Dr. Craig is a liar.

[LadyForCamus]

They weren't True Scotsman -- I mean, True Christians. [emoji12]

[Huggy Bear]

*Pats Huggy on the head* That's nice dear.

You've dodged this each time I've mentioned it, but I'd like you to at least address it a little bit.  

The STEP studies that tested the efficacy of prayer included groups of people that prayed for sick people to get better.  In most cases these prayers were shown to have NO effect, and in some cases those prayers had NEGATIVE effects.  How would you explain that?  Were these people just not using 'faith' in those prayers?

Why do you guys always fail to link your sources?

From ABC news
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132674&page=1

In the meantime, other scientists are taking a look at the 191 studies that have already been done on what they call "remote healing."

One such study was conducted at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. At first, Dr. William Harris had a hard time persuading a fellow cardiologist, Dr. James O'Keefe, to participate in the prayer experiment on heart patients.

"From a purely scientific standpoint, I thought it was illogical," says O'Keefe. "I don't really think of spirituality normally as playing a role in scientific, rigorous, double-blind placebo-controlled scientific studies. It's two different realms."

A previous study by some other scientists had gotten positive results, and Harris wanted to study remote healing for himself. But he, too, was skeptical.

"We were even doubtful that the phenomena itself was real," he says, "that prayer could do anything."

So Harris wanted to make his experiment impervious to any placebo effects. He did not tell patients they were being prayed for — or even that they were part of any kind of experiment. For an entire year, about 1,000 heart patients admitted to the institute's critical care unit were secretly divided into two groups. Half were prayed for by a group of volunteers and the hospital's chaplain; the other half were not.

All the patients were followed for a year, and then their health was scored according to pre-set rules by a third party who did not know which patients had been prayed for and which had not. The results: The patients who were prayed for had 11 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and life-threatening complications.

"This study offers an interesting insight into the possibility that maybe God is influencing our lives on Earth," says O'Keefe. "As a scientist, it's very counterintuitive because I don't have a way to explain it."

A Miracle or Simply Chance?

Dr. Elizabeth Targ, a psychiatrist at the Pacific College of Medicine in San Francisco, has also tested out prayer on critically ill AIDS patients.

All 20 patients in the study got pretty much the same medical treatment, but only half of them were prayed for by spiritual healers. Ultimately, 10 of the prayed-for patients lived, while four who had not been prayed for died.

In a larger follow-up study, Targ found that the people who received prayer and remote healing had six times fewer hospitilizations and those hospitalizations were significantly shorter than the people who received no prayer and distant healing.

"I was sort of shocked," says Targ. "In a way it's like witnessing a miracle. There was no way to understand this from my experience and from my basic understanding of science."

*emphasis mine*

[FatAndFaithless]

Here's the manuscript for the STEP study, along with a wiki link for easy perusing.

https://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_rel..._paper.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on...EP_project


Still waiting, Huggy.

[LadyForCamus]

*Pats Huggy on the head* That's nice dear.

You've dodged this each time I've mentioned it, but I'd like you to at least address it a little bit.  

The STEP studies that tested the efficacy of prayer included groups of people that prayed for sick people to get better.  In most cases these prayers were shown to have NO effect, and in some cases those prayers had NEGATIVE effects.  How would you explain that?  Were these people just not using 'faith' in those prayers?

Why do you guys always fail to link your sources?

From ABC news
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132674&page=1

In the meantime, other scientists are taking a look at the 191 studies that have already been done on what they call "remote healing."

One such study was conducted at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. At first, Dr. William Harris had a hard time persuading a fellow cardiologist, Dr. James O'Keefe, to participate in the prayer experiment on heart patients.

"From a purely scientific standpoint, I thought it was illogical," says O'Keefe. "I don't really think of spirituality normally as playing a role in scientific, rigorous, double-blind placebo-controlled scientific studies. It's two different realms."

A previous study by some other scientists had gotten positive results, and Harris wanted to study remote healing for himself. But he, too, was skeptical.

"We were even doubtful that the phenomena itself was real," he says, "that prayer could do anything."

