Demonstrating the Ineffectiveness of Prayer

The Reverend Bob said:

I think I know what the problem with Hubert's experiment for what I know about the power of prayer.
He didn't send me any seed-faith money. If he would send me his tithe I will pray to the flagpole for him and he will know the power of the flagpole in his life. The flagpole loves you all and wants you all to have joy and prosperity but first you must show the flagpole that you believe that the flagpole can do this for you. And the only way to show the flagpole that you have faith is be willing to send a small donation to me, so I may open up the power of the flagpole to all of you.

Click to expand...

Haha. BTW, what are your beliefs? You seem to be an atheist who likes to play devil's advocate a lot, but correct me if I'm wrong

Hubert Farnsworth said:

Haha. BTW, what are your beliefs? You seem to be an atheist who likes to play devil's advocate a lot, but correct me if I'm wrong

Click to expand...

I am a non-realistic Christian

Hubert Farnsworth said:

I can send you the program and you can type the prayers with sincerity, then.

Click to expand...

And thereby Pascal is validated. Play your silly games all you want. The only thing you'll prove is the stereotype of atheist conceit.

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities

Click to expand...

Hubert Farnsworth said:

Not really. The program only took about 10 minutes for me to write.

Click to expand...

Hypothetically "you have a baby (girl)"
Baby needs you, so you are telling us that the baby first needs to write a computer program before you come to her rescue

FYI: 1 cry should do the trick

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities to maximize the number of ones produced by a generator that generates a random integer between 1 and 2 inclusive that I also coded into the program. I coded a message box to appear that gives room for the user to type the prayer to the specified deity. The program does not finish until the user has finished typing the prayers to all of the deities included in the program. For this program, I included Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, Thor, Kali, and, for the sake of control, the nearest flagpole., I included code to generate a graph of the various deities and how many ones were generated after a prayer to each deity was typed. Here is the graph that resulted from 10,000 iterations of the random generator after each prayer to each deity was made. Clearly, there is no statistically significant difference between the deities, and thus we can conclude that there is no evidence that prayer to any of these deities was effective.

Click to expand...

You remind me of the practice, around in the 90s, of storing Tibetan prayerwheel prayers on hard drives because the number of rotations is important to their potency.

But were I a god, I can't say that an invitation to interfere with a 1-or-0 random generator device would stir my blood sufficiently for me to want to do anything relevant.

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities to maximize the number of ones produced by a generator that generates a random integer between 1 and 2 inclusive that I also coded into the program. I coded a message box to appear that gives room for the user to type the prayer to the specified deity. The program does not finish until the user has finished typing the prayers to all of the deities included in the program. For this program, I included Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, Thor, Kali, and, for the sake of control, the nearest flagpole., I included code to generate a graph of the various deities and how many ones were generated after a prayer to each deity was typed. Here is the graph that resulted from 10,000 iterations of the random generator after each prayer to each deity was made. Clearly, there is no statistically significant difference between the deities, and thus we can conclude that there is no evidence that prayer to any of these deities was effective.

View attachment 30269

Click to expand...

In my experience it seems that the only one to benefit from prayer is the prayee, who feels like they have done something to help.

So i am not surprised at your results, but i see a way to redeem your program. Once the prayer box has been completed open another input box entitled "do you feel better now?" or even more pertinant, "on a scale of -5 to 5, how much better do you feel for having prayed?" You can then total the scores for each god.

I have mentioned this a number of times. When my atheist husband had a very serious brain haemorrhage in 2006 quite a number of well meaning people prayed for his recovery. At the same time a Christian friend of ours had a life threatening illness, no doubt many prayers were said for him too. My husband survived, our friend sadly died, leaving his family in a terrible state as they had young children, all our children were adults. Whilst in a coma my husband had some sort of experience which convince him beyond all doubt that no god or after life existed.

Surely if god existed and answered prayers it would have healed our friend , but let my husband die. As sad as that would have been for us, it wouldn't have devastated our family nearly as much as the other family.

Thor was indisposed, he's at the bus stop.

Musing Bassist said:

And thereby Pascal is validated. Play your silly games all you want. The only thing you'll prove is the stereotype of atheist conceit.

Click to expand...

You actually think that I think that because I ran a program like this, I have proven prayer doesn't work? Lol, I guess not everyone shares my sense of humor.

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities to maximize the number of ones produced by a generator that generates a random integer between 1 and 2 inclusive that I also coded into the program. I coded a message box to appear that gives room for the user to type the prayer to the specified deity. The program does not finish until the user has finished typing the prayers to all of the deities included in the program. For this program, I included Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, Thor, Kali, and, for the sake of control, the nearest flagpole., I included code to generate a graph of the various deities and how many ones were generated after a prayer to each deity was typed. Here is the graph that resulted from 10,000 iterations of the random generator after each prayer to each deity was made. Clearly, there is no statistically significant difference between the deities, and thus we can conclude that there is no evidence that prayer to any of these deities was effective.

Click to expand...

