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Efficacy of Prayer

Southwind17

Philosopher
Southwind17
Joined
Sep 6, 2007
Messages
5,154
So, I'm close to finishing reading Michael J Fox's memoir "Lucky Man", in which, I have to confess, he very lucidly, openly and entertainingly describes his battle with PD (I'd highly recommend it, actually), and then I get to the end of page 297 where, seemingly out of all context with the rest of the book, he writes:
At one time or another, during times of personal struggle or loss, we've all heard people tell us they would "pray for us." Just an expression, I'd always thought, until I felt the power of that sentiment when it is offered, and meant, by tens of thousands of people. The feeling is over-whelming; I have no doubt that being on the receiving end of so much spiritual energy has gone a long way to sustain me over the last couple of years. I no longer under-estimate the power of prayer.
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... and I'm thinking "Oh no, here we go, spoiling an otherwise honest and rational account of a person's admirable adaptation towards thier affliction.", but it got worse ... far worse! Over the page he goes on to write:
Nor, it seems, do some scientists. I recently read about an experiment in which researchers at Columbia University tested the power of prayer to help women with fertility problems to conceive. A group of strangers, members of several different religious faiths in America, were asked to pray for a group of women in a Korean fertility clinic who had no knowledge of the experiment. At the same time, a separate control group at the same clinic received no prayers. At the end of the study, fifty percent of the women who'd been prayed for got pregnant, while only twent-six percent of the control group conceived. This is exactly the opposite of what the researchers expected - their stated intention had been to disprove the efficacy of prayer.
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This raises a number of questions in my mind:

 
It is a real disappointment to read that, I thought MJF was a rational person.
As to why, probably because he pulled through and wants to acknowledge someone or something and in his circle it is perhaps not done to thank and acknowledge the actual people and processes that worked (medicine, doctors, himself) and casting such a wide net of praise probably has a benefit in other ways too.
(and I don't actually think he wrote it with all that intent, he probably wrote it without thinking too much though)
 
Well, it has been shown (though I don't have a reference, so take this with a grain of "maybe Maddog goofed") that believing one's self to be prayed for has effects, something like a placebo effect. I've felt something like it -- on a long fundraiser bikeride, getting REALLY tired, and then thinking "hey, I'm doing this for [the charity] and I've got the support and backing of all those people who sponsored me", and suddenly feeling more energetic. Yes, that was all in my head, but it still lifted me.

I don't know about the study he's referencing, but I've never seen any reliable evidence for double-blind prayer working.
 
maddog said:
Well, it has been shown (though I don't have a reference, so take this with a grain of "maybe Maddog goofed") that believing one's self to be prayed for has effects, something like a placebo effect. I've felt something like it -- on a long fundraiser bikeride, getting REALLY tired, and then thinking "hey, I'm doing this for [the charity] and I've got the support and backing of all those people who sponsored me", and suddenly feeling more energetic. Yes, that was all in my head, but it still lifted me.
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Ah, so it wasn't prayer as such then, with god or such like as the intermediary, in your case, but simply motivation because of a desire to please, or rather not to displease. Also, you were able to voluntarily act on your motivation, by pedalling harder. There's a significant difference between your scenario and an apparently infertile woman conceiving because of a belief in the hand of god inspired by numerous well-wishers pleading with him!
 
Southwind17 said:
Ah, so it wasn't prayer as such then, with god or such like as the intermediary, in your case, but simply motivation because of a desire to please, or rather not to displease. Also, you were able to voluntarily act on your motivation, by pedalling harder. There's a significant difference between your scenario and an apparently infertile woman conceiving because of a belief in the hand of god inspired by numerous well-wishers pleading with him!
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Still, in the case of the infertile women, there might be a certain degree of a desire to please involved. Since religious women believe that children are a gift from God, there's the desire to please God foremost. Also, if they know that there are people praying for them, there would be the desire to please the praying strangers as well---wouldn't want their prayers to go to waste!

Just a thought. Personally I don't think prayers do anything that isn't based in the placebo effect.
 
I'd love to hear the details of the study.
If they are as presented, this would be the easiest, and cheapest test to replicate.

Just find a fertility clinic and get a number of women to sign off to have their conception information available, grab a group of strangers to pray for them and you're golden.

I don't know how long the actually praying needs to go on, but I could set this up in a day for the cost of the phone calls, probably wouldn't even need to pay the praying participants.

Since it's so easy and cheap, if there was a real effect of being prayed for (when you're unaware of it) there should be dozens of studies with thousands of participants. There are a lot of people keen to prove the power of prayer, why haven't they replicated this simple study in overwhelming numbers?
 
Cavemonster said:
I'd love to hear the details of the study.
If they are as presented, this would be the easiest, and cheapest test to replicate.
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Just check out the Skeptical Inquirer link in my OP then - it's all there!

Cavemonster said:
Just find a fertility clinic and get a number of women to sign off to have their conception information available, grab a group of strangers to pray for them and you're golden.

I don't know how long the actually praying needs to go on, but I could set this up in a day for the cost of the phone calls, probably wouldn't even need to pay the praying participants.

Since it's so easy and cheap, if there was a real effect of being prayed for (when you're unaware of it) there should be dozens of studies with thousands of participants. There are a lot of people keen to prove the power of prayer, why haven't they replicated this simple study in overwhelming numbers?
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Ah, if only group prayer were that simple! Follow the link to see why.
 
