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?
You do understand that you make God no different from your wife when it suits you, and as different as can possibly be imagined when THAT suits you?
I recognize that there is nothing terribly new about trinitarian trickery. But it’s ridiculous for all that.
God is no different from my wife and at the exact same time very different from my wife.
It’s called the incarnation and it’s a unique feature of the Christian God. The false god’s of the nations are not like that
I realize that the Trinity and the Incarnation make the Christian God different from the strawman gods that most folks think about when they conjure up some deity that they can safely reject.
But that is the point, God is not anything like your strawman .
The True God doesn’t make it easy to reject him.
peace
On the contrary, I think trinitarianism is so silly that it makes it particularly easy to reject anything that’s supposed to be three-in-one.
Doublemint was bad enough.
You do this a lot.
You use your personal aprasial to dismiss something as silly. But you don’t elaborate as to why it’s silly. I would be very interested in learning why you find it to be so.
Despite your occasional disdain I think that you and I see the world in similar light up until we get to the very ultimate questions.
It’s definitively not my opinion that the Trinity is silly in fact I think that things like Triperspectivalism have amazing utility in addressing all kinds of philosophical problems.
I’ve linked to this before but I’ll do it again in the hopes you take a look at it and explain why it’s “silly”.
peace
Of course that is the essence of the placebo/nocebo effect. Why would anyone think it is anything but that effect. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any discernible effect on any disease process.
I do not believe that anyone has ever claimed it to be the straw man you put forward (^) above.
Of course I understand the placebo/nocebo effect. Which is why it (the placebo/nocebo effect) is so clearly the case with prayer or any deity pageantry worship/prayer .
Again what you are calling the placebo/nocebo effect is really just a term for the physical effects that come from the faith that an individual has in the “treatment” she is receiving.
That Faith is a integral and vitally necessary part of what Christian prayer is.
Answered Prayer is not only faith but prayer works through and because of faith so that you can’t have one with out the other.
I think you need to study up on the impact of things like positive attitude and hope on disease processes. I think you will find the effects are often very discernible. That is exactly why we control for the placebo effect in most medical research.
Then why do you trumpet studies that purposely try and remove the effect of faith from the process????
It seems like you are equating a mental process like prayer with a physical medicine like penicillin.
That is just silly Apples and oranges
peace
I’m calling it what it is. The faith might be a belief in a deity, the prospect of pain relief from a ‘sugar pill’ or procedure (e.g.. needling in acupuncture) or the potential for adverse side effects from a drug. It is still nothing more than the conditioning of a individual of their expectations.
Much akin to the anticipation/faith that a acupuncture session is going to improve the ‘condition’ of the individual or that an adverse side effect from a drug/procedure might be experienced.
Does attitude stop cancerous cells from continuing to divide and spread? How about hope?
Placebos are used in some studies but it is completely unethical to treat patients with ‘real’ physiological diseases (e.g., cancer) with a placebo and instead a new treatment is tested against established treatment protocols to discern if it (the new drug regime) performs better than existing treatments. Someone should study up on the issues and that someone might just be you, fifth.
the ‘faith’ (and anticipation of the individual) is part of the process in all these studies (and many other studies not associated with religious beliefs) and not to be dismissed as being the cause of the observed effects.
Nope. Penicillin has a known effect n certain strains of bacteria. Prayer not so much. But we can test this. Plate some known penicillin-subsucepatable bacteria on a penicillin containing agar and on non-penicillin agar. Pray for the non-penicillin plated bacteria to die and compare it to the penicillin containing agar plate.
What would you predict will be the outcome? Will you expect prayer to kill the bacteria on the non-penicillin agar plates?
Would you predict that prayer will eliminate a bacterial infection in a person or would you advise that the patient to take the prescribed antibiotic?
that is just your straw man characterization of the studies not related to the reality of the situation.
It’s not faith in a individual sugar pill or procedure. It’s faith in the whole complex associated with the treatment.
People don’t trust a sugar pill to make them better they trust doctors and medicine to make them better. The problem is that sometimes human medicine is deceitful and they slip you sugar pill instead of a real remedy.
The Christian God is different than that he will never give you a sugar pill.
That’s what makes Christian prayer so much more effective than faith in things like witch doctors.
No, but prayer working with faith and medicine sometimes does.
In the most recent Templeton study you linked the subjects did not even know if they were being prayed for or not and the intercessors had no contact whatsoever with the recipients.
That’s certainly not a great way for the subjects to develop a sense of trust for the treatment they were receiving.
I would do both and expect the results to be better than for a patient who only took the antibiotic and ignored the mental/spiritual side of his person.
Christian prayer is not a substitute for physical treatment it works with physical treatment.
That you would think otherwise only shows your ignorance of what it is you reject.
