Not a shock to me ...

Study: Prayer doesn't affect heart patients

NEW YORK (AP) -- In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them.

The work, which followed about 1,800 patients at six medical centers, was financed by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research into science and religion. It will appear in the American Heart Journal.

Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" for specific patients, for whom they were given the first name and first initial of the last name.

The patients, meanwhile, were split into three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren't prayed for but were told it was a possibility.

The researchers did not ask patients or their families and friends to alter any plans they had for prayer, saying such a step would have been unethical and impractical.

The study looked for any complications within 30 days of the surgery. Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center, who did not take part in the study, said the results did not surprise him.

"There are no scientific grounds to expect a result and there are no real theological grounds to expect a result either," he said.

Science, he said, "is not designed to study the supernatural."

Science, he said, "is not designed to study the supernatural."

That quote pretty much sums it up, I think. There are so many factors here and the results were inconclusive to any side wanting to claim a win. And people who pray will go on praying, and people who don't, won't.

What is inexplicable is how these doctors got funding for such a worthless study.

Of course, if prayer worked as described in the scriptures, scientists shouldn't have to study it. The effectiveness of prayer should be obvious and astonishing.

While I am not surprised at the results, I really couldn't call this study worthless. After all, religion does play an integral role in many people's lives, and it is know that a person's mindset is quite significant in the recovery of a patient. It seems quite sensible to test to see if any other connection exists that might result in a better recovery..

haha i like the smile next to the topic... but its all a crock like i said in the other thread about this.... this isnt the simpsons were flanders just prays and gets what he wants... and science just proved that

I cannot say that I am surpised the results turned out so badly. The idea that telling people they would have prayers from wiccans, pagans, Christians, Buddhists, Moslims, Jews, Bahia, and everyone else they could pull in sort of shot the whole thing to hell to begin with to me.
The patients were not viewed as individual spirits with individualized spiritual needs but more like a rack of empty test tubes.

The Noetic people may view all prayer as generic in value and a person's spirit a mindless energy force open to any form of manipulation but most people in the general population do not. I think the whole study was stupid and and even cruel, especially given the end results.

I concur with Purplos. The bias is self evident in that quote:

Designed to study the super natural!?
Observations like that, from persons alleged to be of this caliber , cause me to wonder if those PhD correspondence courses are more popular than initially thought!
No, seriously though, how patently absurd to actually put one's name and professional reputation to a study like this!

Now I know ya all have had to have heard of the Noetics bunch before. Maybe there is an old thread on the Noetic Sciences Institute somewhere.

Oh, I agree with you there. The trouble I see with this study is that it doesn't take in to account the following:

1) Whether the patient believes in the power of prayer. (Tell a die-hard athiest he's getting prayed for, and he might get annoyed - not helpful to healing)

2) Whether the religious affiliate of the prayer and the prayee (one being prayed for) is similar. -- If I strict Christian thought a pagan was praying for them, or visa versa, it could have a negative effect.

3) Whether the volunteer prayers actually truly believed in their prayers.

Wasn't there a study done several years back that showed that prayer by the patient helped speed their recovery process? Can't find a link right now. I chalk that up to a positive mental attitude, which is important in recovery if you ask me.

I can agree with the study, in that simply praying to God... in some way may not help someone be healed at all... If the Prayer involved only asking God to heal the patient.... wouldn't God have known you wanted the patient healed before you even asked?

I've prayed to God to heal my Mom and Dad of Hepatitis C, an incurable disease...

I realized... if I sit here and just pray for it to happen, what good will be done?

I realized that it was up to me to find the cure.... so I looked for it and I found it and healed my parents of the incurable disease...

Did God help me? I couldn't have done it without Him... I wouldn't have believed it was possible for me to find the cure... or would have had a lack of 'faith'.

This is one way that God can answer a prayer for healing...

Matt

Matt 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Maybe the people that prayed didn't believe strong enough! LOL

Its worked for me.

Prayers always work for me and thats a fact

How so? Ever pray for somebody who has lost a limb and have it grow back? Somebody who was blind et al? If not ... why not? Should happen all the time if god exists.

I've spent twenty-one years of my life in a wheelchair--fifteen of those years as a devout Christian. Thousands prayed for me. I should have been healed instantly. Was I? No. Here I sit in declining health. Why?



So god helped you discover the cure for a deadly disease? Why haven't you shared this cure with the world? And why hasn't god helped others--including those scientists who are Christian--find cures to other deadly diseases?

Prayer has worked for me as well, many times. I do not think it always does for the simple reason that no one would ever die until the world was so overpopulated that everyone would starve to death. There is order and process and only some wiggle room in our material world at each stage of developement.

Imagine what would have happened if the ancient world had discovered and used penicillian at the level of tech, level of agriculture, and level of human and animal rights they had back then. Disaster and possible extinction.

I believe most people are familiar here with the placebo effect. If not:
http://skepdic.com/placebo.html

Anyway, saying prayers simply "don't work" is pretty careless. It says some people knew that someone was praying for them, but who knows what they thought about it? Did they care? Did they think it would help? How does anyone know for sure?
The placebo effect, meaning believing in something that works (like pills labeled to cure flu or something, but they actually have no effects) cures diseases, can work; however, as the webpage i pasted above states, it obviously doesn't help with cancer, or getting back eyesight, etc. .. I believe the limitation is our own physical body. But meh, I believe we still don't know a lot about ourselves, and nothing can be said for sure.. really.

Sean....if that where the case and for every single last person that was confined to a wheel chair..then every last one of them would bow their heads every day in prayer

Sean I have mentioned this a few times on UM...I myself had been involved in a car accident, I broke my lower back and was told I may not walk again......I didn't pray to God to give me a quick instant fix...I mean COME ON...even I know you must agree to meet him half way...and for that I did.....I asked him to HELP (please note that help does not mean gimme a quick fix) me fight it..help me work hard to get back on my feet again

This took a few years of struggling, I went to a physical therapist and got the help I wanted...the more egar I was the harder I pushed myself....I didn't sit on my back side and mope about how sorry I was for myself..I mean if you sit and do that you will get NO WHERE fast

After 3 years of hard work...I was back on my feet again and took it slowly...I kept praying and kept working hard...now look at me I am fit as a fiddle and it's all because I prayed for the help to work hard and finially get back on my feet....I know and you know thousands have done this too

If you sit on your rear day in day out feeling sorry for yourself and not bothering to try and you give up too easy...you will remain there....God will help those who are willing to help themselves and mean it

But you have to remember there are those who no matter how hard they try they are still unable to walk...but those still show some spirit...and take up sports (wheelchair sports) and still remain happy..you dont see them moping..so they too may well have prayed to God..but found their prayers answered in many different ways

The supernatural...the name for the things and events still not explained by science. But it doens mean it cant be explained.

I think sometimes our expectations of God are too much. When more often than not, we should expect much more from ourselves, as God is within us anyway... Maybe those scientists you speak of finding cures to deadly diseases... maybe they are compelled by their faith to do so, as you say they are Christian. In that way God is helping..., but it is up to them to make the choice to do God's work, do the research, dedicate their lives to the job, etc. If they had no belief in God, maybe they wouldn't have been compelled to do the work in the first place.... just as I was compelled in the middle of prayer to find a way to heal my parents. I thank hundreds and possibly thousands of scientists and others, whose research I used to understand how to heal the disease.


