I agree. I find it highly probably that prayer has a very real effect on the individual who prays. But surely you must agree that this is a subjective thing? And remember that this personal effect has been measured scientifically. Researchers have been able to documents physical changes in the brain waves of people who are having a spiritual experience.
But it is this “magic” effect that I am questioning. There seem to be a lot of people who claim that prayer has a real and objective effect on outside events, yet they say that effect cannot be measured. If this “magic” can’t be measured in any way, it raises the question “does it exist at all”?
Polycarp’s response nails it on the head (with a caveat below). Pretty much everything earlier in the thread has simply equated prayer with enumerating a list of requests.
While asking for things is certainly a part of prayer, I’ve found that sincere and heartfelt prayer resembles a dialogue more than a wish-list. The other half of the dialogue comes from the Holy Spirit.
That being said, I have seen what I consider to be events that clearly indicate that prayer is efficatious–clear instances of specific prophecy for instance. And yet, those experiences are too sacred to me to present to the general public. They are things I share only with those closest to me, and only if I feel it’s appropriate.
Since I’m not proposing my religion as scientific theory, I don’t feel compelled to apply the scientific method. It is fundamentally verifiable and subjective, not falsifiable and objective anyway. Even those experiences which I accept as clear signs could be rationalized by the best of them I’m sure. For instance, any physiological effects associated with prayer can be argued to be the cause of a spiritual epiphany (by the unbeliever) or as the result. (Remarkably, I thought the movie ‘Signs’ addressed this issue fairly well.)
I’m confused. I must agree that what is a subjective thing? I’m not arguing, this is just a question.
Also, thanks to Polycarp for throwing sand in the gears. He reminds me of something I read somewhere. There are usually four parts to prayer, albeit a tad liberal in the interperetations.
Adoration- The whole “God, you 'da best” thing
Thanksgiving- Self explainatory
Confession- “I have sinned”
Intercession- Putting your concerns before God
I’d also like to repeat my request for WinAce to grace us with his/her presence, so we can debate on-topic.
Then again, it’s getting much more interesting near the end without WinAce…
While I respect Polycarp’s mature understanding of prayer as opposed to those who believe that God takes sides in Sunday football games, some things from his quote from Luke stood out to me this morning.
Forget the scientific method for a moment. Just from this message board, it seems clear to me that there are a number of people here for which these promises fail to be fulfilled.
I suspect that the believer is likely to trot out other scripture to explain why this is so. But the following makes it seem to me that receiving these things should not be difficult; indeed it should be easier than achieving earthly results.
Nothing to really debate here, but this struck me as pretty depressing for this unbeliever who is not “anti God”.
blowero said: “Assuming that such a study finds evidence of prayer’s effectiveness, AND is successfully repeated and shown to have good methodology, then I suppose there could be a debate over whether God or human psychic power caused the miracle.”
But I think Apos’s point was that such an experiment itself was in fact impossible long before the results even came down the pike. The experiment cannot be set up unambiguously, nevermind any results.
But rsa, the verses don’t tell you that you’ll get what you ask for. Rather that if you ask, you’ll receive, etc. God is more capable of knowing what’s good for you than you are. If you’re genuinely seeking Him, you’ll find Him. But He might not be what you expect, and His gifts may not be what you asked for.
I fear I haven’t made my point clear at all. I agree with Apos - I was just nit-picking his reasoning on some of his points:
He said the experiment couldn’t be done BECAUSE we wouldn’t know if it was prayer power or psychic power, but I am not aware of anyone ever confusing the two. Psychics never claim to be invoking God, and those who pray never claim to be psychics. There is no danger of confusing the two. My point was, IF (really big “if” - for the sake of argument only - not intended to be a suggested course of action) the experiment were done, and some sort of magic power was demonstrated, the question of what “kind” of magic power would be the LEAST of the problems. I hope that’s a little more clear now.
Apos made some good points as to why such an experiment wouldn’t be possible. I just don’t happen to think that particular point is very relevent. Studies of this sort HAVE been done and have been widely criticized, and probably deservedly so. But I’m not aware any criticism of the nature: “Gee, how do you know those guys weren’t just psychic?”
If Apos says “experiment X can’t be done for the following reasons”, why am I not allowed to agree with him in general, yet disagree with one particular reason?
Well, the context of those promissory verses you quote, rsa, is one in which prayer is “in My [Jesus’s] name.”
