Can you set up an experiment to prove prayer works ?

Question

If you think you can , why haven't you ? this would help many believe in the power of prayer .

Answer 1

Evidence is not for those without faith. When someone chooses not to believe, there is no study, experiment, or proof that will convince them otherwise. They will always find a way to rationalize the evidence you present to them. Faith is a gift from God to the Believer, and does not come from OURSELVES. You either Believe God's supernatural power, and the benefit of prayer, or you don't.

Answer 2

I think such an experiment could indeed be set up. And I'd be willing to be in on it. I am just as anxious as anyone to see if it really works. But one problem is that there are ethical issues involved. For example, is it right to withhold prayer from a certain group of people, just to see if they don't get better? What if prayer really does work? So, you would need to do this with cases that were not life and death related. Because I would think you would not want to withhold prayer from those who may be deathly ill, on the chance that prayer might save them.

So, let's set up an experiment. What do you suggest?

Actually, here's an idea. It could have something to do with praying that I get money to pay off my debt. ;-) Versus people not praying for you to get money. Or something like that.

Answer 3

There are many doctors and patients who will tell you the power of prayer is real when they have either seen or been miraculously healed of a terminal disease. As far as an "experiment" I don't think that will work because you're intentions have to be true. You really have to want or need what you are asking for. At the same time you also have to remember, like all parents God has the right to say no. He knows what is best

Answer 4

There have been strong positive correlations between the power of prayer and people's success in becoming better -- when the person is using prayer for him/herself (for obvious reasons that show how powerful the mind is). However, what you're looking for is third-party intercessory prayer (where people pray for help for others without those receiving prayer knowing thay they are getting prayed for). There have been a number of experiments on this:
1988 - Randolph Byrd’s study - ambiguous results
1997 - Harvard Prayer Study - third-party remote intercessory prayer not effective
1997 - Intercessory Prayer has no effect on alcohol abuse
1998 - Distant Intercessory prayer has no effect on arthritis patients
1999 - Intercessory prayer coronary patients resulted in 10% lower complications but no help for major complications
2001 Mayo clinic - intercessory prayer had no effect
2001 NY Times reports that 'prayer works', citing results of intercessory prayer for women looking to get pregnant; later, one of the studies' authors pleaded guilty to criminal business fraud and the other removed his name from it
2005 Duke University coronary study - intercessory prayer had no effect

Answer 5

"Pagan Rebirth" is right. Not only has the experiment been done, but an even larger study of the issue proved prayer to be totally ineffective by any standard. But of course reason is not a welcome guest on one side of this discussion.

In defense of some of my counterparts in this forum, there is a school of thought on prayer which is less theatrical. To them, prayers should be devotional, not voodoo-like attempts to gain favors from God.

Answer 6

Of course you can't. Just like you can't prove that it doesn't.

I can give you many examples of remarkable answers to prayer and you can always come back and say, "well, that was a coincidence" or "it didn't really happen" or this or that.

There was an instance in Jesus' ministry where He says out loud, "Father, glorify Thy name." And a voice comes out of heaven and says, "I have glorified it." And the people who were right there and heard it said, "Wasn't that thunder?" There is something within the human heart that really really really denies the truth and refuses to believe....

god bless!!

Answer 7

How bout an example. Since you think you could do it, how would you do it? It is nearly impossible to set up a controlled experiment to see if prayer works.

Answer 8

Because it's been done, and shown not to have any effect whatsoever (except to make those who knew they were being prayed for more nervous, so they actually did a little worse).

Some people will say that it's a faith thing; that it can't be tested. Well, either prayer works or it doesn't, and working or not working is something you can easily test. And we have. And it doens't.

Answer 9

If we can set up an expirement like that, we have to test each religion by itself, and make sure the people who are praying are all doing it correctly as instructed to the religion they belong to.

You can't test prayer by getting a big group of people from different religions together. You have to use groups of members from the same religion all praying correctly as their religion instructs.

THEN, we can look at these results.

Answer 10

Actually, they just set up an experiment ( I don't remember where, but it was in the news about a month ago) and they proved that prayer DOESN'T work.
They took a bunch of people in the hospital and divided them in half. Half were prayed for, half were not. The group that wasn't prayed for, did a lot better than the group that was prayed for.

Here, I just found a few links:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/prayer_still_us.html
http://www.educatedguesswork.org/movabletype/archives/2006/03/surprise_interc.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000AFE22-9D1E-146C-9D1E83414B7F0000&colID=5