Prayers, do they really work?

The following editorial was originally posted on Facebook by the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." And I do not necessarily agree with all of the comments expressed therein.

"I often hear 'I'll pray for you' or "My prayers go out to so and so's family", and I can't help but ask, you all realize praying doesn't do anything right? Well, nothing aside from make you feel better about a helpless situation. Let's look at it using the Christian logic. God does everything, God is all knowing, all wise, and all powerful. So, since everything that happens in a result of God's will, and he is all knowing etc, it's pretty safe to say that through that logic he has already planned the result of whatever happened. So then, if it's part of his plan and he has decided the out come then basic logic says that prayer is futile. If it's not part of his plan and he isn't perfect, all knowing etc. then he hasn't accounted for it and has no plan for the out come and so, prayer is still futile.

Now lets look at it from a more realistic aspect. Prayer works right? So, then, if someone where to get, say, pancreatic cancer that was very aggressive, the prayers of the person, their family and anyone else combined would kill the cancer right? Wrong. Without medical intervention the cancer would spread through out the body and they would eventually die. Now, pancreatic cancer is pretty tough to beat, but with chemotherapy and other therapies there is a chance that they will survive. Not always, but a whole hell of a lot more people will survive via medicine that would survive via prayer. Let's take anaphylaxis as an example. Prayer will reverse their severe allergic reaction and save them? Nope. Pray all you want. That person is going to stop breathing and then die 3-4 minutes later without the aid of an epi-pen, or tracheotomy if that may prove helpful.

Basically, prayer doesn't do anything aside from make the person feel better by making them think they are doing something when in reality they aren't doing doo-doo. This is basic "2+2=4" logic and even crows can perform that kind of logic."

- The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Dear Sir,

I'm not sure what your vendetta is against prayer,etc..I also don't understand which "God" your attacking here or form of prayer but there seems to be a bias. While I do appreciate medical interventions and feel they have their place, the medical community is FAR from understanding all aspects of the disease process, especially in the case of cancer. I might reference the case of Maya Tiwari who basically was told to get ready to die from her cancer by medical doctors and used some eastern healing methods to cure herself. ( check out https://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Prac...ds=maya+tiwari). Not to say it's for everyone or incontrovertible proof of anything, but you there are many things about religion you don't understand yet you pretend to.

Peace,
B

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Posted in reply to the post by Edward Mendoza:

I often hear "I'll pray for you" or "My prayers go out to so and so's family", and I can't help but ask, you all realize praying doesn't do anything right? Well, nothing aside from make you feel better about a helpless situation. Let's look at it using the Christian logic. God does everything, God is all knowing, all wise, and all powerful. So, since everything that happens in a result of God's will, and he is all knowing etc, it's pretty safe to say that through that logic he has already planned the result of whatever happened. So then, if it's part of his plan and he has decided the out come then basic logic says that prayer is futile. If it's not part of his plan and he isn't perfect, all knowing etc. then he hasn't accounted for it and has no plan for the out come and so, prayer is still futile.

Now lets look at it from a more realistic aspect. Prayer works right? So, then, if someone where to get, say, pancreatic cancer that was very aggressive, the prayers of the person, their family and anyone else combined would kill the cancer right? Wrong. Without medical intervention the cancer would spread through out the body and they would eventually die. Now, pancreatic cancer is pretty tough to beat, but with chemotherapy and other therapies there is a chance that they will survive. Not always, but a whole hell of a lot more people will survive via medicine that would survive via prayer. Let's take anaphylaxis as an example. Prayer will reverse their severe allergic reaction and save them? Nope. Pray all you want. That person is going to stop breathing and then die 3-4 minutes later without the aid of an epi-pen, or tracheotomy if that may prove helpful.

Basically, prayer doesn't do anything aside from make the person feel better by making them think they are doing something when in reality they aren't doing doo-doo. This is basic "2+2=4" logic and even crows can perform that kind of logic.

