RE: The inefficacy of prayer
September 24, 2008 at 6:54 am
(September 24, 2008 at 5:11 am)FutureAndAHope Wrote: (September 24, 2008 at 12:31 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: (September 7, 2008 at 7:18 pm)Meatball Wrote: I can't remember to chapter, but in The God Delusion Dawkins references a study done to test the effect of prayer on terminal hospital patients. Needless to say it had no effect.
Actually it did have an effect... but a negative effect , obviously due to psychologial reasons.
There were 3 groups
1. Patients not prayed for.
2. Patients prayed for but not told they were being prayed for.
3. Patients prayed for and told they were being prayed for.
The patients who weren't prayed for were as equally effected as the patients who were prayed for but didn't know it. However the patients who were prayed for; who were also told they were being prayed for didn't do so well as the other two groups. Dawkins suggested that it could be because group 3 must have thought something like "For them to need to pray for me...I must be really ill. I must be doing really badly". Which created despair which for psychological reasons is of course bad for health.
Well we had a guy over here who got on the local TV news because he healed a guy who was wheel chair bound. He also healed a young girl of an incurable illness and got on the TV again for that. See:
http://www.johnmellor.org/
Funny how prayer works on only a handful and not the many millions that could of really needed it.
The human brain is very powerful and I reckon those who believed they were healed, assumed that they once could not but now they can.
There was a feller who broke both his legs and at the time he was in extreme danger and yet some how he ran like you and me. He did not realize that he had two broken legs until later on.
It is believed that the brain assumes the worst. If you could not feel your legs, your brain assumes you are disabled. It's assumtion. When you feel pain, sometimes your brain realizes that you are in perfect shape, and this damage is nothing to worry about.
It's believed that the brain assumes it's not capable of moving when it had the ability the whole time. This prayer nonsense could of fooled the brain to thinking that the body was repaired, (Which it was already repaired, It's just it didn't notice anything).
We still don't know the whole human brain and it's capabilitys. The brain can be fooled, Just like images can fool you. Your brain sometimes assumes the worst.
Totaly reasonable and rational conclusion. I would always seek reason way before superstitions.
