Scrolling through some recent comments, my attention was caught by this one, posted by keiths:
Besides not panning out scientifically, intercessory prayer doesn’t even make theological sense.
An old OP on the topic:
So I checked out keiths’s OP, which describes the hypothetical case of a woman named Mary, suffering from a terminal illness, whose friends decide to pray for her. Keiths cuts to the chase:
The question is whether those prayers have any effect on God’s actions. Being an OmniGod [omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – VJT], he will always do the right thing, without fail, regardless of whether anyone asks him to do so. How can prayer ever change what God does, if he always does the right thing in all circumstances?
In other words, is it ever possible that God is prepared to let Mary die, but decides to intervene simply because her family and friends pray for her recovery?
I’d like to make a few brief comments, just to get the discussion rolling:
1. It’s a good idea to read Aquinas first, before writing about intercessory prayer
Why? Because if you read what Aquinas says on the subject (Summa Theologica II-II, q. 83, art. 2), you’ll find that he’s familiar with the standard objections to the practice. Aquinas’s justification for intercessory prayer is not that it changes God’s will – indeed, he insists elsewhere that the will of God is unchangeable, citing the Bible to support his view, and deftly handling Scriptural passages which seem to imply the contrary. Rather, Aquinas maintains intercessory prayer is appropriate, because God wants us to obtain certain goods as a result of praying for them. In other words, intercessory prayer is purely for our benefit:
Reply to Objection 1. We need to pray to God, not in order to make known to Him our needs or desires but that we ourselves may be reminded of the necessity of having recourse to God’s help in these matters.
Reply to Objection 2. As stated above, our motive in praying is, not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that, by our prayers, we may obtain what God has appointed.
Reply to Objection 3. God bestows many things on us out of His liberality, even without our asking for them: but that He wishes to bestow certain things on us at our asking, is for the sake of our good, namely, that we may acquire confidence in having recourse to God, and that we may recognize in Him the Author of our goods...
2. Is there only one right thing for God to do?
Keiths assumes that God, being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, “will always do the right thing, without fail, regardless of whether anyone asks him to do so.” But that assumes there is only one right thing to do – in other words, that if God intervenes and heals Mary, it is because He is morally obliged to do so. Christians would dispute this claim.
3. Nevertheless, keiths’s final question is a valid one
But even if prayer on someone else’s behalf doesn’t change God’s will, it seems we can still meaningfully ask: would God have helped that person, even if we hadn’t prayed for them?
Now, the first thing that needs to be said is that keiths’s argument wouldn’t work against a predestinationist, who would say that God predestines not only the end, but also the means: in other words, He decrees that a person in need shall receive His assistance, precisely because He has already decreed that we shall pray for that person in need. So the question of what would have happened if we hadn’t prayed for that person never arises. And there are some who would argue that Aquinas himself was a predestinationist (see here and here for instance – but on the other hand, see here).
But let’s assume that our choices are not predestined, and that we possess genuine, libertarian free will. In that case, someone who prays for a person in need might not have done so – which prompts the question asked by keiths: would God have still helped that person, even if there were nobody praying for them?
If we answer “yes” to keiths’s question in all cases, then our prayers really don’t make a difference to anything happening in the world, and we can never say that something good would not have happened without our prayers. But if there are at least some cases where the answer is “no,” then that implies that God was willing to let Mary die, if nobody had prayed for her recovery. Or if God had some independent reason for wanting to let Mary live, then maybe there was some other person suffering from terminal illness, whom God was willing to let die.
Given the choice between saying that things would always work out the same, even without our prayers, and saying that there are some people whom God would not have rescued from death without our prayers, I think a religious believer should take the second option. To suppose that prayer makes absolutely no difference to the way things turn out is contrary to the whole message of the Bible. Nor do I think that a God Who would allow some people to die if they are not prayed for is a monster, on that account. That only follows if God has a moral obligation to end all death and suffering immediately. For my part, I am not persuaded that He has any such obligation.
I shall stop here, and invite readers to weigh in on keiths’s dilemma. What do you think?
I’m okay with the idea that prayer is for the benefit of the person who is praying. And that’s consistent with fifth’s apparent view that it is a kind of placebo effect. But that’s not how most Christians look at it.
