DD: If it was "answered" it was because YOU put forth effort
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"It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself" -Epicurus
Scientific basis for the belief that prayer helps!
by exWTslave 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Band on the Run
I prayed and meditated throughout my illness. Nothing. Also, I was anointed with holy oil so many times. Others prayed for me. I was even so desperate I saw a healer/fraud. She believed in slaying by the Holy Spirit. I thought she was tacky but the crowd was rather sophisticated. Half of the young people had terminal cancer. It was sobering. She sang some crap songs. I was not going first so I watched as person after person fell back gracefully to the floor. When it was my turn, I said to not be rigid. I check with doctors that nothing she would do could hurt me in anyway. I relaxed. Well, she flung out her arm to me over and over again. I felt absolutely nothing. All eyes were on me. My mom and friend also felt nothing.
My brother has cerebral palsy but not a serious case. My mom always said God did not answer her prayers over other mothers with severe cp children.
I know that some studies exist that show prayer helpful. If I could be so delusional to believe that a lousy singer could heal me, I would have hope which is not a bad thing. Patients were going home very happy.
I would never pray for a certain boyfriend (not even McCartney), an outfit, a car, or a good business. It makes God vulgar. Joyce Meyers and Joel Osteen make me angry with the prosperity gospel. Jesus taught the opposite. Some of what they teach may make Psychology Today but it is not Christian.
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AudeSapere
exWTslave wrote: Prayer and meditation reveals your trust in God, which means you seek harmony with God.
I disagree with this statement and consider myself Agnostic. I'd be more inclined to agree if the word 'universe' replaced the word 'god', though.
Prayer, in my opinion, is a quick way to dump a person's problems on a diety. Or request a diety's favorable intervention on a human condition or circumstance.
Meditation, to me, focuses on realigning my sense of self and placement within the universe. And sometimes a simple series of deep breathing is all I do. Mostly I stare at the mountain outside my back door.
During cancer treatment in the late 90's, I participated in 'Guided Imagery' sessions as a support of my conventional treatment. I am uncertain if it actually helped balance my blood chemistry, but it absolutely helped me with my mental outlook and lowered my stress levels. I attended once a week and it was way more profound than *any* prayer I ever heard. It was a beneficial supplement to chemo and radiation - no doubt about it.
-Aude.
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Terry
The following is from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/prayer-science_n_1464622.html
Prayer: What Does The Science Say?
An overwhelming 83 percent of Americanssay that God answers prayers--which raises the question, does prayer work? Is it something that we can even begin to approach scientifically? Unsettling as these questions may be, I think it's important to attempt to get to the bottom of them.
For help, I reached out to two researchers,Tanya Marie Luhrmann, an anthropologist at Stanford and author of the book "When God Talks Back" and Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and author of "The Believing Brain." To learn more, watch the video above and/or click on the link below for a full transcript. And, don't forget to leave a comment. Talk nerdy to me!
CARA SANTA MARIA: Hi everyone. Cara Santa Maria, here. How would you answer this question: does prayer work? I want to see if I can get to the bottom of this scientifically. For help, I've reached out to two researchers, Tanya Marie Luhrmann, an anthropologist at Stanford and author of the book "When God Talks Back" and Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and author of"The Believing Brain." I asked Dr. Shermer about intercessory prayer, or praying on behalf of others. He told me that scientific attempts to study this phenomenon in the past have been met with difficulty.
MICHAEL SHERMER: For example, you’re praying for your loved one. How can you have a control group? You can’t exactly go to a bunch of family members and patients and say, "Okay, no praying for your guy because you know, this is science and we have our control group and experimental group and all that."
CSM: Yeah that'd be pretty heartless. But in 2006, the answer to this question, at least scientifically, rang pretty clearly.
MS: When the Templeton Foundation funded this huge study out of Harvard Medical School that Herbert Benson directed, it was the definitive study. These were real heart patients in hospitals that were recovering so they could measure everything and control for all these other intervening variables and they randomly assigned people to be prayed for, not prayed for .. Templeton is always accused of funding projects that they think they can get that would support the sort of interrelationship between science and religion and this one didn’t, so to their credit they publicized the fact that there were no results at all, there was no benefit to people’s health from intercessory prayer.
