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The Scientific Study of Prayer Under Controlled Conditions
Proof it works. Proof it Doesn't ALWAYS Work
There have been over a hundred experiments done of the effect of prayer
on various life forms. Experiments with people showed that prayer positively
affected high blood pressure, wounds, heart attacks, headaches and anxiety.
In many cases we can suspect a psychosomatic reason for these improvements,
but not all. Some of these experiments were done in a double blind manner.
That means that neither the doctor nor the subjects knew who was being
prayed for, and who wasn't. That can rule out the placebo effect. Subjects
didn't get better just because the doctors thought they would and somehow
subconsciously communicated that belief to their patients.
To quote from Dr. Larry Dossey MD's book: "Healing
Words" The subjects in these studies also included water, enzymes,
bacteria, fungi, yeast, red blood cells, cancer cells,
pacemaker cells, seeds, plants, algae, moth larvae, mice and chicks; and
among the processes that had been influenced were the activity of enzymes,
the growth rates of leukemic white blood cells, mutation rates of bacteria,
germination and growth rates of various seeds, the firing rate of pacemaker
cells, healing rate of wounds, the size of goiters and tumors, the time
required to awaken from anesthesia, autonomic effects such as electrodermal
activity of the skin, rates of hemolysis of red blood cells, and hemoglobin
levels. It did not seem to matter whether the praying person was in
the presence of the organism being prayed for, or was miles away.
Objects locked in lead lined rooms and "cages" designed to block all known
forms of electromagnetic energy were still affected.
In one study by researcher Daniel
P. Wirth the effects of prayer on wound healing were studied. This was a
double blind study. Forty-four subjects were deliberately wounded with full
skin thickness surgical wounds. They were not told they were going to be
prayed for. None of the patients were told they were receiving any kind of a
healing treatment at all. They were told to insert the arm with the wound on
it through a hole in the wall for five minutes. The reason for this unusual
exercise was explained to them to be for the purpose of measuring the
"biopotentials" from the surgical site with a "noncontact device." Little
did they know that the "noncontact device" was actually a person praying for
their wounds. With twenty-two of the subjects she was in the room praying,
and with twenty-two of the subjects she was not in the room praying. Several
times during the study, doctors double blinded as to which patient was in
what group, traced the wounds on transparent acetate sheets. Then an
independent technician, also double blinded, would digitize the tracings
into a computer for data collection. By day eight the wound sizes
of the prayed for subjects were significantly smaller than the non-prayed for
subjects. On day sixteen the result was measured again. By then thirteen of
the prayed for wounds were completely healed as opposed to none of the
non-prayed for wounds.
Not all experiments were done double blind.
In one early study done at the McGill University in Montreal by Dr. Bernard
Grad, eighteen children with terminal leukemia were old to pray to God
every night before going to bed. Another eighteen children with terminal
leukemia were not told this. Ninety percent of the praying children survived
an average of fourteen months. Only thirty-seven percent of the nonpraying
children lived that long. Notice that this study does not prove that prayer
CURES terminal leukemia. It only prolonged the children's lives. It did not
necessarily heal them. Also note that the praying children at were
very much aware that faith was being used to help them. We cannot rule out
the psychosomatic effect here. Similar successes have been achieved when
adults with terminal cancer were simply given psychological counseling
during their fight for life. The counseled group lived longer than the
noncounseled group This study does show that prayer is good for one's mental
health and that improved mental health can prolong life.
Prayer has one definite advantage
over counseling alone. God is always there. Your counselor could be on
vacation in Bermuda when you need him/her. A wise person would both
pray and seek counseling.
My little prayer group had an interesting
experience with praying for a child who had leukemia. We all laid hands on
him and prayed for a very long time. Most of us did individual prayer for
the child at various times in our own personal daily prayer routines. He
recovered from leukemia. That's not too surprising. The happy fact is
many children, both prayed for and unprayed for (at least officially), do
manage to recover from leukemia. It is no longer an automatic death
sentence. But here's the interesting part, out of all the kids on his ward
at Shand's Hospital who were receiving chemo, he was the only patient who
didn't go temporally bald from the treatments. What does that prove? Not a
thing. But it is interesting and puzzling.
