Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Polymath257]

Here's the problem with homelessness. We provide a home for someone without a home. Sounds great - like the sub-prime collapse it's a good idea until it's time to blame someone else for it. And then there are more homeless to take more homes. Indeed, I should sell my home, invest my return and claim a homeless benefit.
There's a long chain of events - non-events that led to someone being homeless. And with broken homes, sneering at people who achieve something, politicizing our education system, challenging the values that made our country etc etc etc we wind up with a lot more homeless.

Homelessness didn't begin recently. Look up Hoovervilles some time.

Yes, it is a long process leading to homelessness, from jobs that don't pay a living wage, to mental health issues that don't get cared for, to a lack of jobs in the community, to family issues, etc.

Again, we should be caring for these people, not shaming them.

Why would you sell your home to get a homeless benefit to invest? You will still need a place to live and living in a home is far better than living on the street.

ps I would love to see more billionaires and trillionaires in our society - it means we are all benefiting. Poor nations have few millionaires, rich nations have many. Let's have money, and stop the corrosive envy.

And yet, so many people don't actually benefit. There is no 'trickle down'.

The problem isn't the wealth itself. It is the inequality of wealth. And it is corrosive of society.

The problem is that the poor nations have millionaires. But somehow their wealth doesn't benefit anyone other than themselves.

 

[Sheldon]

Here's the problem with homelessness. We provide a home for someone without a home. Sounds great - like the sub-prime collapse it's a good idea until it's time to blame someone else for it. And then there are more homeless to take more homes. Indeed, I should sell my home, invest my return and claim a homeless benefit.
There's a long chain of events - non-events that led to someone being homeless. And with broken homes, sneering at people who achieve something, politicizing our education system, challenging the values that made our country etc etc etc we wind up with a lot more homeless.

Barking mad nonsense, seriously your posts leap from false assumption to false assumption like a frog on amphetamines.

 

[Sheldon]

Heroin in the 1960's and 1970's was a big fat no no.

No it wasn't, that is absurdly untrue. The recreational use of opiates goes back centuries. Britain controlled the opiate trade into China and made a fortune during the rule of the British Empire, and turned thousands of Chines nationals into addicts into the bargain. As I said it was legal in the US until 1924, and 1920 in the UK. During World War I, some temporary restrictions were placed on the possession opium, cannabis and cocaine as part of wartime measures. These controls were formalised under the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act (DDA), which prohibited the possession and unlicensed import or export of opium, heroin and cocaine.

The number of deaths from Heroin use is relatively small, and very low compared to those who die from alcohol and tobacco use. Addiction is a complex issue, but some substances are simply so addictive using them is very unwise. sadly anti drug policies rarely seem to grasp this fact.

Addicts generally need help, not criminalising.

 

[PruePhillip]

No it wasn't, that is absurdly untrue. The recreational use of opiates goes back centuries. Britain controlled the opiate trade into China and made a fortune during the rule of the British Empire, and turned thousands of Chines nationals into addicts into the bargain. As I said it was legal in the US until 1924, and 1920 in the UK. During World War I, some temporary restrictions were placed on the possession opium, cannabis and cocaine as part of wartime measures. These controls were formalised under the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act (DDA), which prohibited the possession and unlicensed import or export of opium, heroin and cocaine.

The number of deaths from Heroin use is relatively small, and very low compared to those who die from alcohol and tobacco use. Addiction is a complex issue, but some substances are simply so addictive using them is very unwise. sadly anti drug policies rarely seem to grasp this fact.

Addicts generally need help, not criminalising.

In the 1960's and 1970's heroin was not mainstream. The FBI in particular targetted heroin users and dealers. This is why the American Mafia was late into heroin as it was 'too hot.' Dope and LSD were the mainstream narcotics.

 

[SkepticThinker]

We have evidence there was a house of David, but no way would there be evidence for David's inner feelings and experiences.
What skeptics were doing was saying that as "there's no evidence for King David" that David never existed, and that's not scientific.
These skeptics play God (ie themselves the repository of wisdom and knowledge) and play scientist too, 'Science says there's no David.'

But from Abraham onwards the whole historic claim of the bible is more or less validated, with the exception of Moses (yet)
So there are no gods on Mount Olympus, but there were the biblical Phillistines and Amorites, the temple and Jerusalem, Isaiah and David, the Babylonian captivity and Cyrus' return, Pontius Pilot and Agrippa.

So, do you think that if the Phillistines and Armorites actually existed, then that means the fantastical parts of the Bible are true?
Do you think that if the city of Troy actually existed, then that means that Apollo is a true god who flies the sun across the sky every day?

 

[Sheldon]

You heard of 'honor killings' ? There was family honor,

Honour killings are not honourable, they're obscene. Now there is a behaviour worthy of shame. Your posts now seem to be defending indefensible misogynistic abuse and murder.

