prayer experiment

[yourhopeboundheart]

for those of you who believe in the effectiveness of prayer, have you ever conducted any sort of experiment on your prayer life? do you keep a prayer journal with hits and misses, have you ever prayed for anything with the sole purpose of proving prayer? has controlled experiment ever been a priority in your prayer life, and how have you controlled these experiments?

what i'm mostly asking is, do you have responsible reason to believe that your prayers are effecting the world around you?

 

[Riverwolf]

Prayer doesn't affect the world around me. Prayer affects me.

 

[no-body]

Prayer for me is the same thing as meditation. I've never really understood praying for things or events but I guess it's just because I don't understand that concept of God.

The efficacy of prayer has been studied and I believe statistically it doesn't bear up anything solid. The few times where people got together and prayed for something and it happened don't total up to anything useful. If you are praying for things like health; science and medicine have a better record at doing something. Prayer corresponds to radomness.

 

[mho123]

for those of you who believe in the effectiveness of prayer, have you ever conducted any sort of experiment on your prayer life? do you keep a prayer journal with hits and misses, have you ever prayed for anything with the sole purpose of proving prayer? has controlled experiment ever been a priority in your prayer life, and how have you controlled these experiments?

what i'm mostly asking is, do you have responsible reason to believe that your prayers are effecting the world around you?

well I don't know any experiments with prayers , but I know that some years ago a scientist called Arthur c Clarke ( If I don't misspel his name ) challenged to test the theory of probability .
What he does was making a random number generator ( without getting into detail ) and he asked people to look at the numbers on generated by the machine .
He asked one group to concentrate and wish to get an even number and another group to hope wish concentrate on uneven numbers . The control group was just to stare at the numbers without further information .he repeated this several times and compares the results .
To make a long story short , the results of the test was that when people would wish for an even number , the probability of the machine to create an even number was higher and statistically meaningfull difference was obtained .
What does this all mean ?
1- theory of probability is not 100% correct
2- our minds thoughts have somehow had an influence on the machine so there was a link with our thoughts and the outcome of the machine .
Weird stuff but rather intersting .
Hope it helps about your question .

 

[Engyo]

for those of you who believe in the effectiveness of prayer, have you ever conducted any sort of experiment on your prayer life? do you keep a prayer journal with hits and misses, have you ever prayed for anything with the sole purpose of proving prayer? has controlled experiment ever been a priority in your prayer life, and how have you controlled these experiments?

what i'm mostly asking is, do you have responsible reason to believe that your prayers are effecting the world around you?

Prayer, for me as a Buddhist, is "from", not "to". Prayer is an offering, rather than a request; a giving rather than a receiving. As another poster said, I am changed through the act of prayer, not my surroundings.