That doesn’t mean that the prayer is effective only if you close it with the handy-dandy formula “In Jesus’s name. Amen.” – That’s magic of the traditional school – manipulating the supernatural by means of words, as any elementary anthropology textbook would tell you. And the fact that it’s done by a Presbyterian minister in a suit in a brownstone building, instead of a witch doctor wearing a loincloth and shaking a thighbone, does not stop it from being an attempt at ceremonial magic.
Rather, what one is told to understand that formula to imply is that to pray in Jesus’s name, one must adopt, to the best of one’s ability, Jesus’s mindset – WWJD, e.g., if He were sitting here with these people and asked to pray for them.
Nonetheless, we are promised in the Gospel that prayer in His name will be efficacious – in fact, one can command mountains to move in the expectation that they will.
However, it’s been my experience that God works through His Creation rather than superseding its laws to perform a flashy Type A miracle – His miracles, quite real, are in, for example, sending a sixteen-year-old boy to go visit with a man whom the boy knows will listen to him, just as that man is having a massive heart attack and will need emergency transport to the hospital to survive. (That is not a hypothetical example – I am sitting here typing in this post because and only because precisely that set of events happened twelve years ago last March 23.)
—Nonetheless, we are promised in the Gospel that prayer in His name will be efficacious – in fact, one can command mountains to move in the expectation that they will.—
With your re-interpretation of the WWJD stipulation, that makes Jesus’s claim about mountain moving seem pretty slippery: quite a misleading sales-pitch.
—“Gee, how do you know those guys weren’t just psychic?”—
I don’t think that was exactly the gist of my criticism. That’s just one possible outcome of the problem I was describing: but the problem is that you cannot isolate out the effect of prayer, because prayer is not observable. All you can isolate out is the effect of TELLING some people to pray for something. If there is some effect, then at best you can support the idea that TELLING people about a problem has an effect, not prayer itself. If there is no effect, then what you’ve learned is something about telling people to pray, not about prayer.
If prayer was found to be efficacous at all, how about this:
Set up several groups of believers, one set praying in Jesus’ name, one set in Allah’s name, one set to just God, one set to Krishna, and one set just praying to no God. If one set has more effective results, that might be an argument for the existence of a particular God, and the effectiveness of prayers to that God. If all groups had equally good results, then either psychic powers are involved, or there is a deity who doesn’t care who you pray to (interesting in itself) or there are lots of deities.
All this assumes you can reproducibly measure the effectiveness of prayer in any context, of course. None of this proves anything, but then no experiment does.
Well, there’s the matter of lots of men having massive heart attacks with no one around…
A few rare exceptions that would nevertheless seem ‘too coincidental’ by virtue of human psychology are pretty much expected in a world with no supernatural forces. The difference is that those people who don’t experience something peculiar don’t wonder why a miracle didn’t occur.
Hmm, can this be called something like the Miraculous Anthropic Principle?
And it seems a few others have taken on the alleged power of magic in my absence. At any rate, such things as ‘fulfilled’ prayers, miracles, etc. are much more parsimoniously explained by invoking known phenomena, not postulating supernatural entities for which empirical evidence is completely non-existent.
However, the average theist isn’t usually aware of this (note the anecdotal reports of ‘healing’ after prayer!) and subsequently falls for these and other claims hook, line and sinker.
The belief, once established, can easily survive demonstrations that prayer is empirically as effective as meditating on sunflower seeds, just as believers in faith healers can avoid confronting the results of James Randi’s tests.
However, it is VERY reasonable to ask–if that faith originally arose because of an anecdotal, unrepeatable, empirically unverifiable personal experience, are there other possible explanations for it? Would it be expected, even rarely, in a world with no supernatural events from human psychology, random chance, etc.?
And if it would, can they really be any less pasimonious explanation than postulating a strange metaphysical force (which operates above our knowledge of physics, making it necessary to postulate new laws too!) that interacts with the universe and produces obvious change, the type which makes people believers, yet doesn’t produce a detectable, empirically verifiable, unambiguous effect of any type?
In that regard, religion, pseudoscience and other such endeavours can be considered “the systematic and successful attempt to create subjectively powerful but objectively useless evidence out of thin air, human psychology and pre-existing beliefs”. </opinion>
First- I doff my hat at thee, WinAce, quite eloquent indeed.
Second:
-Emphasis mine.
Okay, you can ask, but you may or may not get something, and that somethingmay or may not be what you want or what you expect.
… and this can be identified as something other than sheer random chance and wishful thinking just how, again?
It is not the least different from John Edwards’ fraudulent “cold reading”. You WILL make some sort of connection if you look hard enough and really want it. Man is a pattern-recognizer; we see faces in smoke, profiles in mountainsides, or doves in rocket exhaust.