My own Dad has had a pain in his side for years, something called 'adhesion', only fixed by operation which usually fails miserably. I believe I'll find a way to heal him though... despite the odds.

Jesus must have figured out a way to heal the blind, etc., even though God was with Him... it would have been up to him to figure out how to heal the blind.

Why haven't I shared the hepatitis C cure with the world? Mainly because it sounds crazy to some people, and so some people get very angry when it is given. I'll share it with you right now though.

When I tell you I used the juices from fresh Beets, Carrots, Green Cabbage, Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach and pretty much every single other green plant, you might not even believe that such a thing would work to cure an 'incurable disease' such as Hepatitis C. I mainly focused on plants scientifically proven to be beneficial for the liver, i.e., beets, carrots, etc., because hepatitis C is a liver disease.

(This thread will probably be closed now or I'll be kicked off.... as it has happened once before on this site after writing about this cure.)

The cure is sitting in every grocery store across America...

There is some evidence to go on... and it comes from scientists and doctors in the form of research articles that can be found on the internet.

Type in any disease on Google.com, such as "Heart Disease Vegetables Fruit" with 'vegetables fruit' added on to the search term. You'll find information from doctors and scientists that give research material and evidence explaining how certain plants effect the heart and heart disease... Alot of it comes from fairly new studies.

i.e. not many people know a tomatoe has over 10,000 natural chemicals in it, some not even identified and given a name yet.... nobody truly knows of the power hidden within a simple tomatoe or any other plant...

I couldn't have explained it any better.

Thanks

Some prayers aren't answered for a reason. You'll understand one day.


Think about this. You're with your wife, you have a happy and wonder life. You go to a ball game with her and you meet up with an old girlfriend who isn't living such a good life anmyore. You think to yourself "Man, I use to love her so much". Then, you might even say "Thank God for unanswered prayers". Why? Because you prayed to God you'd stay with that girl. But you have a happy life with your wife and if God answered your prayer you'd still be with your old girlfriend, possibly not as happy as you are now.

That's true...God has his reasons

Then why pray?!



You “may” not walk again. That is a far cry from you “you won’t”. And a broken back is not a catastrophic injury--a 100% dislocation of one’s vertebrae is! My vertebrae (C3-4) were literally sitting side-by-side, leaving my spinal cord severely bruised. Healing is not a possibility in such instances. There in no chance of significant recovery--none!



Why? How many came to Jesus and asked to be healed and were? Supposedly many. Jesus didn’t say “Sorry ... no quick fixes! Heal thy self.” No. Jesus healed those who came to him, instructed his disciples to do the same, and clearly stated that those who pray for healing ... shall receive healing.



Where in the Scriptures does Jesus say such a thing?



I did--for fifteen long years. My condition has only worsened.



As did I. Spent six months in the hospital (Shoitz Medical Center) and rehab ... and many more at Dallas Rehabilitation Institute et al.



Nor did I. I pushed myself for years. And as for moping ... Don’t make myopic-minded comments such as this when you haven’t a clue as to what I have been through--lived life in my shoes! Typical arrogant narrowed-minded Christian response!



I love statements like this from people who have no idea what it’s like to have your spinal cord mangled and lo be paralyzed from the neck down as a teenager--to be left a prisoner within your own body until the day you die.



Twenty-one and counting--fifteen of those year as a devout Christian.



I’m very happy for you. And I also worked hard, prayed fervently for strength and aid. So why are you “fit as a fiddle” and am I still sitting here in declining health and headed for a nursing home (within the next two years or so) at the age of thirty-eight to live out the rest of my days?



I sit here, not because I feel sorry for myself, but because my spinal cord is severely bruised at level C3-4. I’m paralyzed from the neck down. Therapy cannot heal a bruised SC--that is where god must step in.



That is the most asinine thing I have ever heard!



Where in the Scriptures does god say this?



I put myself through college and am a published author. No problem with spirit.



You are missing the point entirely. The point is that Jesus said your prayers shall be answered--no matter what! There is no fine print--if, ands, or maybes. No caveats. None! Pray and you shall be healed--period!

Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Matthew 17:20 For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Matthew 21:21 I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

John chapter 14:12-14 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

And it’s a lie.

Sean

Chapter 5 - Why won't God heal amputees?

Does God answer prayers? According to believers, the answer certainly seems to be YES.

For example, at any Christian bookstore you can find hundreds of books about the power of prayer. On the Internet you can find thousands of testimonials to the many ways that God works in our lives today. Even large city newspapers and national news magazines run stories about answered prayers. God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.

God's power often can be quite dramatic. Take, for example, this story from Marilyn Hickey Ministries:

Prayer is a communication system we have available to fellowship with our heavenly Father and which activates His promises in our lives. No one can beat this system. It's quick. It's efficient. And it's available to you right now! Prayer reaches our heavenly Father instantly. Years ago my mother's doctors found a tumor in her brain. When I heard the news, I was out of town so I could not lay my hands on her. That night as fear swept over me, the Lord quickened Psalms 107:20 to my spirit: "He sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions." I sent God's Word long distance to my mother's brain. When she was X-rayed again by her doctors, there was no evidence that any tumor had ever existed! Hallelujah! Our prayers are swifter than any medical technique. Only born again believers who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord can have a relationship with the Father and prayer is the communication method you must use to develop that relationship. [ref]

Stories like these can be easily found all over the Web.

How Prayer Works

In the Bible, Jesus promises many times that he will answer our prayers. For example, in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Ask and you will receive. What could be simpler than that?

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus reiterates that same message:

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Since a mustard seed is a tiny inanimate object about the size of a grain of salt, it is easy to imagine that the faith of a mustard seed is fairly small. So, paraphrasing, what Jesus is saying is that if you have the tiniest bit of faith, you can move mountains.

Jesus says something similar in Matthew 21:21:

I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

The message is reiterated Mark 11:24:

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

In John chapter 14, verses 12 through 14, Jesus tells all of us just how easy prayer can be:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

In Matthew 18:19 Jesus says it again:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Jesus is actually in our midst and God answers our prayers.

The miracle of Jeanna Giese

There are so many examples of the power of prayer, but one in particular deserves special consideration because it is so well documented. In December of 2004 a girl named Jeanna Giese survived a bite from a rabid bat through prayer. Hundreds of newspapers (including the Raleigh News and Observer in my home town) ran stories about the miracle of her recovery with headlines such as "Rabies girl in miracle recovery." In Raleigh, the headline was "Web weaves global prayer circle - Petitions circle the world as girl beats rare case of rabies." [Source: by Sharon Roznik, Raleigh News and Observer, December 17, 2004]

The summary of the story goes like this. Jeanna was in a church service in Wisconsin when a brown bat fell into the aisle. She picked the bat up and carried it outside. No one gave it a second thought. Because no one gave it a second thought, no one considered the possibility that the bat might be rabid, and Jeanna was not vaccinated against rabies.

A month later it was obvious that something was wrong. Soon Jeanna had a full case of rabies. No human has ever survived this disease without being vaccinated. Up until 2004, full-blown rabies had been 100% fatal.

