posted
Well, hey, it made you post three times in a row, yes?
But as for experiments, why, one might try to pray for cancer victims. Now it's true that such an experiment could not prove or disprove all creators, but it could test one with the distinguishing characteristic of 'answers prayers'. The existence or not of a Desit-type creator, completely uninterested in human affairs, is really not that interesting, being more on the order of a IPU.
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quote:But as for experiments, why, one might try to pray for cancer victims. Now it's true that such an experiment could not prove or disprove all creators, but it could test one with the distinguishing characteristic of 'answers prayers'.
It's doubtful that prayers made under such conditions could be considered "prayers."
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posted
Fair enough; how about counting the number of sincere prayers made? You don't have to make them up artificially, there must be lots of variation on this.
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quote:Originally posted by JennaDean: Also, how do you define "answers prayers"?
What if the answer is, "No, sorry, it's your turn to die?"
Then what is the use of that god in the first place? Presumably, people who pray believe that this somehow increases the survivial chance of the one prayed for.
The objection that prayer is private is the sort of thing that sociologists compensate for all the time. This is what the concept of 'systematic uncertainty' was invented to deal with. Read any physics paper and you'll see in the abstract, "We find the ratio is n.nnn +- a.aaa +- b.bbb where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic."
As for sincerity, in this context I think "Not asked for by the researcher" would be good enough. Presumably, nobody prays without wanting the thing prayed for, and believing that the prayer will do some good. If you believe prayer is a useless activity, why would you do it?
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quote:Then what is the use of that god in the first place?
Well, no one would ask "What's the use of a father who won't give me everything I ask for?" Actually, a child might ask that, but most of us understand that everything a child asks for is not good for them, even if they don't understand why; and that if we as the parents love them we won't just give them everything they want.
But it doesn't hurt to ask; perhaps there are things we're not in the right position to receive until we've exercised enough faith to ask. It's like a parent who watches their child struggle, but doesn't step in and help until the child is willing to ask for help; and then doesn't always help exactly the way the child asks but instead helps in the way the parent knows is needed.
quote:Presumably, nobody prays without wanting the thing prayed for, and believing that the prayer will do some good. If you believe prayer is a useless activity, why would you do it?
I don't think it's useless. I don't think it's going to guarantee I'll always get the answer I want, but I don't think it's useless to communicate with my Father. I think He's willing to give us what we ask for as long as it's not the wrong thing for us (or for someone else, such as when we pray for Him to do something that would take away someone else's free will). I may get what I ask for; or I may only get a better understanding of why I can't have what I ask for right now. If what I get is communion with God and an assurance that His decision is the right one, it's worth praying for, for the peace that brings.
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posted
Right. So what you're saying is that prayer is sometimes answered with what you were asking for, and sometimes with 'inner peace'. Now, the latter is a bit subjective, but one could perhaps compare it to, for example, the effects of meditation, prayers to other gods (by people who believe in those gods), prayers to gods the subject knows do not exist, and drugs. If your prayer turns out to be measurably more effective, then that is certainly worth knowing, even for an atheist.
And if the prayer is sometimes answered with what you were asking for - then the effect should be statistically measureable. It doesn't have to be 100% effective. Medicine measures things that work in 5% of cases all the time; I myself am investigating a decay chain that occurs about once in a million decays. It's only a question of getting enough statistics.
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True. Haven't they done that? I mean haven't some hospitals done studies and found that people who prayed or had faith were more likely to recover, or recovered faster?
Sorry I'm a little vague, I'm just going on some memory of old PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly shows here.
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posted
You are correct that the study was done; several, in fact. You mis-recall the results and more results. You will probably be able to find some studies claiming to have found statistically significant effects; I am prepared to bet that for each such study, there will be a debunk of the methodology somewhere. Oddly enough, this field seems to attract a fair number of charlatans.
