Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Kenny]

You get presents if you believe in Santa.

Santa is real... it is your parents.

Thanks for helping me prove my point.

 

[Sheldon]

Hey im not a christian. I pray but not to the christian god. My gods aren't all powerful and often dont help in the real world. To me the point of prayer is to talk to my gods not ask for stuff. They might help but that's not my goal in prayer.

That's fine, but I was making the point in the context of this thread making assertions for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. I also don't agree that its efficacy can't be measured, as it has been. The research was contracted to remove subjective bias, and outside variables. The only objections people seem able to offer amount to selection bias, but in the case of the research on post operative heart patient recovery the excuses simply don't make any rational sense. However this research does show how easy such claims are to objectively test.

I will simply say this, prayer has never been objectively demonstrated to regrow a severed limb, an easy task for an omnipotent deity. After all evolution has managed to do this in certain species, so why can't a deity?

 

[viole]

No... I haven't lost. Apparently you didn't read the OP. It seems like you have in your mind something that is tainting what you are reading.

Not really. My point is that requiring double-blind tests to evaluate the effectivity of prayer, is an a-priori defeater of the efficacy of prayer. For there is no reason for God to grant prayers in such a way that only a statistical analysis can detect.

On paper, I should be able to move that mountain from Switzerland to New Jersey, or be able to magically separate Siamese twins, if I ask with the same spiritual pre-conditions that led God to cure a cancer.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Clara Tea]

I find that prayers, when understood, are usually "yes".

Certainly some prayers are superfluous (like praying for a loan). But, if a child asks for bread (self-interest) - would you as a parent not answer the self-interest prayer?

I think of "self-interest" as Governor Arnold Swarzenneger eliminating tax for the movie industry, and promoting Planet Hollywood (which would pay him if they made a profit). A child has to eat, so though the bread would do him some good, it is more like a necessity, rather than a luxury.

Definition of SUPERFLUOUS

Webster's Dictionary (above) defines "superfluous" as unnecessary or more than enough. I don't think that praying for a loan is unnecessary. What if the loan was for an orphanage? We might, some day, ask God to help us with a loan so that we might do His work...maybe for a church?

 

[Clara Tea]

That's fine, but I was making the point in the context of this thread making assertions for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. I also don't agree that its efficacy can't be measured, as it has been. The research was contracted to remove subjective bias, and outside variables. The only objections people seem able to offer amount to selection bias, but in the case of the research on post operative heart patient recovery the excuses simply don't make any rational sense. However this research does show how easy such claims are to objectively test.

I will simply say this, prayer has never been objectively demonstrated to regrow a severed limb, an easy task for an omnipotent deity. After all evolution has managed to do this in certain species, so why can't a deity?

Oh, great. Now see what you've done. I have eight arms. All of a sudden, God caught up with the backlog of unanswered prayers, and he got them all done at the same time.

 

[Clara Tea]

It is difficult to ask

Not really. My point is that requiring double-blind tests to evaluate the effectivity of prayer, is an a-priori defeater of the efficacy of prayer. For there is no reason for God to grant prayers in such a way that only a statistical analysis can detect.

Ciao

- viole

God seems to use science to hide his presence (if, indeed, he exists). For example, if the world is only 6,000 years old, and you could find dinosaur bones that date to over 6 million years old, it is obvious that God put them there to fool people. If God is going to alter facts in order to fool us, surely he could alter a prayer study, as well.

You are right, God isn't in the habit of answering prayers merely to prove his existence. He answers real prayers.

 

[Clara Tea]

Santa is real... it is your parents.

Thanks for helping me prove my point.

Is God your parent?

 

[Clara Tea]

That's fine, but I was making the point in the context of this thread making assertions for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. I also don't agree that its efficacy can't be measured, as it has been. The research was contracted to remove subjective bias, and outside variables. The only objections people seem able to offer amount to selection bias, but in the case of the research on post operative heart patient recovery the excuses simply don't make any rational sense. However this research does show how easy such claims are to objectively test.

I will simply say this, prayer has never been objectively demonstrated to regrow a severed limb, an easy task for an omnipotent deity. After all evolution has managed to do this in certain species, so why can't a deity?

Doc Oc (Spiderman movie).

 

[Sheldon]

Prayer Prevents Sickness and Heals According to Several Studies - RachFeed

There are multiple sites by medical professions that support ti.

did you try searching for them?

Have you even read these links you're Googling? Or do you not understand the difference between correlations and causation?