According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna's father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna's plight and they said prayers for her.

And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine.

Dr. Charles Rupprecht of the CDC in Atlanta called Jeanna's case a miracle. The family and everyone in Jeanna's huge, global prayer circle know that God heard their prayers and answered them.

This is amazing stuff. The dictionary defines a miracle as "An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God." [ref] So we must ask a fundamental question: Did an all-loving, all-powerful God hear the prayers from Jeanna's worldwide prayer circle and then reach down from heaven to help Jeanna? Did God actually interact with Jeanna's body, making the impossible happen and curing her case of rabies through a divine miracle?

Or did something else happen that is completely coincidental?

We can actually answer this question with a simple experiment....

A simple experiment

Billions of people believe that God answers prayers. You may have heard many stories about the power of prayer, either from friends or through the press. Jeanna's story is a great example of that process.

Therefore, here is an interesting experiment for us to try. For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident.

Now create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier's legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey's mother.

If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.

What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once -- he says it many times in many ways in the Bible.

And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen.

No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day.

Isn't that odd? The situation becomes even more peculiar when you look at who God is. According to the Standard Model of God:

• God is all-powerful. Therefore, God can do anything, and regenerating a leg is trivial.

• God is perfect, and he created the Bible, which is his perfect book. In the Bible, Jesus makes very specific statements about the power of prayer. Since Jesus is God, and God and the Bible are perfect, those statements should be true and accurate.

• God is all-knowing and all-loving. He certainly knows about the plight of the amputee, and he loves this amputee very much.

• God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small. All that you have to do is believe. He says it in multiple places in the Bible. Surely, with millions of people in the prayer circle, at least one of them will believe and the prayer will be answered.

• God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna's every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.

Billions of people believe in the power of prayer and pray their own prayers. Not only do they pray, but they personally witness God answering their prayers every single day. In addition, the entire industry of inspirational literature is built around God's ability and willingness to have a personal relationship with us and answer our prayers. Any Sunday morning we can find thousands of ministers and priests preaching about God's grace, God's love, God's blessings and God's desire to hear and answer our prayers.

Nonetheless, the amputated legs are not going to regenerate.

What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them.

Processing basic factual information

You can see that the amputee experiment reframes our conversation. No longer are we talking about "religion" or "faith" or "God's existence". What we are talking about here is the basic human ability to process factual information.

At the beginning of the chapter we highlighted a number of promises that Jesus makes about prayer in the Bible. Summarizing, here is what Jesus promised:

• If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21]

• If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:14]

• Ask, and it will be given you. [Matthew 7:7]

• Nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20]

• Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24]

The question is simple: are Jesus' statements true or false? By looking at amputees we can see that they are false. Jesus/God never answer prayers to spontaneously restore lost limbs, despite the promises in the Bible.

That is why the question "why won't god heal amputees?" is so interesting. With this single question, we can conclusively prove something very important about Jesus and the Bible.

If you are a believer, and if this is the first time you have thought about the situation faced by amputees seriously, you have a set of stock answers running through your head right now. Let's examine the stock answers one by one.

Stock answers

Key Point
No matter how many people pray, no matter how often they pray, no matter how sincere they are, no matter how much they believe, no matter how deserving the amputee, what we know is that prayers do not inspire God to regenerate amputated legs. This happens despite what Jesus promises us in Matthew 21:21, John 14:14, Mark 11:24, etc.

Here is an explanation that you might have heard or used before:

The reason God cures thousands of cancers, infections, etc. each day but never intervenes with amputees is because it is not God's will to do that. It is not part of God's plan.

This explanation seems a little odd. Amputees really do seem to be getting the short end of God's plan if this is the case. If the Standard Model of God is correct, it seems like God should restore lost limbs. If God answers prayers as promised in the Bible, and if God is performing all of the medical miracles that we read about in inspirational literature, then God should also be restoring amputated limbs. Why would God help cancer victims (e.g. Marilyn Hickey' mother) and people bitten by rabid bats (e.g. Jeanna Giese), but discriminate against amputees like this?

Keep in mind what Jesus promised:

• If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21]

• If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:14]

• Ask, and it will be given you. [Matthew 7:7]

• Nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20]

• Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24]

There is no indication from Jesus that amputees will be ignored when they pray for medical help.

The five quotes in the previous paragraph are all simple, straightforward statements. Doesn't "nothing will be impossible for you" mean "nothing will be impossible for you"? Jesus is God, and as an all-knowing being God knows how humans interpret sentences. If Jesus did not mean "nothing will be impossible for you," it seems like Jesus would have said something else. He also would not repeat that sentiment so many times. And Jesus is supposedly answering millions of prayers each day, so prayer-answering seems to be his intent (See Understanding the gumball machine for a more in-depth discussion).

Here is another explanation that you might have heard: "God needs to remain hidden -- restoring an amputated limb would be too obvious." We will discuss this idea in more detail in later chapters, but let's touch on it here.

Does God need to remain hidden?

That does not seem to be the case. In general, God seems to have no problem doing things that are obvious. Think about the Bible. Writing the Bible and having billions of copies published all over the world is obvious. So is parting the Red Sea. So is carving the Ten Commandments on stone tables. So is sending your son to earth and having him perform dozens of recorded miracles. And so on. It makes no sense for a God in hiding to incarnate himself, or to do these other obvious things. Why send your son to earth, and then write a book that talks all about his exploits, if you are trying to hide?

In the same way, any medical miracle that God performs today is obvious. The removal of a cancerous tumor is obvious because it is measurable. One month the tumor is visible to everyone on the X-ray, and the next month it is not. If God eliminated the tumor, then it is openly obvious to everyone who sees the X-ray. There is nothing "hidden" about removing a tumor. So, why not regenerate a leg in an equally open way? If God intervenes with cancer patients to remove cancerous tumors in response to prayers, then why wouldn't God also intervene with amputees to regenerate lost limbs?

Key Point
If God intervenes with cancer patients to remove cancerous tumors, then God should also intervene with amputees to regenerate lost limbs.

Another example is seen in Jeanne's rabies case discussed earlier in the chapter. Tens of millions of people are aware of the Jeanna's rabies miracle. Personally, I read about it in a big article in my morning newspaper. That is pretty obvious. What is hidden about her recovery?

Why, then, does God ignore the prayers of amputees?

Some people might say, "Everyone's life serves God in different ways. Perhaps God uses amputees to teach us something." That may be the case -- God may be trying to send a message. But, again, it seems odd that he would single out this one group of people to handle the delivery. To quote Marilyn Hickey once again:

No matter what has happened in your past, no matter what is happening in your present, seek out your heavenly Father in prayer as often as you can. Take my word for it -- He loves you and wants to answer your prayers. [ref]

In Jeremiah 29:11 the Bible says:

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

It does not seem to make sense that amputees would be cut off from the blessings that Jesus promises in the Bible. And it also does not mesh with all of the prayers that Jesus seems to be answering for other people.

Someone might say, "Thou shalt not test the Lord. It says so in the Bible." This is hard to swallow because every prayer is a test. Either God answers the prayer or he does not. There is no difference between praying for an amputee and praying for Jeanna Giese and her rabies.