 

[Sheldon]

Heroin in the 1960's and 1970's was a big fat no no.

No it wasn't, that is absurdly untrue.

In the 1960's and 1970's heroin was not mainstream.

Watch those goal posts shift....wow...

 

[SkepticThinker]

You base your relationship on first impressions/emotions and you trust that person enuf to committ - a leap of faith if you like. And that's religion too.

Whoa there. I didn't hook up with my spouse based on a mere "first impression." I got to know them first, got to know their character and behaviours and quirks. I trust him based on analysis of the evidence. How does he treat me? How does he treat others? Is he an honest person? Does he hide his phone when I'm around? Etc. There was no leap of faith necessary. Trusting in one's spouse isn't a religion, in any sense of the word.
I often find it strange when religious-minded people try to drag things down to the level of their religion, apparently without even realizing it. "You have faith too!"

In fact the bible is a love story, in every book. And if you have spent your life in a religion that didn't deliver the peace, joy, love and proving of things for yourself then you are either in the wrong place or you don't understand. I often think about Catholics who 'pray the rosary' and do exactly what Jesus told them not to do - use 'vain repititions' in prayer. And why did Jesus warn about 'vain repititions'? Because you cannot build a relationship with God by chanting something.

This is just preaching.

 

[Polymath257]

In the 1960's and 1970's heroin was not mainstream. The FBI in particular targetted heroin users and dealers. This is why the American Mafia was late into heroin as it was 'too hot.' Dope and LSD were the mainstream narcotics.

Marijuana and LSD are not narcotics.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The love story of the bible is immensely symbolic of God's love for his people

The problem with Christian claims of love is that it is not referring to what I would call love, but rather, something that shouldn't be called love at all. The examples cited as acts of love include a crucifixion. There are scriptures about cutting off hands, plucking out eyes, and castration. There is punishment for those who don't comply with commandments. This comment helps one understand what scripture means by love: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." As an unbeliever very familiar with scripture, I can tell you that scripture teaches hatred of atheists, who are depicted as immoral and fit for perdition simply for not believing those same scriptures.

None of this is appealing. In fact, it's quite off-putting, and as I said, falls very short of what I call love. I can't imagine treating somebody I loved the way this deity is depicted treating humanity. Love is about the needs of the object of love, not the needs of the one claiming to love.

What have I ignored?

He's pointing out that you made contradictory claims, that he identified them for you, has asked you repeatedly to comment on the apparent incoherency of claiming that something is incomprehensible and then describing some of its qualities. We see this kind of activity almost exclusively with thinkers who are unfamiliar with academic standards for debate, and really never debate. They just dissent, but they don't rebut.

I'll remind you what that word means in case you're not clear: It means to offer a counterargument that, if sound, demonstrates that the original claim cannot be true. He has said that you made an incoherent (internally self-contradictory) comment and explained why he calls it that. His argument is convincing. In academic circles or in a court of law, the debate ends when the last plausible, unrebutted statement is made. He made that last statement. He was hoping that it wouldn't be the last statement, that you would defend your claim against his rebuttal if you thought his argument flawed or agree with him if you could find no fallacy.

But as I said, that's behavior we almost never see coming from those not well versed in critical thought. I used t be more like @Sheldon , pointing out how somebody is evading a question, but I got the same results he has, namely being ignored, so, I've modified my approach and simply declare that if there will be no rebuttal forthcoming, the debate is over. This debate is over. It has been convincingly demonstrated that your claims about the incomprehensible were incoherent, and you have no rebuttal to that.

And in the future, when the apologist makes the same already rebutted claim, which also happens commonly, I don't debate it again. I simply explained that his position has already been ruled out, and unless he wants to try rebutting, the issue is resolved.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Have you considered that the studies are testing for the wrong result? The aim of prayer and other kinds of energy work is to bring about wholeness — not necessarily “fixing the physical problems”

The study can't be testing for the wrong result. The study is designed to see if prayer was efficacious in impacting heart patients' post-op outcomes. Why was that the purpose of the study rather than whatever else it is that you suggest they ought to design a study to investigate - wholeness, a rather vague term? Because that is the claim of scripture and of Christians - that prayer heals or prevents illness.

It’s a worthless exercise in research.

The scientific community disagrees. I disagree. I found the study very informative. You're probably aware that those who knew that they were being prayed for fared worse that those who were unaware, another psychological effect revealed by this study. This indicates that it was not prayer that mattered, but somethin happening in the prayed for one's head.

God isn’t a magic genie who grants wishes.

That is how the Christian deity is depicted. It's a testable claim, because it would involve a detectable, measurable change in physical reality if correct.

This is like testing for why cars don’t fly, then complaining that cars don’t seem to be able to fly.

