The "right" number of prayers?

[Mastema]

This was passed to me by a co-worker, I submit for your comments.

Recently my cousin, who is “born again,” and who pesters my family with his
preaching sent me a pyramid scheme via email in which he claimed that a
women was dying of some sort of cancer. His pitch was that if I and all
other recipients just prayed for this women and sent the email on to ten
others, God would hear our prayers and heal the poor cancer victim.

I am an engineer and a conservationist. I like solutions to problems that
are efficient and quantifiable and this pyramid prayer scheme caused me to
ask my cousin the following questions:

How many prayers are required to cure cancer with God’s intervention? 58…
one million?

Is there a statute of limitations or shelf life to prayer? Once uttered,
does prayer exist forever unaffected by time? Does prayer have a half life.
If so, what is the time period required to collect the requisite number of
prayers?

Do different types of cancer require different amounts of prayer to effect a
divine cure?

How do I know if my prayer is effective? Perhaps 73 prayers were required
and my prayer was number 74. Can my surplus prayer be applied to other
diseases?

What if I decide to break the pyramid and my prayer was the last one needed?
Will I be guilty of killing the poor cancer sufferer and as a consequence go
to Hell?

What if I am a sinner whose name has already been posted on Heaven’s Post
Office bulletin board? Would my prayer be an anti-prayer and annihilate a
perfectly good prayer (and perhaps, perish the thought, reduce the number of
prayers to below the cure threshold).

Seems to me that this healing prayer business is poorly organized and ill
defined! I propose that we initiate a study similar to that used by drug
companies to qualify their products for consumption by the public. For a
preliminary study, we will gather a population of cancer victims (all having
the same cancer and all being roughly at the same progression in their
disease). Half the victims will receive no prayer and the other half of the
victims will receive prayer from Christians carefully screened to weed out
cardinal sinners. The study will be repeated by increasing the number of
prayers until we have an acceptable correlation between cures for the prayed
for group and the number of prayers offered.

It is my belief that such a study would be a tremendous public service. The
world is in such a mess with so many problems that could benefit from prayer
that excess prayer is nearly a criminal act.

[Meatros]

*Originally posted by Mastema *
**This was passed to me by a co-worker, I submit for your comments. **

Ah here’s the problem:"“born again,”".

You see when you are born again, you start over, at the age of one, that’s why the reasoning is bad.

FTR-I don’t think a specific amount of prayers will tempt God into curing cancer; what’s the point? If you believe God created everything with a reason, why would he uncreate cancer-just because some people prayed? Also if God did cure cancer, that would be solid, irrefutable proof of God’s existance (well, if he did it the way I’m thinking), in which case the question becomes, what good is faith?

[Mastema]

Clarification: Read the OP with as much sarcasm as you can muster, so you’ll have the tone of the e-mail right.

[Meatros]

*Originally posted by Mastema *
**Clarification: Read the OP with as much sarcasm as you can muster, so you’ll have the tone of the e-mail right. **

Ah, I see. Puts a different spin on it entirely.