So on the control group, how did they know that they weren't receiving anonymous prayers as well? Were they isolated in a prayer-free environment? What if in some congregation someplace in the world a pastor tells his flock, "Join me now in prayer for all those women in the world who want to conceive a child?"
 
I am getting so tired of people talking about petitionary prayer as if it's something that either "works" or "doesn't work". It's not an ability (although we have the ability to do it and that is of course not the same thing). It's a supplication to a Being whose participation, motivation, or even existence, by definition, cannot be confirmed through scientific study (supernatural + natural science = contradiction). Nothing but guesswork or mere presumption is possible. I'm no expert in theology but I have the suspicion that God's infallibility and omniscience indicates that petionary prayer is probably more for our own spiritual benefit via the act of doing it than it is for anything else.
 
It goes the other way around, too. The great film critic Roger Ebert has had a few bouts with cancer, the last of which left him in a coma and unable to walk when he recovered and permanently disfigured and unable to talk.

His wife, apparently a person of faith, asked the public to pray for him when it first happened. He is an agnostic himself and had been a lapsed Catholic for years but, according to one article, let her pray for him and read him passages from the Bible.

A reporter asked him if he felt God during his long illness and he said no. The reporter thanked him for his answer and said it was a relief to hear after all the news stories of people crediting prayer in illness and near death experiences but told him it probably would not be used.

If someone is already an agnostic or an atheist or just not very religious, they will continue thinking that way after a stroke, cancer, etc. And if they are somewhat religious or religious they will continue thinking that way.

Maybe desperate times make some people turn to religion when they usually aren't very religious and make some people do the exact reverse and reject it.
 
Yahya Sulaiman said:
I am getting so tired of people talking about petitionary prayer as if it's something that either "works" or "doesn't work". It's not an ability (although we have the ability to do it and that is of course not the same thing). It's a supplication to a Being whose participation, motivation, or even existence, by definition, cannot be confirmed through scientific study (supernatural + natural science = contradiction). Nothing but guesswork or mere presumption is possible. I'm no expert in theology but I have the suspicion that God's infallibility and omniscience indicates that petionary prayer is probably more for our own spiritual benefit via the act of doing it than it is for anything else.
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I don't think this is really true. Showing that prayer worked (internally valid, replicated studies) would certainly prove that something supernatural is out there, and I think would shatter the skeptic's world view.

So, a positive effect would indeed be informative. The negative effect, though, wouldn't be proof that gods don't exist (I suppose it would prove that if the god prayed to exists he at least doesn't answer prayers for science).
 
The post I made which you quoted, bpesta, showed why the very notion of prayer "working" or "not working" is flawed in the first place. Read it more carefully.
 
Yahya Sulaiman said:
The post I made which you quoted, bpesta, showed why the very notion of prayer "working" or "not working" is flawed in the first place. Read it more carefully.
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It didn't show me anything like that, and I read it while wearing safety goggles and a reflective vest.

Maybe it's not the readers who should be more careful.
 
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Greg_in_CO said:
So on the control group, how did they know that they weren't receiving anonymous prayers as well? Were they isolated in a prayer-free environment? What if in some congregation someplace in the world a pastor tells his flock, "Join me now in prayer for all those women in the world who want to conceive a child?"
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That's the point of having a control group. If you look at a large enough sample you should see all the same variables averaging out between subjects and controls. Then the study group you add the intervention to should show the difference just from the intervention which is the one thing different between the 2 groups.
 
Yahya Sulaiman said:
I am getting so tired of people talking about petitionary prayer as if it's something that either "works" or "doesn't work". It's not an ability (although we have the ability to do it and that is of course not the same thing). It's a supplication to a Being whose participation, motivation, or even existence, by definition, cannot be confirmed through scientific study (supernatural + natural science = contradiction). Nothing but guesswork or mere presumption is possible. I'm no expert in theology but I have the suspicion that God's infallibility and omniscience indicates that petionary prayer is probably more for our own spiritual benefit via the act of doing it than it is for anything else.
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So all those people claiming God answers prayers are full of it then? I would have to agree.

Or is it God likes to hide the fact he exists. If you dare actually look for evidence God exists, then he will hide from you. I would ask you to show me where in the Christian Bible does God say you must believe in spite of the fact I am going to cover up all evidence of my existence?
 
Yahya Sulaiman said:
The post I made which you quoted, bpesta, showed why the very notion of prayer "working" or "not working" is flawed in the first place. Read it more carefully.
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Maybe you think you've explained why testing prayer is flawed, but in reality you have not.

I suggest you consider a different option. You are rationalizing why, when you look for evidence God exists, you don't find any.
 
Any test for prayer, you know as well as I, would devolve into a "Special Pleading!" contest.

I used to have two decks, one on the front of my trailer and one on the back. I challenged by sister to pray that the rear deck gets sanded and painted while I actually sand and paint the front deck and see who gets the job done first.The back deck was even smaller so I tilted the odd in God's favor. Well, needless to say I won. I still don't know why this failed to convince her. Oh, so God can cure cancer or favor one side over another in War but can't sand and paint a deck? Pshh... Some Almighty God...
 
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