At the University Dartmouth 232 people who had gone
through elective heart surgery were studied. It was found that those who
considered themselves not to be religious were three times more likely to
pass away than those who did consider themselves to be "spiritual." Also of
the thirty seven patients who described themselves as being deeply
religious, none died. Only five percent of those who attended church at
least a few times a year died, compared to twelve percent of those who
rarely went to church or who never went to church. Of course again, this is
not a double blind study and other factors could be at work here. People who
feel better are more likely to go to church and feel grateful to God than
those who feel poorly. Still it is an interesting statistic and it shows
more study is warranted.
A San Francisco hospital used a computer to divide three
hundred and ninety three coronary care patients into two groups. One group
was prayed for, the other was not. Ten months later the prayed for group had
fewer cardiopulmonary arrests (three versus 14). had less pneumonia (three
versus 13) used fewer antibiotics (three versus 17), and were less
frequently intubated (zero versus 12)
Not every experiment showed that
prayer works. Significant results were achieved in only about fifty percent
of the experiments. Does that mean that prayer is useless? NO. It just means
we don't know enough yet about what it can and can not do. Penicillin is an
excellent antibiotic, but it's worthless for cold viruses, and can actually
kill people if they happen to be severely allergic to it. That doesn't mean
penicillin is a bad drug. Someone sadly pointed out that at Lourdes there
are thousands of abandoned wheel chairs and crutches but not one glass eye
or artificial limb. We know a lot less about what prayer can do than
penicillin. Future experiments may clarify the issue. While there is a
considerable body of evidence that prayer does effect Human healing in a
positive way, the effect was not as potent as researchers (or anyone) would
have liked. Medically unexpected biological changes in Human beings occurred
only about 15 or 20 percent of the time. That's significant enough to show
there is something there, but few drugs with such lousy results would be
approved by the FDA. But unlike drugs prayer is free, available at all
times (not just when at the doctor's or drug store), and it is completely
free of side effects. When used as part of a balanced and sensible health
plan it has never been proven to be the least bit harmful.. How can it hurt?
One problem with studied prayer in Human beings, is, how
do you get a sufficiently controlled, control group? If you divide people
into two groups, one that is being "officially" prayed for and one group
that is not being "officially" prayed for, how to you eliminate "UNofficial"
prayer? Even if you divided people up by religious beliefs as well as by
similarity of health problems, what rules out friends and relatives from
praying for the supposedly nonprayed for control group? How do we rule out
subconscious prayer? Conditions can get so bad even some Atheists can be
driven to pray though they may or may not admit it. And here is a thought
for you; how do we know the person's pets aren't praying! We do not know yet
if prayer is limited to Human beings, and I personally doubt it is limited
to human beings. What constitutes a prayer? Does saying, "Oh God!" in a
moment of agony count? We don't know these things yet, and while at least
some of them can be studied, it will be difficult. Also, the opposite mental
state of beneficial prayer, cursing also hasn't been studied sufficiently
and it would be hard to ethically do so in Human beings. How do we know some
of the people in the officially prayed for control group aren't sabotaging
their healings by saying "God d*****s," or, are being cursed, or were
cursed, by someone else? We ought to do several huge, carefully
controlled studies to see if socially unskilled people have more health
complications than those who are well liked. Being a jerk may have fatal
consequences, or not. Studies of this nature have not been done yet. It is
difficult to study these things but it is so vital that we do so. If
millions of people are neglecting using a method of healing that is so cheap
and convenient and effective under certain circumstances, (apparently)
as prayer because they do not believe in it, that is just as tragic as if
millions where ignoring such healing methods as medicine or surgery.
Christian Scientists often get in trouble (and they should) for failing to
utilize surgery and medicine for their sick children. But since there is
some evidence prayer works, maybe nonprayers should equally get in trouble
for failing to pray for their sick kids, or for cursing them with God
d****its." A wise person neglects NO healing method for themselves or
their loved ones. You just don't do so. It is insanity to do so.
SO WHY DOESN'T GOD ANSWER EVERY PRAYER?