Sometimes consciousness does have physical affects on reality:

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities to maximize the number of ones produced by a generator that generates a random integer between 1 and 2 inclusive that I also coded into the program. I coded a message box to appear that gives room for the user to type the prayer to the specified deity. The program does not finish until the user has finished typing the prayers to all of the deities included in the program. For this program, I included Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, Thor, Kali, and, ...

Click to expand...

Interestingly according to the Bible, Jesus is not the one and only true God, because:

This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
John 17:3


...the Father is greater than I.
John 14:28

And before you pray Bible God, it would good to know God.

Scientific confirmation that prayer works!

Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, who earned her doctorate degree at Harvard University, is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University. She has a neutral outlook on religion, having said, “I do not assume the existence or nonexistence of a deity or other suprahuman forces.”

Brown cites two scientific, peer-reviewed studies that confirmed the efficacy of prayer on patients. She noted, “One of the first publicized studies was by Dr. Randolph Byrd, published in 1988, in the peer-reviewed Southern Medical Journal. It was a prospective, randomized, double-blinded, controlled study of four hundred subjects.” The results: “Patients in the prayer group had less congestive heart failure, fewer cardiac arrests, fewer episodes of pneumonia, were less often intubated and ventilated, and needed less diuretic and antibiotic therapy.” The editor of the Journal noted that the study had been peer-reviewed and was judged to be a properly designed and executed scientific investigation.

THEN, a decade or so later, a REPLICATION STUDY by Dr. William S. Harris and colleagues was published in the “Archives of Internal medicine.” Dr. Brown noted of this study, “This was a ‘gold standard’ study of the effects of intercessory prayer on almost a thousand consecutively admitted coronary patients. Half received prayer, the other half didn’t. And again, the group that received prayer had better outcomes than the control group. These studies affirmed that the recipients of prayer had better outcomes than those who didn’t receive prayer.” - "The Case for Miracles," by Lee Strobel, pages 123-128

Yea God!!

God answers the prayers of the righteous. You have to come to God with clean hands. Psalm 66:18. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me". Sometimes the answer is "no". Only God can see into the future, and he will do what is best to facilitate the desired outcome. When you become holy, God will answer before you ask. God can also heal diseases. Psalm 103:3. "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases". I recently healed my Doctor Elijah of prostate cancer. God knows all of our thoughts and God is in all of my thoughts.

This just wouldnt work for the Bible God (Yahweh / Jehovah).....
Hebrews 11:6, NIV....
"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Also...if one is asking other gods for help, Jehovah won't answer. -- Exodus 20:1-5

ChristineM said:

In my experience it seems that the only one to benefit from prayer is the prayee, who feels like they have done something to help.

So i am not surprised at your results, but i see a way to redeem your program. Once the prayer box has been completed open another input box entitled "do you feel better now?" or even more pertinant, "on a scale of -5 to 5, how much better do you feel for having prayed?" You can then total the scores for each god.

Click to expand...

An old fella once told me god does answer prayers.
He said not every prayer because most only pray to him when things are bad but forget him when things are good.

The fella told me god is fickle but also wise. He knows the difference between a true christian that keeps god in his life at all times, good or bad and the fakes that only keeps him there part time when it benefits them only looking for gain.

He also made the comment about how many make the mistake praying for money and how money isn't happiness and that the bible tells that.

Anyhow, I found listening to that old fella when I was young interesting.

We Never Know said:

An old fella once told me god does answer prayers.
He said not every prayer because most only pray to him when things are bad but forget him when things are good.

The fella told me god is fickle but also wise. He knows the difference between a true christian that keeps god in his life at all times, good or bad and the fakes that only keeps him there part time when it benefits them only looking for gain.

He also made the comment about how many make the mistake praying for money and how money isn't happiness and that the bible tells that.

Anyhow, I found listening to that old fella when I was young interesting.

Click to expand...

Interesting ? Maybe. On analysis later on your life to you not find that reading between the lines that old guy was be somewhat judgemental of other abrabimic religions (and other religions in general) and even other christians?

And of course knowing god? Too many questions, some may earn me a reprimand from above (RF admin)

Hubert Farnsworth said:

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of prayer, I wrote a computer program that prompts the user to pray to various specified deities to maximize the number of ones produced by a generator that generates a random integer between 1 and 2 inclusive that I also coded into the program. I coded a message box to appear that gives room for the user to type the prayer to the specified deity. The program does not finish until the user has finished typing the prayers to all of the deities included in the program. For this program, I included Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, Thor, Kali, and, for the sake of control, the nearest flagpole., I included code to generate a graph of the various deities and how many ones were generated after a prayer to each deity was typed. Here is the graph that resulted from 10,000 iterations of the random generator after each prayer to each deity was made. Clearly, there is no statistically significant difference between the deities, and thus we can conclude that there is no evidence that prayer to any of these deities was effective.

View attachment 30269

Click to expand...

Ok, I choose none of the above. I don't believe in any of them. So, I can't pray to them and believe that they will do anything for me. Your computer program didn't have God who I do believe in. Now what?

If a person has prayed and the result is positive they praise god, if the result is negative often an excuse is made as to why god didn't come through for them.