Some people might say something like, "Jesus never says when he will answer your prayers. Maybe your prayer will be answered in the afterlife." But that seems uncomfortable. Jesus is answering millions of prayers for everyone else in the here and now. Clearly that is what he means with all his verses in the Bible. Why single out amputees for treatment in the afterlife when Marilyn and Jeanna get their prayers answered almost instantaneously?

Someone might say, "God will answer your prayers, but not immediately. You must be patient." They will point to a situation like that found in Mark 6:47-51:

And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out; for they all saw him, and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.

A person might say, "you see, he came in the fourth watch (generally understood to be 3AM to 6AM), not in the first or second or third. You must be patient and wait for the Lord to answer your prayers." This is just as uncomfortable as the previous explanation. God does not answer the prayers of any amputee to restore lost limbs.

Finally, there is this oft-used chestnut: "There is no way to understand the mysteries of our Lord. People have believed in Jesus for 2,000 years, and there must be a very good reason for it." This feels like a sad point in the conversation. On one side of the conversation is a person who is defending the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe. This person's position should be unassailable. Yet, if God exists, and answers prayers as described in the Bible, there is no explanation for what we see in the world around us. The Bible is silent in this case. God is silent. There is not a good, comfortable explanation for the situation faced by amputees except to say, "We cannot understand the mysteries of the Lord. We have no explanation for why God refuses to answer prayers to regenerate lost limbs."

Explaining the case of amputees

Just for a moment, I would ask you to consider the possibility of another explanation. If you believe in God this explanation will initially appear to be complete nonsense. However, it is interesting in light of the conversation we will be having in this book.

One explanation for the evidence that we see before us is this:

God exists, and God answers prayers, but for some reason God chooses to ignore the prayers of amputees. We don't have a good explanation for why God acts this way, and it does seem to contradict what Jesus teaches about prayer in the Bible, but clearly God has his divine reasons.

Now let's look at the situation with amputees from another point of view. This explanation is more straightforward:
God is imaginary.

Let's look at what happens when we consider this explanation and see how it stacks up.

Assume that God is imaginary. The beauty of this explanation is that it fits the facts perfectly. In the case of amputees, it is a valid way to explain the reality that we see in our world. The logic goes like this:

If God is imaginary, then he does not answer any prayers. Therefore, the prayers of amputees would go unanswered too.

The thing that is so appealing about this explanation is that there is no hand waving. There are no contradictions. It is completely fair. There is no paradox. This explanation makes complete sense in light of the evidence we see in our world.

Key Point
If God is imaginary, then he does not answer any prayers. Therefore, the prayers of amputees would go unanswered too. The thing that is so appealing about this explanation is that there is no hand waving. There are no contradictions. It is completely fair. There is no paradox. This explanation makes sense in light of the evidence we see in our world.

Interestingly, this explanation also happens to cover the case of Neva Rogers in Chapter 1. And Steve Homel's subdivision in Chapter 2. And Ranika in Chapter 4. If you assume that God is imaginary, then the paradox of God evaporates in all of these cases. Why did Ranika die? Because there was no all-powerful, prayer-answering God to save her. Why did Neva die? Because there was no all-powerful, prayer-answering God to save her. Why did Steve's house remain standing while 39 others burned to the ground? Because there was no all-powerful, prayer-answering God to save any of the houses (and Steve's house was a fluke). Why did 200,000 people die in the tsunami? Because there was no all-powerful, prayer-answering God to save them. And so on. It explains amputees too. The paradox of God vanishes completely.

In response to this proposal, a thoughtful person might say, "Just because God never answers the prayers of amputees, it does not mean that he does not answer other prayers. I agree with you that it is unfair to amputees, and I agree with you that it contradicts what Jesus teaches in the Bible, but God has his reasons. For some reason, it is not part of God's plan to help amputees by regenerating their lost limbs. There is no way to understand the mysteries of our Lord, but he does have his reasons and they will become clear to us when we die and go to heaven." That is one possible explanation, but words like "unfair" and "contradicts" feel, somehow, uncomfortable. They do not fit with our mental image of an all-loving and perfect God, nor with the words of Jesus in the Bible. Why would God have such a problem with amputees that he completely ignores their prayers to regenerate lost limbs, while at the same time he is answering all of these other prayers millions of times a day? When it comes to amputees, why would Jesus renege on his promises to answer prayers in the Bible?

You can see that what we have here is a paradox:

• On the one hand we have an all-knowing, all-loving God who has made very clear and specific statements in his Bible about the power of prayer. We have billions of people who believe that their prayers are being answered. We have thousands of examples of the power of prayer published in inspirational literature. We have prominent doctors at the CDC declaring that God is reaching down onto earth and performing medical miracles. We have major newspapers and magazines reporting on the power of prayer and prayer circles.

• On the other hand, we have a piece of explicit evidence that does not make any sense if God exists. No matter how many people pray, no matter how sincere they are and no matter how much they believe, God does not answer the prayers of amputees to regenerate their limbs.
There are two possible explanations for this paradox:

• Many people believe that God answers millions of prayers every day, using his love and power to bless people all over the globe, but that God ignores the prayers of amputees for a divine reason. In that case, the situation with amputees is a bit of a mystery.

• Many other people believe the opposite. They believe that God is imaginary, and therefore he cannot answer prayers. In that case, the situation with amputees makes complete sense.

The thing about amputees is that the evidence is rock solid. This is the part that makes this example so compelling.

A cascade of problems

It's not like I am revealing some hidden truth here. The funny thing about amputees is that this evidence is obvious to everyone. We have all seen that God ignores the prayers of amputees. This evidence has been plainly visible for centuries.

Amputees are not the only ones either. For example:
• If someone severs their spinal cord in an accident, that person is paralyzed for life. No amount of prayer is going to help.

• If someone is born with a congenital defect like a cleft palate, God will not repair it through prayer. Surgery is the only option.

• A genetic disease like Down Syndrome is the same way -- no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.

It is also fairly easy to find corroborating evidence. At the global level, we see the evidence every day in many different ways. For example, we all see the millions of children who die every year from the tragic effects of poverty. Unicef puts it this way:

Every year, more than 10 million children die totally preventable deaths. Some are directly caused by illness – pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles – and others are affected by indirect causes such as conflict and HIV/AIDS. Malnutrition, lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation are contributing factors to more than half of these deaths. [ref]

Jesus is supposed to love all the little children of the world: "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." So we can ask this straightforward question: If children are precious to Jesus, then why is he killing 10 million of them every year with abject poverty? That's 27,000 dead kids every day -- more than 1,000 dead children each hour. If Jesus answers prayers as he promises in the Bible, then why haven't the prayers of billions of people to end world hunger caused Jesus to solve the problem of global poverty? (We will discuss this situation in more detail in chapter 22.)

Key Point
27,000 children die every day for preventable reasons like malnutrition and unsafe drinking water. If Jesus answers prayers as he promises in the Bible, then why haven't the prayers of billions of people to end world hunger caused Jesus to solve the problem of global poverty?

We all know that holes like these exist. It is fairly easy to find them. The holes suggest that something odd is going on.

Ambiguity and coincidence

The question, "Why won't God heal amputees?" probes into an extremely interesting aspect of prayer and exposes it for observation. This aspect of prayer has to do with ambiguity and coincidence.