God does answer
every prayer but sometimes the answer is "No!" We can be grateful that the
answer isn't always "yes." Oscar Wilde pointed out that when the gods want
to punish us, they answer our prayers. Another humorist, (I am afraid I
forgot whom), pointed out that it would be most inconvenient, to say the
least, if God got around to answering every single prayer we ever prayed.
Imagine, said this funny man, what would happen if you grew up from being a
cute little kid, and became a successful suburban businessman. Then one day
you looked out your window and there was a pony on your front lawn! We can
be grateful God is not some cosmic Santa Claus answering every single prayer
of every good being from here to the edge of the Universe!
I have a friend who
is a Deist, at best. He is willing to believe vaguely that some Being may
have wound up the Universe long ago, but he does not believe in a Kind
Omnipresent Being who ever answers prayers today. One day my friend
came to my house in a jolly mood. A mockingbird had stood next to a
sprinkler at the fellow's house and thrashed his wings and made sprinkling
noises. He obviously wanted the sprinkler to give him a bath. My
friend was laughing at this, "silly bird practicing sympathetic
magic." I laughed too, but I pointed out, "But you did turn the
sprinkler on for him, didn't you? Sheepishly my friend replied, "Well,
yes..."
Is there any wonder
that sometimes our prayers aren't answered? We know even less about how the
mind of God works than the mockingbird knew about Human brains and
sprinkler systems! But even so, sometimes, if we thrash our wings and make
sprinkling noises long enough and loud enough, we might get a shower.
Experiments
and anecdotal evidence seem to show there is no connection between how moral
the subject of the experiment is and how well prayer works. This surprises
me. I would have thought otherwise. But history bears this out. A
famous and charming faith healer named Kathryn Kuhlman had many
successes (and many self admitted failures). She died of health
problems herself. During her meetings many proclaimed themselves healed. but
the most faithful and seemingly most deserving often left unhealed.
But once she had an Atheist walk into her meeting and proclaim, "I just felt
myself healed. I came here only to make fun of you. I didn't believe in God
when I walked in here, and I still don't. But I had a very painful medical
condition and I just felt it go away!" Bernadette, the young lady who
discovered Lourdes, died of TB after suffering terribly with it for years.
But if everybody lived forever
there would be no room for evolution. If every model T that rolled off the
assembly line were still chugging and sputtering up and down our roads, we
would not be driving minivans and hybrid cars today. We would have no
motivation to learn to solve our own problems if every problem were solved
for us. It would be as if God were doing our homework for us, instead of
letting us do it ourselves. Much of Human progress and learning would come
to a halt due to lack of motivation.
If caribou can pray, they surely pray
that God will spare them from the wolves. If wolves can pray they surely
pray that God will make the caribou easy to catch. But the Inuit know that
if wolves didn't weed out from the herd those caribou who are sick and weak,
the whole herd would soon become sick and week. And if caribou were too easy
to catch, evolution would quit favoring the survival of the fastest,
strongest and most cunning wolves. God is God of both the caribou and the
wolf, and God is God of both the Human race and all life, including
microscopic life. What megalomaniacs we are to think God should only answer
Human prayers! We cannot say at this point in time, if a person dies of TB
that prayer did not work, for maybe in their own primitive way the TB germs
were also praying. We just don't know these things yet.
Much of the suffering that goes on in
this world happens, not because God does not answer our prayers, but because
we don't answer God's prayers to US. In the Sermon on the Mount, God prayed
to us to feed the hungry, and our planet produces plenty of food, but it often
doesn't get to those who need it. This is because WE, not God, lack enough
compassion. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, "Pray to God to end
abortion." That is so wrong. It is not God who fails to find resources
enough to aid pregnant desperate women. God prays to US to end
abortion! Alcoholism? Through Paul God prayed that Humans would use
alcohol only in moderation. Cancer, allergies and respiratory diseases? We
can be sure God is praying to us to eliminate smoking and pollution from the
Earth. Illegal drugs? Ditto. Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases?
God prayed to us, "Thou shall not commit adultery," and to restrict
sex to marriage. The cures for arthritis, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease
may have died in the gas chambers of the holocaust. It was not God who fired
up those chambers. He prayed to us, "Love one another," and "Thou shalt not
Kill."
