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WillowOne's Positions

Prayer

My Positions

  1. Intercessory prayer has no measurable effect on the world. Where it has been tested properly, nothing has happened.
  2. Prayer has real effects on the person praying: calm, focus, the clarifying of a problem by putting it into words. These are the effects of meditation and of talking to oneself, and they require no listener.
  3. "Thoughts and prayers" offered in place of action is a moral failure dressed as piety.

Notes

  1. The tests. Francis Galton noticed in 1872 that the British royal family, prayed for every Sunday by the whole nation, died younger than the gentry. The modern trials are more careful and reach the same result. The STEP trial (2006) followed 1,802 heart-bypass patients in six hospitals; those prayed for by congregations did no better than those not prayed for, and the group who were told they were being prayed for had more complications, apparently from performance anxiety. The MANTRA II trial (2005) found no effect of distant prayer on 748 cardiac patients. The 2009 Cochrane review of ten trials concluded that there was no basis for recommending the practice. This is the one supernatural claim that is easy to test, and it has been tested.
  2. The theological escape makes the claim empty. Told of the trials, believers reply that God is not a vending machine, that prayer must not be tested (Deuteronomy 6:16), that God answers "yes, no, or wait". A prayer that is answered confirms prayer; a prayer that is not answered also confirms prayer. A claim compatible with every outcome forbids nothing (Popper's Razor), and "prayer changes me, not God" concedes the entire point while sounding as if it has not.
  3. Why prayer feels answered. Most things prayed for are things that often happen anyway: the illness that remits, the job that comes through, the lost keys. Those are remembered; the rest are filed under "wait" (Confirmation Bias, Regression to the mean). Draw the target after the shot and every prayer hits (Texas Sharpshooter). Nobody has ever prayed a limb back onto an amputee, which is the test that would settle it, and which is quietly never run. See Miracles.
  4. The benefits are real and secular. Sitting still, breathing slowly, naming what one is afraid of and what one wants, and feeling that one is not alone with it: these help, and the evidence that they help is the evidence for meditation, gratitude practices, and talking therapy. The believer gets them with a supernatural addressee; the rest of us get them without, and the addressee adds nothing except the expectation of a reply.
  5. The harm. Children have died of treatable illnesses because their parents prayed instead of calling a doctor, and in several American states the law still exempts those parents from prosecution for neglect (Religious Exemptions in Law). The Followers of Christ in Oregon and Idaho buried dozens of children this way. At the policy level, a legislature that opens with prayer and responds to a massacre with prayer is announcing that it does not intend to do anything, and should be taken at its word.

Sources

  • Benson, H. et al., "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients", American Heart Journal 151 (2006)
  • Krucoff, M. W. et al., "Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the MANTRA II randomised study", The Lancet 366 (2005)
  • Roberts, L. et al., "Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health", Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2009)
  • Galton, F., "Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer", Fortnightly Review 12 (1872)
  • Asser, S. M. and Swan, R., "Child Fatalities From Religion-motivated Medical Neglect", Pediatrics 101 (1998)

Also see