Firstly that's an article citing studies not medical research, and they're clearly using subjective claims, secondly these studies are showing a correlation between religiosity and health benefits, this is not objective evidence for anything supernatural obviously, since the benefits of doing things one enjoys, especially in cohesive social groups are well documented. They not of course apply solely to religiosity, meditation for example has vey similar health benefits. As previously explained several Scandinavian countries are now almost entirely secular or atheistic, and they have some of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. The research would need to remove many other variables of course for even the core claim to be objectively measured.

As has been explained one can Google anything and get results that reflect what you want, which is what you appear to be doing here. Try and imagine for a moment, the global impact of properly conducted scientific research that "proved" intercessory prayer works? As opposed to showing that religiosity including prayer can have health benefits. Go look at the Catholic Herald website, the headline reads "Pope Francis gives red hat to Archbishop Arthur Roche"

No mention that science has proved prayer works, I'd have thought the implication was not that opaque to any objective individual.

 

[Clara Tea]

Prayer Prevents Sickness and Heals According to Several Studies - RachFeed

There are multiple sites by medical professions that support ti.

did you try searching for them?

But prayer is a form of meditation or hypnosis, and it has also been proven that those prevent sickness and heal. There are people in England who were taught to hypnotize themselves so that they could get open heart surgery without anesthetic and not feel it. It is well known that some hynotized people can have a needle stabbed through their arms and they won't feel it.

When I was taking a graduate course in Psychology, my professor (trained in hypnosis...not a part of his training in psychology) made one of our classmates cluck like a chicken. The egg breakfast was an added incentive (that part was a joke).

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Relevance to the subject matter?

Well, you just undermined your entire case in the OP......

You said that for prayer to work, you need to meet the correct criteria for how praying should be done.
And then you gave 3 such criteria from the bible. And if you think there are more criteria, I'm sure they'll be christian criteria as well.

And your entire case is that if one doesn't comply to your criteria then the "test is invalid" - because they are "praying wrong" and thus god wouldn't answer.


But then again you also said that this god doesn't actually care about those criteria either, since you believe he answers the prayers of this muslim fellow and that he's so good and merciful that he'll answer "wrong" prayers anyhow.

So I'm confused...

Are you saying that following the "correct" criteria gives one a guarantee of having the prayer answered?
And thus a 100% success rate?

 

[Clara Tea]

Handy to line up handwaving excuse in advance, when the evidence inevitably doesn't go your way. The irony of course if it did, we all know theists would leap on it as proof for a deity. I have yet to see any argument for intercessory prayer that didn't involve such obvious selection bias. It appears to work, it's evidence, it doesn't work - it's not evidence and can be waved away, the way you did with the double blind clinical trials conducted on post op heart patient recovery.

I'm afraid the bias is too obvious too ignore,

Maybe if we had a bowl of black jelly beans and orange jelly beans, and selected only those people who were given orange jelly beans, we could assert that prayer worked? We have to be careful defining the parameters of the experiment.

 

[Clara Tea]

Have you even read these links you're Googling? Or do you not understand the difference between correlations and causation?

Firstly that's an article citing studies not medical research, and they're clearly using subjective claims, secondly these studies are showing a correlation between religiosity and health benefits, this is not objective evidence for anything supernatural obviously, since the benefits of doing things one enjoys, especially in cohesive social groups are well documented. They not of course apply solely to religiosity, meditation for example has vey similar health benefits. As previously explained several Scandinavian countries are now almost entirely secular or atheistic, and they have some of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. The research would need to remove many other variables of course for even the core claim to be objectively measured.

As has been explained one can Google anything and get results that reflect what you want, which is what you appear to be doing here. Try and imagine for a moment, the global impact of properly conducted scientific research that "proved" intercessory prayer works? As opposed to showing that religiosity including prayer can have health benefits. Go look at the Catholic Herald website, the headline reads "Pope Francis gives red hat to Archbishop Arthur Roche"

No mention that science has proved prayer works, I'd have thought the implication was not that opaque to any objective individual.

Google makes us all "bubble boys" (as I call it). Democrats, looking up George W. Bush, would get negative remarks about him. Republicans, looking up George W. Bush, would get positive remarks about him. This is because the Google search engine targets interests. So, if you are interested in proving a point (that God exists, for example), Google will show you that you can prove that God exists (or fool someone into believing that it is proof--as you pointed out). We're like some boy in a bubble of his own thoughts, with no outside influences. If he thinks that the earth is flat, he will get nothing but agreement from Google.

I opted out of the Google preference tracking. I want even-handed unbiased information (so that I can bias it, lol).

 

[Polymath257]

A lot of people whose prayer was fulfilled (including me) would not agree with you.
Because sincere praying to God doesn't mean testing it.