Would praying about it lead us to a satisfying answer?
Glen Davidson
No praying gets the same result, we will obtain what God has appointed.
VJ,
You have built your entire OP on keiths strawman; that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent and then you added your own strawman that God expects something, like prayer for others.
If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent then the expectation of prayer for others is contradictory to God’s Omnis.
Where you got the idea that even if God expected some to pray for others would make Him a monster, totally boggles my mind…
If anyone ever complains about the poor quality of my OPs, I’m going to point to this one as an example of one of the worst OPs ever not only at TSZ. 2 strawmen in one…
It doesn’t have to have any effect, except the effect that meditation has on the meditator. The request to forgive those that trespass against us is among the great ethical ideas of all time.
1) Do you think that effect is chopped liver??
2) Do you think all forms of “meditation” are equal
3) Can’t “meditation” have positive effects on those in contact with the meditator?
peace
The placebo effect is just a description of the physical effects of a subjects faith in the “treatment” he is receiving.
Faith is an integral part of what makes Christian prayer effective.
Faith is also a gift from God.
peace
Sure but it does not require God to exist. Just the belief.
How do you know this?
I’m serious here, it seems to me that any form of effective mediation assumes a reality that is above normally experienced disconnected physical existence.
That sort of transcendent reality could be considered divine could it not?
peace
Why is the preservation of that supposed loophole so important to you?
peace
Are we back at: God is a sugar pill?
I got hung up on:
”the will of God is unchangeable”
If this is true, should we not still be killing homosexuals, women who are not virgins in their wedding night, and children who dishonour their father?
No we are back at God is “the expertise of the medical profession” that we place out trust in.
The difference is that God unlike human practitioners of medicine would never prescribe a sugar pill
peace
God never once commanded that we do that.
peace
God seems to relish ambiguity, just honoring His choice.
Leviticus
““If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense.”
“‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.”
“‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”
“‘If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
“‘If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.” [why kill the animal?]
“‘If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
J-Mac,
1. You say there’s a formal contradiction between God’s being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent and God’s expecting us to pray for others? OK. Prove it. I’m not holding my breath.
2. In any case, it may interest you to know that I personally don’t think of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. In fact, I’ve even criticized that notion of God in my post, The Christian God and the Problem of Evil (February 12, 2017), arguing instead that: (a) God has power over all things, but He does not have the power to do all things; (b) God knows everything there is to know about His creatures, but He does not know all counterfactuals; and (c) God naturally wants what is ultimately best for us, but He does not necessarily want us to enjoy a pain-free journey to our ultimate destination.
3. However, I didn’t bother bringing these points up in my OP because I don’t think they matter much. Even if we simply acknowledge (as I do) that God has complete power over, complete knowledge of, and an unshakable love for His creatures, rather than being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, it would still follow that He doesn’t need our prayers for others, in order to accomplish what He intends.
Where did I say that? What I said was:
Get your facts straight. Oh, and by the way, you might want to fix your sentence grammar (see the quote from the third paragraph of your last post, cited above).
The second one is fake, and the first is irrelevant. You’ll have to do better than that.
Hi Acartia,
My OP did not assume the truth or inspiration of the Bible. The problem posed by keiths would apply equally to Muslims and to all theists who believe in a loving and transcendent God.
The objection you raise was anticipated by Aquinas in his Summa Theologica I, q. 19, art. 7 (Whether the will of God is changeable?):
Hope that helps.
You can’t be serious???!!!
If God is omniscient – knowing everything – that means He already knows who is going to pray, for whom, and for what reason. If God would expect billions of people to pray to him for something he already knows, would make no sense and would make God seem foolish and not monstrous…
It would also make no sense to me that a loving God would play this game with his worshipers and ask them to pray for something he already knew…
It follows from your statement.
It is an assumption based on your presuppositions which I do not share.
Sure, anything can be considered divine. Since it not universal, one could consider it an aspect of a particular physical reality.
peace
O
Everything that is logically possible to know.
Then prayer would only affect the one who prays, helping alleviate the feeling of helplessness.
vjtorley, quoting Aquinas:
I came up with a similar defense when I was still a believer. It doesn’t really work, however, as I explained in my first comment on the older thread:
Vincent,
We’ve had this discussion before. It’s not about obligation; it’s about what a loving and powerful God would choose to do.
