Doesn't this belong in the Colosseum?
WELL IF IT DOESN'T NOW, IT WILL SOON, HAHA AM I RIGHT?
Wombatwarlord777 said:
Ironically, one of the best arguements for these state of mind effects comes from a study on the effects of prayer for those who had undergone heart surgury. This study of 1,800 heart bypass patients concluded that prayer has no effect on recovery if the patient prayed for has no knowledge of such prayer, and that those who were aware that others were praying for them had more complications through their recover. Why is this? Because people tend to pray for those that are in bad shape. If you heard that people started praying for your safe recovery after surgery, you might think that your condition is worse than it actually is, become depressed and inadvertantly weaken your immune system. That demonstrates the effects that directly-powerless practices, such as curses, magical healing, and prayer, can have on our actual health via changing our moods and outlooks.
I think you chose a bad study to prove your point. The media just jumped on that one when it took place, but if you look at the way it was carried out, it gets kind of sketchy. I've read up a bit on this study (and some other studies about the same subject) and there is one major flaw with it. That very flaw is even hinted at in the article you linked.
"According to Dr. Charles Bethea, Integris Baptist Medical Center, Oklahoma City, one of the co-authors of the study, "Intercessory prayer under our
restricted format had a neutral effect." "
What exactly was this restricted format? A little research shows me this: The groups doing the praying weren't doing their own praying. Instead, the coordinators running the study gave them scripted prayers. Literally. The people doing the "praying" were simply reciting lines written on a piece of paper for them. Now, from a Christian viewpoint, at least, that is total
bullshit. Christian prayer is not reciting lines, it is opening up your heart and mind to God. That is very hard to do through a bunch of pre-written words. Even in the Bible, the only place where a pattern was given for prayer was the Lord's Prayer, and that was not a word for word thing, but just an example of the things we should pray about.
tl;dr, that study had a serious flaw if they're talking about Christian prayer. I'm not just making excuses to fight science for the sake of justifying my beliefs, either. I know of two other studies that got surprising results when they did it right in the first place.
The first one was done with a group of Cardiac Patient residing at the San Francisco General Medical Center. Being aided by computer generated lists, they divided the patients into two groups, neither of which knew they were being prayed for. One group was prayed for, and one group wasn't. As for the people doing the intercessory prayer, they were chosen because of their confession to be born again Christians, their regular fellowship with other Christians, and daily prayer. In addition, the doctors and nurses didn't know which patients belonged to which group. A double blind study, in every sense of the term.
These patients were monitored before and after the prayer was started. At that point in time, there was no statistical difference between them. After a period of time, when prayer was introduced, the results started to get dramatic. I'll give the exact statistics too, but in the words of the coordinators, the patients who had unknowingly recieved prayer suffered "less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently intubated and ventilated."
Here are the results on their own:
In total, the significance of this study is way beyond what is considered significant in the scientific community. To put it in simple terms, if the results of a study had merely a
20% chance of turning out the way they did, it is considered significant. In the case of this study, it had a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening, and that is incredible precision. Even still, to be fair, we have to consider the fact that many of the control group may have actually had people praying for them in the first place, which would skew the results to a more minor significance.
That's not all, though. There was also another study done at the Mid America Heart institute, with patients in the Coronary Care Unit. Again, it was a double blind study. The patients weren't aware of the study, and the doctors had no hint of which patients belonged in which group. One group recieved prayer, and the other one didn't. It's also interesting to mention that the intercessors, a mix of non-denominational, catholics, episcopalians, and other protestant denominations, knew nothing about the patients except solely their first name.
The results:
Although not as incredible as the last one, the conclusion is still significant, having a 1 in 25 chance of coming out that way. However, that is most likely do to the much smaller sample size in this test.
I actually know of one other study also, involving bloodstream infection patients, but I hesitate to mention it here, simply because I don't know the specifics of it enough. Oh well, I might as well mention it, there's no harm in it.
The third study involved a few thousand patients (3993 to be exact) dealing with bloodstream infections. Again, one group received prayer, and the other didn't. Judging from the differing mortality rates, the length of hospital stays, and the rate of fevers, they came to these results: The group that was unknowingly prayed for had a significant difference from the placebos, and it came out in the end to be a 1 in 25 possibility, significant enough for science.
Of course, these are pretty much the results I would expect. I fully believe in a God who receives Christian prayer and blesses us through it. And from what I see, he doesn't appreciate scripted prayer too much. XD
So yes, if you would consider prayer magic, I do believe in it, in that regard. And science seems to be with me.