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My belief is that we all as humans have free will. Why else would we have so many choices in life? And, our Creator, God or whomever you wish to call the name of your creator (*there are many) and in that free will we have options/choices to make.....well we can align with our Creator and co-create our lives with him/her/it/energy for the optimum learning opportunity that we came to this "earth school" for so-to-speak. Or we can buy into our Ego(me) mentality (most humans are familiar with) and struggle, make it harder on ourselves and those around us. I also believe that we have to acknowledge and ASK for help from our Creator. As we are given free will, there is no interference in outcomes of choices made if we don't ask. Prayer is asking for the good of all involved.

To me, prayer is a way, of saying, Hey, Creator I know this person has free will and I can't do anything about it, he's made his choices and will continue to whatever they are and the consequences of them, but maybe ask for assistance on his behalf, cause if he gets a little assistance, maybe it will in turn help others and me too cause I could use a little assistance from time to time. That certainly does make me feel better and I do believe our minds are very powerful and what we put into our minds is way important in our belief system. I'd rather do that cause yes, it makes me feel better, others feel better and that is good!!! Much better than putting out hate, discord, etc. as energy for other people to feel. We all have energy and it's important what we put out there. Just look around you right now.

I know for a fact that prayer has helped me endure through difficult times and make it through to better days. Not trying to make it sound simplistic, but I do think we humans have a tendency to make things way more complicated that they need to be. Simple just works better.

My brother has often quoted me as a youngster, I was 9 of 11 children raised on a 200 acre farm in the Mid-
west, of staying "If you're looking for a helping hand, look at the end of your own arm." Don't remember saying it, but I think if everyone would just help themselves and prayer with our creator is one tool we have and is probably the most powerful way to do that. Cause if you're in tune with pure creation, you're on the right path and will be able to help yourself and maybe in the process help a few others to help themselves. That's life..............

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Posted in reply to the post by Edward Mendoza:

I often hear "I'll pray for you" or "My prayers go out to so and so's family", and I can't help but ask, you all realize praying doesn't do anything right? Well, nothing aside from make you feel better about a helpless situation. Let's look at it using the Christian logic. God does everything, God is all knowing, all wise, and all powerful. So, since everything that happens in a result of God's will, and he is all knowing etc, it's pretty safe to say that through that logic he has already planned the result of whatever happened. So then, if it's part of his plan and he has decided the out come then basic logic says that prayer is futile. If it's not part of his plan and he isn't perfect, all knowing etc. then he hasn't accounted for it and has no plan for the out come and so, prayer is still futile.

Now lets look at it from a more realistic aspect. Prayer works right? So, then, if someone where to get, say, pancreatic cancer that was very aggressive, the prayers of the person, their family and anyone else combined would kill the cancer right? Wrong. Without medical intervention the cancer would spread through out the body and they would eventually die. Now, pancreatic cancer is pretty tough to beat, but with chemotherapy and other therapies there is a chance that they will survive. Not always, but a whole hell of a lot more people will survive via medicine that would survive via prayer. Let's take anaphylaxis as an example. Prayer will reverse their severe allergic reaction and save them? Nope. Pray all you want. That person is going to stop breathing and then die 3-4 minutes later without the aid of an epi-pen, or tracheotomy if that may prove helpful.

Basically, prayer doesn't do anything aside from make the person feel better by making them think they are doing something when in reality they aren't doing doo-doo. This is basic "2+2=4" logic and even crows can perform that kind of logic.

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Hello Edward,

I have to refute some of your logic here, or at least offer an alternative perspective:

First, a caveat -- I am not a Christian, so I cannot speak for them or their way of thinking. But let's look at the logic that you propose -- That if God knows everything that is going to happen then it is already all planned out, and prayers shouldn't make a difference. It's already baked into the cake, as it were, so appealing to the Almighty doesn't make any sense. But even assuming that omniscience and fate are a part of the equation, by that logic, why is anything happening at all? If God already knows how it will all end up, why bother to let it play out? Why not just cut to the chase, already?!

