Why doesn’t prayer work?

Question

My nephew (a budding free thinker) put together a cool little 7th grade science fair project. He ran an experiment to see if Christian prayer was effective. He built a maze and had two different rats run the maze. During 50% of the runs he had Christian students in another room pray for the rat. The prayers started 2 minutes before the rat was released and continued until the rat finished running the maze. The control was identical except no one was praying for the rat. Whether or not the rat was prayed for was randomized by coin toss.

The results showed that prayer made no significant difference in how the rat ran the maze. (I don’t have the P value with me sorry).

So what’s wrong with god?

Answer 1

Come on now! You want to believe in prayer, but you find something as little as that to turn away. Have you ever lost a love one and you needed God to step in and keep you from losing your mind? Well he did it for me! Prayer does work!

Answer 2

Prayer isn't just asking for a million dollars and poof, it's there. Prayer requires some important steps.

FIRST, prayer requires personal relationship with Christ. When we pray, we ask for things in Christ's name. God gave us life and every good thing we have and we all wronged Him by lying, stealing, etc. We were cut off from God. Christ repaired the relationship by paying our penalty by dying on the cross. Jesus makes our communication with God possible.

SECOND, prayer are things that need to be asked in accordance to God's will. If I pray for a million dollars, odds are I won't get it. However, if I pray that an orphanage gets food this week, you'd be surprised how often God answers prayers when we pray for the benefit of others for God's glory.

THIRD, prayer has 3 simple answers. Yes, No and Wait. God doesn't say YES to EVERY prayer because God knows what's best for us. He knows every variable. What may seem like a bad thing today may turn out to be the best thing that's ever happened to us. Also, what seems like a good thing today could lead to our ruin.

I'm sorry your prayer rat experiment didn't work. However, the Bible does say "Do not put the Lord thy God to the test..." :)

Answer 3

First of all let's get one thing straight, prayer does work. Secondly, nothings wrong with God, what's wrong is the way you or whoever was praying prayer, ask yourself was my prayer sincere, was ALL my faith put into this prayer, and do you have a relationship with Jesus. You can't just pray when you want something to happen, you have to pray when things are going good, when things are bad, basically you have to pray everyday and be sincere about what you are praying for. Also you have to be faithful to God in order for him to be faithful to you(reading and studying your Bible, praying, paying your tithe and offering, following ALL 10 Commandments). Remember this P.U.S.H(Pray Until Something Happens). Don't let that one little thing mess up your relationship with Jesus, keep faith alive.

Answer 4

So this is how we define God and rather we choose not to believe? This is sad....


K well I will tell you that prayer does work....

9 years ago I had science and man tell me I would never conceive a child due to having 1 fallopian tube and 1 ovary(you're all scientific so I'm guessing you recognize those medical terms). Well regardless to what they said I kept my faith in God(and faith is what lead me to pray not to prove something) I stead fast in prayer for 30 days asking God to bless me with a son, and he did for the next 8 years I prayed and asked God for my daughter, and he gave her to me. I now have my children walking talking breathing in a world that MAN said they would never be. BUT GOD SAID other wise!!!! So not you, an Atheist, and no DEVIL in hell can shake my faith!!! God Bless You and prayer does work!

Answer 5

I'm guessing that god has so many prayer requests that he can't be bothered with a little boys science experiment attempting to prove/disprove his existence.

Granted, it is a smart little project, but prayer is something that comes from the heart and has personal meaning, it isn't something you tell others to do for a science project.

Answer 6

I'm not Christian, but I'm sure God has better things to do than make rats run through mazes.

Answer 7

You are asking for magic... Gods power is not to be played with. However you want to know why prayers dont be answered. Well if all of our prayers were answered life will be to easy and not a proper test. A person who prays to God needs it to be a sincere one. In Islam Allah has said life is a test, He will test us through life and He will keep testing us however He will not give us a test that we cannot pass. The more tests we pass the closer we become to Allah

Answer 8

ROTFL!
I'm sorry, this is all just priceless. "whether or not the rat was prayed for was randomized by a coin toss"
I'm sure the Good Lord was humored too.

Answer 9

Maybe becasue he wont be Mocked by having people offer prayer over stupid rat races! That isnt true prayer because you are tempting God to show his power..which is WRONG!
Now if you had said You had prayed from the heart for two different sick people, and niether one got better..I would have more to say.
IDIIOT

Answer 10

Nothing is wrong with God. First of all the Bible tells us we shouldn't test God and I wonder if that was part of why it didn't prove anything. The other part of prayer is Faith.
If we pray for something and do not believe it will happen then most of the time it doesn't.