Imagine that you pray for something -- It does not really matter what it is. Let's imagine that you have cancer, you pray to God to cure the cancer, and the cancer actually does go away. The interesting thing to recognize is that there is ambiguity in your cure. God might have miraculously cured the disease, as many people believe. But God might also be imaginary, and the chemotherapy drugs and surgery are the things that cured your cancer. Or your body might have cured the cancer itself. The human body does have a powerful immune system, and this immune system has the ability to eliminate cancer in many cases. When your tumor dissappeared, it might be a coincidence that you happened to pray. Drugs, an immune response or a combination of the two might have been the thing the cured you.

How can we determine whether it is God or coincidence that worked the cure? One way is to eliminate the ambiguity. In a non-ambiguous situation, there is no potential for coincidence. Because there is no ambiguity, we can actually know whether God is answering the prayer or not.

That is what we are doing when we look at amputees.

When we pray to God to restore an amputated limb, there is only one way for the limb to regenerate. God must exist and God must answer prayers. What we find is that whenever we create a non-ambiguous situation like this and look at the results of prayer, prayer never works. God never answers prayers if there is no possibility of coincidence. We will approach this issue from several different angles in this book, but Chapters 6 and 7 are particularly important.

The fact that prayers are never answered when the possibility of coincidence is eliminated meshes with another fact. If we analyse God's responses to prayers using statistical tools, what we find is that there is never any statistical evidence for prayer. In other words, when we statisically compare prayer to coincidence for explaining any situation, they are identical. For example, this article points out:

One of the most scientifically rigorous studies yet, published earlier this month, found that the prayers of a distant congregation did not reduce the major complications or death rate in patients hospitalized for heart treatments. [ref]

It also says:

A review of 17 past studies of ''distant healing," published in 2003 by a British researcher, found no significant effect for prayer or other healing methods.

No scientific study has ever found any evidence that prayer works.

There are two possible conclusions to draw from these statistical studies and the situation with amputees:

1 God somehow detects every non-ambiguous situation (like amputees) and every situation where a statistical study will be done and he "refuses" to answer prayers in those situations.

2 God is imaginary and does not answer prayers at all. In every case where it appears that God "answers" a prayer, it truly is nothing more than a coincidence.

One problem with the first explanation is that it contradicts what Jesus teaches about prayer in the Bible. Jesus says that he answers payers. He never says, "don't pray to me unless the situation you are praying about is ambiguous." Another problem with the first situation is that it is possible to analyse any prayer with statistics, meaning that God cannot answer any prayer.

In other words, we reach the same conclusion: God is imaginary.

Incredibly Interesting

Whether you are religious or not, you have to admit that what we see here is incredibly interesting. Despite the fact that billions of people around the world believe in God, in this chapter we have seen a credible piece of evidence that indicates that God is imaginary.

We also have many other pieces of evidence that indicate the same thing. Let's step back and look at several of them.

First of all, we have this fact: there is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example, God has never left behind any physical evidence that shows that he is real. None of Jesus' miracles left behind any physical evidence either. God has never taken over all the TV and radio stations and broadcast a message to mankind. There is the Bible, but as we will see in Section 2 the Bible has problems of its own. And so on. So let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists:
• If we had scientific proof of God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather than "faith in God".

• If we had scientific proof of God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather than a theological one.

• If we had scientific proof of God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that had been scientifically proven to exist.

• Etc.

Second, we have the fact that there is no statistical evidence that God answers prayers. No non-fradulent scientific study has found any evidence that prayer works. For example, if we have a prayer group pray for certain people in a hospital but not for others, the people who were prayed for don't get better any faster or live any longer. The prayers have zero statistical effect. We will discuss this in much more detail in Chapters 6 and 7.

Simply think about the world around you. First, if there were conclusive statistical evidence that God answers prayers, that would provide scientific evidence that God exists. Second, we can see that there are not two laws of probability -- one for Chistians who pray and one for everyone else. There is a single law of probability that applies equally to everyone. Prayers have zero effect in any statistical study.

Third, we have quite a bit of daily evidence that also suggests that God is imaginary. For example, there is the paradox of Neva Rogers from Chapter 1. In this case Neva prays openly to God and then gets shot in the head four times. There is the paradox of Steve Homel's house, where Steve prays and his house is saved. Unfortunately, the 39 other houses on his street are cursed and burn to the ground. That 97.5% failure rate for prayer makes it feel like the survival of Steve's house is pure coincidence rather than a miracle. We see paradoxes like that constantly, and they all point to the fact that God is imaginary.

Fourth, we have the fact that all of the gods of the past truly were imaginary. We all know with certainty that the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods and the Aztec gods were completely fictitious. Otherwise we would not have started to worship Jesus. We would be worshiping Ra or Zeus rather than Jesus if Ra or Zeus were real.

Now we can start adding pieces of new evidence showing us that God does not exist. For example, we have the case of amputees as described in this chapter. If God is real, it is apparent that there is something very odd about amputees. God is supposedly answering millions of prayers on earth every day, but he completely ignores amputated limbs and refuses to restore them. That makes no sense according to the Standard Model of God and Jesus' statements in the Bible. God's treatment of amputees is inexplicable if God exists, but makes a lot of sense if God is imaginary.

We have all of this evidence to show that God is imaginary. If we were in a court of law looking at this question, the judge would quickly rule that God is imaginary. There is no concrete evidence that God is real and lots of evidence that he is imaginary.

If you are a thoughtful, curious person, the case of amputees really makes you wonder: Is God real or is he imaginary? Let's try looking at another example and see if it sheds any light on this situation...

http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com/god5.htm

Sean

1st of all Sean...I don't believe in the Scriptures..I don't believe one single word the bible tell me...I am not a christian either

I follow my own rules...I pray to God MY WAY..it's my way or NO WAY..this is how I work

I make up my own prayers...you know what's funny about this whole praying thing?
When I used to follow a religion..I went by the prayers that where taught to me and was taught the bible, but that didn't work for me Sean...so I took it apon myself to follow God my way!

And then what happened when I began to do it my way? I got what I wanted...to heck with the Scriptures Sean...IMO no one needs them...if you have devoted your life once as a christian..and it didn't work..well...you could have went your own way

I am sorry you have ended up the way you are sean..but WHY give up hope of everything else that may make you happy?....if at 1st you don't suceed..try try again...but Sean when I met God half way..I got things done the way I wanted them, and I have NEVER asked God for a quick fix..I agreed to at least help myself and not sit and feel so sorry for myself....the more one does that the more depressed they are..that's a fact!!!

IMO God wants us to follow him in our own good time and in our own ways..I believe he doesn't want us to follow some book....so when I did..I got!!

No book tells me that I must meet God half way...my heart does, so I follow that..and I get places

BTW ...I am NOT a typical narrow minded christian...I am just me..I DON'T and WONT follow a religion or a bible...just to make that clear to you

"Every year, more than 10 million children die totally preventable deaths. Some are directly caused by illness – pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles – and others are affected by indirect causes such as conflict and HIV/AIDS. Malnutrition, lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation are contributing factors to more than half of these deaths. [ref]

Jesus is supposed to love all the little children of the world: "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." So we can ask this straightforward question: If children are precious to Jesus, then why is he killing 10 million of them every year with abject poverty? That's 27,000 dead kids every day -- more than 1,000 dead children each hour. If Jesus answers prayers as he promises in the Bible, then why haven't the prayers of billions of people to end world hunger caused Jesus to solve the problem of global poverty? (We will discuss this situation in more detail in chapter 22.)"




