Prayer Studies

[dafydd]

Prayer doesn't work because your god doesn't exist. It's simple, really.

I don't have a problem with atheists making claims like this. However if you claim prayer studies prove prayer doesn't work....you're a bit thick in the head in my opinion.

Do you have any evidence that prayer studies prove that praying works?

[Sejanus]

I don't have a problem with atheists making claims like this. However if you claim prayer studies prove prayer doesn't work....you're a bit thick in the head in my opinion.

Do you have any evidence that prayer studies prove that praying works?

He's saying that prayer studies can't say anything definitive about prayers, so your comment makes no sense. However, he only came to that conclusion by, as others have said before me, presupposing a god exists and has known motives. Instead of using prayer studies to prove prayers don't exist, I suggested that the god in question simply doesn't exist; therefore prayers don't work, no study needed.

[Heywood]

I don't have a problem with atheists making claims like this. However if you claim prayer studies prove prayer doesn't work....you're a bit thick in the head in my opinion.

Do you have any evidence that prayer studies prove that praying works?

This isn't a thread about whether or not prayer works....stop trying to move the goal post as so many others in this forum have already tried to do.

This is a thread about the scientific validity of prayer studies. Do not conflate that efficacy of prayer with methodology. They are separate and quite distinct things.

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Do you have any evidence that prayer studies prove that praying works?

He's saying that prayer studies can't say anything definitive about prayers, so your comment makes no sense. However, he only came to that conclusion by, as others have said before me, presupposing a god exists and has known motives. Instead of using prayer studies to prove prayers don't exist, I suggested that the god in question simply doesn't exist; therefore prayers don't work, no study needed.

Prayer studies pre-suppose God exists...and then presuppose they can control said God....which is what I find ludicrous about them.

[Chas]

Prayer studies pre-suppose God exists...and then presuppose they can control said God....which is what I find ludicrous about them.

No, they don't. They are only testing whether praying has any effect, not how or why. It makes no assumptions about mechanism.

It only assumes that the act of praying exists.

[rexbeccarox]

I actually kind of agree with Heywood. I've always thought studies about prayer are ridiculous. To prove anything about prayer you'd have to first prove god(s), but even then there's no control over what god(s) would choose to do with the prayers.

BTW, Heywood, it's "I *couldn't* care less". Sorry- that one drives me freaking crazy.

[Cyberman]

Yeah, me too.

I think that studies on the supposed effects of prayer, if they are conducted properly, don't have to address the question of god/s at all. The goal of science is to remove ambiguity in order to focus in on probable causes. It's the act pf praying and the effects claimed for it that should be under scrutiny. Investigation into the mechanism comes later.

[Rampant.A.I.]

It's the placebo effect, it has nothing to do with anything but the belief of the patient.

Patients with Parkinson's disease were given placebo treatment drugs, and still showed the same increase in dopamine as the actual prescription.

According to the report, researchers at the University of British Columbia have demonstrated that in patients with Parkinson's disease, the placebo effect produces the same results as pharmaceuticals.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...ents-feel/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20679593/

[Esquilax]

Just because something is un-falsifiable doesn't mean it is logically invalid. You will have to do better.

Nice of you to just baldly assert that.

But in the real world, if there's no failure state for a claim, then there's no way to test that claim, and hence no possibility of being rationally justified in believing it. You theists are committed to retracting every possible failure state for your claims as though that somehow makes them bulletproof, when in actuality all it does is make them untestable and pointless.

You are the one changing the goal posts. This thread is about the validity of prayer studies....you want to change it into a thread about whether prayer works or not.

I'm not moving any goalposts, just making sure you're aware of the consequences of what you're saying. I actually agree with you: prayer studies are pointless because of the ad hoc desperation of those who really want prayer to be effective even when it's shown not to.

You're not saying anything new here, is my point. We already know how theists will scrabble to turn their own claims into vague, intangible messes.

[Tonus]

I actually kind of agree with Heywood. I've always thought studies about prayer are ridiculous. To prove anything about prayer you'd have to first prove god(s), but even then there's no control over what god(s) would choose to do with the prayers.

There would be one way to prove prayer before proving god, and that would be for prayer to have so clearly an effect that we would have to acknowledge god. If a double-blind study turned up an extremely high efficiency rate (say 98% of those prayed for recovered from heart surgery, for example) and a follow-up showed examples of what was otherwise considered impossible (amputees growing back limbs when they were prayed for), then it wouldn't matter if we presupposed god or not.

But I guess there's a reason that they start with people recovering from relatively routine surgery.

[JesusHChrist]

How many faith healers does your local hospital employ?

Let me see.... All of the ones around here employ...zero.

Odd that...