I would posit that it is because there is value in process. People often watch movies they've seen before, but knowing the outcome doesn't mean that there is nothing to be gotten out of going through the process of watching it all the way through. Likewise, I would posit that there is value in engaging the process, and perhaps prayer is an important part of the process. For instance, even in a movie you can't get to the end without first having a beginning and a middle. Even if God knows what the outcome will be, perhaps prayer is part of how that outcome is generated.

Second, I think your sense of what prayer "should do" is overly simplistic. Yours is a very mechanical interpretation of prayer, as if prayer should work the same way chemotherapy does. But does anything work the way chemotherapy does, besides chemotherapy? Not exactly -- that's why we use chemotherapy in situations where its use is indicated, as opposed to surgery, or a quick dunk in the ocean. I have some theories but do not pretend to understand exactly how prayer works (if it does -- I am debating logic, not making a positive affirmation of prayer's effectiveness), but if you think about it as being akin to asking a friend for a favor, you would not expect it to work every time. You can ask a friend for a favor, and s/he may say, "Yes," but it is equally possible that s/he will say "No." If the answer is "No," that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have asked or that asking is never effective, it just means that in this case, the answer is no.

There is also a third option -- "I'll see what I can do." So in the case of someone with pancreatic cancer, let's say prayer was used and God decided to "see what I can do" -- that might mean killing the cancer cells outright, or it might mean setting circumstances in motion to get that person to a better doctor, or to getting away from the carcinogenic causes of their cancer, or some other option that none of us, not knowing the Big Picture, could even think of. Or it might mean that the best that can be done is to help the person come to terms with the inevitability of their death so that their final moments on Earth are as peaceful as possible.

Third, I think a lot of people who pray also have an overly simplistic understanding of how it works. Many people pray to ask God to give them what they want, but even if that happens, God will not change the nature of what is being asked for. So for example, if someone asks to meet their "soul mate," God might grant that wish, but what a soul mate actually is and what the person imagines it to be are often two very different things, and rather than the "happily ever after" fairy tale that they have in their minds, it turns into a dramatic nightmare -- because a soul mate is someone who reflects your own stuff back to you far better than anyone else. So the most effective prayers are not requests for trinkets and favors, but for guidance, strength, and wisdom (a distinction that is, in fact, made in the Biblical story of King Solomon).

What say you?

Kind Regards,
Nathan

Dearest Nathan,

Please forgive me but I neglected to give credit where credit is due. You see, I did not write this little rant but I thought it interesting enough to repost here on Wacco. I found this on Facebook and the entity that posted it originally goes by the handle, "Flying Spaghetti Monster." So, in reality, I have no way of knowing who the person was and I felt a bit "squeamish," if you will, in putting that kind of an identifier on my post. But I am doing it now since the post from FSM has evoked various responses and, at least for now, seems to be a somewhat popular issue in our teapot called Waccoland.

I do not necessarily agree with all of the specific points made by the FSM. Apparently, some might even be factually wrong. However, there is one overarching message that underlies said post and that is: There is an essential absurdness and destructiveness of religion, which has an overwhelming impact on society at large, including today.

Edward

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Posted in reply to the post by NathanSW:

Hello Edward,

I have to refute some of your logic here, or at least offer an alternative perspective:

First, a caveat -- I am not a Christian, so I cannot speak for them or their way of thinking. But let's look at the logic that you propose -- That if God knows everything that is going to happen then it is already all planned out, and prayers shouldn't make a difference. It's already baked into the cake, as it were, so appealing to the Almighty doesn't make any sense. But even assuming that omniscience and fate are a part of the equation, by that logic, why is anything happening at all? If God already knows how it will all end up, why bother to let it play out? Why not just cut to the chase, already?!

