Hope Springs Eternal
16 July 2005 by BobCardiac Patients in New Study Fared No Better With Spiritual Intercession
Praying for sick strangers does not improve their prospects of recovering, according to a large, carefully designed study that casts doubt on the widely held belief that being prayed for can help a person heal.The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die.
Just gotta love this part:
While skeptics of prayer welcomed the results, other researchers questioned the findings, and proponents of prayer maintained that God’s influence lies beyond the reach of scientific validation.
Yeah, how DARE you try to SCIENTIFICALLY show that prayer improves the MEDICAL condition of a CARDIAC PATIENT in — of all places — a HOSPITAL!
16 July 2005, on 7:07 pm
Thanks Bob. This article is pretty rich, so hope you don’t mind me adding some other observations.
I enjoyed:
“…those who received both MIT [music, imagery, touch] therapy and the “high-dose” prayer may have been slightly less likely to die in the following six months.”
Imagine the bedside conference with the doctor: “Well, we do have a promising lead that combines some non-traditional approaches and it may make you SLIGHTLY LESS LIKELY TO DIE, so you know, hey, it’s worth a shot.” Yeah, doc, go ahead, pray, knock yourself out.
It’s hard to know the intentions of Dr. Krucoff who lead the study. He says, “”I really don’t want people to think we’re dissing prayer.” Wouldn’t it be refreshing if he had just said, ‘Ok, game over, prayer does nothing’. It’s too bad he has to cover his ass in this way. Or just as likely, his hope was that the study would have shown prayer to be efficacious.
Maybe the most galling is this:
Marilyn Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif., said the study showed the need for additional research. She is conducting a federally funded study testing the power of prayer to help wounds heal. “The fact that the vast majority of people in this country make use of prayer or some type of compassionate intention really demands that we look at these phenomena with rigorous scientific perspective,” she said.
Does it really demand they look at these “phenomena”? What phenomena? People either getting sicker, staying the same, or getting better? (to paraphrase Penn and Teller). Maybe she’s right though in the sense that the majority do believe this stuff and so a series of strong studies levigating this power-of-prayer nonsense is called for. Of course, with most irrational types the upshots from such studies will mean nothing, just as if shown with quoted Reverend’s rebuttal.
17 July 2005, on 10:31 am
“…proponents of prayer maintained that God’s influence lies beyond the reach of scientific validation.” What the hell? This is the supidest thing I’ve ever heard! Christian extremists make claims that involve the NATURAL WORLD. Even if god heals the sick through supernatural means, the healing itself involves NATURAL changes to the body on a biochemical level. Science is the only method we have to study these NATURAL changes. When Christian extremists make claims like these that turn out to be false, we get to see the real danger of religiosity.
18 July 2005, on 8:42 am
I’d like to see a study that has a control group with no prayer, group B getting “placebo” prayer (in which the prayee is really just rehashing a grocery list or something), group C getting prayer to Juno, group D getting prayer to Thor, group E getting prayer to some type of native americal great spirit, and group F getting prayer to yaway, lord of the nomadic jews of 5000 years ago. maybe they can have another group (G) getting prayer to Jesus. Then let’s seem ‘em chart it out.
OK, so Thor’s group is kicking ass, but Juno and Jesus have squat. The grocery group lot, however, have come quite an amazing way.
Conclusion: Pray to the produce aisle.
18 July 2005, on 12:53 pm
Christians will accept any study supporting their bias… but… if it doesn’t, then “God’s influence lies beyond the reach of scientific validation.”… let’s face it, prayer is effective… it makes the praying person feel much better about themselves…
18 July 2005, on 9:24 pm
[...] I just read a Washington Post article (which I found out about at God is for Suckers!) about a new study on the healing power of prayer. Guess what. It doesn’t work. The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die. [...]
20 July 2005, on 9:40 am
And it’s not as if this is the first study to show prayer doesn’t work - there are loads of them.
I wrote about some of the others: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/prayer_still_us.html
23 July 2005, on 3:35 am
You make it seem as though death is such a bad thing. Perhaps prayer has an affect on people living, may be it doesn’t. These is a very humanistic and immature approach to something so important. We live and we die.. and people pray for us. Death is the ultimate, godly, “end” to life on earth, so why would he listen to our every wish? Why would God “obey’ us, and bring those who are suffering and dying back into years of more agony and suffering? You seem like you want to prove that there is no God so strongly. The fact that you want to disprove his existence so badly must mean he’s there, in a very obvious way.
I used to be an Atheist by the way. It’s fine, you can be one, but being a jerk about it gives all atheists bad names. It’s just like snooty Christians, and you certainly don’t want to be put in THAT category, now, do you?
23 July 2005, on 4:34 am
It’s Yahweh, and it isn’t just the “god of the nomadic jews.” The term Yahweh is used for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Yehweh and Jesus are both part of the trinity. People, your thoughts mean nothing when you know nothing about religious views and God Him self. I was once an athiest, it’s fine, but as an atheist study up on your, “worthy opponents,” show respect, be educated, and people will respect and listen to you.
23 July 2005, on 5:08 am
Thank you!! These people don’t have any faith in their gods. If God didn’t want people to get cancer, motherfuckers wouldn’t get cancer. These assholes know that god doesn’t exist or they wouldn’t erect hospitals out in the jungles.
23 July 2005, on 10:42 am
If Christians actually studied their faith’s dogma they would understand why prayer can not possibly work: does it make sense to believe that an all-knowing, all-powerful and all benevolent God has to be reminded that their followers need help? And does God pay more attention to the situation when they pray?
If God has a divine plan for everyone then praying is pointless. This means that if God has everything planned out then things are going to happen the way God planned it, whether you pray or not.
In fact, when Christians pray, they are paving their own way to hell.
If God has a plan for us all and has our best interests at heart when they pray to Him they are, in effect, saying “hey God, I don’t like the way you are running things and this is what I want you to do…” which is a violation of one of the Big Ten - they are not honouring their Father.
Apart from being sacrilegious, and probably blasphemous, they are demonstrating a lack of faith and trust in their Lord - a big no-no and a sure-fire way of having the Pearly Gates slammed in their faces.
Besides, He just doesn’t have the time to deal with every piddling little prayer request; don’t they know that He’s got a couple of bijillion cubic light-years of universe to run? He’s tried delegation, both inside and outside the family firm - JC, Mohammed, etc. but we all know the trouble they’ve caused.