When healing fails
to occur we must avoid the destructive habit of blaming the victim. There is
no evidence, scientific or anecdotal, that there is any connection between
morality, spirituality and healing, or even mental health and healing.
Atheists have miraculous recoveries even without prayer. Saints die slow and
painful deaths despite the anguished prayers of multitudes. Angry, violent
people get well. The gentle fade away like dying violets. Carl Sagan quoted
a Victorian statistician named Frances Galton who argued that the monarchy
in England should be very long lived, because millions of people all over
the world daily intone, "God save the Queen" (or King). But Galton showed
that if anything they don't live as long as other wealthy and pampered
aristocrats. The family tree of the royal family is heavily infested with
the most agonizing and puzzling of illnesses and tragedies, and incredible
amounts of suffering. To name just one sad example, multitudes praying "God
save the Queen." did not save Queen Anne, from tragedy. She was
pregnant 18 times but only gave birth to five live children. Only one lived to adulthood and he
didn't live to see her coronation. But this is an unfair jab. How well would
the monarchy be doing if they weren't being constantly prayed for? Comparing
them to other kinds of aristocrats is not a good enough control. The
monarchy is often the target of large amounts of hatred and envy as well as
prayer. If positive prayers can bring about healing, then hatred might bring
about the opposite effect. They get assassination attempts. They have cruel
gossip spread about them. They sometimes have to make stressful decisions
that affect the lives of millions. If you were studying the effect of a drug
on a group of Humans you wouldn't assume that it was going to work
on a group of heavily stressed world leaders the same way it
would work on the wealthy unemployed. Also, monarchs are often in poor
genetic health due to generations of inbreeding among the limited
"acceptable choices," who comprise the small number of fellow royalty
a potential monarch is allowed to marry. Due to inbreeding the Amish
are having similar genetic difficulties. Praying for one's offspring is no
substitute for avoiding making poor genetic choices in a mate and neither
should it be. The rules for genetics, like gravity, must work for all or
none, or the Universe becomes unfairly chaotic instead of predictable.
God heals whom He
wills, and lets die whom He wills. He lets us suffer and I am quite sure He
often suffers Himself. We think He's cruel sometimes but we don't know the
whole picture. In the famous Classic Star Trek episode, "The City of the
Edge of Forever," McCoy goes back in time and changes history for the worse
by saving a street missionary named Edith Keeler from a violent death.
She goes on and forms a peace movement that prevents the United States from
entering World War II soon enough, so Germany invents the nuclear bomb first
and wins the war. She was right about "peace being the way, but she was
right at the wrong time." Kirk and Spock have to go back in time and prevent
McCoy from saving Edith Keeler's life in order to set history straight
again. Captain Kirk has to stop McCoy from saving her life even though he is
deeply and profoundly in love with her. So Kirk grabs McCoy just as he
is about to push Edith Keeler out of the way of a speeding automobile. Then
he has to watch tearfully as she is impacted and thrown into the muddy
street. Surely there must be times when God feels like Captain Kirk. He
has to stand by and let the good die, and the evil live, and close his ears
to the poignant prayers of the sick and suffering! We question God's
love and integrity when He refuses to help the innocent and the sick and
dying but He sees the alternate futures. We do not. Nevertheless it must be
so hard to just stand by and do nothing, or even worse, to deliberately stop
the McCoys of this world from saving the Edith Keelers of this world. I
would not want to be God!
Sometimes God allows us to
suffer to teach us something. Paul had a thorn in his flesh (2
Corinthians 12:7 through 12:9), that God would not take away though he
prayed "three times." God told Paul that His grace was sufficient for him
for power is perfected in weakness."
Sometimes prayer
isn't answered because of evolution. Many of the things that make us suffer
also make the Human race smarter. Those who are controlled by their
neocortex instead of their glands avoid the dangers of sexually transmitted
diseases. Those foresighted enough to wear seat belts are less likely
to die in accidents; more likely to pass their genes on to the next
generation. People who chose not to take drug, smoke, or drink number one in
the first place don't become addicts, smokers and alcoholics. They make
better parents. This is cruel only in the sense that the wolf is cruel to
the caribou.
