Prayer does not work

[max-greece]

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Jacob,

You are playing games with the word work. In the discussion "work" implies achieving something over and above the placebo effect.

Yes - prayer can have the same benefits as any placebo - but it can also make things worse - as in the case of the test described in the OP. People who knew they were being prayed for did worse than either of the other 2 groups.

If prayer has the same level of impact as a placebo, at best, then it does rather imply it is a pointless waste of time. Better to take a sugar pill and get on with things.

I'm not playing any games . I'm taking the dictionary definition of "work". Viz (in this context)

(of a plan or method) have the desired result or effect."the desperate ploy had worked"

In which case whether prayer "works" is entirely contingent on what the "desired Result" is.

Refrain the statement. "prayer never has the desired effect". Doesn't work does it. What if I pray for a dying man to give him comfort. It does. It worked. It had the desired Result.

I'm interpreting "work" per the dictionary. You've generated your own definition of "have an effect beyond the placebo". So which one of us is playing games ?

Tell you what. Find me a dictionary which defines" work" as you are interpreting it, which includes not only that something has an effect but also HOW something has an effect and I'll concede the point .

I'm commenting on what the thread title says. I can't comment on what you think it might infer because I don't know what that might be.

Oh And if you believe that placebos are a pointless waste of time, you've never worked in medicine!

How you got to me not believing in placebo's I don't know.

In the context of the OP we have a quest to discover whether prayer works in a medical environment. It is therefore being evaluated in as similar way as possible to any other treatment.

It is inherent in the testing (as it always is in medicine) that in order to evaluate whether a given treatment "works" it has to outperform a placebo. Anything that hasn't performed better (or as in the case of prayer actually worse) than the placebo has not worked.

So, for example, a pain tablet that produces the same results as a placebo is deemed to have failed - or not to have worked.

So again I repeat - you are playing with the definition of "work" to include the placebo effect.