A couple questions/issues I have on the topic of prayer

I

Innominate

Why?
Registered Senior Member
1. Can prayer be studied through science?

Most religious individuals say no, but the way I see it, if prayers work, and if god is good, then the life of an individual that prays would be better in some way than the life of someone that doesn't. Basically, either it works or it doesn't, if it does, if things are actually made better by god through prayer, it can be studied. There would have to be evidence. Getting evidence would be easy too, all someone would have to do is write down what they pray for, and track the results. Whether or not a prayer has been answered should be a clear yes/no answer, right?

This brings me to my second question about prayer

2. How do you know the difference between a coincidence and an answered prayer?

If I pray to god that I recieve a phone call between 6pm and 7pm tonight...and I actually get that call, was it an act of god? or a coincidence? Is there any logical way to know the difference? The same can be said for anything that's percieved to be an act of god.

My point is this, right now, I believe prayer only benifits the individual praying, it's a fancy word for hope, it's a thought placebo, nothing more. But I'm curious if there's evidence that says otherwise.
 
nice op.

add a layer of complexity; even when you pray and something bad happens, your prayer might have prevented it from being worse.

but i believe it can be studied by praying for vry specific things, like a Caprice SLR.
hmm, but statistics won't be accurate enough:scratchin:
 
Innominate said:
1. Can prayer be studied through science?
Click to expand...
Since prayer is a human activity then yes, it can be studied scientifically.
If, however, you mean the effects of prayer (which I suspect you do given the follow-on paragraph) then that, too, can be (and has been) studied.
It had zero effect.

2. How do you know the difference between a coincidence and an answered prayer?
Click to expand...
There's no such thing as an answered prayer, except by coincidence.
Unless, of course, god is totally arbitrary about which prayers he does answer - i.e. he chooses not to answer those that are studied and tested but does sometimes answer those that aren't.
 
i don't think there is such a thing as coincidence. there's a reason for everything, and every effect has a cause.

and thoughts and desires have an effect. they are manifest. this can be observed, and measured, and studied.

and along those lines, i also think that we are led to pray, and i don't think it's sincere to pray about something arbitrary in an effort to test god. i think that could skew the results.

which brings me to the "be careful what you ask for" aspect of prayer, in that god may use a method, that you don't anticipate, and don't even perceive to be good, to fulfill your desires. most, if not all of the time, it is ourselves that is in the way of our own fulfillment, and god is required to show you that, break you down, and build you back up the way you need to be, in order to receive that fulfillment. from my own experience, that's not pretty to watch usually.

i'm just saying that i think the results would be very difficult to interpret in the short term. and let me tell you, god is not on your schedule either, so a timeline for an experiment is out of the question.
 
It's not too difficult to set up a set of circumstances where people with real problems can be prayed over, such as people with medical conditions. In that case, it's not arbitrary.

If God doesn't work in a timely manner, then that kind of contradicts the whole effort, doesn't it? If the actions of God are indistinguishable from randomness, then there is no reason to believe in it.
 
spidergoat said:
It's not too difficult to set up a set of circumstances where people with real problems can be prayed over, such as people with medical conditions. In that case, it's not arbitrary.

If God doesn't work in a timely manner, then that kind of contradicts the whole effort, doesn't it? If the actions of God are indistinguishable from randomness, then there is no reason to believe in it.
Click to expand...

i'm just saying that i don't think prayer is like magic. i think it's a lot more practical than that.
 
That's what I'm saying, there is no practical (measurable) effect apart from the placebo effect.
 
I think your assumptions about prayer are wrong. The bible seems to suggest that one should not pray for personal gain. Though I think that is how most people pray. I'm not a religious person, but I do hold to a belief that there is some greater consciousness beyond human reach and comprehension. I've always believed that I can communicate with this "being" through meditation or "prayer". Though I never ask for any sort of personal gain. All I want is to be connected to this being, and get to know perhaps a glimpse of it's nature. While I do turn to this method in times of trouble, I do not ask for it to "help" me or magically take away my burdens, rather, I use it as a focal point when I am in times of distress, knowing in my heart that connection to this being will make any situation tolerable, or at best acceptable. I don't expect this being to intervene in my affairs, or give me special treatment, or make miracles for me. I do it only because I have always felt that it exists, no matter how hard I tried to disbelieve in something greater than me, I could never do it. But I also found that religion didn't work. So I devised my own conception of who or what this being is. "Prayer" (if you want to call it that), and meditation are the only methods I have found to bring me closer.
 
