Prayer Heals... Or Does It?

[Brown]

From the Des Moines Register (http://desmoinesregister.com/life/stories/c4788996/23108223.html): Olshansky and his co-author, Larry Dossey, the journal's executive editor, reviewed research that studied 3,393 septic patients. The researchers found that "retroactive" prayer, offered even four to 10 years later, affected the outcomes of the patients' cases.Hmm, I wonder how "retroactive" prayer is defined and controlled. Well, no matter. I guess it means that those who were prayed for died less often than others, eh? No, that doesn't seem to be the case:While the rate of mortality was similar between the prayer group and the non-prayer group, the length of stay in the hospital and the duration of fever were both shorter in the prayer group.Now, I haven't read the study (it appears in the British Medical Journal) and maybe I'm missing something, but does the study suggest that prayer isn't very effective where it counts? After all, one would think that the really important statistic is the one pertaining to whether people die, not the statistic pertaining to how long they are in the hospital. Does the study demonstrate that God is not omnipotent? In other words, does the study suggest that the Almighty is pretty successful in the fever-breaking department, but not too successful in the keeping-people-from-dying department?

And by the way, which god or gods were being prayed to? Could we use a study like this to determine which religion is the correct one?

[TruthSeeker]

This study clearly demonstrates that God is interested in health care economics rather than healing.

Shorter stays = lower costs

As for retroactive prayer, Brown, when were you last ill? I'll pray for you and perhaps you'll recover sooner than you did.



;)

[Upchurch]

Retroactive prayer is a funny concept. How do they hope to effect the events of something that happened as longa s 4 to 10 years ago?
the length of stay in the hospital and the duration of fever were both shorter in the prayer group.The implication is that those that didn't die got better faster, but that isn't what it says, is it? The prayer group could have had a shorter stay in the hospital and the duration of the fever could have been shorter because those in the prayer group died faster. Just something to ponder.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Oh joy, Oh rapture! That time my daughter was in the hospital with high fever was quite unpleasant. Could a few of you pray for her so that experience can be made less awful?

Turns out there was only one pray-er. I best contact him.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1465

Something about that page just doesn't seem right.

~~ Paul

[Brown]

Thanks for the link, Paul.

Some of the references cited at the conclusion are, shall we say, "suspect."

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The entire article seems bizarre. What kind of journal is that?

Wouldn't you just love to see the statistical analysis?

I'd like to see the same study done with sham prayer. But, to make it legitimate, you'd have to mark the records of all the subjects as follows:


WARNING! Never do a prayer study with this subject after July 1, 2004. If you do, you will postretroactively invalidate a sham prayer study we did during the first half of 2004.

Hopefully, of course, no one will have done a real prayer study with any of those subjects prior to the sham study.

Oops, hold on! How does the guy who did the above study know that no one will have done one with those subjects in the future? The study is tainted!

Especially if the future study is a negative prayer study.

~~ Paul

[FFed]

So your god makes you sick, and then decides who to heal by who begs the most?
Nice god.

[Ralph]

Originally posted by FFed
So your god makes you sick, and then decides who to heal by who begs the most?
Nice god. and how about a God who'd let a small child die a horrible death from brain cancer who might otherwise be saved-----if only his parents had gathered up a mob to pray for him.

On the other hand---God will do an intervention & shrink someones hemorrhoids as long as enough people pray get together and scream- "In the name of Jesus!!--Hemorrhoids
be GONE"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Given that god is omnipotent, couldn't he set up some kind of, like, automatic prayer system, so that everyone could be prayed for continuously? Or does this violate the "gotta show me you believe in me" clause?

Could we pray for him to set up the APS? Would that work?

~~ Paul

[Zero]

Usually, the way these 'prayer proof' studies work is that they gather info on as many different effects as possible, then pick the one or two areas in which their prayer efforts match a positive result.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I wonder what would happen if they did the statistical analysis, then did the praying, then did the analysis again? I suppose since the data was already retroactively affected by the prayer back when it was collected, both analyses would give the same results.

I wonder what would happen if two pray-ers each prayed for a randomly-chosen subset of the subjects, then PEAR ran an experiment in which they retroactively micro-PKed the random number generator. In addition, after it was all over, we randomly lobotomized one of the pray-ers. Would it matter if half the subjects were atheists? What if the experimenter was a priest?

I wonder if you can pray for a computer? If not, how about a person with an artificial heart?

~~ Paul

[calladus]

What if you pray that your Grandfather never had children with your Grandmother - would you cease to exist?

(Retroactive prayer, Star Trek Time Paradox style)

[Yahweh]

Retroactive prayer...


We pray for you after you get better...

Then you get better faster...


I guess you cant argue with results... :coal:

[shemp]

While the rate of mortality was similar between the prayer group and the non-prayer group, the length of stay in the hospital and the duration of fever were both shorter in the prayer group.

You knuckleheads! Don't you get it? The people who were prayed for and died died faster! Their deity swept them into heaven sooner! That's the real moral of the story.