There is also a verse somewhere in the bible which says we should not stop praying for same thing over and over again.

So how can we make up a double blind study that fits the requirements?

How can we test the beliefs of both the person praying and the person being prayed for? How can we test for the sincerity? How can we select people that pass this so that we can even proceed to a test?

The test in the OP took people who believe in the power of prayer and had them pray according to their beliefs. The funny thing is that those patients that knew they were being prayed for had worse outcomes than those who did not.

 

[Polymath257]

We have medical verifications. We have a multitude of people who can testify of its efficacy. People who go to church (where prayer is engaged are 55% less likely to die:

Church attendance, allostatic load and mortality in middle aged adults

another study:

Religious Service Attendance and Mortality Among Women

My main point is that I gave just three reasons why "the quotes against prayer" didn't have the correct parameters. Prayer has spiritual principles that are necessary to be effective.

The effect of going to church is primarily because having a social network leads to a longer life span.

How can a test make sure those 'spiritual parameters' are met so there is a valid test? And how can that be done for *all* the different beliefs about what those parameters are?

 

[Clara Tea]

Well, you just undermined your entire case in the OP......

You said that for prayer to work, you need to meet the correct criteria for how praying should be done.
And then you gave 3 such criteria from the bible. And if you think there are more criteria, I'm sure they'll be christian criteria as well.

And your entire case is that if one doesn't comply to your criteria then the "test is invalid" - because they are "praying wrong" and thus god wouldn't answer.


But then again you also said that this god doesn't actually care about those criteria either, since you believe he answers the prayers of this muslim fellow and that he's so good and merciful that he'll answer "wrong" prayers anyhow.

So I'm confused...

Are you saying that following the "correct" criteria gives one a guarantee of having the prayer answered?
And thus a 100% success rate?

Maybe it is like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (if you look at something, it changes). The idea is that looking at a subatomic particle with light will alter the energy of the particle (the light will change the energy of the particle). So, they started looking at particles by bouncing particles off of particles (even neutrinos--which was done by Aharenov, of the Aharenov-Bohm Effect fame).

One of my best friends (now a professor of physics) made a cabinet to demonstrate bell curves. Ping pong balls were dropped through rows of nails, and they were supposed to always form a bell curve as we watched them through glass. But the lid was warped. So, every time we closed the lid, it altered the statistics. It was very similar to the Uncertainty Principle.

The actual principle states that if you know more about the position, you know less about the momentum (and vice versa).

So, in this case, if you try to measure prayer, and God wants to stay anonymous, God will alter your experiment. On the other hand, if you are not trying to measure prayer, the experiment might work.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Prayer Prevents Sickness and Heals According to Several Studies - RachFeed

There are multiple sites by medical professions that support ti.

did you try searching for them?

Strange way to sidestep my post, but the blog post you linked to, which cited... another blog post sure was compelling.

Feel like addressing my points now?

 

[Clara Tea]

So how can we make up a double blind study that fits the requirements?

How can we test the beliefs of both the person praying and the person being prayed for? How can we test for the sincerity? How can we select people that pass this so that we can even proceed to a test?

The test in the OP took people who believe in the power of prayer and had them pray according to their beliefs. The funny thing is that those patients that knew they were being prayed for had worse outcomes than those who did not.

Then we'd better not anger theists, or they might pray against us. Maybe pray for a Golem?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Indeed, but more importantly how are the perceived successes being differentiated from random chance? All I have seen offered are subjective selection bias. Research that leaps from correlation to causation while ignoring any number of affecting variables, and didn't remotely evidence the efficacy of prayer in any objective way.

Indeed.

I've found it interesting how we've had a few members who have posted variations on "but the OP is about a sort of prayer that I don't do. I never do the sort of prayer where a lack of feedback from God would imply that the prayer had failed."

 

[KWED]

There is no No True Scotsman fallacy here because in the story I quoted there is no 2nd person who would improperly disqualify Saul's mistakes.
Sorry but, you either didn't understand the point or you don't know what is "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

You are the "2nd person".
By citing that story, you are claiming that not being a true believer is a reason for god not answering our prayers.

I really have no idea nor did I ever go after what other people are praying.

You made the initial claim so surely you have a position on the implications of it.

Did you read the broader context?

Yes. If you think there is context that refutes my point, feel free to explain it.

obviously to someone who have 0 XP with prayer and encounter with God.

So you are saying that in order to realise that prayer works, you first have to believe that prayer works?

Scriptures say not to test God, therefore their tests are useless and impossible to prove anything.

How do you figure that?

I would rather not share that here.

Then we can assume it never happened. (Claims that are made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.)