EDIT : I realised I'm laying myself open to a charge of 'no true Scotsman', here. Let me rephrase. I am aware of several studies claiming significant effects for prayer, all of which have really glaring flaws in the methodology which have been exposed by other scientists. I am not aware of any such study which has survived scrutiny. Also, you should note that even if one were found, the sheer number of negative studies means it has to be a really strong effect. It's like coin-flipping studies : If you do several hundred studies, then sure, you're going to find one where the subject was able to get the coin to show heads 600 out of 1000 times. But you have to look at the whole picture of all the studies. That's what review articles are for.
[ February 07, 2006, 02:40 AM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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posted
Oh, and by the way : Why is it that no modern miracles seem to regrow limbs? We certainly have plenty of amputees, what with all the wars around; you would think some of them would be Christians. Yet there seems to be a remarkable lack of healings of this sort of wound. Now, again, you could argue that these people do not really need a new limb, they need the inner fortitude to deal with their tests; but you should then explain why, say, the guy with cancer does need a remission.
I am reminded of the cult of Om (I think) in Discworld, whose priests had "quickly learned that a prayer, say, for Om to pull a stone down to earth, followed by a quick push over a cliff, was usually answered quite reliably."
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posted
Those were good sites, thanks, KoM. You may be right about my mis-recalling the results. I may be remembering surveys they've done where people of faith tended to live longer and be healthier. But those were surveys that asked people to describe their own level of faith, which wouldn't qualify as scientific studies, if I understand correctly. These researchers came up with about what I expected; I personally don't think you can randomly test God like you would ask a performing dolphin to do his tricks. Some people had objections to the tests that seemed silly to me, but this one objection I agree with:
quote:The 12 prayer groups were composed of strangers to the patients. Prayer might be more effective if it is done by family or loved ones of the patients -- people who know the patients and are concerned about their recovery. A posting on the Good Fig web site suggested that: "God doesn't want our vain repetitions; He wants sincere, heartfelt prayer. Some group of people that has never even met the patient in person and doesn't really know the person can't do that."
I also think it's difficult to have an accurate double-blind study done when 1) many of the patients in the "no-prayer group" probably have family and friends who are praying for them anyway; and 2) prayer is supposed to be at least a little bit dependent on the faith of the one being prayed for, so if you don't know you're being prayed for, how can you have faith that it'll work? And if it's missing that component, how could you consider that a valid result?
I think it's going to be hard to do a study that will simultaneously be a fair, controlled, blind scientific study of the effects of prayer on healing, and ALSO be a real measure of sincere prayers by people of faith on behalf of people they really, sincerely care about. I don't see how that could be done. If you only used people in your study who normally have faith and would be praying for themselves and have family sincerely praying for them, that won't be considered impartial evidence, because the researchers wouldn't get to randomly select who gets prayed for and who doesn't, and it wouldn't be in any way double-blind; yet those are the only kinds of people who are REALLY praying the way we want to test. Kind of a Catch-22. I guess all you'd end up with is anecdotal evidence. Which is what we already have!
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posted
I do think I dealt with this already. You would count the number of prayers; the sincerity and love of the ones doing the praying is a systematic uncertainty, which can be estimated for a large-enough sample. There are plenty of statistical means of dealing with this kind of problem. In effect, it's like checking a correlation between smoking and lung cancer : You don't get to choose who does the smoking, either, but that doesn't mean the study is unscientific! It just means you have to be careful to account for all the confounding variables. Double-blind is a fine method, but it's not the alpha and omega of all science.
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posted
Cool. So not a controlled study, more like a survey? For every heart patient, you note whether they died or not, how long it took for them to heal, how many complications they had, and then you ask them or their family whether or not they prayed for them? Do you also ask if it had any emotional effect on them - lowered their stress levels, etc? (That was noted in the studies you linked to - that the actual rates of healing may not have increased, but the stress levels appeared to be lower.)
I guess you'd also have to ask what was prayed for - it's possible some would pray for the person to be comfortable and not to linger. Or those who pray for God's will to be done and for us to accept it. But most of them would probably be prayers for healing.