Acartia,
Do you think you are a iron age Israelite?????
Those commands were written to a specific nation living under a specific covenant at a particular time in a particular context.
If I command my kid to do his homework do you think I want everyone at all times to do my child’s homework?
peace
I don’t think so. He just seems to be polite.
He allows you the option of rejecting him and then demonstrates the futility of that choice.
peace
So where are our commands written?
So you think that universality is the criteria for authentic divinity? Why?
peace
they are written on your heart at conception 😉
peace
When I last checked, hearts didn’t show up until some time after conception.
I almost put “heart” in quotation marks but decided against it hoping that we were above that sort of wooden literalism here.
I guess I was mistaken 😉
peace
fifth, to Acartia:
Because killing teh gays with rocks is a great idea, as long as you get the timing right.
Definitely.
Hi J-Mac,
Your argument proves too much, as the following parallel argument shows:
If God is omniscient – knowing everything – that means He already knows who is going to work, and for what reason. If God expected billions of people to work for some goals he already knows about, that would make no sense and would make God seem foolish.
So you’re saying God doesn’t expect us to do any work?
Hi keiths,
You write:
Given that believers already know that God expects them to pray for others, the default expectation is that at the very least, praying for others won’t hurt them.
It is theoretically possible that God might refuse to grant a prayer by a large group of people if they are being spiritually presumptuous in their attitude, and expecting God to answer the prayer right here, right now, and in public. God might want to teach these people a lesson: that He can’t be put in a box. However, if the people pray with an attitude of submission to the will of God (“Thy will be done”), then I would say there is no conceivable reason why a mass prayer campaign would backfire.
Keep it up, Vince, and you’re going to end up on somebody’s ignore list pretty soon!!
Dear Jesus. Please let Elizabeth return soon and clean up this mess you’ve made. Thank you.
That might be a bad assumption to make. Look at this Templeton-funded study:
Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer
Herbert Benson, MD’Correspondence information about the author MD Herbert Bensonl,Email the author MD Herbert Benson, Jeffery A. Dusek, PhDl, Jane B. Sherwood, RNm, Peter Lam, PhDm, Charles F. Bethea, MD, William Carpenter, MDiv, Sidney Levitsky, MD, Peter C. Hill, MD, Donald W. Clem Jr., MA, Manoj K. Jain, MD, MPH, David Drumel, MDiv, Stephen L. Kopecky, MD, Paul S. Mueller, MD, Dean Marek, Sue Rollins, RN, MPH, Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhDl,m
PlumX Metrics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2005.05.028
Abstract
Full Text
Images
References
Supplemental Materials
Abstract
Background
Intercessory prayer is widely believed to influence recovery from illness, but claims of benefits are not supported by well-controlled clinical trials. Prior studies have not addressed whether prayer itself or knowledge/certainty that prayer is being provided may influence outcome. We evaluated whether (1) receiving intercessory prayer or (2) being certain of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with uncomplicated recovery after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.
Methods
Patients at 6 US hospitals were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer also after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive prayer. Intercessory prayer was provided for 14 days, starting the night before CABG. The primary outcome was presence of any complication within 30 days of CABG. Secondary outcomes were any major event and mortality.
Results
In the 2 groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayer, complications occurred in 52% (315/604) of patients who received intercessory prayer versus 51% (304/597) of those who did not (relative risk 1.02, 95% CI 0.92-1.15). Complications occurred in 59% (352/601) of patients certain of receiving intercessory prayer compared with the 52% (315/604) of those uncertain of receiving intercessory prayer (relative risk 1.14, 95% CI 1.02-1.28). Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups.
Conclusions
Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.
Vincent,
I don’t see why.
The Christian God — if he exists — already shits all over people, as we’ve discussed many times here in threads concerning the problem of evil. Christians bend over backwards to rationalize this.
If God is willing to let someone be eaten alive by mites, what makes you think he’s incapable of hurting someone who is prayed for?
PeterP,
You are still ignoring methodology. The
study you link has very little relationship to intercessory prayer as it is modeled in the Bible and practiced in Christianity.
apples and oranges
Nope, fmm, that isn’t it at all.