Man A prays for happiness. He could find a stray puppy right outside his house ten minutes later, or he could find that his favorite blend is on special at the coffeehouse on the way to work the next day, or he could get a raise the next month, or buy a new car the next year. All of which he could self-justify as “God’s answer” to his prayers for happiness.
Man B does not pray, to anyone or anything. He could find a puppy, get his coffee on sale, get a raise or that new car, too.
There is no observable difference in ends. There may or may not be, however, a difference in means. The bottom line is that there is no way to show whether or not an event occurs because a prayer somehow “worked.” This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t answer prayers, or doesn’t listen to them.
Before you jump on me about this, I am perfectly aware that occurances that some might attribute to prayer can be indistinguishable from occurances that arise out of randomness. I am also aware that I worship a God who works in this way. I don’t need to justify to anyone else my beliefs, as long as they don’t harm anyone else. I simply need to justify them to myself and, if possible, live them out in my life. I justify them to myself every time I wake up in the morning.
Also, as an aside, what do y’all non-theists believe the purpose of prayer is?
And I was (vaguely) aware of the phenomenon of confirmation bias.
Which does not, in fact, affect my conviction that I happened to be saved from the overwhelming likelihood of fatal myocardial infarction by an act of God through Jay’s “impulse to come visit” in order to do the things I’ve done since then – and that he, by no means an active churchgoing Christian, shares the conviction that God worked through him.
—I am also aware that I worship a God who works in this way. —
A god functionally indistinguishable from no god?
—I don’t need to justify to anyone else my beliefs, as long as they don’t harm anyone else. I simply need to justify them to myself and, if possible, live them out in my life.—
Damn straight.
—Also, as an aside, what do y’all non-theists believe the purpose of prayer is?—
I think there was already a pretty comprehensive list given of all the reasons people pray. I don’t see any reason to doubt the sincerity or accuracy of those reasons, even if their underpinings are just beliefs too.
Didn’t WinAce make the point that the evidence supporting the effectiveness of prayer is unreliable? Given what you have just said, wouldn’t you say that his point is valid? If you admit that there is no way to show that prayer “works” for events, how can you say prayer is reliable?
I see two issues here:
Does prayer have an effect on the person who prays?
It seems obvious that it does. This leaves open the question of whether this change in attitude is due to the act of prayer itself or due to a supernatural and unprovable cause. Personally, I find the former to be more likely. However, I respect your right to believe the latter. BUT, if you choose the supernatural cause over the natural cause, I would not consider your belief to be objectively “reliable”.
Does prayer have an effect on events outside of the mind of the person who prays?
The consensus seems to be that there is no way to demonstrate this one way or the other. Therefore, believing in “the power of prayer” means accepting an unprovable supernatural cause over the natural “confirmation bias” explanation. Again, how is the the supernatural belief reliable?
I think it’s the same as any form of meditation; a way to focus the mind. When you pray, you are changing your own mindset. Zen Buddhists focus on a paradoxical riddle; Christians focus on God. If I understood Polycarp’s explanation correctly, I think he was saying the same thing - we simply disagree on the factual matter of whether God is really there.
I completely agree with him that any “evidence” for the “effectiveness” of intercessionary prayer is unreliable. WinAce’s point is completely valid.
I make no scientific claim that prayer is reliable. My beliefs are purely based on faith. God an prayer are, as JThunder said, simply beyond the realm of science. I don’t see why I should try to use science to prove something not even remotely scientific.
Does prayer have an effect on the person who prays?
Obviously. I agree. And I don’t consider my belief to be objectively reliable, either. Religious beliefs are, by their very nature, personal and subjective things.
2)Does prayer have an effect on events outside of the mind of the person who prays?
To answer this the best I know how: “Probably, but I cannot possibly be sure either way.”
This seems to be a bit of a tautology. Of course “supernatural” things are unproven. From dictionary.com
Supernatural:
Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
Of or relating to a deity.
Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous.
Of or relating to the miraculous.
I completely agree that there is no way to prove the “supernatural,” because that’s the nature of the beast. Supernatural beliefs cannot be tested according to natural laws because they are, prima facia, unnatural.
Are you, up front, denying the validity of supernatural beliefs because they aren’t objecively reliable?
Not sure what “up front” means. I am simply applying Occam’s Razor; given two possible explanations for belief in the power of prayer: 1) Human propensity towards superstition/ confirmation bias, and 2) Inexplicable, untestable, undefined and unprovable supernatural cause; I would tend to believe the more likely of the two.