Wouldn't this be yet another case of "meeting God half way". Who is it really up to, to provide medicines and food to suffering poor Children at this time? Grown up people that have medicines and food maybe? Or should we blame Jesus Christ, someone who isn't even here in the flesh?

What sort of "magic" should we expect from Prayer?
Those Prayers will be answered when actual people provide food to those starving, and medicines to the sick...

All the Praying in the world will not magically provide a bowl of rice or antibiotics to materialize in front of a starving kid... an actual person has to provide that food and medicine, grow the rice, make the bowl, create the anti-biotics, etc. It's up to us. And how do we feel about it? Most of us feel we can't do anything about it, but we probably could if we actually tried.

See where you're coming from, Becky. Sorry for my terse reply.

Tis ok Sean...but just because I pray and believe in God...that dont make me a christian...BM here has no desire to be a christian and never will LOL I like they way I do things..and when my lil girl gets older if she decides to be an atheist or anything..I wont stand in her way

Sean you should do things your way and if you dont want to follow a religion or some book..good for you mate I just hope you will find happiness again with yourself

Sean i too was gonna say something similar, if you see no benefits of praying thats okay, you don't have too, All the best.....IMO its about letting go of constructs as much as possible.....

Is it me or is it even a little silly to actually argue the point? How would one prove or disprove!? And who's business is it anyway and what harm is it to believe for one's self, in or not in, the veracity of prayer?! There are miracles on record. There are personal experiences that may not be recorded for others to witness, but that does not mean it there was not one, or many, as the case may be.

How can anyone hope to prove "prayer doesn't work?"
And how can anyone prove that which was prayed for did not happen?



See? I prayed and instead of that new Ferrari, I'm still stuck with the Hyundai! Bull**it! Prayer doesn't work!!!! *stomps foot*

Julian Penrod
4 Fairfield Avenue
West Caldwell, New Jersey 07006
(973) 220-1601
julianpenrod@comcast.net

March 31, 2006




Letters to the Editor






Dear sirs:

The low and unscrupulous tend not to operate truthfully. They dare not reveal the full corrupt nature of their machinations for fear of being shunned, even opposed. For this reason, no "defense" of any malignant position or "promotion" of any underhanded program can depend on valid and verifiable statements. The supporters of the foul and putrid utilize any of a number of illegitimate means to suggest a sense of validity behind their positions. The gullible may be easily fooled, but an in-depth examination of their statements can quickly reveal the flaws, failings and frankly faulty underpinnings of their "arguments".

In many venues in society, today, there seems a genuine distaste, if not outright hatred, for religion. Certainly, the endeavor that calls itself "science" seems bound and determined to undermine and even eradicate not only religion but spiritual inclinations, in general. Supporters of this program go through motions of not being impressed by any "proof" of the existence of God and spirituality, yet, at the same time, use "proof" against the existence of religion that is generally far more specious! "Experiments" they claim to perform "disproving" the existence of God are generally poorly framed, badly conducted and based on foundations so laughably incompetently assembled that they would be immediately denounced in any other area!

One perception that the thing that calls itself "science" seems determined to "disprove" is that prayer can change events. Among other signs of the evident patent unscrupulousness here, for example, is the fact that there are many things that prayer can affect, but "science" has hinged its test of the power of prayer only on how it impacts illness in individuals. If they can paint a test as failing, they will say it has no effect; if they can't hide its success, they can claim that confidence and well-being can exert a placebo effect on the patient, and so still deny prayer its power! This can't be done in cases of prayer to affect the weather or stop a dam from breaking, successes in those cases will not be misrepresented as a case of psychological self-delusion! For that reason, prayer affecting inanimate events is stringently steered clear of by "science"!

But even in the managing of "experiments" of the effect of prayer on health and well-being apparent palpable unethicality can be perceived!

This can be seen very well in the recently reported "experiment" on the influence of prayer in health funded by the John Templeton Foundation and soon to be published in the American Heart Journal!

This "experiment", evidently the largest such on record, involved Christian groups being asked to pray for patients undergoing heart surgery. 600 patients were told they might be prayed for but weren't, 600 were told they might be prayed for and were and 600 were told they were being prayed for and were. Each patient was prayed for for two weeks, then doctors monitored the patients for medical complications for 30 days! The sponsors of the report proudly proclaim that praying supposedly made no difference to the health of the patients and, in fact, those who were informed that they were being prayed for were supposedly about 14% more likely to have complications, mostly abnormal heart rhythm.

Leave aside the fact that the patients were ordered prayed for for only two weeks, while their recovery was followed for more than four weeks!

Among other things, the fact that telling the patients only that they might be prayed for can introduce extreme concern. Also, even if the Christian groups didn't pray for certain patients, members of their family and their friends might have!

Among the most egregious failings, though, the "experiment" utterly fails to frame the situation in terms of the context of past history. Even anecdotal information has a degree of significance in any legitimate experiment, if only to derive an understanding of the matter in general. A valid experiment, for example, would take into account the fact that, historically, people who were sick were always prayed for by someone, often by groups far smaller than those used in this "experiment", and, historically, surgery, over a wide range of maladies, has a fairly glowing record of achievement! And many, if not most, of those operated on in the past knew that they were being prayed for! Yet the 14% occurrence of irregular rhythms doesn’t seem to have taken place in the past! This is an utterly anomalous occurrence, apparently!

This failing is significant with respect to the construction of the “experiment”, too. Because, as it is, the “researchers’” supposed “comparisons” are utterly meaningless! Because they are comparing the rate of recovery of people being prayed for, evidently with past rates of recovery of people being prayed for! Standard experimental methodology requires providing a “control group”, a collection of instances where what is being tested is not involved. This way, the influence of the item being tested can be perceived. In order to have a legitimate experiment, among other things, the “researchers” should have had a group of people they could prove had never had anyone pray for them! But they did not! They seem to have violated one of the most fundamental rules of standard experimentation!

No wonder their “experiment” showed “no difference”; they were comparing the results of people being prayed for with past results of people who were prayed for!

But, then, this sort of shoddy chicanery is what a corrupt and unethical pseudo-logician would do to try to convince the unwitting that God didn’t exist!

Also, there seems no record of the “researchers” actually taking steps to make sure that the people instructed to pray for the patients actually prayed for them! Their supporters would insist that the people doing the praying were Christians, and so would have no compulsion not to pray to try to prove the strength of prayer. But that is still assuming, and those who wanted to be known as legitimate experimenters made a point of always making sure about aspects of their examinations! They would never just assume that something took place because “it had to have taken place”! To aspire to that level, the “researchers” here should have made sure that they had someone with each group, making sure they prayed for the right people! The “study” has a price tag of $2.4 million; what were they doing with all that money?

One of the most serious flaws, though, something that seems to undermine the very essence of the “experiment”, can be seen, in all places, in the headline depictions of the “results” of the “study”!