CSM: Credit where credit's due, I guess. When we asked Dr. Luhrmann about intercessory prayer, she chose not to go there.
TANYA MARIE LUHRMANN: I would say that it’s a red herring to do research that tries to see whether prayer has consequences independent of the person who’s praying. And that’s a complicated question about divine intervention, and people have a lot of different theories about that. That’s thekind of research that people get all sort of hot over, hot and bothered about. I think the research we really need to do more of is how prayer changes the person who prays, and again I think there’s more and more evidence that this practice of talking to God or at least the person you represent in your mind as being a wise and good loving person, has health effects both emotionally and physically.
CSM: Okay, so it seems there may be health benefits to prayer after all, so long as we are looking at the prayer, not the prayee.
TML: I use the term sensory override to capture an experience when people have a sensory perception of something that's not, kind of visibly present or not tangibly present. And what they’re reporting is that they hear God speak to them or see the wing of an angel. And I began asking these questions because I noticed that people who prayed regularly and were prayer warriors were more likely to report these experiences.
CSM: Dr. Luhrmann studies these specific "sensory overrides" and claims that they change the quality of one's imagination and thinking. And this positive effect can be linked to prayer.
TML: When somebody’s praying, they’re using their own psychological capacities. They’re using the human mind. And the human mind is human. And so what I saw was that people were training their imagination. And what they’re really doing is learning to take seriously the thoughts and images that they might otherwise dismiss as just theirs. So they’re paying attention to their inner experience. That changes the way they trust their inner experience, how real that inner experience becomes for them, it allows them to take the prayer process more seriously, and it also changes the vividness of that experience. That’s psychological stuff. I’m a social scientist. I can’t say, you know, when that’s connecting to the divine or if it’s connecting to the divine. I can just talk about that human side of the story.
CSM: So, there's no way to study whether or not God is on the other end of the phone. The god that's commonly described in Western culture is a supernaturalbeing. Science is the study of the natural world. Being supernatural, we convenientlycan't observe this "God" using scientific methods. So if researchers can't "go there" and instead only look at the very human, very secular benefits of prayer, why call it prayer at all? Doesn't that imply a known relationship with a deity, something that scientists can't touch with a 10-foot pole?
MS: Let’s find a different word than prayer, like self-reflective thought or something like that, or meditative thought, or you know, just anything. The problem with prayer is that it’s just so wrapped up with all the religious, mystical notions that it’s not helpful from a scientific perspective.
CSM: Now I know this probably won't sit well with you, and it may be hard to hear, but just because you may have had a strong, personal, emotional experience in which you prayed and your prayers were answered, the scientific evidence simply doesn't support its efficacy. Prayer may help you feel calmer, more centered, or even lower your blood pressure, but unfortunately, praying for something to happen has absolutely no effect on its specific outcome, whether it be for health, prosperity, or Tim Tebow to get that touchdown. Remember:
MS: The whole point of science is that we can’t rely on anecdotes. You know, the plural of anecdotes is not data as they say, right?
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Oubliette
How funny, the OP contains a commercial advertisement. I'm sure "prayer" is working really well for Travis Davis.
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Oubliette
After years and years of unanswered prayers to God asking for help, comfort and solace, I decided to try a different approach.
So last night I prayed for God to leave me alone. It was the first time my prayers were answered.
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DJS
Nice OP. Interestingly, the fact that prayer 'works' is one of the first things that caused me to question the Borg and then the existence of god. It may have been the first thing (it has been a while). There was good science several decades ago suggesting that prayer had a positive health impact. However, and this is the point that caused me to begin my Pink Floyd sojoun (another brick in the wall of my theism being removed): prayer 'works' regardless of which god one is praying to, including whether the 'god' is a rock, a pole or an imaginary creature in the heavens. All that matters is the one praying 'believed' or placed their psychological selves in a calmer more restful state.
Buddhist chants do the same thing only a lot better.
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jgnat
Without the FREE video:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104310443
A related scholarly article by the same researcher:
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.2003.97.2.625?journalCode=pms
And his book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116482.Why_God_Won_t_Go_Away
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stuckinarut2
The act of prayer just serves to help people stop, relax, get their thoughts together, and calmly move on.....