Francis Galton concluded that prayer was useless after noting how badly many royal families fared despite all the people praying for them, and that insurance companies did not charge less to insure missionary vessels than slave ships.
Still, like Tevya, I must wonder would it spoil His vast eternal plan, if Shakira and Salma Hayek were to show up at my door and demand I be the kosher salami filling of a Latina sandwhich?
Possibly. I have worked that theory into my design for a 1920s Style Death Ray.
It’s been a while since I saw Fiddler, but I don’t think that’s exactly what Tevya was hoping for.
Dear G-d, you made many, many horny geeks. I realize, of course, that
it’s no great shame to be a horny geek… but it’s no great honor, either. So what would have
been the difference if I lived out… a small fantasy?
Salma and Shakira,
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich filled with me
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were the kosher meat.
Oh I’d work them very hard,
Diddle diddle diddle
Fondle fondle fondle fondle bite
If I were in that Latin hotty hotty,
Bouncy jiggly statuesque sandwhich.
I’d give them …um… ‘happy endings’ by the dozen
Right in the middle of the bed,
And some hot, steamy lovefests in the shower,
I would tease them with such a long build up
That when they finally …um… ‘arrived’
They would howl and begin speaking in tongues!
I’d handsew some revealing latex outfits
Take walks for the town to see and hear,
Moaning just as noisily as they can,
And each loud “Oh-G-d-Doc! Yes-yes-si! Da-me-lo! Di-os-Mi!”
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say, “There lives a lucky man.”
Oy!
Salma and Shakira,
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich filled with me
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were the kosher meat.
Oh I’d work them very hard,
Diddle diddle diddle
Fondle fondle fondle fondle bite
If I were in that Latin hotty hotty,
Bouncy jiggly statuesque sandwhich.
I see my self, Doc Cathode, looking like a living corpse
With out any body fat,
Supervising meals to her heart’s delight.
All that exercise, forgetting to eat
I see me getting scurvy and rickets like a sailor
But! What a happy mood I’m in,
Screaming with Latinas in the sheets!
The most important men in town will come to fawn on me–
They will ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise–
“If you please, Doc Cathode”–
“Pardon me, Doc Cathode?”–
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes–
Asking how my lustful dream was realized
(chanting) Ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum…
And it won’t make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong–
What how I explain the whole thing.
If I’m the filling who cares how?
In that sandwich, one babe in front one in back
Why sit in the synagogue and pray,
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall,
Our shouts of 'Oh, G-d!" echo of the walls
And I’d discuss the learned books with the holy men
And I’d thank Him with each thrust as we made love
tweny five hours every day–
That would be the sweetest thing of all…
Oy!
Salma and Shakira,
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich
Sandwhich sandwhich sandwhich filled with me
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were the kosher meat.
Oh I’d work them very hard,
Diddle diddle diddle
Fondle fondle fondle fondle bite
If I were in that Latin hotty hotty,
Bouncy jiggly statuesque sandwhich.
Lord who made the poor and the rich,
You decreed I should be what I am–
Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan,
For me to fill that Latina sandwhich?
Well this is embarassing
I forgot to delete
“Supervising meals to her delight”
“Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes”
“And I’d discuss the learned books with the holy men”
I’ll bet a million to one that the study was fradulent.
Studies presuming to prove the efficacy of prayer pop up every once in a while, usually led by well-meaning theistic scientists hoping to provide some scientific foundation for their faith. They feel that a little subterfuge is justified as long as the results turn out to prove what they know in their hearts to be true. Ultimately, however, the fraud is uncovered by legitimate scientists doing proper science.
One of the most egregious examples of such quackery was profiled in Wired:
I am giving odds of a million to one because there is a small but nonzero chance that one group is going to do better than the other group to a statistically significant degree due to plain dumb luck. Of course such results are not going to be replicable in repeat studies so the point is moot.
What I often find disappointing is when I point out to people studies like this tend to be so flawed as to be false or uninterpretable, they claim, because I “don’t like religion”, that I’m just being stubborn and overly skeptical.
I think most scientists would agree that if someone could demonstrate convincingly that prayer was an efficacious form of therapy (using prayer to cure somebody else, for instance), it would probably be the most exciting new field of research the world has ever seen, and we’d all jump on it like starved weasels. I bet at least 20% of the top scientists in a number of fields (physics not the least) would immediately drop whatever they were doing and pursue “prayer science” with 110% of their energy. It would revolutionize science. It would be wondrous. We’d love it. We’d jump for joy. It would be so fantastically interesting. Same with extraterrestrials, psi phenomena, you name it. The problem isn’t skepticism, the problem is the reasearch sucks!
