All right, but how many times did you pray? What was the frequency? Duration? Have you tried it with, let’s say, 5 other people? Maybe the power increases exponentially with additional people. Were your prayers based on selfish desires, or were they for greater human benefit? Ask we ask these types of questions, we start to see that there could be a lot of factors that might contribute to a successful prayer. As it stands, no scientific study has been able to figure out what works and what doesn’t, or if it even works at all.
Again, I am not stating that prayer works or doesn’t work; I’m just saying that you have to keep an open mind because most negative opinions on the matter are based on prejudgement (“praying for crime to go down?! that’s stupid!”), not data from experimental studies.
This is venturing into GD territory, but what the heck.
I do believe in prayer. I have tons of (anecdotal) evidence to back me up. The problem is that the people in the OP’s link are praying that God will make all their problems just go away. It’s been my experience that God doesn’t work that way. He helps those who help themselves.
Not a whoosh, he was asking a question. I doubt anyone believes faith can move mountains (if it could the pope wouldn’t have had to ride around in a bulletproof car and Bin Ladin wouldn’t have kidney disease) but the studies I have read show prayer to be helpful, but some show it is inconclusive. So who knows, I can’t find a definite answer. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msciprayer.html
At the very least large groups of people doing something that may be pointless in an effort to improve other people’s lives isn’t a bad thing. I’d rather see people in pointless prayer circles than having violent fantasies or something else that really doesn’t affect anyone else.
I’ve read assorted books and magazine articles, generally more on the subject of meditation than prayer, which cited studies which found that if a percentage of people within a community took up the practice of meditation (I think that it was something like 3%) the community at large seemed to cop a mellowtude. Violent crime rates went down, and folks were generally less stressed-out.
I recently finished reading Healing Words by Larry Dossey, and he presented some pretty convincing evidence for the power of prayer for healing disease/medical conditions. What I found most intersting was that the prayers that seemed most effective weren’t the “God, please heal Bob of his cancer” type of prayers. The type of prayer that seemed to work best were more along the lines of “Thy will be done” or “Please bring about the best possible outcome/do what is best for this person”. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that if prayer can improve the outcome for a sick/injured person, it can also improve the general well-being of a community.
I suppose that if enough of the folks in Ottowa are given to the more contemplative/meditative variety of prayer, they might just help bring the addiction rate down some.
Yes, many factors might contribute to a successful prayer. And as it stands, no scientific study has been able to figure out what works and what doesn’t, or if it even works at all. That may have something to do with that prayer has no actual evidence, and there is no real way to test it and prove that it does or does not work. One big issue is the clause that someone mentioned earlier that if the prayer is answered, yay prayer works, but if not, then it just wasn’t god’s will. That complicates the issue.
Can you find any way to actually test the power of prayer? Who would set the standards? Who is prayed to? How do we know if the prayer worked? How can we find if it was not the result of something else? Is there any way to receive feedback from what is prayed to? Can we extract any data for analysis that would be relevant?
I’m not trying to come across as an ass, and I’m honestly sorry if I am. I just thought someone should answer your questions, and after doing that, I’ve become curious at the prospect of doing actual scientific experiments with prayer. I just don’t see how it could be done. Anyone have any ideas?
I disagree. It can hurt if people forgo proven medical treatment in favor of prayer. It can hurt whenever individuals, or a whole community in this case, decide to leave their problems “in the hands of God” instead of making any attempt to confront the problem.
I disagree. In this case, the time used (wasted, really) praying could be better spent thinking up ways and/or doing things to achieve a reduction in the drug problem the community is concerned about.
I have seen it work, several times in my life. Each time, it required not only prayer, but me taking some action on my own. Here’s the most notable case in point.
Many years ago, I was on my way to a church retreat when I passed a couple stopped by the side of a road halfway up a mountain. I stopped to see what I could do, but there wasn’t anything, so I offered to pray for them. As I continued up the mountain, I did pray that God would send someone to help them. Halfway down the otherside of the mountain, there was a policewoman stopped by the side of the road, presumably watching for speeders. As I passed her, I realized something. I was asking God to send someone to help the people I passed. Apparently, that person was me. I turned the car around, went back to the policewoman and told her what I’d seen.
If I recall, the people Jesus helped in the Gospels asked for help and, usually, took action to get that help, even cutting a hole in someone’s roof in one case. In the Old Testament, when Moses and the Israelite’s left Egypt, they weren’t given a magical route straight to the Promised Land; instead, there was a heck of a lot of walking.
Prayer, in my book, is a good thing, but left to itself, I’ve got my doubts about it. We aren’t puppets for God to manipulate on a whim, or at least I hope we’re not. While I’m usually grateful for prayers, I’m even more greatful concrete help and ideas. After all, God’s got a lot on His plate – we can’t leave it *all * up to him!
This was not your original question. Your original question was, “How many of you have tried it first-hand for yourself, and seen if it works or not?” And I have tried it for myself, and it didn’t work for me.
Why should I acknowledge it? I don’t believe in a god, so why on earth would I think praying to something I don’t believe in would work?
Why, yes, I can remember all the titles of every book and the dates of every periodical I’ve read since I was a teenager, and can find an online edition to link to. :rolleyes:
So you tried prayer with the expectation that it wouldn’t work? And you weren’t praying to a higher power? Doesn’t seem like a very convincing prayer to me.
Just because you tried it one way and didn’t get the results you wanted doesn’t mean that you’ve provided conclusive proof of anything. You’re trying to dismiss the entire concept without having conducted a thorough investigation. By your logic, I can say that exercise doesn’t make you lose weight because I tried running 20 minutes at isolated intervals in time, perhaps months or years apart, and I didn’t lose weight. That exercise shit doesn’t work, man.
Obviously we can see the fault in the reasoning here. There’s a lot of factors that can go into the effectiveness of the exercise: lifestyle, diet, attitude, etc. It’s not unthinkable that the same might be true of prayer.
And yes, that does mean that you have to practice prayer in a methodical way to investigate its validity. That’s not a hole in my logic, that’s the nature of the subject we’re talking about.
Cagey Drifter, I suggest you go start a double blind scientific study that proves once and for all that prayer works. If you do, you could get famous and write a book and become filthy rich.