I showed you a study that tried to measure the effect of actual Christian intercessory prayer as it’s practiced instead of some neutered materialistic caricature.
I would be happy to look at similar studies if you have them.
Studies that don’t reflect Christian prayer are simply irrelevant to the reality of Christian prayer.
peace
I’ve actually “elaborated” it several times. And It really doesn’t take a ton of elaboration. It’s inconsistent with the laws of logic. That’s enough for me. As with other things, you like them when they serve your ultimate theistic goals, but dismiss them when they don’t.
So? Needling in a ‘cold clinical’ setting has been demonstrated to have different effects than when needling is done in a ‘soothing’ setting. Same needling different effects due to conditioning.
Prescribing a sugar pill is the real remedy in those situations that warrant a doctor prescribing a placebo rather than a drug that is not necessary.
He never gives you anything which is why Type I diabetic children die when an appeal to god is made to cure them.
witch doctors have as much success (and failure) as christian prayer.
That is only your projection of faith and prayer jumping on the success of a drug/medication.
So?
That’s certainly not a great way for the subjects to develop a sense of trust for the treatment they were receiving.
too bad that doesn’t pan out in the realm of evidence-bred medicine. The antibiotic and bacteria don’t ‘care’ one wit about wether prayer is involved or not.
simply because what you call physical treatment has proven success rates and mechanisms of action. Prayer is just a hanger-on and riding on the coattails of known physiological processes and interventions.
ahh, fifth, don’t retreat to ignorant comments they just reflect poorly on you.
Which study was that? The one which was so roundly criticized (and rightly so) for its poor methodology? recall that the pageantry and conditioning via prayer is a key characteristic of the placebo/nocebo effect. That you dismiss the very valid criticisms of that study merely reflect your inherent religious bias. and closed-mindedness.
Would you like to walk through the study methodology and discuss those fatal flaws?
You can’t even deal with the fatally-flawed study you cited why would more make any difference.
Then you won’t have any problem listing those studies you consider valid and we can then discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
What I don’t get is this trying to take credit for the results of science but then weaseling in some claims about “Christian prayer” (AKA the good kind) on top of it. If good theology allows the science to work, then the prayer ought to be unnecessary, and if (the good kind of) prayer works, then competent theology ought to hold that there is no need for modern medicine.
Nothing could be more obviously ad hoc than this sort of melding the two together with weasel juice. One might as well say that the proof that something was the wrong kind of prayer is that it didn’t work and leave it at that.
Take all of the credit and none of the blame, that’s what I say!
Please explain.
The doctrine has been around a long time a lot of folks smarter than you or I have concluded that it it perfectly consistent with the laws of logic.
I also don’t see anything inconsistent with the idea of one being three persons.
What about it do you find to be objectionable?
What is the “them” you refer to??
What do you think my “theistic goals” are??
I really don’t follow what you are getting at.
For me it usually works like this when I’m presented with a supposed theistic dilemma.
Since I presuppose that it is only an apparent dilemma and not actual I take a moment to think about how the Christian God would uniquely solve the difficulty and the answer usually presents itself rather quickly.
There are some theological problems that are more difficult but I trust that they too can be answered eventually not by me but by God who is Truth.
I try not ignore anything but instead I want to put it in it’s proper perspective and context.
peace
It’s this sort of thing that confuses me about you.
You seem to be saying that prayer and medicine are somehow apposed to each other and I see them as different aspects of the very same thing. Truth.
Mind you this is not just my perspective it is the orthodox Christian position and it always has been.
The vast majority of doctors would say they believe in prayer. In fact the level of belief is surprisingly high
http://www.mdmag.com/physicians-money-digest/contributor/heidi-moawad-md/2016/10/surprising-results-about-physicians-belief-in-god
That does not mean that believing doctors want to abandon medicine? Far from it’s often the belief in God that leads them to pursue medicine in the first place
Truth is not partisan. Despite what you have been told
peace
I already linked one and also I provided the skeptical objections and why they were unfounded in my opinion . Did you miss it?
peace
Many more, even smarter than them, have concluded that it’s not. This seems completely obvious to me, at any rate. Nothing that is one is also three.
Re mixing medicine and prayer, there’s no harm, and could be some placebo effect–with respect to the praying person. That’s all fine with me. But there’s no decent evidence for anything more, as Peter has indicated, and, for my own part, I sincerely doubt there ever will be. In any case, if there should end up being some, there will have to be a scientific explanation for it.
When I posted this:
did that suggest that I missed that citation?
Let’s go ahead and pick apart the methodology and see if has sufficient rigor:
for example when testing for hearing is it wise,, or prudent, to do so in a noisy environment?