I would posit that it is because there is value in process. People often watch movies they've seen before, but knowing the outcome doesn't mean that there is nothing to be gotten out of going through the process of watching it all the way through. Likewise, I would posit that there is value in engaging the process, and perhaps prayer is an important part of the process. For instance, even in a movie you can't get to the end without first having a beginning and a middle. Even if God knows what the outcome will be, perhaps prayer is part of how that outcome is generated.

Second, I think your sense of what prayer "should do" is overly simplistic. Yours is a very mechanical interpretation of prayer, as if prayer should work the same way chemotherapy does. But does anything work the way chemotherapy does, besides chemotherapy? Not exactly -- that's why we use chemotherapy in situations where its use is indicated, as opposed to surgery, or a quick dunk in the ocean. I have some theories but do not pretend to understand exactly how prayer works (if it does -- I am debating logic, not making a positive affirmation of prayer's effectiveness), but if you think about it as being akin to asking a friend for a favor, you would not expect it to work every time. You can ask a friend for a favor, and s/he may say, "Yes," but it is equally possible that s/he will say "No." If the answer is "No," that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have asked or that asking is never effective, it just means that in this case, the answer is no.

There is also a third option -- "I'll see what I can do." So in the case of someone with pancreatic cancer, let's say prayer was used and God decided to "see what I can do" -- that might mean killing the cancer cells outright, or it might mean setting circumstances in motion to get that person to a better doctor, or to getting away from the carcinogenic causes of their cancer, or some other option that none of us, not knowing the Big Picture, could even think of. Or it might mean that the best that can be done is to help the person come to terms with the inevitability of their death so that their final moments on Earth are as peaceful as possible.

Third, I think a lot of people who pray also have an overly simplistic understanding of how it works. Many people pray to ask God to give them what they want, but even if that happens, God will not change the nature of what is being asked for. So for example, if someone asks to meet their "soul mate," God might grant that wish, but what a soul mate actually is and what the person imagines it to be are often two very different things, and rather than the "happily ever after" fairy tale that they have in their minds, it turns into a dramatic nightmare -- because a soul mate is someone who reflects your own stuff back to you far better than anyone else. So the most effective prayers are not requests for trinkets and favors, but for guidance, strength, and wisdom (a distinction that is, in fact, made in the Biblical story of King Solomon).

What say you?

Kind Regards,
Nathan

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Posted in reply to the post by Edward Mendoza:

However, there is one overarching message that underlies said post and that is: There is an essential absurdness and destructiveness of religion, which has an overwhelming impact on society at large, including today.

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Hello Edward,

As a former militant atheist, I can certainly sympathize to your perspective. But also as a former militant atheist, I have to disagree. Not that people haven't done horrible things in the name of religion, nor that they don't continue to do so, but again I think this is an overly simplified perspective.

Religion, like almost anything, is what you make of it. Some people use it to justify their racism, abusiveness, and greed, but there are many others who use it as their inspiration to be better people, to help the poor and disenfranchised. For example, I attended a church for a year in which the head pastor was a black lesbian, and every week she inspired us to work harder on ourselves and on making the world a better place for those at the very bottom rungs of society. One Sunday, she played a short documentary film about the homeless and near-homeless in our area whose sole source of income was picking up cans discarded by the others and recycling them. Although this requires painstaking work for very little pay, and is a helpful and environmentally friendly service, they are constantly looked down upon, chased away, and marginalized by their well-to-do neighbors. So after playing the film she brought them in to meet the congregation, and you could see on their faces that they had never known what it meant to be given love and praise for the work that they do. Many of them are mentally ill, but they knew love when offered, even if they honestly didn't know what to do with it.

This is just one example. I also donate money to an Indian woman who travels the world and gives everyone she meets a free hug. Thousands of people line up to receive her hug, and somehow in the process they are moved to help others, as well. They donate their time and money, and as a result, she has a worldwide ministry that feeds the poor, builds homes for widows and victims of natural disasters (she gave $1 million to the victims of Katrina), plants trees to help the environment, builds hospitals to serve the poor -- the list goes on and on. She doesn't try to convert anyone, just to inspire them to live from a place of love.

