Prayer: Asking for more than healing

Speaking of prayer (story below), in "Do we have a prayer?" in The American Spectator, editor Quin Hillyer reflects on politicial activists and prayer:

Most of us have known people, too, who swear, absolutely swear, that they are alive today after some dread illness only because the prayers of others got them through. But then we wonder about those like Snow who did not survive, and none of it makes sense. Do prayers work? How? Why? And when they don't seem to, at least not by our understanding, why not?

He notes,

... we know that prayer doesn't necessarily bring comfort, or at least not "comfort" in the way the world usually understands it. Prayer does not bring comfort in the sense of ease or luxury or softness.

Ah ... word study urgently needed here: "Comfort" originally meant "strengthen" (the "com" part = with, and the "fort" part = strength). Later, "comfort" came to mean "ease" or "soothe." That created much misunderstanding around the idea that prayer "comforts" people.

Here is my view as a Catholic Christian: I have myself benefited from several healings that could only be attributed to the power of prayer, however understood. I would encourage anyone to pray, even if they are not a religious believer. Just say, "I know I am not a good person, but this feels too hard for me to bear. If You are out there, help me, please, at least to understand what is happening to me."

The main role of prayer is to put us in touch with God's view of our situation. We benefit from prayer to the extent that it does that. We benefit little from prayer if we view it as a way to make God do what we want.

In that case, even if we seem to get what we want for now, we will not grow into the people we should be. And there will come a time when we don't get what we want, and we also did not learn anything that would help us see the bigger picture. So we stop praying, and stop growing spiritually. Which is very sad because healing is only one of the benefits of prayer.

We are all going to die someday, which means that all healings are temporary. So I would say, by all means ask for healing, but don't stop there. Ask for insight too, for the day when healings come to an end.

Are prayer studies a waste of government money? No way!

A fellow blogger draws my attention to a column in the Waco Tribune by John Young who announces that he is "starting to long for the days when it was respectable enough for a Bible-believing American to say science was Satan’s tool." He lists many sources of grievance with the present science establishment, which - in his view - favours fundamentalists, including this one:

Our president’s type of "sound science" is that which authorized $2.3 million to study the power of prayer.

Did it indeed? Only $2.3 million? Well, I have some news for Young of the Tribune:

Here is what I wrote to some friends on the subject:

Anyone familiar with the placebo effect would consider $2.3 million to study the power of prayer money well spent.

Listen: The drugs you pay $$ for must perform 5% BETTER than your own belief that you will get well in order to be licensed for use.

That doesn’t mean that belief is 0%, as the vast majority of the lay public is encouraged to believe.

It means that any licensed pharmaceutical is at least placebo + 5%.

Have you ever read a label that said,

Phynyl causmungaphene

In the controlled study, 60% of the patients who thought their sugar pill was this medication got better and 85% of the patients who were actually taking this medication got better.

In the placebo group, 15% of patients required treatment for the "side effects" of the sugar pill and in the study group, 30% required treatment for the side effects of phynyl causmungaphene.

$44.95 15 tabs

(But this really IS the medication, honest. You can TRUST your pharmacist!)

No, I bet you didn’t read that. And you won’t either. But that’s not because this stuff never happens.

Look, I am NOT trashing pharmaceuticals. They wouldn’t be on the pharmacist’s shelf if they didn’t do anything at all. And doctors tend to know what works for their patients, so sure, we can trust an experienced physician and pharmacist.

But I was amazed when I learned what studies actually show about the difference that what you think is happening makes, in a wide variety of illnesses, while researching The Spiritual Brain (and Mario and I talk about that in some detail, too). After we turned in the manuscript, I read several more books that opened my eyes on the subject.

So even if people WERE praying to a Great Void (they're not), they might still gain some benefit. Research in these areas is critical for the following reason:

Aging people (of whom there are a lot just now in the settled and prosperous democracies) must sometimes take drugs that have unpleasant side effects or effects that counter each other (though both may be necessary, for different reasons). Research into the extent that mental states affect physical states may enable some individuals to manage with fewer or reduced medications that have undesirable side effects. And if they do it through prayer, whose business is that?

And that's not even saying that prayer studies will confirm that prayer has independent effects ... even if it didn't, prayer would still be highly effective.

Prayer: Intercessory prayer works, according to study

According to a news brief in Science Daily (March 15, 2007),

David R. Hodge, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services at Arizona State University, conducted a comprehensive analysis of 17 major studies on the effects of intercessory prayer -- or prayer that is offered for the benefit of another person -- among people with psychological or medical problems. He found a positive effect.
"There have been a number of studies on intercessory prayer, or prayer offered for the benefit of another person," said Hodge, a leading expert on spirituality and religion. "Some have found positive results for prayer. Others have found no effect. Conducting a meta-analysis takes into account the entire body of empirical research on intercessory prayer. Using this procedure, we find that prayer offered on behalf of another yields positive results."

Apparently, Hodge's work is featured in the March 2007 edition of Social Work Practice . He doesn't suggest that prayer alone will work in situations such as depression.

Most churches that offer healing prayer find that it provides at least some help for sufferers, especially with chronic conditions. It only rarely reverses the course of serious illnesses.

It would be interesting to relate the power of prayer to phenomena like the quantum Zeno effect.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Article of interest: Why soldiers pray

In an interesting article on why people pray and why there are sometimes atheists in foxholes, author Andrew Carroll observes:

"Some of my colleagues have wondered out loud how there can be a God with all of this suffering," Lt. Col. Scott Barnes wrote in an October 2005 email home from Iraq. It is a question that transcends war and relates to any catastrophe involving loss of life, and theologians and philosophers could not have provided a more impassioned answer: "Where is God?" Col. Barnes went on to write. "He is in the will of the sergeants helping organize a blood drive as only they can, He is in the hearts of the soldiers who immediately rolled up their sleeves to give what they had to save a dying brother whom they don't even know." Like those who came before and after him, Col. Barnes saw the worst of human nature in a war zone. But in the selflessness of his brothers and sisters in arms, he also witnessed the best.

The diminishing plausibility of materialism is more easily understood when we consider that this sort of behaviour, by no means rare, is regarded as the "problem" of altruism.

The article is in support of Carroll's just-published book Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War

Materialism run mad: Co-operating with nature is "anti-science"?

Here's a good one, from the Washington Post (October 30, 2006), about a Nebraska-based women's health and fertility clinic that adheres to Catholic teaching , while espousing all the high tech methods that are not in conflict with that:

The institute, which is attracting more than 700 new patients a year, melds modern medical facilities with the philosophy and symbols of Catholicism. The waiting room greets patients with a bust of the Madonna and Child and an illuminated stained-glass crucifix. Bulletin boards titled "Miracle Baby Hall of Fame" are filled with snapshots of children. Down the hall is a fully accredited lab for analyzing hormones. An ultrasound suite downstairs is equipped with the latest technology. A large statue of St. Therese stands in a stairway leading to the Chapel of the Holy Family, where Mass is celebrated weekly.

"This is anti-science," says Anita L. Nelson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Los Angeles. "They might as well be advocating prayer for infertility," quips Richard Paul, a fertility expert at the University of Southern California.

Actually, that would be a darn good idea. The placebo effect is very powerful and at least some barriers to fertility have a psychological component. Especially assuming that, as here, the patients are voluntary and supportive of the MDs' stance.

In any event, Hilgers retorts that

his work is based on numerous research papers that he and others published in well-known journals earlier in his career, and that he has compiled the results of his more recent studies in a 1,243-page textbook he produced in 2004.

Remember this when materialists claim that they are not "against" other faiths. They are.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, which keeps tabs on the intelligent design controversy.