So when are you going to do this study? Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Of course, this study would have the failing of all correlational research. It fails to identidy a causal relationship.
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That is certainly true, but you could hardly argue that people getting better causes their loved ones to pray. I think I did mention that there would be a lot of confounding variables you'd have to account for.
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"... people getting better causes their loved ones to pray"
Hmm ... that's a thought. Someone getting better could cause a loved one to develop or increase faith, and begin to pray. But it wouldn't have caused the prayer that happened before the person got better, so for the purposes of this study, no.
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posted
You also seem to be operating under the premise that God has to answer the prayers offered in this experiment. I don't know if this idea makes sense but say you did a statistical study on prayer and found a perfect method for measuring it. Lets say you actually proved beyond a doubt that prayer is beneficial to any patients condition. What now?
How would there then be any element of faith within prayer? People now would all be praying because they had read the study and had faith in that same experiement not because they had faith that God would help them.
I am one of the subscribers to the idea that prayer does not change the will of God but merely secures the blessings he desires to grant us, but are contingent on us asking for them. It is impossible to know God's will concerning any group of sickly people and therefore how can any percent of patients getting better mean anything? People cannot agree on how people ougth to pray. Are we invoking the favor of Jesus? Allah? Buddha? Who? What if by asking the wrong God on the first try we incure God's wrath and all the patients die? (not that I think that would happen, but how would we know if it did? What if in order to emphasize the role of faith within prayer God refuses to take part in our experiment? We would conclude scientifically that there is no correlation between prayer and recovery and we would be wrong.
I just don't see any experiment on the power of prayer working at all.
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Trying to scientifically prove the existence of “God” (or any other widely supported deity) is equivalent to proving the existence of the IPU (which I take as a known example of ad-hoc invention).
Here’s why:
quote: Originally posted by : JennaDean “prayer is supposed to be at least a little bit dependent on the faith of the one being prayed for, so if you don't know you're being prayed for, how can you have faith that it'll work?”
JeenaDean was giving this as a second point of a list of reasons why “studying prayers results” can’t be validated at face value.
This little quote contains for me all the “power of Religion”. If you actually believe in a deity, and have faith that your prayers are listened (and answered when it’s ok with that deity to do it) then I’d say that the name of that deity is irrelevant. It all comes down to personal beliefs and faith. When it works for a given individual, it’s the most beautiful fulfilment of Religion.
The thing is that IMO a lot of people need to have some deity to believe in, and there the traditions come in. Christians would teach their children to believe in a particular deity, Muslims would teach their children to believe in some other particular deity. But that is OK!.I myself am a non-theist (by choice, as a result of free will), but I don’t see Religion as bad. In the context above it’s quite admirable.
As long as the teachings of that deity say that “good” is preferable to “evil”, that peace and love are preferable to war and hatred, then the name of that deity might be whatever the tradition you follow says it is. Yet, when your deity “commands” you to eliminate any non-true-believers (see Inquisition), or to fight a “holy war”, then the whole idea of Religion is gravely misunderstood and misused.
But let’s get back to our present topic: “proving” the existence of “God” through scientific study. It’s useless! Every believer truly believes in the chosen/traditional deity, beyond any scientific proof. Any non-believer (in any one particular deity) might find “evidence there is not such a deity”. And there is no way to prove either way scientifically (and here the term “scientific theory” comes in, for no such theory proves anything at all). I even think that the day science claims to have found proofs against all deities, it would be a sad day of ultimate destruction of all that we call Humanity.
Remember that all scientific theories are accepted to “hold true” as long as there are no known facts to prove them false (or partially wrong). And our IPU can “choose” to never give out any way for us to prove it (doesn’t) exists.
Trying to scientifically “(un)prove” Religion, or to religiously assert that science is “overrated” (or even “evil”) are the two positions that are not only useless but also non-beneficial to anyone.
Keep Religion in Church and Science in School. It’s all called Education! (and I also seem to recall an Amendment about that...)