So Harris wanted to make his experiment impervious to any placebo effects. He did not tell patients they were being prayed for — or even that they were part of any kind of experiment. For an entire year, about 1,000 heart patients admitted to the institute's critical care unit were secretly divided into two groups. Half were prayed for by a group of volunteers and the hospital's chaplain; the other half were not.

All the patients were followed for a year, and then their health was scored according to pre-set rules by a third party who did not know which patients had been prayed for and which had not. The results: The patients who were prayed for had 11 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and life-threatening complications.

"This study offers an interesting insight into the possibility that maybe God is influencing our lives on Earth," says O'Keefe. "As a scientist, it's very counterintuitive because I don't have a way to explain it."

A Miracle or Simply Chance?

Dr. Elizabeth Targ, a psychiatrist at the Pacific College of Medicine in San Francisco, has also tested out prayer on critically ill AIDS patients.

All 20 patients in the study got pretty much the same medical treatment, but only half of them were prayed for by spiritual healers. Ultimately, 10 of the prayed-for patients lived, while four who had not been prayed for died.

In a larger follow-up study, Targ found that the people who received prayer and remote healing had six times fewer hospitilizations and those hospitalizations were significantly shorter than the people who received no prayer and distant healing.

"I was sort of shocked," says Targ. "In a way it's like witnessing a miracle. There was no way to understand this from my experience and from my basic understanding of science."

*emphasis mine*

So...god only helped those people because a randomized group of strangers chosen for a research study were assigned to pray for them? Otherwise, what? He would have let them die of heart attacks or strokes? Was there a threshold? Like, was God sitting up in heaven saying, "if they reach 100,000 prayers I'll save the guy. 99,000 just isn't going to cut it.

Not to mention, the insinuation that we can change people's fates (down to their very life or death) with prayer flies in the face of the notion that God has a divine and personalized plan for each and every one of us. I was meant to die at 50 of a stroke leaving my entire family alone and penniless, but thankfully enough people from experimental group B prayed for me so God changed his mind! 'Absurd' doesn't even come close.

[FatAndFaithless]

And I know this won't matter to you Huggy, but trying to use an ABC story as some sort of scientific report is a little...shitty. Not to mention the fact that the one you linked includes insight from Depak fucking Chopra.

Oh, not to mention that the experiments run by Dr. Targ have been shown to be riddled with problems...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_...ing_prayer

Targ is probably best known for a 1998 study that claimed prayer improved outcomes for AIDS patients. A follow-up to a 1995 pilot study of twenty case control study patients with advanced AIDS, the study was highlighted as a powerful proof of the effectiveness of prayer due to a significant difference between the control and prayer groups, as well as the rigorous methodology used - employing randomization, control groups, and when published it was portrayed as a double-blinded trial.[3] Targ received nearly $1.5M in grant funds from the National Institutes of Health to test the effectiveness of prayer on AIDS and breast cancer patients.[4] However, in 2002 Wired columnist Po Bronson published an article discussing Targ, and discussing the methods and results of her study. While the study was running, the "triple cocktail" of antiretroviral drugs and protease inhibitors[5] had a revolutionary effect on the longevity of AIDS patients, including the study's subjects. As a result, the study was unblinded partway through and the results were dredged for a significant finding. After finding no significant difference in the scores for mortality rate (the study's original outcome measure), symptoms, quality of life, mood scores (which were actually worse for the groups prayed for) and CD4+ counts, the study's statistician found that there was a significant difference between the groups for hospital stays and doctor visits. After a suggestion from an outside doctor, the group also collected data on 23 different infections commonly found in AIDS patients, using retrospective review of the patients' charts, results which were also found to be significant. As a result, Bronson stated that the study could no longer be considered properly blinded, and was actually an example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy when positive results are published while negative results are ignored. A peer reviewer of the study stated that had he known of the multiple attempts to find significance, the data would have required different calculations making it much less likely to have a positive result and therefore considered it a pilot study rather than a conclusive proof.[2] A later study listing Targ as an author was published in 2006, five years after her death. The study featured a much larger group of subjects (150 rather than 40), and concluded that the only difference between groups that received healing prayer and those that did not was that the group receiving prayer were more likely to guess they were the experimental subjects rather than the control group. There was no difference found between longevity, symptoms, or any other clinically meaningful outcome.[6]

But again, I doubt this will matter to you.