If people were claiming that prayer makes cars fly, then yes. Ask believers to pray that the car flies and record the results to decide and report on the truth value of the claim (complaining isn't part of the process). Would you then claim that that was the wrong test? Maybe.

how I have been subjectively helped by such prayer is really all that matters.

And that's great. But the skeptic is testing the claim that deities are involved. If what you describe is nothing more than a naturalistically explainable psychological phenomenon, then the supernatural claims can be ignored. It's not that there isn't value in such practices. It's just that they work the same without a god belief as they do with one. @Sheldon has explained that he get the same benefit doing the same thing as praying, but without the idea that he is communicating with a deity or expecting to be heard or helped by one. He's not denying your claim that you find benefit in prayer, just that it doesn't need to be prayer or directed to an imagined listener to get that benefit.

Meditation IS prayer. And yes, it has been shown that meditation can lower stress. This is evidence that meditation (hence “prayer”) is efficacious in this context.

I'd say that prayer is meditation with a supernatural aspect thrown in.

you don’t get to negate religion because some research pointed out that religion doesn’t do what it’s not supposed to do.

Isn't it you negating religion? You have walked back the claims of the efficacy of prayer in Christianity so far now that it only offers the same psychological benefit as meditation. That's honest, and I would say correct. If the whole of Christianity limited its claims like that, I don't think you'd get much objection. But that's not usually what we deal with here on RF.

I missed most of the Reiki discussion, but I presume that the discussion was about whether the claims of energy transfer were based in evidence.

Skeezix.

Are you familiar with the comic Gasoline Alley? Probably. In case you're not, Skeezix was the foundling that Walt Wallet raised, and who, unlike characters such as Little Orphan Annie and Dennis the Menace, aged over the years. By 1944, Skeezix fights in WWII.

 

[PureX]

As always, making no distinction between religious representation and the spiritual conditions that they are meant to represent results in science (atheists) wasting lots of time and money making insignificant anti-religious proclamations. Prayers won't heal broken bones. Did we really need a study to tell us that? On the other hand, prayer helps us to become calm, and become more focused, and become more positive about the healing process. Helping us to endure the process more gracefully and effectively, creating an impression that we are healing faster and better than otherwise expected.

 

[Polymath257]

As always, making no distinction between religious representation and the spiritual conditions that they are meant to represent results in science (atheists) wasting lots of time and money making insignificant anti-religious proclamations. Prayers won't heal broken bones. Did we really need a study to tell us that? On the other hand, prayer helps us to become calm, and become more focused, and become more positive about the healing process. Helping us to endure the process more gracefully and effectively, creating an impression that we are healing faster and better than otherwise expected.

Yes, evidently some believers *do* need to be told that prayer doesn't work any better than a placebo.

 

[PureX]

Yes, evidently some believers *do* need to be told that prayer doesn't work any better than a placebo.

And some materialists just can't seem to accept the fact that prayer and placebos both do work.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Prayers won't heal broken bones. Did we really need a study to tell us that? On the other hand, prayer helps us to become calm, and become more focused, and become more positive about the healing process. Helping us to endure the process more gracefully and effectively, creating an impression that we are healing faster and better than otherwise expected.

You're describing psychological processes. Skeptics agree that that is what prayer is, just like meditation, but with another character who is listening and can act thrown in to make it a dialog rather than a monolog, which can have a salutary effect, but as the study revealed, can also do the opposite.

Most theists claim that more than that is happening with prayer. I just read today on one of these threads that God answers all prayer, but sometimes the answer is no. That person believes that his words are heard by a deity that cares about him and will do what's best for him, which sometimes means saying no. That's a completely different understanding of prayer than you expressed here.

some materialists just can't seem to accept the fact that prayer and placebos both do work.

Really? What empiricist is disagreeing that placeboes work, or that prayer functions as a placebo?

You now hold the "materialist" position. Prayer is meditation with a supernatural placebo thrown in to create an impression as you say.

As always, making no distinction between religious representation and the spiritual conditions that they are meant to represent results in science (atheists) wasting lots of time and money making insignificant anti-religious proclamations.

That study was time and money well spent. I learned from it and have used it multiple times over the years in my posting on the efficacy of prayer.

No anti-religious proclamation was made apart from the results of the data showing that prayer was not efficacious in preventing complications during and after cardiac surgery, which is a significant finding, just as it would be had the opposite been found. We get precious few testable claims from religion. The claims are usually metaphysical and therefore unscientific and undecidable. But here's one that makes a claim about something measurable, and measure they did.

Not surprisingly, the results seem to agitate a lot of believers, who throw verbal rocks at it as we see in this thread beginning with the OP. Objections have ranged to arguing that the study is irrelevant, tests the wrong thing, misunderstands the claims regarding prayer and healing, they didn't say if they were praying the right way, it was a waste of time and money, and the like. But notice that there are no refutations - no rebuttal - to what the study purports to reveal. I guess that that was unassailable to the believer, although with expertise in the scientific method, had the study design been flawed, one could challenge whether it really shows what it seems to show.