A.
PS: NASA’s site should be a scientific tool and act accordingly.
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posted
It does seem to me that you have not been reading the thread closely, of late. One cannot prove or disprove the existence of some far-off, uninterested god, true. But that is not a very interesting problem. Who cares if the IPU exists? She never interacts with humans, anyway. The question is, do the gods actually asserted by believers exist? And they have testable qualities, one of them being answers for prayer, and other intervention in human life. And I do believe I have dealt with the sincerity issue twice or thrice over, now : You would not pray to see if it worked, you would ask others, perfectly sincere believers, if they had already prayed, and then you would see if that had worked.
Once again : We hear of miracles on the order of 'cancer remission' and 'life turned around'. Why not, then, 'limb restored' - which, oddly enough, is outside what modern medicine, sheer willpower, or the human immune system can do?
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posted
Well I had a reply and the forums deleted it now I am not too eager to type it all out again.
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Heh. Getting back on the original topic, Commissar Deutsch is now resigning, and it also turns out that he did not, in fact, have the college degree that he claimed to have when he applied for the job. It seems there is still justice in the world. Linkie.Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: Originally posted by: King of Men Once again : We hear of miracles on the order of 'cancer remission' and 'life turned around'. Why not, then, 'limb restored' - which, oddly enough, is outside what modern medicine, sheer willpower, or the human immune system can do?
“Oddly” enough, the answer is contained in the question itself.
posted
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: How would there then be any element of faith within prayer? People now would all be praying because they had read the study and had faith in that same experiement not because they had faith that God would help them.
Hang on, though. It seems you are saying that your god would refuse to grant any of the prayers I was studying, lest people's faith be destroyed. But then, what if I decided to study all prayers, everywhere? Are you really saying that I can completely destroy the power of prayer, merely by systematically asking people what they've been praying for lately? That seems rather odd behaviour for a god who is not influenced by human pleadings.
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posted
Honestly, KoM, when are you going to figure out that God is smarter than you are. You insist on imaging God as a fairy-tale genii that can be tricked with technicalities.
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So what do you think would happen, precisely? And also, I am merely exploring some avenues that the theist posters' assertions are opening up, here. Certainly, rather than deny all studied prayers, it would be easier for a god to smite the researcher with lightning (or, ok, some more subtle distraction). You'd get into all kinds of free-will issues, of course. But that's not the point. I am trying to figure out what kind of god we can confirm or deny the existence of by scientific means. So far, the ones that could not be studied in this manner are turning out to be rather tricksy sorts.
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posted
I don't think that God is at our beck and call. There isn't some kind of a formula for making God grant our wishes. That is superstition rather than faith.
I think that prayer is a way to invite God to work in us, to show our devotion, to help us to focus on doing God's will.
Of course, God is smarter than I am, too.
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posted
Ah, it seems you have a slightly different perspective on prayer than what has been discussed so far. If I understand you correctly, then you do not believe that praying for a sick relative is going to make any difference to their chances of survival? That is certainly a kind of god that my proposed study would not touch; but it's also rather new to this thread, hence the confusion.
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You do not understand me correctly - but that isn't your fault. It isn't an easy question. I think that prayer is effective in all sorts of ways that we can't even imagine - and some that we can. But I do take issue with the idea of prayer as a way to control God. That by using the correct magic words we can force God to do our will rather than the other way around.
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Well, look you. There are two options. Either prayer is correlated with real, physical effects, or it isn't. If such a correlation exists, then it is measurable; this would be extremely strong evidence for some kind of force responding to will. (Not necessarily a god, it could just as well be a psychic force field; but at any rate, something which is currently not known to science.) The opposite does not disprove the existence of a god, but it does disprove the existence of a god who grants requests for real, measurable things. Is this a fair statement of the problem? You seem to be crying "false dichotomy, it's not that simple", but I haven't seen you give a third option.