The SF Gate proclaims, “Study calls prayer for sick people ineffective”, while “Healing power of prayer knocked” is how The Patriot Ledger phrases it. “Prayer doesn’t improve patient health”, says the Duluth News Tribune, and the Belleville News Democrat declares, “Prayer doesn’t improve health, study shows”. USA Today has the headline “Study shrugs off prayer’s power to heal”, while the Guardian Unlimited, from England, says acidly, “If you want to get better - don’t say a little prayer”. In a significant number of cases, headlines describe the “conclusions” of the “experiment” as addressing prayer’s influence over “health” or “disease” or “illness”.

But, in fact, the actual situation, here, was far from that!

There are many levels of being unwell, from simple dyspepsia, to a head cold, to a sprained limb, to influenza, to an ulcer, to hepatitis, to a broken bone, to multiple sclerosis, to cancer, to heart failure. The most severe conditions, notably that involved in this “experiment”, in fact, do not involve “disease” as much as a total collapse of the body’s systems, to the point that extraordinary help from outside is needed! The essence of prayerful intercession is that of God taking a hand to act to effect a cure spontaneously, without anyone else entering dramatically. True prayer would act to cure the patients without their needing surgery; if anything, here, the surgeons actually interfered with God’s interaction! There are those who would say that the patients were so bad off that they couldn’t depend on being prayed for, since they didn’t have that much time left; they needed to be operated on now!

To be sure, this demonstrates a patent lack of faith in God’s ability, but, largely, when talking about God and His actions, a commonly overlooked aspect is His motives! Many seem to view God as just an inanimate spigot of supernatural power to be turned on and off at an individual’s discretion and for every particular wish. Such is evidently not the case! For God to “heal” someone after prayer is for Him to undo circumstances that He wrought, whose undoing will likely do some good. For something like a common cold, malaria or even a serious sprain, that can lead to a strengthening of confidence in God’s mercy, in the person afflicted.

Someone in the throes of heart failure, however, is likely a person who has more than earned that through a lifetime of wholesale corruption and connivery! In one way or another they have likely ruined the lives of others for their own petty, malevolent, greedy ends! To spontaneously “heal” their organ would be to have them, likely, snap their fingers at the sky and call God their lackey! And many of the impressionable would be tempted to follow suit. And that would be a loss to the world! That seems to be why certain conditions are all but unhealable; they represent a payment to the arrogant, the crude, the callous, the malignant for their depredations! At that stage, they must be reduced to a condition where they are not a razor's edge away from being well, to remind them of the crimes they committed! They cannot depend on God’s guaranteed intercession! That is the penalty they must pay! It is informative that the “researchers” chose heart surgery to examine, and not, say, someone recovering from influenza! It’s as if they knew ahead of time that they would be examining those with whom God literally had lost patience, and, so, would not be so easily invoked to dramatic flights of intercession!

It should be mentioned, too, that it is often, if not generally, the case that even those who undergo successful heart surgery have to come back a short while later for things like a pacemaker. Even if they are prayed for, and even if the heart surgery goes off without a hitch, they still must go through more! And that is evidently because those in that state are there because they are so utterly corrupt that even repairing their organ does not rehabilitate them!

In that way, then, that they are beyond even possible extraordinary recuperation, they cannot be described either as “unwell” or “diseased” or capable of being “healed”! And, for that reason, prayer will not “heal” them!

The fact that those informed they were being prayed about did so poorly is an indication! They are likely so morally gone that the very idea of God being invoked chafed at them! To engage in the kind of activities that leave you in a condition beyond “healing” is, generally, the outgrowth of genuinely hating God!

This seems to answer the question of why the “researchers” did not check to see if the patients actually prayed for themselves! Someone who deserved God’s intervention would be one who believed enough that they would call upon God’s help themselves! Many in the experiment apparently were not informed that they were being prayed for, and, for all that the “researchers” fail to mention it, they might not even have shown the confidence in God to pray for themselves! And to answer invocations automatically to intercede in such an individual’s situation would be for God to make Himself that person’s lackey! Such an individual doesn’t give an inch to God’s teachings, and, for such a person, God will not be their water boy!

In a similar vein, it is not mentioned what faith the recipients of the prayer were! Many religions today embrace an idea of God as something namelessly nebulous and utterly dissociated from the world, and many endorse an attitude of utter futility and absolute fatalism over hope. Such beliefs as those do not necessarily merit such overarching dedication by God!

The failure to understand God’s plans and motives, and to put that in appropriate context in considering whether He will answer a call for “healing” or not, shows a definite lack on the part of many who even call themselves Christians! And that is dangerous! It can lead some to be unjustifiably over-confident in their actions, believing they can just turn on the “God switch” and make things right, if they go wrong! It can make them lose confidence in prayer when incessant prayer for a financier thug who destroyed the lives of an entire community fails to help them get over a monstrously debilitating infirmity! People have to inform themselves about the apparently consistently, if not deliberately, overlooked aspects of God’s actions!

Among other things, God does definitively want to have a hand in the real world! He is not content with just being a nebulous concept, residing at infinity, away from the human world! That seems to have been a perception fostered by unethical, criminal heads of state and even the Church who wanted to gloss over the fact that God refused to answer their patently malignant entreaties! God wants to have a hand in people’s lives, and, if He doesn’t, it means they are doing something wrong and had better change!

And a primary area of change is faith! Before that, though, it has to be understood what faith is! It is not confidence in God doing something! It is not the firm belief that God will automatically respond to prayer! Because many prayers may be low and those who pray, undeserving! God will not answer all entreaties! To believe that He will, then, is not faith, but lies! Faith is a complicated thing! It is described as a grace and many wonder how believing could be a grace. Grace supposedly comes from believing, they believe. Then, because the concept is too difficult, they turn away, and don’t consider what it means! Grace is a blessing bestowed for good actions. Not just belief, but actual action in the world to make things better! Just as God doesn’t want to be a presence at infinity, He doesn’t want those who follow Him to be, either! Good actions will endow an individual with a degree of worthiness, deserving to have their prayers answered! And that fills them, even unspoken, with the faith that, because they are deserving, they will be answered! Faith is the inner knowledge that you will be answered because you deserve to be answered!

And not just answered with “No”. That diseased sentiment also appears to have been trundled out by those wishing to hide the fact that God doesn’t answer them because they are foul and vicious individuals!

God will answer you in the affirmative if you have faith, the kind of faith that is the grace that comes from working to improve the world! You don’t just get the sanctifying grace that creates faith because you were born! You have to earn it! Many people today haven’t done a single thing since the day they were born to curry God’s favor!

And, if you are not worthy, you do not have faith! You can sit all day, mouthing prayers, but, in the end, you will only have so much extra carbon dioxide in the room!

And “improving the world” is not just tossing off a few extra dollars of “disposable cash” you scammed from someone else into a “charity”, that only ends up funneling the money to corporate cronies for “services for mankind”! It means actually taking a hand yourself and doing something!

It means hounding apparently criminally complicit politicos to make them reveal the evident role of the White House in engineering the event of September 11, 2001!

