Keep up the good work. God is using you mate! Praying for you buddy boy. Hope to see you in heaven.

Gentlemen,
Perhaps I was unclear in my earlier post. I speak of prayer from a spiritual perspective, not a religious one. I believe the answers to Daniel’s questions (in his initial post) are ones that fall through the cracks of both science and religion. Daniel’s questions seem to point to a spiritual pursuit–undoubtedly, a personal one.

“…You obviously can’t relate to this because you yourself have never really questioned your ‘faith’, or rather the random accident of birth that led you to be brought up in a Christian family, and the consequent environment of closed-mindedness that comes with a life spent in the church.”
Barry, why do you assume I’m a Christian in a church? Why not a Jew in a synagogue , a Muslim in a mosque, or a Buddist in a temple? If I was as close-minded as you suggest, I probably would have clarified my own religious identity or affiliation. And questioning ‘faith’ is a universal and inescapable phenomenon of human behavior. Moreover, it is critical to spiritual awareness and enlightenment.

Prove faith and prayer, solve all the mysteries, find the hill where the Lord hides, and then tell me where the quest ended. Maybe within?

Peace, wml

What’s so miraculous about someone being depressed not being depressed anymore after a significant life event?

And about the guy who got healed so he could go off and fight… I bet he was hopping mad at God for healing him!

First of all, the first link you provide is the findings of one researcher, “an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services”, not a medical scientist but a “leading expert on spirituality and religion”! I can’t help but conclude that his “research” is biased towards validating his own field of study.

The second link simply states that prayer makes people happier and that this has a positive effect on their health. Notice however that it doesn’t specify that you have to pray to the Christian god (the article says you can pray in a “church, temple, or mosque”) so you’ve really shot yourself in the foot. Praying to Allah has the same effect as praying to Yaweh!

Now for the real science:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html
“Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.”

http://tinyurl.com/5fmkv7
This was a *proper* meta-analysis of 14 studies.
“Given that the IP (Intercessory Prayer) literature lacks a theoretical or theological base and has failed to produce significant findings in controlled trials, we recommend that further resources not be allocated to this line of research.”

I’d also like to conclude by quoting a critic of these IP claims, in saying that I “subscribe to the generally accepted axiom of science that extraordinary claims (particularly miraculous ones) require proportionately extraordinary proof.”

What a bleak metaphor!

To be heated and burnt for so long, only to end up chewed into pieces and digested into millions of tiny molecules.

If THAT is the ultimate plan, it would be a better strategy not to go along.

While it is true that many (maybe most) extraordinary personalities were forged in turmoil and violence, I believe many of them would rather work to build a better world where people need not be subject to so much suffering.

Whatever the life experience, some of us are helping to reduce this suffering instead of cooking up a whole bunch of pointless metaphorical questions.

Witnesses are important in court cases, but questions about our world are not decided as court cases. Nevertheless, witness accounts can serve as the basis for hypotheses that can be later tested.

Even in a court case, however, the judge will compare the witness accounts to available physical evidence. If there is a disagreement it is clear that witnesses cannot be trusted. There is very little physical evidence for religious claims and thus it is not a problem in this case.

Another thing that the judge checks is if the witness accounts contradict each other. We can see great contradictions in the case of religion. Just compare the accounts of the main religions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. I see a problem there.

Third thing that I can think about right now is that the judge should check if it is possible for the witnesses to know what they claim they know. For example, many Christians claim that Jesus was born of a virgin. It is hard to imagine how even people living in his times would know something like that.

Concerning the “scientific proof”, I think that Barry was wrong and there is no such thing in science. There is only evidence for or against a particular hypothesis. When the evidence is overwhelming, it becomes reasonable to accept the hypothesis as a “fact”, or a “theory” if it encompasses a significant amount of knowledge with a great explanatory power. It is of course tentative. New evidence can change everything.

I don’t think that anybody is claiming that premarital or extramarital sex or homosexuality or the other things that you talk about are healthy. They are just person’s choices. For example, I like girls with black hair and smaller breast and that’s why I date such girls. Is it healthy or unhealthy? No, I just like it that way and it works for me.

There’s nothing unhealthy about prayer. I simply believe based on the available evidence that it doesn’t work. If other people believe that it works, good for them.

About the research that you mention, look for example at http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=89 for a review. I looked at the original article by David R. Hodge, and he himself states that the best designed and most recent studies didn’t show any effect. Most of the studies that he evaluates have very small samples, and as he notes, some are of poor quality. In my opinion, the effect is smaller than one would expect from an omnipotent deity (please, take this as a rhetorical statement, I don’t claim that I have any idea what an omnipotent deity would do).

Best, Norbert

What makes you think only atheists go into science and medicine? I have a buddy who worked on the genome project in St. Louis a few years back, and he just happens to be… a Christian. I know plenty of nurses who are also… Christians.

I’m thinking like someone praying and their arm growing back, or something like that. I’m only aware of things where people pray, and about half are healed, and the other half aren’t. In other words, the same as coin flipping.

Or, people are told people are praying for them, which can also increase chances of success. (Or in some studies, worsened their chances!) But that seems to be a psychological effect since it changes if they aren’t told.

My guess science will find a way to grow limbs back (we’re almost there), and then all of a sudden people will attribute it to God. God was so merciful to have godless scientists figure out a way to help people! And so on.

Ooh ooh, tell me about your avalanche of scientific proof against my personal convictions. Point me in the right direction. Tell me about how healthy premarital and extramarital sex is. Tell me how healthy homosexuality is. Tell me how healthy alcoholism or any vice done to excess is. Tell me how wrong loving your neighbor is… or perhaps how unhealthy prayer can be. Tell me how unhealthy a commitment to community is. Tell me how unhealthy it is to have convictions and morals that don’t shift like the sand… and to live a life with a greater certainty that comes with faith and hope.

After you’re done with that, you can explain to me why recent research has shown that patients who have an active prayer life generally do better through the treatment process than those who do not.

Dazzle me, Barry.

And please don’t start with the tired response of “Show me that research…” Go to http://www.physorg.com/news93105311.html and
http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/comp_med/types/spirituality.jsp just to get a taste.

“It’s just not” is not an argument. It’s your personal belief, possibly borne out by experience, but to assume that your personal experience applies to everyone is the sort of arrogant anti-logic that your faith promotes.

Proof, on the other hand, is a logical tool that has been developed over centuries and shown to work. If you have scientific proof that medicine is not as effective as prayer, I will convert immediately to whichever god you choose. I can safely say that because I know there is no proof, and never could be.

You can state as many arguments as you like, but without proof you are simply talking from personal experience. Are you really so arrogant to think that your personal convictions carry more weight than the avalanche of scientific proof against them? I don’t believe you are. What I do believe is that, because you are part of a large organisation that is happy to promote such ideas, you believe you have a weight of opinion behind you that gives your argument validity.

Oh, please. Are you seriously saying we should all follow “the little voices inside our heads” rather than take evidence from the world around us? That could justify any number of beliefs. Personal conviction is not a test of truth, it’s an excuse for lazy minds to justify what they can’t explain.

It sickens me to see someone who has honestly and painfully questioned the religion he was brought up in, being accused of not looking “within [him]self” for the answers! You obviously can’t relate to this because you yourself have never really questioned your ‘faith’, or rather the random accident of birth that led you to be brought up in a Christian family, and the consequent environment of closed-mindedness that comes with a life spent in the church.