[Huggy Bear]

Here's the manuscript for the STEP study, along with a wiki link for easy perusing.

https://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_rel..._paper.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on...EP_project


Still waiting, Huggy.

from your wiki link

STEP attempted to standardize the prayer method. Only first names and last initial for patients were provided and no photographs were supplied. The congregations of three Christian churches who prayed for the patients "were allowed to pray in their own manner, but they were instructed to include the following phrase in their prayers: 'for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications'. Some participants complained that this mechanical way they were told to pray as part of the experiment was unusual for them.

Prayer requires one to be sincere, that means speaking from the heart.

Like the bible states "the prayer of faith shall save the sick" as you can clearly see, people expressed doubts at being told how to pray.

What are you waiting on exactly?

[FatAndFaithless]

So you're really saying they didn't pray the right way. You're full of shit Huggy. You can't claim to have science on your side and then say the results are tainted by scientific rigor when they don't agree with you.

[LadyForCamus]

Here's the manuscript for the STEP study, along with a wiki link for easy perusing.

https://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_rel..._paper.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on...EP_project


Still waiting, Huggy.

from your wiki link

STEP attempted to standardize the prayer method. Only first names and last initial for patients were provided and no photographs were supplied. The congregations of three Christian churches who prayed for the patients "were allowed to pray in their own manner, but they were instructed to include the following phrase in their prayers: 'for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications'. Some participants complained that this mechanical way they were told to pray as part of the experiment was unusual for them.

Prayer requires one to be sincere, that means speaking from the heart.

Like the bible states "the prayer of faith shall save the sick" as you can clearly see, people expressed doubts at being told how to pray.

What are you waiting on exactly?

So if enough prayers were sincere God would have saved those people, but because they weren't he was like, "welp, too bad! Now they die!" What a sociopath.

[LadyForCamus]

So you're really saying they didn't pray the right way.  You're full of shit Huggy.  You can't claim to have science on your side and then say the results are tainted by scientific rigor when they don't agree with you.

It's like a prayer telethon:  "If we can reach the '100,000 sincere prayers' goal, John smith is SAVED! Call in now to make your donations.  Remember...if I let him die it's on you guys so pray extra, extra hard!

[Huggy Bear]

So you're really saying they didn't pray the right way.  You're full of shit Huggy.  You can't claim to have science on your side and then say the results are tainted by scientific rigor when they don't agree with you.

I'm saying YOUR particular study was tainted.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/def...ish/prayer

prayer
Pronunciation: /prer/
noun
1 A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/def...ish/solemn

solemn
Pronunciation: /ˈsäləm/
adjective
1.2 Characterized by deep sincerity:

Your own quote.

By faith do you simply mean 'confidence' or 'trust'?

If I put it this way: "The prayer of confidence shall save the sick", By your article stating that; "Some participants complained that this mechanical way they were told to pray as part of the experiment was unusual for them." shows that there was no confidence in what they were being told to pray.

---

Why do you guys always fail to link your sources?

From ABC news
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132674&page=1

*emphasis mine*

So...god only helped those people because a randomized group of strangers chosen for a research study were assigned to pray for them? Otherwise, what? He would have let them die of heart attacks or strokes? Was there a threshold? Like, was God sitting up in heaven saying, "if they reach 100,000 prayers I'll save the guy. 99,000 just isn't going to cut it.

Not to mention, the insinuation that we can change people's fates (down to their very life or death) with prayer flies in the face of the notion that God has a divine and personalized plan for each and every one of us. I was meant to die at 50 of a stroke leaving my entire family alone and penniless, but thankfully enough people from experimental group B prayed for me so God changed his mind! 'Absurd' doesn't even come close.

You're acting like that article came from a religious source...