Refuting Theist Arguments - 'Power of Prayer'

Refuting Theist Arguments -- 'Power of Prayer'

When pressed for proof of their god(s), some theists will try to claim that prayer can be used to scientifically prove the existence of god.

In this video I will examine the research done pertaining to intercessory prayer and its potential effects.
I will show that, if anything, scientific research has provided more circumstantial evidence for the idea that god was made up by human beings.

Before I examine the research conducted on this subject I would like to say one thing:
Anecdotal stories mean nothing.
I can find you anecdotal stories regarding the existence of pink elephants, sentient toilets, etc.
Anecdotes do not provide evidence of anything.

Now, let us examine the research that has been conducted on prayer (starting with research often cited by Christians).

We will start with the PLIM report (1999, Vol. 8 #4.) study.
Read more about the group's beliefs: http://www.plim.org/PrayerDeb.htm
Note: PLIM stands for 'Power Latent In Man' (Col. 1:26)
Already the fact that the group is so obviously religiously biased calls into question their ability to be objective...

The problems with this 'study' are numerous.
Even if we ignore the small sample size (393 individuals) and the fact that the research came from a biased Christian source, we are left with methodological issues.

Major issues with the PLIM report:
-This study did not have a placebo group in addition to a control
-The study did not talk about how individuals were divided into groups, assessed, etc.
-The study did not provide a correlation or raw data

I even e-mailed the people at PLIM asking them these questions....
Not surprisingly, I never got a response...

Other sites often cited as 'proving prayer' by Christians are as follows:
http://miraclesofprayer.com/pages/research.htm
http://www.godandscience.org
Interesting note: godandscience supports ID and rejects LOTS of scientific evidence from many fields

I spent hours painstakingly searching through over a hundred Christian 'research studies' and this is what I found:
-Most of the 'studies' did not provide raw data or correlations
-The 'studies' that provided their data showed no significant improvement (the placebo effect produces better results in most cases)
-Almost none of the 'studies' included a placebo group
I also found other minor methodological issues in all of the 'studies' that I reviewed.

But the most important issue that I continually ran into was:
-No prayer study ever published in a peer-reviewed journal showed ANY significant effects from prayer

Note: There have been a couple of studies in peer-reviewed journals that claimed that prayer worked -- the scientific community immediately found numerous serious methodological problems with these studies (i.e. they were not conducted objectively or scientifically)

One example of a peer-reviewed article that found prayer had no significant effect:
"Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized Controlled Trial"
This article appeared in the Mayo Clinic Proc. 2001;76:1192-1198
A PDF of this study is available online.

There are dozens of other pieces of SCIENTIFIC research that show that prayer has NO EFFECT.

Of course, after you explain to a theist the problems with the research that they cited, and you cite scientific research that appeared in peer-reviewed journals, they will often try to back-peddle by making claims such as:
"You can't expect to be able to manipulate prayer as you please."

They will often try to claim that prayer is not something that can be controlled as an independent variable.
At this point they are saying anything to rationalize their beliefs/explain away evidence that contradicts their preconceived notions...

This is where they trap themselves. I will explain why.
Either
(a) we can scientifically measure the effects of prayer (and, by doing so, determine if there is a supernatural force that grants prayers)
Or
(b) we can not.

If (a), then (c) scientific research has shown that prayer has no effects (this would indicate that there is no supernatural force that grants prayers).
This would also provide more circumstantial evidence for the theory that god, and the idea that prayer works, were both made up by people.

If (b), then (d) prayer can not be used to try to prove god anyway.

So, through a basic constructive dilemma, we find that:
Either
(c) prayer has no effect
Or
(d) prayer can't be used to prove god anyway

As you can clearly see, the theist has backed himself/herself into a corner where they either have to admit that prayer has no effect, or they have to admit that the effects of prayer cannot be measured, and, therefore can not be used as proof for the existence of a supernatural force.

Clearly, prayer either provides more evidence that god is a human construct, or it can't be used to prove god anyway, so theists need to stop claiming that it can.

To recap: prayer either provides more circumstantial evidence that god was created by people, or it does not prove anything.
Either way, it certainly does not provide any evidence of a supernatural force (i.e. a god).


