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The Power of Prayer - Or Not

Ethan Hawke

16:38 / 14.12.01

Mayo Clinic Study proves inconclusive

Mayo clinic researchers discover no significant difference between patients who were unknowingly prayed for and those who weren't.

"I don't think we can randomize God,'' said Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. "I don't believe we can truly understand God's will. And I don't think that prayer is another pharmaceutical agent.''

Ask your doctor about Prayer (tm).

Tempus

19:32 / 14.12.01

Can't randomize God, eh?

You know, for someone who we're supposed to believe in as a matter of course, God puts an awful lot of effort into pretending not to exist. Then again, I suppose that, as mortals, we are incapable of knowing the justifications of the divine mind.

In other words, trying to get religion to bow to reason is probably about as fruitful as trying to get an Easter Island statue to follow you home.

Seth

09:06 / 15.12.01

Yeah. I expect it's only a matter of time before God decides to appear and bow before our limitless reason. In fact, I can hear Him coming now...

Tempus

09:41 / 15.12.01

Perhaps I should have said "the religious." God bowing would probably snap space-time in half at the waist. Or at the least create some rather unusual relativistic effects.

But that semi-retraction only applies if you actively equate religion with God.

(And the graemlin was gratuitous, I'll admit.)

Seth

09:41 / 15.12.01

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to seperate faith in God from religion. One is an active, spontaneous, vibrant thing: the other is currupt, lifeless and inflexible and should have been put down ages ago.

Prayer "disproved?" Whatever next? These crazy scientists. I'd like to put them together with the guys who "proved" prayer, clasp all their hands together and ask, "Why can't you all just... get along?"

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:19 / 16.12.01

This has got to be one of the daftest "scientific" studies I've ever come across in all my puff. What on earth did either buch think they were going to prove? If things had panned out for the pro-prayer contingent, we still wouldn't know what was going on. Nothing has changed with this result. People who belive in prayer are just going to shrug and say "Ah, well. File under 'moves in mysterious ways', eh?" I can think of any number of holes in such a study that a Supreme Being might slip through.

Anyway, how do we know they were praying properly?

Rev. Wright

14:02 / 16.12.01

It is of possible interest for this thread that claims were being made regarding drops in crime rates, linked to group meditations. I wish I could add more, I believe that teh trials were conducted in Britain, possibly Northern England.
The theory behind this is that the group meditating create a vibratiuon or tone that chills out all would be criminals. I suppose its a safer test than donning a cape.

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