Prayer Studies

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Faith1960 said:


  1. It’s called the STEP Study, funded mostly by the Templeton Foundation.
    They studied over 1000 bypass patients from, I think 6 hospitals, over period of I think 10 years.
    Patients were put into one of three groups.
    Group 1 and 2 were told they may or may not be prayed for.
    GROup 1 was prayed for without them knowing for sure.
    Group 2 wasnt prayed for and didn’t know for sure.
    GROup 3 was told they were being prayed for and were.

    The outcome of the study revealed that Groups,1 and,2 had the same results, group 3 did a little worse, suffering complications.

    95% or 96% of all the patients said that friends and relatives were praying for them.
    One would also wonder if nurses, hospital chaplains and other hospital personnel prayed without their knowledge.
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  1. Id also like to add that the number of patients was more than 1800, and it was a the largest, most comprehensive study ever done on prayer, was a double blind study and headed by well respected scientists, including Dr. Herb Benson.
 
Faith1960 said:
95% or 96% of all the patients said that friends and relatives were praying for them.
One would also wonder if nurses, hospital chaplains and other hospital personnel prayed without their knowledge.
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Oh I see. Yes, that is a good point. Naturalistic studies are challenging that way; there is no way to control all of the salient variables.

From this factoid you’re citing, I would suggest that a measurement finding that “prayer worked” would be meaningful but not the other way around. There are probably scores of people who are even praying daily for “all patients” in need of cardiovascular healing. We would need a study to find out whether prayer works better depending on your relationship with the targeted beneficiary.
 
Not to mention, maybe they happened to choose people to pray, among some group whose prayers God wasn’t particularly interested in fulfilling. 😃
 
Another thing that bothers me is that there was a meta-analysis done on prayer that said that prayer does work, so that made me feel better but then another meta-analysis that showed prayer had no effect on the outcome.
 
I have a 2 volume set of Craig Keener’s book Miracles, and was reading some of it last night. There were lots of miracles from answered prayer in it and he attributes the prayer study’s findings on the fact that 96% of the patients were being prayed for by family and friends.
 
Faith1960 said:
Sorry, I mean DISTANT intercessory prayer.
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Makes me think of “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein referred to quantum entanglement. They can act immediately and even at great distances, without the limitation of the speed of light to get the “message” from here to there.

There is a huge amount of information and interest; search YouTube for “quantum entanglement” or “entangled particles” for more than you can ever watch. Here is one short one, not technical but with a shot of some cool looking equipment:

What is quantum entanglement
 
Mystical_Seeker said:
Makes me think of “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein referred to quantum entanglement. They can act immediately and even at great distances, without the limitation of the speed of light to get the “message” from here to there.

There is a huge amount of information and interest; search YouTube for “quantum entanglement” or “entangled particles” for more than you can ever watch. Here is one short one, not technical but with a shot of some cool looking equipment:

What is quantum entanglement
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That was a neat card triick. The rest of it was,over my head. 😊
 
I’ve read that proximal intercession prayer (PIP) was found to work but that could be a placebo or power,of suggestion. 😦
 
Faith1960 said:
That was a neat card triick. The rest of it was,over my head. 😊
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The idea is that parts of the card deck go their separate ways and are manipulated independently without looking at each other and not even at exactly the same time, and yet the decks end up stacked so that complimentary cards are in order.

In the same way, you have certain measurable aspects of tiny quantum particles that behave like that. Their behavior is mysteriously coupled, and it seems it could be across the room or a million light-years away, they act in concert. IOW it can’t be one sending out a wave and giving the other an update, because it would take 200 million years for the signal to get there and for us to see the results come back. If that still doesn’t make sense, just know that it is truly weird and to me it is no weirder than believing that there really is a real, physical (but not yet discovered) way that prayers can be “delivered” where they are needed, and have an effect.

It’s like we really are one body and one spirit, in that we are all connected to each other in bizarre ways that we don’t understand how or why. Jesus may not have had quantum physics terminology to describe it since humans hadn’t invented it yet, but who’s to say He didn’t tap into a realm we technically could but chances are will never discover?
 
Mystical_Seeker said:
The idea is that parts of the card deck go their separate ways and are manipulated independently without looking at each other and not even at exactly the same time, and yet the decks end up stacked so that complimentary cards are in order.

In the same way, you have certain measurable aspects of tiny quantum particles that behave like that. Their behavior is mysteriously coupled, and it seems it could be across the room or a million light-years away, they act in concert. IOW it can’t be one sending out a wave and giving the other an update, because it would take 200 million years for the signal to get there and for us to see the results come back. If that still doesn’t make sense, just know that it is truly weird and to me it is no weirder than believing that there really is a real, physical (but not yet discovered) way that prayers can be “delivered” where they are needed, and have an effect.

It’s like we really are one body and one spirit, in that we are all connected to each other in bizarre ways that we don’t understand how or why. Jesus may not have had quantum physics terminology to describe it since humans hadn’t invented it yet, but who’s to say He didn’t tap into a realm we technically could but chances are will never discover?
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Wish I could find something that shows that 2006 Prayer study faulty. Then again, one of the prayer groups was the Unity church which is kind of New,age. I think they believe we’re,all divine. Maybe that affected the studies?
 
Why isn’t anyone else sounding upset about the study’s conclusions?
It was a lengthy study involving many patients. It was,expected to show that prayer helps when patients have cardiac surgery. It was conducted fair and square.
 
I think the study was interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything about the efficacy of prayer.

Who is to say that prayers can even be parsed out this way, “I will pray for X but not Y.” And God will thereby heal X and not Y.

If the study had found an effect, I would consider that significant. But to find no effect doesn’t mean that there isn’t an effect, but we just didn’t find any by this experiment.

Personally I have trouble believing there is some mechanism – including the intervention of the saints and God – that converts what I pray for into the proper visible result. I have a lot of reasons I pray in various ways, but I really don’t do too much intercessory partly because I don’t presume to know even what to ask for. So I’m more likely to discuss with God how I feel about and react to a reality, then asking Him to change it.

That said, I still say that no honest scientist can conclude there are no effects of prayer, and to me this study may have been conducted “fair and square” and that’s great. But since we have no idea even whether prayer works from a measurable standpoint, we really don’t know what measures we should even use to look for them. The study was based on certain assumptions about the mechanics of God’s prayer-reply behavior, and so far those they have made have not been supported.
 
I think whole thing depends on the cold, experimental attitude, like for instance testing how would a caged monkey respond in certain environment or circumstances. God is not a creature who is under humans to be tested in this fashion. He is the creator of all things. He will not act based on our whims and fancies. He can withhold or show his mercy to whomsoever he wants or desires. Even if we should be all on our knees, repenting, humbling, moaning and praying for mercy on ourselves, it is His supreme will whether to respond or not. We cannot set Him within the limitations of an experimental study, which would be too degrading and it is like putting him to test and a sin. How would even an earthly mother or father feel if their child is secretly trying to invoke/measure their love, kindness and active intervention by use of simulated actions or manipulations . If we will forget and abandon everything into his hands and wait in hopeful abandon and humbleness, he will respond in His time. No physics or chemistry can explain the Author of Life. His is the supreme will of His is the sovereignty!
 
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