It means acknowledging that there is apparently no proof that any election is legal; admitting that there is no evidence that politicians don’t conspire about who they want in office next, then fabricate numbers to convince the people it was the public who put the next crop of crooks in power!

It means actively questioning government spending, to the point of finding out the apparent truth, that most of it is just hand-outs to criminal corporate pals of politicians!

It means denouncing all the attempts by evident thugs to “disprove” the reality of God!

In fact, though, it is in every aspect of life that respect for God’s desire for the best for mankind must be expressed. Driving around in a “boom car”, that is a car equipped with a specially designed “boom box” in the back, to annoy neighborhoods with blaring music, is against God. Defacing the body with mutilations, piercings or even outlandish hair stylings, purely for the purpose of grabbing undeserved attention, that is, attention not merited by personal accomplishment, is a violation of God’s wishes. The kind of disregard for the concept of the general outgrowth and effect of actions that leads someone to walk around sloppily dressed and unpresentable is not of God! Dulling the alpha wave of the brain with constant music is against God’s wishes! The kind of despondency that leads to chronic and gratuitous sarcasm, insincerity, rudeness, cheating and even foul language is a sin in God’s eyes! Wasting the mind by a constant watching of pornography is contempt for God. We are here to love and serve God, and a fundamental part of that is caring for the welfare of your neighbor and the world!

And the need for responding to this situation is eminent and critical! God wants to have a role directly in the world, and, in the same way, the evil unleashed by the crudity that prevents faith also acts directly in the world! An act of malevolence is a prayer to Satan! And there seem few who will deny that the past few decades have seen an upwelling of wholesale malevolence and pain in the world at least verging on unprecedented in its extent and degree! The need for the depth of ethicality and decency that brings faith is severe!

Yes, it is a demanding thing to be worthy of God answering your prayers, but people have to ask themselves if it’s any the more fun knowing that they don’t have a hand to pull them out of the fire they get themselves in! And that, if they don’t obtain faith, they will, apparently, inevitably end up in that fire!



Julian Penrod

This is the height of your responce!!! A fancy motor...have you actually thought much about this topic???

We can't prove either...but each person KNOWS within themselves whether it does or doesn't work...its all about faith and how you do it...not sit and ramble off wish after wish!!! And no it's NOT silly to argue the point...Sean has his reasons that are understandable and he has the right to rant if he wants...so it must be just you then

Prayer works! But when I say this, I don't mean to be religious at all. I'll explain why?

Several people follow several methods to counter pain and suffering. If a perfect nonbeliever in god, believes in his own ability and in the treatment that he is taking, then it will help him out better too. Why? Consider a patient visiting a doctor, the course of treatment that a doctor prescribes for the patient works much better if the patient believes that it will actually work out for him -it is a scientifically proven fact. It is because of the involuntary self-suggestions that the patient gives himself that assist his internal recovery system's response to external aid like medicine and other such treatments.

Certain feelings that are generated within us cause a release of some chemicals in our brains; this in-turn helps us combat pain and disease better. Nothing mystical and religious about it, just science. These feelings are voluntarily or involuntarily generated within us by the use several methods; prayer is just one of them. Prayer and other such beliefs and rituals do not work any miracles as most people think, they just trigger our brain to respond to pain better. Most people just don't realize this.

Prayer helps, but not the way most people think. It's all in the mind.

hi my name is nishman what are you saying about ghosts what your suggestion about ufo

Penrod, that was a pretty inaccurate and judgemental spill you gave against the ill and suffering. You had better rethink some of that. The majority of the those suffering come from poor backgrounds. They did not get the care, nutrition, and work place safety they needed in their hard lives at the bottom.
Perhaps you should reconsider that the problem did not lay with the patients but with the Noetic Science people who were treating them.

If you have heart failure, chances are you have (or had) one or more of the following. Some of these can be present without you knowing it.

Coronary artery disease
When cholesterol and fatty deposits build up in the heart's arteries, less blood reaches the heart muscle. This damages the muscle, and the healthy heart tissue that remains has to work harder.
Past heart attacks (myocardial infarction)
A heart attack occurs when an artery that supplies blood to the heart gets blocked. The loss of oxygen and nutrients damages the heart's muscle tissue — part of it essentially "dies." The remaining healthy tissue has to pump even harder to keep up.

High blood pressure (hypertension)
Uncontrolled high blood pressure increases a person's risk of developing heart failure by two to three times. When pressure in the blood vessels is too high, the heart has to pump harder than normal to keep the blood circulating. This takes a toll on the heart, and over time the chambers get larger and weaker. (most common cause genetic tendency with aging and poor nutrition)

Abnormal heart valves
Heart valve problems can result from disease, infection (endocarditis) or a defect present at birth. When the valves don't open or close completely during each heartbeat, the heart muscle has to pump harder to keep the blood moving. If the workload becomes too great, heart failure results. (most common cause poor prenatal health care and nutrition)

Smoking and drinking can cause heart disease but the most common cause is poor nutrition and health care which is common in lower income levels.

Maybe the prayers didn't work because they're faith wasn't strong enough. I know prayer works. Without prayer and God in my life-I wouldn't be here and neither would my mother. I have been healed and so has my mother. My brother has survived gun shot wounds. I believe in prayer-I don't question prayer cuz I have experienced how powerful it really is.

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

-Voltaire

Smoking and drinking can cause heart disease but the most common cause is poor nutrition and health care which is common in lower income levels.

Bella,
alcohol is a cause of all kinds of health problems the biggest High blood pressure, smoking are you kidding very bad for the entire body not only the heart if one system is compromised they all are, If you find yourself in this sort of health no prayer is gonna help you, but not smoking, not drinking,paying attention to your eating and lowering stress ess will.Health care and lower level incomes this is crap, the biggest drain to the health care system is poor care of the human body all the above mentioned , there is more health care available to low income familys than hardworking people. Just about no child will ever do without health care.......Sheesh!!!!!!

Brother, have you heard the bad news?
It was supposed to be good news, like the kind in the Bible. After three years, $2.4 million, and 1.7 million prayers, the biggest and best study ever was supposed to show that the prayers of faraway strangers help patients recover after heart surgery. But things didn't go as ordained. Patients who knowingly received prayers developed more post-surgery complications than did patients who unknowingly received prayers—and patients who were prayed for did no better than patients who weren't prayed for. In fact, patients who received prayers without their knowledge ended up with more major complications than did patients who received no prayers at all.
If the data had turned out the other way, clerics would be trumpeting the power of prayer on every street corner. Instead, the study's authors and many media outlets are straining to brush off the results. The study "cannot address a large number of religious questions, such as whether God exists, whether God answers intercessory prayers, or whether prayers from one religious group work in the same way as prayers from other groups." Some the most common excuses tendered for God’s lack of action in this study are:
God ignores you if your faith isn’t strong enough.
God ignores you if you don't pray hard enough.
God ignores you if you're wicked.
God chooses His own outcome measures, maybe God had planned this to be the end of the patient’s life.
God doesn't participate in studies, many people choose not to, so why can’t God?
God hates being told what to do. Several clerics argue that the kind of intercessory prayer used in the study is "manipulative … of divine action" and sinfully treats God "as our instrument."
God takes His time. - Taken from an online article by William Saletan.

Prayer is to hope and hope is to more possibilities.