Prayer is a form of meditation and/or directed attention.

If prayer has an effect on a sick person, I suspect that it's a result of these characteristics rather than the verbal content of the prayer.

How can Ms. Brower and Mr. Scariato expect their musings here to have ANY credibility at all when they ignore an even larger, and better-designed, study of intercessory prayer, headed by Dr. Herbert Benson. See
Benson, H., et al. 2006. Study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial on uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal 151: 934-42. That study showed that the patients who were the "targets" of intercessory prayer did no better, and that those patients who knew they were being prayed for did WORSE.

See also http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-02/prayer.html.

After having read a considerable amount of the published research, I conclude that prayer can have a modest "positive thinking" or attitudinal impact on the health of a patient who is doing the praying for himself or herself, but that there is no measurable benefit whatsoever to intercessory prayer.

The kindest thing I can say about Ms. Brower and Mr. Scariato's current essay is that at least they are not advocating the murderous craziness of relying on prayer exclusively and refusing all medical treatment -- a strategy that some religious sects consider to be very well-grounded in scripture, and which has resulted in the totally preventable deaths of dozens of innocent children in the U.S. alone.

Jeff D

Ambrose Bierce defined 'to pray' as

"to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

Amen to that. He forgot to add that there's nobody up there to pray to anyway, and that's the reason they're never answered.

If you folks think prayer is so great, just pray and don't burden the medical system. The main beneficiaries will be mortuaries.

If not for modern medicine, most of those praying would have had similar mortality to those human populations around the time of christ and throughout most of human history. Most people died before the end of childhood. Median survival for those that lived to reproductive age would been mid thirties to early forties. Some people would have lived into their 80's, but the percentage of those elders would have been very small.

Prayer does and doesn't work, and this fact is inextricably entwined with the whole problem of why "bad things happen to good people." People who have prayed and have been prayed for sometimes miraculously recover from illnesses. But sometimes they die.

People who have NOT prayed and have NOT been prayed for sometimes miraculously recover from illnesses. But sometimes they die.

How to explain this? Does prayer only work for "true believers?" Does God listen selectively?

I can't figure it out either.

In days of old, whole communities would pray together at set intervals for God to save the reigning Monarch. Priests had the job of organizing the mass-praying and were expected to get results. The monarch died anyway. In days of old death was everywhere all the time. There was only prayer.

If prayer worked we would be living in a different world. Successful prayer techniques would have been understood and refined by now, and people would know how to succeed at praying, and why the prayers of others failed.

Even the pope's prayers fail. I'm thinking of the family of the missing little girl, who sought his help a year or two back.
He waved his magic wand around, and prayed to the Bigguy, and predictably nothing happened. Because nothing ever happens as a result of talking to a god who isn't there. Except maybe a placebo effect of doing something rather than nothing.

"Group One was assigned to a variety of prayer teams thoughout the United States, who prayed for them each day. Group Two was not assigned any prayer team."

With all due respect, what does this tell you about god? For the 1986 results to indicate that god interceded on behalf of group one more favorably than group two one has to believe that god was not aware of the study either. Surely had god been aware of it he would not have allowed more suffering in one group over the other simply because it wasn't asked for it by strangers ias part of some study. Or would he?
Was god duped? Was god ignorant of the study? Does this mean that if no prayer group is aware of my illness, I will suffer more and longer? Really?

Thanks for such an enlightening article. Would also like to share with your readers another article on:
HOW PRAYER WORKS @
http://inspiromania.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/how-prayer-works/

I mean, hey. I'm just a random crazy perons who's been known to be called a 'shaman' here and there. But. If you want to heal people, you don't use their suffering to 'prove' something.

For the TV.

You do it. Or you do not.

I think the reason people are starting to see results where Christian prayer actually *worsens* clinical results is cause ...you made it ugly that way.

Made it about something other than your hearts. Maybe let someone take that from you.

If healing is what you want, ...shhh. This noise is not healing.

This is all nonsense.

Prayer does *not* work when it's some kind of obligation or controlled study. Better-documented studies than from 1986 repeatedly show it does *not* help, statistically. Even anecdotally.

I would say prayer works sometimes when all else fails, but, by the same Gods, you don't try to establish authority for it by cooking books when more obvious ways are available.

You say:

"We know that people who talk to their plants succeed in growing their plants. Could talking to plants be considered a type of prayer?"

Mostly, it's considered a form of 'witchcraft,' actually.

Not that my plants complain, just if you do it on any sort of macro scale..I save these shocked plants from Wal-Mart, it's a 'miracle,' I question why more than I could take home are dying in the first place, I'm a 'commie.' :)

I've called on many spirits to heal many people. Thing is about it, the moment it's about anything but doing that, say, 'proving something,' ...it's not a prayer, it's not a healing, ...it's using someone's sickness for something.

And that's not good.

That's why these studies seem to be showing people actually doing *worse* if prayed for, just lately.

Either that's all wild statistical deviation being made too much of all along, or...

Maybe the powers you think to command don't wanna be used in that manner of 'proving a point.'