It is a placebo/nocebo issue. I’m surprised that you haven’t been able to figure that out yet.
Hi PeterP,
I would dispute that. The following quote is from an article posted by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 19, 2015 in Science Simplified!, titled, What is Nocebo Effect? (bolding mine – VJT):
OK. So if intercessory prayer is a nocebo in the strict sense of the word, then the negative effects associated with prayer have to be caused by the subject’s belief that prayer would produce harmful consequences. However, this appears not to have been the case in the STEP study you cited (which, I might add, is from 2006). Here’s what Wikipedia says on the study in its article on Studies on intercessory prayer:
In short: the harmful consequences associated with the STEP experiment were not caused by the subject’s belief that prayer would produce harmful consequences, but rather, by the mistaken belief that they were about to die. (After all, why else would someone be praying for them?)
I’d like to close with a quote from Section II, Chapter II of The Popes and their Church, a virulently anti-Catholic work by ex-priest Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), who became an atheist and was the author of several polemical works. (I first came across McCabe’s writings when I was in my early twenties, and spent lot of my spare time reading in university libraries.) Here’s what he has to say on the Catholic sacrament of Extreme Unction (a.k.a. the Anointing of the Sick). It illustrates perfectly the point I was making above regarding nocebos – namely, that in this case, it is not the belief that the treatment is harmful that causes the alleged ill-effects, but rather, the belief that the treatment is only administered to dying people (bolding mine – VJT):
fifthmonarchyman was basically right:
Hi everyone,
While we’re on the subject of studies of intercessory prayer, why isn’t anyone talking about the 2007 meta-study conducted by David R. Hodge, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services at Arizona State University, which tentatively concluded that God (or some other type of transcendent entity) does indeed answer prayer? Here’s a report from Science Daily (March 15, 2007):
Here’s what Hodge had to say about Benson’s 2006 STEP study:
To be fair, here’s Wikipedia’s somewhat more critical take on the study:
The study itself concludes:
Make of that what you will. I’m not aware of any more recent meta-studies on intercessory prayer. Is anyone else?
In spite of the “thus” there, I don’t think the conclusion actually follows from what comes before it.
Of course, one can use “nocebo” any way one wants. One might also use “placebo effect” to include deleterious effects when the subject expects harm, because it is an additional example of effects (though in this case not positive ones) caused solely by psychological “forces.” The point is that It doesn’t really matter how one splits up these categories, as long as we’re clear about it. In one parsing, nocebos occur whenever there are negative effects from what should be effectless drugs, in another parsing, one only has a nocebo proper when deleterious effects are expected.
vincent, alto pretty much nails it in his post (^) in that the nocebo effect(s) are those negative effects resulting from negative conditioning of the individual. It might be a result of believing a curse has been placed on the individual (witchcraft/voodoo) or a negative priming of the possibility of negative side effects that might arise from a procedure or a drug (or a sham).
In the prayer studies (and the citation I provided is by no means the only one available) the patients may have been primed by their fear of dying or simply being anxious by knowing someone was praying for them (they might no like the idea).
I think from the weakness of intercessory prayer effects across, pretty much all, the available studies demonstrates the foundation of the placebo/nocebo effects resulting from the physcolognical and psychosomatic makeup, and priming, of the individuals in these (and other) studies. It is all in their heads!
It is your argument that everyone knows that God exists. What is it everyone knows!
.
Then so am I.
And how do we know what constitutes rejection? For the Iron Age Jews not killing homosexuals would seem to be required.
peace
Interesting question, how do we know what counts as rejection of a spouse or parent? I suspect it is more or an internal disposition than an outward behavior.
However behavior does tend to follow intention
peace
Compiling fatally flawed studies just multiplies the error.
peace
Just enough to leave us with out excuse.
I suspect for most folks it’s just a vague notion that there is something or someone out there beyond yourself to which you are obligated.
I have no firm opinion. I wouldn’t think universality is necessarily a prerequisite. Especially given the prevalence of animism among primitive societies.
peace
You do know that what we are trying to quantify with prayer is the effect of the mental on the physical. Don’t you?
Answered prayer is not some physical force like an invisible laser that is beamed from the planet Kolob directly to the recipient.
You understand this don’t you?
peace