Doc, I have to ask.
How long have you been sitting on that one?
Loopydude I believe in G-d. However, that belief is not based on evidence which would meet any legal or scientific definition. I have never seen any study or other evidence which held up to scrutiny. To cite Galton’s argument, of prayer were effective at reducing risks, improving health, and prolonging life, why have the statistics-crunching insurance companies adjusted their rates accordingly? Considering that they factor in such things as the color of a car, and the grades of teenage drivers, wouldn’t they have noticed people who pray are a lower risk group?
Well, I should have said “some people”. 
Yllaria
A few minutes. Ultrafilter’s response inspired me. I found a site with the lyrics. I took a few minutes to change them without altering the meter or rhyme scheme too much.
So those would be the skinless hot dogs?
runs
The problem with this sort of study, which is not totally insurmountable, is that it appears to presume that there is a direct causal link between prayer and the beneficial effect prayed for. This is, in a word, magic – “If I say ‘abracadabra,’ the problem will disappear, because of the efficacy of the word ‘abracadabra.’”
Prayer, in contrast, is the beseeching of a Deity believed to have the power to accomplish some end deemed beneficial by the pray-er for Him to exercise that power and accomplish that end. However, in most religious systems, the Deity is believed to have a substantially greater knowledge of the world than he/she who prays to Him. (I’m carefully not tailoring this to the Judeo-Christian God, to avoid the classic error of Occam’s Razor – the “He/Him” can be regarded as common gender, with the singular including the plural, to allow for Goddesses and Polytheistic systems.)
As might be inferred from the middle sentence of the last paragraph, it is quite possible that the aforementioned Deity may regard the results in a different light than the person beseeching His intervention – and may therefore effectively deny the prayer. (“Effectively” because “Thy will be done” is implicit in such prayers, so in effect it’s not a total denial of the prayer itself – but it is of the petition which is the main topic of the prayer.)
Nonetheless, for prayer to have some degree of efficacy, there should be a measurable difference between things prayed for and not prayed for. But the one-to-one correspondence will not be present, by virtue of the greater knowledge and wisdom presumed of the Deity.
To conduct such experiments, one should have persons praying in faith that their prayers will be answered – because the Highest Judge is no more fond of frivolous petitions than the average human judge, and expects that faith of His believers, according to most theological systems – for a variety of ends deemed good by the petitioners and in accordance with the Deity’s instructions for prayer and for proper petition content – and an attempt made to find controls that will almost certainly not be prayed for by anyone. This will account for the Divine Wisdom factor, by presuming that at least some of the petitions will be for things deemed appropriate to be fulfilled by God.
But as noted, attempting to cover the “control” aspect is going to be difficult, especially as there are those whose role it is to hold up in prayer all those situations which “deserve” prayer but have no one to pray for them.
It’s important, however, for the skeptic to note that prayer is not magic. There is not a one-to-one expected correspondence between prayer and the fulfillment of its object. A God deemed wiser and more far-seeing than the person uttering the prayer is the one being asked for the results – with the humble acknowledgement that He may know better than the petitioner what is best, and that that result is what is really being asked.
Think of it, rather, as similar to a lawyer retained to argue a case, who believes that it’s possible the court may hear his client’s petition favorably, but cannot be certain of the result. It’s better to file the case anyway, since not doing so will result in benefitting his client only if the court happens to order the desired results coincidentally as the result of a completely separate class action suit, while filing it, though not a sure thing, may conceivably result in the desired end.
Folderol.
I’ve no idea how good the research really is; I don’t doubt it may all well be worthless. But I also don’t doubt that there would be lots of resistance to even an impeccably researched study. Scientists are human beings complete with their own values and belief systems, some of which emphatically rule out the supernatural.
The evidence is the history of science itself. As Kuhn and numerous others have demonstrated, when a truly revolutionary idea hits, the scientific establishment is usually quite slow to overturn received truth; and I can’t think of much more revolutionary than empirical proof of the supernatural (which might be an oxymoron…) No doubt some would react as you say; but plenty of others would react very much like fundamentalists hearing Darwin for the first time.
To the OP: I just happened across a reference to this book:
I’ve no idea how good it is, but an author I take seriously (Neil Postman, an atheist FWIW) seems to take it seriously.