The atheist filter is often skewed towards seeing the faults with religion -- of which there are admittedly many -- but also to ignore the good that it so often does. This is the atheist version of confirmation bias. I would humbly submit that true skepticism and intellectual honesty requires that we do our best not to fall into the trap of such bias, whether it supports one's atheist ideology or one's religious ideology.

Thoughts?

Kind Regards,
Nathan

'Prayer can help with high blood pressure, asthma, heart attacks, headaches, and anxiety; moreover, it can alter enzyme activity, blood cell growth, and the germination of seeds. [Larry] Dossey rejects the traditional Judeo-Christian notion of prayer as a relationship to a transcendental God, offering instead his own quasi-pantheistic view of prayer as a "genuinely nonlocal event'' directed to the "Absolute'' in all things. In any case, prayer apparently works:

Even unconscious or dream prayer, it seems, can be effective. At the same time, prayers often remain unfulfilled, and Dossey blasts New Agers for preaching that illness is the patient's fault and that physical health always reflects spiritual health, pointing out that many saints have suffered from terrible physical or emotional maladies.'
--from Kirkus review of Healing Words

I was disappointed when i read the book, as it doesn't do what it sets out to do: give a scientifically solid, if anecdotal, report on the efficacy of prayer. I hope someone really does do that some day. I'm atheist, and it's not necessary to believe in some third party's intervention to notice that our thoughts do affect material reality. When physicists perform experiments to discover how light waves behave, light behaves like waves; when they experiment to learn how light particles behave, it behaves like particles. An uncle of mine was a very sensible Christian Scientist, and one day a horse threw him and proceeded to trample on his ankle. An orthopedist, along with my uncle's own doctor--to keep him honest--did the exam and told him there was no way to save the foot, that it would just have to be amputated. My uncle said, essentially, "Patch it up the best you can, and God and i will do the rest," and for the rest of his life he walked completely normally, except for barely detectably favoring the injured foot when he was very tired.

Why Prayers, Meditations, Wishes, and Any Such Don't Help to Establish a Lasting Peace in the World.

It is a safe assumption that ever since humans started experiencing the horrors of warfare, they also started to wish to live in peace that would not end with a war again.

Humans in great numbers have been wishing, praying, meditating for peace since time immemorial, but, so far, with no lasting results. Why should this be so?

The answer might be that the very reason that wars always come back is precisely because we do want to live in peace!--we don't experience a lasting peace, because our ideas of what peace should be differ from each other so greatly, that we go to war to settle our differences again and over again.

A lasting world peace is possible, of course--it is within human capabilities to effect this--but since our ideas of what such a peace should look like are so diverse, we have to learn how to resolve our differences peacefully, instead of ultimately choosing war every time we feel the desire for peace.

This is what I feel should be done:
All of us who pray, meditate, wish, and etc., for a lasting peace in the world have to get together one way or another, and come up with one unified design of a world we would like to live in. A design in which it would be possible to see how we all are to live together in one world in as small detail as possible. Differences that normally would get resolved in real life with often damaging results would be resolved harmlessly in a model during the process of hammering out of a design in which all of us would find an optimal place in.
More on how this could be done is presented at ModelEarth - www.ModelEarth.Org

The idea on how to create a lasting Peace in the world is also presented in a different form at: "Designing a Lasting World Peace Together" - https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html

Thank you, Hearthstone.

While I largely agree with the diagnosis of the problem that you present, I do not agree with your solution. It is true that our desire for peace is often what leads to war, but I don't think this is because we haven't collaborated well enough on what peace looks like. I believe the problem is that people pray for peace while they have blame and war in their hearts ("please fix the other person so I can know peace"), and the true intention within the words -- an implicit desire to "win" over the other person, which is an invitation for violence -- is what manifests.

