RE: Prayer Studies
May 17, 2014 at 7:10 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2014 at 7:11 pm by Heywood.)
(May 17, 2014 at 6:26 pm)Tonus Wrote: You don't, because you can't. Researchers cannot even realistically determine what a "successful" prayer is, since theists determine that after the fact and based on a number of non-testable claims. And if all else fails, theists simply remind us that there are some things science cannot test.
I keep hoping that one of those tests will turn up a result in favor of prayer that is just significant enough to get theists to claim "SEE! THEY PROVED IT SCIENTIFICALLY!!!" Then non-theists can be the ones making the objections to the testing methodology and so on.
The only prayer studies I might believe are ones that test first person effects that do not require intercession from God. For instance does praying the roasary increase baroreflex sensitivity(the ability of the body to maintain a constant blood pressure). Any studies which try to test for God, I simply ignore as being unsound.
