(April 8, 2011 at 12:04 pm)Minimalist Wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html
Quote:Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.
And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.
Didn't even slow the shitwits down, though. Mencken was right again.
Quote:The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.
I suspect personally that for certain people prayer can certainly act as a placebo. But never anything more than a placebo.
Deep down many religious people probably don't actually believe in prayer's efficacy despite how much they might profess belief in it.