My prescription would be for everyone who prays for peace to look within for the causes of conflict within themselves, and then to resolve those inner conflicts. If everyone did that with dedication and searing honesty, there would be no more war. Differing ideas on how to enact peace would not lead to conflict, because the conflict would already be gone from people's hearts, and such differences would become remarkably easy to overcome.

IMHO.

Love and Light,
Nathan

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Posted in reply to the post by hearthstone:

Why Prayers, Meditations, Wishes, and Any Such Don't Help to Establish a Lasting Peace in the World.

It is a safe assumption that ever since humans started experiencing the horrors of warfare, they also started to wish to live in peace that would not end with a war again.

Humans in great numbers have been wishing, praying, meditating for peace since time immemorial, but, so far, with no lasting results. Why should this be so?

The answer might be that the very reason that wars always come back is precisely because we do want to live in peace!--we don't experience a lasting peace, because our ideas of what peace should be differ from each other so greatly, that we go to war to settle our differences again and over again.

A lasting world peace is possible, of course--it is within human capabilities to effect this--but since our ideas of what such a peace should look like are so diverse, we have to learn how to resolve our differences peacefully, instead of ultimately choosing war every time we feel the desire for peace.

This is what I feel should be done:
All of us who pray, meditate, wish, and etc., for a lasting peace in the world have to get together one way or another, and come up with one unified design of a world we would like to live in. A design in which it would be possible to see how we all are to live together in one world in as small detail as possible. Differences that normally would get resolved in real life with often damaging results would be resolved harmlessly in a model during the process of hammering out of a design in which all of us would find an optimal place in.
More on how this could be done is presented at ModelEarth - www.ModelEarth.Org

The idea on how to create a lasting Peace in the world is also presented in a different form at: "Designing a Lasting World Peace Together" - https://https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html

Thank you, Hearthstone.

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However--the approach that you advocate has not worked ever, so far. A few people always look within themselves to create their peace in themselves, and perhaps within their immediate environment, while most of people never do. The overall picture is always one of a war (whether actual war activities, or a "peace" that results in a war sooner or later.
The continuous engagement of all ("by a hook or a crook") on the entire societal level is necessary to create and maintain a lasting world peace.
Thanks, Hearthstone.

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Posted in reply to the post by NathanSW:

...
My prescription would be for everyone who prays for peace to look within for the causes of conflict within themselves, and then to resolve those inner conflicts. If everyone did that with dedication and searing honesty, there would be no more war. Differing ideas on how to enact peace would not lead to conflict, because the conflict would already be gone from people's hearts, and such differences would become remarkably easy to overcome.

IMHO.

Love and Light,
Nathan

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First, a technical note: The second link, the one with peace in it, got me a "Server Not Found" message.
I think the real reason we don't have lasting peace is much simpler than any large-group psychological explanation. The
reason US presidents are constantly pressured to keep the country always at war in one place or another is that war profiteering
is one of the very most profitable business types of all. I am not optimistic about ever having a lasting peace under capitalism,
unless elections become publicly funded. If people want to meditate in a unified way for peace, probably the
most effective meditation would be to visualize the members of the .1% becoming able to experience a sense of satisfaction that tells them when they have enough.

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Posted in reply to the post by hearthstone:

Why Prayers, Meditations, Wishes, and Any Such Don't Help to Establish a Lasting Peace in the World.

This is what I feel should be done:
All of us who pray, meditate, wish, and etc., for a lasting peace in the world have to get together one way or another, and come up with one unified design of a world we would like to live in. A design in which it would be possible to see how we all are to live together in one world in as small detail as possible. Differences that normally would get resolved in real life with often damaging results would be resolved harmlessly in a model during the process of hammering out of a design in which all of us would find an optimal place in.
More on how this could be done is presented at ModelEarth - www.ModelEarth.Org
The idea on how to create a lasting Peace in the world is also presented in a different form at: "Designing a Lasting World Peace Together" - https://https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html
Thank you, Hearthstone.

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