it is only the prayer influencing differences?

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Permalink Reply by matt.clerke on January 4, 2012 at 6:43pm

I would recommend hydroponics with controlled indoor environments... that should be enough to isolate prayer from other environmental factors.

Edit: I am guessing the articles in question didn't go to this kind of extreme to isolate the prayer variable. This further invalidates them.

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Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 5, 2012 at 12:31am

Hey Dave,

 

I think this (your) is the line of questioning that will be most effective. If you read most of these posts here you can see that there are a lot of smart people here. But this level of abstraction, and focus on more general questions and other studies, which works well for the posters here, isn't going to have the same affect on adherents, imo.

 

And that is not to imply that adherents are simple, I'm just saying that more direct, less abstract counter arguments are just more effective generally.

- kk

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on January 4, 2012 at 7:20pm

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/video8.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

 

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Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 5, 2012 at 12:23am

Hey Brian,

 

If I can be so cocky, get a copy of these studies, pass me the methodology and I'll rip it up. You need to attack these studies if they really exist because I think there is an avalanche of studies on prayer that show that it doesn't work.

 

- kk

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Permalink Reply by Ron V on January 5, 2012 at 8:51am

Kir,

Here are some. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer

These, and others, have already been scrutinized- with a little searching you won't have to recreate the wheel.

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Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 5, 2012 at 5:18pm

Hey Ron - thx - kk

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Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 5, 2012 at 12:36am

Hey Brian,

 

Sorry, one more point. I just checked out that link. There's a saying that goes something like, "show me the data". And that is relevant here. It would be most effective to get the study itself and start deconstructing the methodology, which I'm certain is bogus.

 

- kk

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