Or how about the stated times of contact with the recipient 15 minutes to over an hour for others. Do you think, that perhaps, this type of repeated questioning and conditioning (let alone the incongruence of using different ‘treatment times) of the patient might lead to the patient realizing that s/he is not giving the ‘correct’ answer to the ‘healer’?
AS I recall the only objection you could muster is ‘this is how christians do it’ which hardly addresses the effect of conditioning/priming a respondent prior to the ‘test’. Classic placebo/nocebo methodology.
If it is in a different context then it’s obviously not the same needling.
Events have contexts and the context makes up part of the reality of the event.
No faith in the treatment is the remedy.
The sugar pill is immaterial except that deception is deemed to be necessary.
God does not need to do that.
Ever hear of Insulin?? Where do you think it came from??
peace
Exactly, there is no way to ever prove the existence or non-existance of other minds.
No matter how complex or unlikely the behavior there will always be a way to explain it away if we choose to.
peace
Same ‘meridians’ being needled and after all, it is, allegedly, stimulations of those ‘meridians’ which elicit the effect. Insense, soothing music, and subtle lighting have no effect outside of patient conditioning.
As I have been saying. Conditioning of the ‘patient’ via religious pageantry or explanations of adverse side effects is the reality of these studies.
Huh?
do you think the patient would be just as cured being sent out of the doctors office with the admonishment that it is all in their head? The conditioning of the patient is key to the placebo effect on those maladies that deem prescribing a placebo as being the effective course of treatment. god doesn’t appear to do anything based on these studies.
Sure the islets of langerhan. Why ask such a question.
I know the people praying for their doomed children (doomed from the idiocy of the parents) think God can make the children start producing insulin but that doesn’t turn out well at all for the children now does it?
can you provide any case history of a Type I diabetic child being cured and producing insulin on their own?
I ask for a case-study so we can examine the patient history and diagnosis. Anecdotes don’t have that level of detail so please refrain from posting anecdotes on the subject.
Haha “explain away.”
When it comes to other minds it all depends on your perspective. 😉
I expect you and I will be on the same side of things when folks from the singularity cult claim that we are just explaining away the evidence when strong AI becomes more sophisticated.
peace
nope. that is unless they believed (ie had faith in) the admonishment
Christian prayer does not promise that anyone will be cured “on their own” and prayer is not a substitute for medicine.
Are you even paying attention?
I’ve heard of cases where folks were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and had extended periods when little additional insulin was required with proper diet and nutrition and a positive prayerful attitude is certainly helpful with the long term maintenance of that sort of regiment.
peace
I think you have a jacked up idea of healings and miracles in the christian tradition.
Miracles are always very rare and are almost always associated with important events in redemptive history.
By design I don’t think they would ever rise above the level of what you call anecdotes.
That is why they are called miracles
peace
OK
Absolutely, one works and the other doesn’t
Well bless your heart, fifth.
So different folks often require different doses of medication. I guess this is probably why drug companies make drugs in different strengths.
Sure some people need a prayer to stay away from that piece of chocolate cake. Hardly a ‘killing’ supportive case for the efficacy of prayer.
You think a lot of things about people that aren’t true. So what?
So you say. Can you provide us with some case histories? Remember no anecdotes, please.
then don’t post any anecdotes instead provide some (a) case history example(s) for discussion.
You didn’t answer my questions about the methodology of the study you cited.
Is there a reason for this or should I speculate that you agree its crappy methodology and the criticisms are/were valid?
hold it a minute honcho
I’m not making an argument for the efficacy of prayer. I don’t need too. I never claimed that empirical evidence could establish the efficacy or non-efficacy of prayer in the first place.
That is your hobby horse. You made the claim
You need to demonstrate that prayer does not work.
My only suggestion is you use studies that look at actual Christian prayer and not some random anonymous pseudo spiritual words offered by total strangers for folks who are not ever sure they are being prayed for.
peace
I must have missed them What questions were those exactly?
Are they the same questions “the skeptic” asked?
I already pointed out that many of the things he objected to were vital aspects of intercessory prayer as modeled in the bible and practiced by Christians.
peace
how convenient I tell you that by design miracles probably will never rise above what you call antidote and you ask for something above antidote
Oh well if you are truly interested check it out and get back to me.
peace
My name is Peter not honcho. Just can’t help yourself can you, fifth?
You provided a citation you believed demonstrated the efficacy of prayer. Why else would you provide that citation unless you were defending the notion that prayer works. Otherwise, we are in agreement that there is no empirical evidence that prayer works.
Already done that, fifth.
I think you would say something along the lines of “haven’t you been paying attention?” about now.
You’ve already posted one that was so rife with errors as to be meaningless yet you dispute the validity of the criticisms. In fact you won’t even venture to discuss the methodology used in your posted citation.
but giving you the benefit of the doubt: Which studies would those be, fifth?
