Sunday, April 02, 2006
PRAYER
A new study suggests that prayer does not heal
(And might even be associated with post-surgical complications).
Everyone has an opinion talking about this study, and I know you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for the official JulieVW editorial . . .
1. I wonder if the folks that prayed got paid for their participation in the study. I suspect they did, and I suspect the prayers of paid pray-ers are less effective than the prayers of voluntary pray-ers. (They should do a new study to compare paid prayer to voluntary prayer).
2. How do the researches know that the church-people actually prayed for the people they were supposed to?
I've been to enough of those confessional small group bible studies to know that folks often say they'll pray for someone, but then they forget and never actually pray about it.
3. Several years ago someone did a study that said prayer did help heart attack victims get better. Christians in my circle used that study as "proof" of the power of prayer (and the excellency of biblegod). This new study has them changing their tune. Now they say healing may not be in biblegod's will, and prayer is not about producing results. It's an interesting turn around. (And it makes me giggle!)
4. This study only looked at Christian prayers. I wonder what would happen if they compared the effectiveness of the prayers from adherents from different religions. (What if a Buddist prayer is more effective than a Christian prayer?)
5. I'd really like to complain about the people who say, "I don't pray to change god, I pray to change me" but that's outside the scope of this mini-editorial; I'll tirade on that some other day.
6. Some other day I'll also tell you the story of Great Gram's funeral - it's indirectly related to everything I've already written here and something I want to write about (but once again, outside the scope of my prayer-study-mini-editorial).
A new study suggests that prayer does not heal
(And might even be associated with post-surgical complications).
Everyone has an opinion talking about this study, and I know you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for the official JulieVW editorial . . .
1. I wonder if the folks that prayed got paid for their participation in the study. I suspect they did, and I suspect the prayers of paid pray-ers are less effective than the prayers of voluntary pray-ers. (They should do a new study to compare paid prayer to voluntary prayer).
2. How do the researches know that the church-people actually prayed for the people they were supposed to?
I've been to enough of those confessional small group bible studies to know that folks often say they'll pray for someone, but then they forget and never actually pray about it.
3. Several years ago someone did a study that said prayer did help heart attack victims get better. Christians in my circle used that study as "proof" of the power of prayer (and the excellency of biblegod). This new study has them changing their tune. Now they say healing may not be in biblegod's will, and prayer is not about producing results. It's an interesting turn around. (And it makes me giggle!)
4. This study only looked at Christian prayers. I wonder what would happen if they compared the effectiveness of the prayers from adherents from different religions. (What if a Buddist prayer is more effective than a Christian prayer?)
5. I'd really like to complain about the people who say, "I don't pray to change god, I pray to change me" but that's outside the scope of this mini-editorial; I'll tirade on that some other day.
6. Some other day I'll also tell you the story of Great Gram's funeral - it's indirectly related to everything I've already written here and something I want to write about (but once again, outside the scope of my prayer-study-mini-editorial).