Maybe some prayers
are not answered because if we don't have enough faith God can't answer
them! We bulk at a God who can't do something. God is supposed to be able to
do everything! But in Mark 6:22 it mentions that when Jesus went back to His
home town of Nazareth, people were so incredulous that this person who had
grown up among them had gained such a reputation as a miracle worker that,
"Jesus could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands upon a few
sick people and healed them. And he wondered at their unbelief."
There are so many unanswered questions
about prayer. Are some people more talented at it than others? If so, is
their talent genetic or the product of life's experiences? Is one system of
religious belief more effective at achieving successful results than others?
I would like to think that Born Again Christians have advantages with God
here, but do they? Under certain circumstances does the devil heal
too? All these things are testable under controlled conditions but they
haven't been yet. The studies are yet to be done.
But if we prove beyond a shadow
of a doubt that prayer does work, is the need for faith dead? We can prove
that prayer works, but we can't prove Christ is God. If a prayer is
answered, if someone appears with lightning and thunder on Mount Sinai. If a
white robed being soars down out of the sky and proclaims himself, "I Am."
is this the Lord Most High, or a lesser being claiming to be God? It is a
big Universe. We have no idea what is out there or what isn't. The character
Q on "Star Trek, the Next Generation" could pass for a Supreme Being
to many people, for he could certainly rise from the dead Sunday morning. He
just doesn't have the courage to be crucified for our sins Friday afternoon!
How can God prove Himself? If He created a brand new Universe, right before
our eyes, how do we know this is the Creator of OUR Universe and not some
other universe-creator? How do we know the whole experience isn't being
planted in our minds by some form of mind control?
Prayer can be proven to work, or
not work, and even the fact this Universe was created, not just an accident,
can be proven. The finely tuned variables of the Universe that the Anthropic
Principles point out, do prove that, but it's always going to take faith to
believe that Christ is God, or to believe in the integrity of God. It is to
Jesus' credit that He was so reluctant to perform proof miracles. He knew
the simple folks of the first century could be awed by a thunder blast, but
not the sophisticates of a culture exposed to Tesla. Captain Kirk would
never be awed by booming voices or sound and light shows. We can take
comfort in the Bible's portrayal of God as a "Still Small Voice. " (Kings
19:11 to 19:12). And that, in the end, is the only way we can truly recognize
Him. Those that have invited that Still Small Voice to live inside of them
(and He must be invited in, He won't go where He's not invited for ethical
reasons), will recognize whether or not any sound and light show is being
put on for real, or if it is just the product of some alien version of
Industrial Lights and Magic.
Should prayer be the only acceptable method
of healing the way the Christian Scientists practice? Definitely NOT!!! In
the New Testament over 20 different methods of healing were practiced or
advocated by Christ. One example. Jesus told the story of the Good
Samaritan. When the good Samaritan found a mugging victim bloodied and
bruised along the side of the road, he put the man on his own donkey, which
was as close to an ambulance as they had back then, and he took the man to
an inn, which was as close to a hospital as they had back then. He treated
the man's wounds with oil and wine, which was state of the art high tech
medicine back then. Indeed wine is still considered a good antibiotic. There
is no record that the good Samaritan prayed for the mugging victim. Yet
Jesus commended this guy and said that out of all who passed by, he and only
he, was a good neighbor and that we should all do likewise for one another.
While taking a
little girl to a church event I watched a strapping 15 year old pick his
mother up, give her a big hug and swing her around affectionately. I
commented to the mother how charming this was. She said, "You know, he is
very sick. He has schizophrenia. he almost ended up in the hospital instead
of coming to this event. He had gone off his medication, because he wanted
to be healed directly by God. If he had done so, he might have been in a bad
way by now. But his Pastor talked to him. He told the boy about the incident
in the Gospel of John, Chapter 9, where Jesus made mud and put in a blind
man's eyes to heal him. This shows God can use the things of the Earth to
heal too. The Pastor told the boy to think of his medication as his "mud." I
had always wondered why Jesus did that, instead of just healing the man
directly. Now I understand it was a message to all of us whom God chooses to
heal through earthly things.
ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO TRY AN EXPERIMENT?
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