You said:

First and foremost, it cheapened my personal accomplishment.

This phrase was literally in my head just before I read it. Of course it did. We’ve discussed this cheapening effect that prayer/God’s plan has many times. It belittles us all.

And your Occam’s Razor conclusion pretty much sums it all up. For a rationalist, that is. However, if you posted your story on a theist blog, I can almost guarantee you they would either a) spout more meaningless platitudes like the monkey-sack at your party, or b) delete your message entirely.

Because as you pointed out re: this study, as long as the magical can intervene in the conversation, as long as they refuse to abide by the same rules of logic (what we call reality), there is no point.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060331/sc_space/dontlaughjustthinkaboutit

I have a very personal interest in this concept, because twelve years ago I had cancer.
A malignant tumor the size of a ping-pong ball that had to be surgically removed (I won’t get into from where…). During the surgery, the doctors saw that the tumor may have spread, and told me to prepare myself for several sessions of chemotherapy.

Well, as much fun as that sounded like, I had different ideas. I began reading up on cancer survivors who used creative visualization, diet, and physical/mental fitness regimens to literally create a psycho-somatic environment that could stop the spread of cancer cells. I should mention here that despite the fact my excellent doctors (props to the Mayo clinic and modern medicine) did discuss mortality percentages with me, the form of cancer I had was not de-facto fatal. They encouraged me to fight.
So fight I did.
Diet, exercise, meditation, staying positively focused, and (I think most importantly) lots of fantastic marathon sex with the woman I loved at the time all helped me through what was a pretty scary time for someone whose 20th birthday was spent getting ready for cancer surgery.

My family was wonderfully supportive… HOWEVER (and here’s the rub), my parents are – my mom in particular – religious folk. Mom regularly reminded me that they and all of their friends were praying for my health. I told them not to bother, and that it kind of bugged me that she kept bringing it up. My “personal spiritual journey” was pretty heavily leaning toward no-god after eight years of religious schooling and life-long mandatory church going. But she persisted with the “power of prayer” litany. I think it helped her to deal with what must have been a terrible time for a mom.

I did not ever pray. Laying in bed after surgery, wracked with pain and puking my guts out from a reaction to the anesthesia, I found myself starting to wonder if “god” was punishing me. It was one of the worst times of my life: in a hospital, wondering about if I was going to die. But even then, I had the sense to realize it was just genetic misfortune. This was not “some terrible time” that made me “angry at god” which “turned me to atheism”. I was already on my way simply because “god” makes no sense. So, I focused my personal non-believer energies on getting better, and on the idea that I could beat cancer. I pushed myself. No self-pity, no “surrender” of letting go and letting god. I knew that it was up to me.
No prayers.
No spiritual healing bullshit - ayurveda, TT, holistic, ad nauseum.
Just self-actualized focus and personal commitment to living strong and healthy.
And plenty of heavy metal. Keeps you irregular.

When I returned to the Mayo three months after my surgery, bags packed for a week-long stay in the chemo ward, I felt a strange sense of upbeat calm. I remember as we waited for the elevator, my dad turned to me and told me he would stay with me all night if I wanted him to be there. I smiled at him and said, “You know, I don’t know that I’m going to have to stay at all.” (I was pretty full of my own shit with all the personal-power stuff I’d been doing). He smiled back and said, “We all want that. But in case you do, I just want us to have a plan.” Writing this, so many memories are flooding back. My dad was, and is, friggin’ awesome.
Well, to make this long story come to a point, I didn’t have to stay. I didn’t have cancer anymore. The doctors seemed mystified by the change in my bloodwork. All my cancer markers had fallen almost below detectable levels. They couldn’t keep me there.
We scheduled some follow-up blood tests, but that was that. The cancer was gone. I had basically decided I wasn’t going to have cancer, and it worked. Is that cool, or what?
Dad drove me back home, and the whole trip he was just amazed and thrilled for me. My mom was floored, and started to talk about how hard she had prayed – (groan).

Look… don’t get me wrong. My mom is amazing. I love her and respect her deeply. But I refuse to listen to that crap about the healing power of prayer.

First and foremost, it cheapened my personal accomplishment. It cast doubt on the fact that we human folk are capable of incredible things, and we don’t need prayers, church, god, or any of that garbage to do them. Some people may insist that we do, but I stand here – twelve years in remission – as a testament to the fact that we do not.

Often times, when I relate this story to mixed company, some theist monkey-sack chimes in with something about god having a plan for me.
I ask them what kind of shitty plan involves an atheist surviving cancer while some of the kids from religious families I met at the Mayo ended up suffering and dying from leukemia. “I want nothing to do with a god who plans for children to suffer and die while their parents live in fear and then weep with grief for years. This god of yours is a heartless asshole – if I met him on the street, I’d punch him in the fucking teeth.”
That usually shuts everybody up, which allows me to get back to the important task of telling the rest of my story in an effort to pick up girls.

These prayer-healing tests are a waste of time unless you can get an agreement from the god-squad at the get-go as to what would indicate success or failure of the experiment.
If there is no evidence that would change their minds about the “power of prayer”, then the experiments are a total waste of time and money. If statistical zero-sums or even failure aren’t accepted for what they are, then experimentation is pointless. And they should know that the millions spent on these nonsense circle-jerks could have saved real lives.

What douchebaggery.

So, Occam’s Razor review – is it more likely that supernatural intervention by an omnipotent sky-daddy motivated by en masse wishful thinking removed the cancer from me and not other clearly more-deserving believers, OR that my own effort, focus, and godless ass-kicking fury was responsible for my self-healing and that sometimes people die of diseases for no good reason?

Discuss.