I also think you've got it wrong about what religious representation, in this case, the claims of Christianity, is meant to represent. You have joined Sojourner in removing all of the supernatural claims for prayer and reduced it to something the skeptic would say - placebo effect. Notice that you and he get no argument about that from the "materialists." But as I indicated, that's not what most Christians believe. It's the supernatural, metaphysical baggage thrown in that is being challenged by skeptics.

 

[Sheldon]

As always, making no distinction between religious representation and the spiritual conditions that they are meant to represent results in science (atheists) wasting lots of time and money making insignificant anti-religious proclamations. Prayers won't heal broken bones. Did we really need a study to tell us that?

Except the claims were theistic, and tested for veracity, it has naught to do with atheism, and science was merely designing a test that removed subjective bias. Incidentally it was measured the recovery of a large group of post op heart patients, against a known median metric.

On the other hand, prayer helps us to become calm, and become more focused, and become more positive about the healing process.

You don't need prayer for that of course, and the research demonstrated this was not the case anyway. In the research cited those patients who knew they were prayed for faired worst of all.

Helping us to endure the process more gracefully and effectively, creating an impression that we are healing faster and better than otherwise expected.

Again the research demonstrated the exact opposite.

 

[Sheldon]

And some materialists just can't seem to accept the fact that prayer and placebos both do work.

I have never met a "materialist" who has denied the placebo effect, and I doubt anyone here, other than theists, would deny that prayers might work as a placebo under the right conditions.

 

[PureX]

There’s no effective difference between praying into the great mystery of being, and praying to a specific religious deity. Prayer works as an action, not as an idea. Praying for calmness, for example, and the act of praying helping one to become calm does not change based on the idea or image in one’s mind that the prayer is directed at. It could be directed at Jesus, Buddha, or the great mystery of existence, and the prayer will still work.

And when it doesn’t work, it’s not because it was directed toward the wrong ‘object’, but because the act of praying was being employed for the wrong purpose. So all these foolish accusations of prayer being ineffective because people pray to supernatural deities’ is both false and irrelevant to the actual efficacy of praying. An atheist can pray and gain the same results as anyone else can because the act of praying works, as long as we apply the activity appropriately.

 

[Sheldon]

There’s no effective difference between praying into the great mystery of being, and praying to a specific religious deity. Prayer works as an action, not as an idea. Praying for calmness, for example, and the act of praying helping one to become calm does not change based on the idea or image in one’s mind that the prayer is directed at. It could be directed at Jesus, Buddha, or the great mystery of existence, and the prayer will still work.

Well the inference there is pretty clear, at least for the claims of theists that make claims about what prayers can do. As addressed in the research that was cited.

And when it doesn’t work, it’s not because it was directed toward the wrong ‘object’, but because the act of praying was being employed for the wrong purpose. So all these foolish accusations of prayer being ineffective because people pray to supernatural deities’ is both false and irrelevant to the actual efficacy of praying.

I think you're creating something fo a straw man here, as the research and this thread is addressing specific claims. So calling it foolish for not addressing your beliefs is irrational
.

An atheist can pray and gain the same results as anyone else can. Because the act of praying works, as long as we apply the activity appropriately.

Well you don't even have to pray, meditation will achieve the results you're describing, again there is a pretty obvious inference there.

 

[sojourner]

Isn't it you negating religion? You have walked back the claims of the efficacy of prayer in Christianity so far now that it only offers the same psychological benefit as meditation. That's honest, and I would say correct. If the whole of Christianity limited its claims like that, I don't think you'd get much objection. But that's not usually what we deal with here on RF.

In John 14:13 there’s a sentence: “Whatever you ask for in my name I will do.” People take that as carte blanche to treat God as a cosmic Santa Claus. People have been doing that with deities since deities were invented. Throw a Virgin in a volcano; do a rain dance — all designed to get the deity to do something. And more often than not, it has not worked. So why do people continue to do/believe that? Desperation? Fear? Yet, fear and desperation are no part of religion. There’s a disconnect somewhere. We have to ask what the Johanine writer meant when he had Jesus say that. I suspect it had nothing to do with performing miracles. I suspect that it had everything to do with love and connection, since Jesus was just talking about his connection with the Father, and how connecting with him was to connect with the Father. If we strive in prayer for closer connection, that connection will happen. That connection isn’t a “fixed” body — its wholeness.

Doesn’t matter if we pray “to” God or to polka dot llamas. Because prayer isn’t about who or what it’s aimed at; it’s about connecting in an act with a better sense of wholeness. Prayers don’t grant wishes. But prayer does help put us in a better space in order to better deal with misfortune.