You will note, right now I am not trying to prove or disprove the existence of any gods; I'm just trying to show that for some kinds of god, which in my opinion are the only interesting ones, their existence or otherwise is a question that science can investigate.
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KoM> I think what the detractors are saying is that attempting to run tests on the behavior of a single individual can produce misleading results, especially when that individual is aware that he is being experimented on.
One would presume that God--like all the other intelligent beings I have encountered--has a wide variety of complex motivations that can interfere with attempts to study his behavior. The situation is further complicated by the fact that no two religions agree on exactly what those motivations are, so that there are an immense array of possible explanations for any result, positive or negative.
I don't mean to entirely disagree with you, to tell the truth. (It hasn't been that long since some of my church's preachers offered cash rewards to anyone who could document a genuine, verifiable miracle of healing and were lambasted for materialism by charismatics.) But the problems involved are still real, as can be seen from all manner of studies on ordinary human psychology.
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I wonder how you would interpret the data? If people said they'd prayed for their loved one, and they recovered, that could count toward the existence of that God. Or it could mean they were going to recover anyway. If they said they'd prayed for their loved one, but they died, that could count against the existence of that God; or it could mean it was God's will for that person to die at that time. If people said they hadn't prayed at all, then their recovery or lack thereof says nothing whatsoever about the existence of God.
I'm not trying to be obtuse here, I just don't see how you could make a study that would be accepted as scientific. I guess you could count those who'd been prayed for, and see how many recovered; and count those who hadn't been prayed for, and see how many recovered; but what would the results mean? The answer will be interpreted differently by everyone.
If the prayed-for group had a higher rate of recovery than the other, theists will see that as evidence of what they already know, and atheists will see it as "the power of positive thinking" or something. If there was no difference in the rates of recovery between the two groups, what would that prove? I think to an atheist, it would be, "It didn't make any difference, your God must not be real because He's not answering your prayers." To a theist, it will be, "God cannot be controlled by our prayers, and he did answer them, but some of them were answered with 'No.'" Subjective things like the family members feeling comforted in their time of loss, or the sick person feeling at peace with it being his time to die, cannot be objectively counted, and would have no place in the study - although those things may be the answers to the prayers. In other words, the scientist may not even recognize whether a prayer has been answered or not. So we'll be back where we are right now - unable to prove God exists, except to those who are willing to put their own faith into the test.
I'd be interested in seeing the study, actually, but it wouldn't change my faith. I doubt it would change an atheists' lack of, either.
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posted
The 'power of positive thinking' is a known factor that can be controlled for; it has been rather effectively measured. (Google for 'placebo effect' and you'll see what I mean.) There are fairly sharpish limits to how much it can account for.
As for proving anything to a theist, well, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm only attempting to answer Dag's challenge by showing that there exist gods for which we can do scientific testing. Who would believe in what is highly irrelevant to that purpose. After all, there are plenty of people who believe in literal, young-earth Creationism; that doesn't make geology useless.
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quote:Perhaps, Horatio* honey, but my God isn't one of them.
Why not? Is your God capricious and random? If so, why do you worship Him, since that makes it just as likely that He'll smite you?
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posted
The Harris study has serious problems : It is not clear that the randomisation was done properly.
quote:1013 patients were randomized, 484 to the prayer group and 529 to the usual care group. After removal of those patients who spent less than 24 hours in the CCU (prayer was not started until 24 hours after admission), 524 remained in the usual care group and 466 in the prayer group.
quote:The much higher dropout rate in the first 24 hours in the prayer group is a very serious criticism of the study. The statistical probability that this finding would appear by chance is (.001), or 1 chance in a 1000, a statistically very significant finding. This higher dropout rate, since the mortality rate in the two groups was the same, suggests that the prayer group, for unknown reasons, was not quite as ill as the control group since the patients discharged within a day often turn out not to have serious problems. If they were a little liess ill at the start, we would expect them to have a more favorable course.
And in any case,
quote:There was no statistical difference in the days in the CCU, days in the hospital, or mortality.
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