Posted on 03/30/2006 3:17:30 PM PST by paltz
My sister would be angry with me if she knew I had forgotten her sage insight. Thanks for the reminder.
I think the "authors" of this ridiculous charade for a scientific study on the results of prayer can best be summed up by the only expert source on prayer, the inerrant, Holy Word of God, the Bible....
I Cor 1:18-20 -- "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness: but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?"
I Cor 1:25-27 -- "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty."
And the telling of all when it comes to what I believe sums up the authors of this dubious study.... I Cor 2:14 --"But the natural (unsaved) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dead."
Its ridiculous to think that a god has the power to heal the little baby who got poisoned ....but he won't because not enough prayers were said. Of if later, lots of prayers start being said on behalf of the poisoned child....so this omnicient/omnipotent god, Architect of the Universe decides to change his mind and heal the child.
I couldn't worship such fickle and petty god.
These so called studies do not understand God, or faith. I am glad God knows what is best for me :-)
If you were to send this article along with the article posted in #10 it might be more constructive.
surgery work done in combination with the conditions of the patients going in for such surgery.
To wit: The study is incomplete.
You would have to do more of such observations.
All we know from the one test completed, is an initial result (see "test 1" below), in which you can compare and contrast the three groups responses.
You would want to do more tests, with more groups' responses being the results, like the following:
Percent of Post-Surgical Complications:
(existing data is black text; example data is green text)
PATIENT GROUP test 1 test 2 test 3 test 4 test 5 test 6 test 7 test 8 test 9 etc. -> % % % % % % % % % % prayed for but only told they might be 52 54 49 53 47 53 51 59 52 ... not prayed for though told they might be 51 50 51 59 57 49 50 52 49 ... knew they were being prayed for 59 50 54 50 49 48 51 52 53 ...
Now, I just tossed some numbers in there, for the purpose of showing an example.
I think you get the drift. That, after more testing, you may or may not find trends in the data.
Then, you may or may not be onto something.
In the meantime, don't lose faith nor hope.
God bless.
God Bless you for that reply. It would make a wonderful tagline.ROFLMAO
I'm amused thinking how the researchers will try to control and cover all the bases in their next study design -- soundproof rooms, maybe? "background prayer", lol! How about this, Group A prays just in the morning for no more than 10 minutes, Group B prays am & pm ... : >
I'm not surprised by the results of this study. If we could push God's buttons by prayer, then none of us would ever have bad things happen to us and our loved ones would never die.
Bad things would not happen to good people, or if they did, they would be miraculously fixed by pious prayer.
Instead, we see the wicked prospering and good people dying young, just as much as we see the opposite.
Prayer may be beneficial to the person praying, but I don't think there's any evidence that it affects God's behavior in the least.
Did the extensive prayer thread here for TexasCowboy prolong his life? It surely doesn't look like it did. And there's no doubt he was a fine man and the prayers were numerous and sincere.
My feeling is that God interferes almost never. In the overall scheme of things, we're all insignificant and we're all going to die. It matters not at all whether we die early or late in life. The only thing that matters is how we live that life while we have it.
I seem to recall the Bible saying in essence- God will grant anything you ask- so long as you ask for the right thing. As the parent of two daughters age ten and twelve- I could well tell them the same thing.
If you hash it out, it can kinda even makes sense. Then again not.
It can't hurt to ask. The differences between the three groups in the case study above are probably statistical noise.
I think God will do the right thing whether we ask Him or not. It's hard to imagine that He'd say, "I would have cured that stomach cancer but the group came up three prayers short."
Plus, I stress again, it's not important how long you live. It's how you live.
Bingo!
The whole 'praying to cure someone' always reminded me of the old 'Queen for a Day' show, where the volume of the audience applause determined who would win. "Sorry Jacob! I could have healed your cancer, but the Prayer-O-Meter didn't make it up to 53%. Sorry!"
It doesn't look like the study takes into account the fact that healing is not just of the body, but of the soul. They have no idea how many tortured souls were healed and lifted up. They also have no idea how many of those prayers helped comfort and strengthen the families of the patients.
God always answers prayers, it's just that sometimes he answers, 'No.'. We aren't insignificant to God. Maybe our time on Earth is insignificant in the whole scheme of things and that's why it's easy for God to say, 'No.' in certain cases.
You are right that we should live the life we have. We should also treasure every moment with those we love because they might be gone tomorrow.
I thought God answered prayer three ways. Yes. No. And, not right now.
Scripture indicates that faith works through love.
Evidently the strangers praying for the ill lacked sufficient love to have sufficient faith for healing.
I'm sure the authors of the study will withdraw their careful statistical analysis of 1800 cases when they here your anecdote.
here=hear.
Oh yes that's true, but I didn't think that 'Not right now' really applied in the context of praying for someone that ends up dying. That seems like a definite 'No'.
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