No one's talking about personal gain. You are basically admitting that the benefits are psychological and indistinguishable from secular practices like meditation, which are demonstrably beneficial.
 
All I read was the OP. I was thinking specifically of his example of asking for a phone call. To me, that seems like asking for a favor. If one was asking for a phone call, one may as well be asking for ones cancer to be magically cured.
 
spidergoat said:
That's what I'm saying, there is no practical (measurable) effect apart from the placebo effect.
Click to expand...

i do think that our thoughts and desires manifest in ways that are observed and can be measured. i just don't see god as a genie that grants wishes, and presto chango everything is magically the way you want it to be.

you know i've had some weird stuff happen to me right. and what comes to mind is that time i sat on my couch, sober as hell in the middle of the afternoon, and watched some stationery i had sitting on my coffee table morph right in front of me. so i know that sometimes seemingly miraculous, unexplained stuff happens, but here's my point...the paper curled itself up into a ball when it had been lying flat. i could observe that the texture of the paper changed, starting from the outer edges and moving inward gradually. it looked like it had gotten wet, misshapen a little, and then dried again. the cellophane package that the envelopes were in shrunk. it became striated from stretching as it shrunk, and the envelopes were being forced out the open end of the package. the stationery did not however, turn into a frog and hop off my coffee table. see what i mean?

now, there was obviously some force, that i could not observe, that was causing that to happen, and i'm sure that force can manifest in lots of ways. but it's not a force that we control, and i'm sure it works in contexts that we don't understand, and though i have had a response to specific things i've been led to pray about, it has never been a response i expected, and it has never resembled a granted wish.

in the bible it says we're supposed to pray for god's will to be done. and when it comes to healing, jesus always turned it around on the afflicted, or the petitioner, and made it about their own faith. and a person's faith is impossible to measure.
 
I didn't say it was magic! But there should be some measurable effect, even if very slight. I think what happens is that the act of prayer concentrates your attention to certain things that you would not have otherwise have noted.

In your case I would suggest the cause was humidity.
 
spidergoat said:
I didn't say it was magic! But there should be some measurable effect, even if very slight. I think what happens is that the act of prayer concentrates your attention to certain things that you would not have otherwise have noted.

In your case I would suggest the cause was humidity.
Click to expand...


there was no observable variation in humidity, and no excessive humidity, to cause such a thing to happen. i remember it was a nice sunny day in april, though none of my windows were open...they were in disrepair at the time. there was no fog or condensation on the cellophane, and the paper was dry to the touch. i said that it looked like it had gotten wet, been handled, and then dried, but that wasn't what was happening. i was watching it happen, and it was not getting wet, and being handled, and then drying.

anyway back to prayer, i do think people are led to pray, and certainly an illness or some type of trauma might lead someone to. when you feel desperate and/or humbled you're inclined to pray. i think those prayers do manifest in some way, but it might not be a miraculous recovery, or some way that you expect, or that is immediate. aside from what you're calling a placebo effect i think? like a greater sense of peace, or calm, or comfort that may be beneficial to healing? aligning a chakra or something? maybe the effect of people or god caring for your welfare?

i do think that "seemingly" miraculous things happen, like healings, but i think they happen for a reason greater than it's what someone wanted and asked for. i also think that the power of prayer is directly correlated to the amount of faith a person has, and faith and prayer feed off of each other, and empower each other.
 
i had the weirdest thing in the entire world happen to me one time that led me to pray. and so i prayed, and then a few years later i saw the results of that prayer, and they were even weirder.
 
Lori_7 said:
there was no observable.
Click to expand...

You see, people pray in adverse conditions, when events are in flux. When the events turn out in line with the prayer, we remember it, and think the prayer contributed to that outcome. If it doesn't, we don't remember it, or interpret it in different ways.

The same things happen to baseball players. If they wear two pairs of underwear or whatever when they pitch a perfect game, they insist from then on that they need their special good luck charm to play. It's superstitution.
 
spidergoat said:
You see, people pray in adverse conditions, when events are in flux. When the events turn out in line with the prayer, we remember it, and think the prayer contributed to that outcome. If it doesn't, we don't remember it, or interpret it in different ways.

The same things happen to baseball players. If they wear two pairs of underwear or whatever when they pitch a perfect game, they insist from then on that they need their special good luck charm to play. It's superstitution.
Click to expand...

until they get distracted by being without,then their game suffers..
 
Yes, it's a fact that elite athletes can benefit from having a good luck charm, it's a little psychological boost, a kind of placebo effect. I mean, the placebo effect is real! Just don't think it's cause is the supernatural creator of everything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top