Music: Dragon_Warrior_Thou_Art_a_DJ_OC_ReMix, by Ghetto Lee Lewis, from http://www.ocremix.org

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• refute
• refuting
• theist
• theism
• atheism
• atheist
• religion
• god
• deity
• prayer

[RoxyFoxy1992]

Umm.. i don't know about yall but prayer does have an effect, this little girl at my church could not hear, we prayed for her and she could hear again, an old man in front of everyone in my church showed he could not walk up straight, we prayed and when he left he could walk perfectly fine, Now try to tell me God is not real and prayer never works! No one can believe any more, everyone has to have proof! Just believe in Him and He will save you!

GOD BLESS!

[GreenDragon23]

Thanks for your comment.

However, your stories are anecdotes; every time one looks at prayer objectively one finds that it simply doesn't work; praying does not change the relative odds of various outcomes.

Also, for every anecdote you can find that 'supports' prayer (or any other superstition), you can find another that 'supports' a exclusive supernatural claim.

What I am saying is that anecdotes play well with people, but are not logical evidence.

[Opposui]

You are fucking epic.

Permanent subscriber.

[GreenDragon23]

hehehe

Thanks!

;)

[DimSumDANCE]

a miracle is often a religious way to ignore the physical laws to explain something. ie: "wow that ball missed his head by a 1/3 of an inch. it's a miracle." no the ball literaly just missed him. that's it. no work of god, nothing. a guy fell from a 40 story high building and lived. just because we can't explain it YET doesn't mean we can call it a miracle and that's it.

[tenzinandrio1]

I can't post a link here for some reason. But google "Does prayer actually work scientific inquiry" and check out the article on the suite 101 page.

[tenzinandrio1]

My problem with your reasoning is that you are locked into the battle about the existence of God. You are arguing with nincompoops, rather than open minds. I have come across a number of studies that simply attempt to find if prayer has a health outcome, regardless of any belief in "God" - and they report statistical evidence that it does. Couldn't this be evidence of a heretofore-misunderstood "connection" between humans?

[Gnomefro]

@Sleek310 One suspicious thing about it all is that the old man would bother to "show everyone that he couldn't walk". Right there we're well into showmanship and magician tricks. A girl claiming to be deaf has to be one of the easiest thing to fake of all and no casual observer could ever conclusively say that any change occurred in her body at all.

The real question here is why god would inflict those states on those people/not cure them without groveling if he cared about them at all.

[Gnomefro]

@Sleek310 "Ok so lets go on this notion that a prayer made this man walk straight and this girl hear and thats proof of God"

The anecdote could well be true though. People do in fact observe these things all the time. It's just that the faith healing shows are set up by con men that have been exposed in a variety of circumstances. James Randi's book on faith healing(and debunking of one of these guys on live TV) is one example of this being done.

[Sleek310]

@RoxyFoxy1992 Why would anyone want to believe something to which theres no evidence and stand behind fairy-tails in the face of evidence to the contrary? You dont know prayer helped these ppl u believe it helped them because it supports what u already believe but for every person who says god fixed my minor issue, you have thousands more who die from aids, suffer from autism, die from cancer, but when u have a headache and pray and its gone in 3 hours GOD gets the credit, its nonsense

[Sleek310]

@RoxyFoxy1992 Ok so lets go on this notion that a prayer made this man walk straight and this girl hear and thats proof of God....what about amputees who pray and dont get their limbs back and for the record they never have.....what about the people screaming at funerals for god to give back their 10 year old child killed in a crossfire of a drive by ppl who lose their jobs and pray yet still end up on the streets...U telling me that walking straight is more important than life and wellbeing

[AntisKepticOintment]

See how God is like the placebo effect, wile God is not simply the same thing as the placebo effect. AntisKeptic Ointment at blogger

[hsfootballvids]

Prayer truly has no effect on the outcome of a situation. This is coming from a born and raised Christian who in the past year has actually started to analyze the "faith" that he has been indoctrinated to live by. If you pray for something and it comes true, you say: "God answered my prayer!" when really, it was just a coincidence. However, if you don't get what you pray for, you say: "I guess it's not in God's plan," which is ridiculous because if God has plan that cannot be changed, why pray?

[stevehayes13]

Neat.

[handom85]

@RoxyFoxy1992 How do u know the pple who are cured are not faking it? And even if prayer was the cause for their improvement, that proves nothing supernatural. Faith's physiological effects (or any strong conviction's effect for that matter) are real, but prove there's a god it does not. Supernatural claims require extraordinary evidence.