Prayers obviously don't work so why do religious still keep doing it? Are they insane because you know the definition of insanity according to Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
There was even that multimillion dollar experiment by religious people that ultimately proved how praying doesn't work. Maybe religious people haven't heard about it and that's why they still believe in prayer, but still they had to know when they saw how their own prayers don't get fulfilled.
Still here's Richard Dawkins' description of that prayer experiment:
There was even that multimillion dollar experiment by religious people that ultimately proved how praying doesn't work. Maybe religious people haven't heard about it and that's why they still believe in prayer, but still they had to know when they saw how their own prayers don't get fulfilled.
Still here's Richard Dawkins' description of that prayer experiment:
Quote:the team of researchers soldiered on, spending $2.4 million of Templeton Foundation, money under the leadership of Dr Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. [...]
Dr Benson and his team monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals, all of whom received coronary bypass surgery. The patients were divided into three groups. Group 1 received prayers and didn’t know it. Group 2 (the control group) received no prayers and didn’t know it. Group 3 received prayers and did know it. The comparison between Groups 1 and 2 tests for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. Group 3 tests for possible psychosomatic effects of knowing that one is being prayed for.
Prayers were delivered by the congregations of three churches, one in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts and one in Missouri, all distant from the three hospitals. The praying individuals, as explained, were given only the first name and initial letter of the surname of each patient for whom they were to pray. It is good experimental practice to standardize as far as possible, and they were all, accordingly, told to include in their prayers the phrase ‘for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications’.
The results, reported in the American Heart Journal of April 2006, were clear-cut. There was no difference between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not. What a surprise. There was a difference between those who knew they had been prayed for and those who did not know one way or the other; but it went in the wrong direction. Those who knew they had been the beneficiaries of prayer suffered significantly more complications than those who did not. Was God doing a bit of smiting, to show his disapproval of the whole barmy enterprise? It seems more probable that those patients who knew they were being prayed for suffered additional stress in consequence: ‘performance anxiety’, as the experimenters put it.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