A reasonable request given the recognized problems with anecdotes.
How cute, fifth. Instead of just admitting you don’t know of any case histories you try and deflect by having me read a book.
You could have at least tried to foist some of the Lourdes alleged miracles off on me. They at least have some semblance of case history attached to them.
these questions:
for example when testing for hearing is it wise,, or prudent, to do so in a noisy environment?
Or how about the stated times of contact with the recipient 15 minutes to over an hour for others. Do you think, that perhaps, this type of repeated questioning and conditioning (let alone the incongruence of using different ‘treatment times) of the patient might lead to the patient realizing that s/he is not giving the ‘correct’ answer to the ‘healer’?
related but we can get to the ‘skeptics’ questions later and in more detail.
and you completely ignored the context and validity of the criticisms. it doesn’t matter if that is how christians do it, or how acupuncturists do it, or how any other practitioner does it. What matters is how these methods work, and their commonality, to shape a recipients expectations and anticipations which are all foundational, and characteristic, to the placebo/nocebo effect manifesting itself in these cases.
As Ive been saying from the beginning.
I linked to the study and to objections to it to show you that methodology makes all the difference in these sorts of things. I’m not sure how many more ways I can say it.
geeze
There can be no empirical evidence that any request to any mind whatsoever is effectual.
That is because it’s is impossible to empirically prove or disprove that other minds even exist.
Before you try and prove empirically that prayer works or not why try and prove empirically that requests to any person whatsoever are effectual.
You can’t. All you can ever hope to do is demonstrate some limited correlation between requests and outcomes.
peace
Posting a study that used terrible and fatally-flawed methodology doesn’t help your case. Don’t know why you think it does.
Nonsense. Treatment outcomes, e.g., can be measured. People have been sentenced to jail for killing their kinds, via praying for them instead of seeking medical treatment. So, yes, we can generate data that indicates if requests are effectual. I also outlined several other instances of this previously.
Now comes the question you are so for of asking me: :haven’t you been paying attention?”
Doesn’t even factor into the equation. the other mind is presupposed in the prayer studies. Are they mistaken to make this assumption?
You really don’t get it do you?
There can be no case histories that would conclusively prove that prayer works or not.
Just as there are no case histories that conclusively prove that requesting a raise from your boss works.
All I can do is show you that lots of folks have asked for raises and seen a corresponding increase in their paycheck.
That is exactly what the book will do when it comes to prayers for healing.
peace
for probably the fifth time, Christian prayer is not a substitute for medical treatment. It works in conjunction with medical treatment.
Is your internet connection bad or are you just ignoring what I say?
peace
fifth, to PeterP:
That is remarkably silly, even by FMM standards.
Bless your heart, fifth.
I never stated ‘conclusively’ as a criteria. Nice straw man.
We could certainly look at those case histories and draw some conclusions from them.
OK. Now do the same for prayer.
The book contains use histories of lots of people getting their prayer wishes granted? If it does it contradicts your claims of miracles, aka granted prayer requests, as being invalid.
Why don’t you post a sample case history from your book citation?
Do you think a miracle is merely a granted prayer request??
Ok, then I personally witnessed a miracle yesterday when I prayed that I would have a safe trip home from my son’s graduation.
care to discuss that?
peace
You’ve completely dropped the context of my comment to instead answer a question I did not ask.
I wish you would stop projecting your inadequacies onto me. It is unbecoming to you, fifth.
could be or are suggesting that is impossible
That would be an anecdote not a case history and as I mentioned above I’m not interested in discussing anecdotes.
What I would like to discuss with you is the methodology used/outlined in the study you posted. How about it?
Yeah, it is like he thinks that an employer would never be able to discern if the tasks s/he assigns to other minds has actually been completed.
no it’s like he will never be able to empirically demonstrate that the tasks were completed because he asked for them to be completed and not for some other reason.
peace
Well there you have it.
You discount individual instances of answered Christian prayer with personal verification and then attempt to remove the very things that distinguish Christian prayer from group studies.
At that point you are left looking at studies of strange practices that bear very little resemblance to what Christians would call prayer and from that highly biased and fatally flawed data set conclude that prayer is not efficacious.
you could not make this stuff up.
peace
You are the one who argued that context does not matter.
It’s the same neddling just despite the different context remember?
peace
sure you can just ask the employees why they do the tasks they do.
When I was working commercial construction and my boss told me to pull of of one job and drive 6 hours to another job he isn’t confused at all about why I show up in the different locations work. He knows it was because he told me to and not that I did it on my own initiative. Otherwise, I would have been fired.
the context is the same in needling as I pointed out. its all about the meridians not the environment the needling is performed in. Maybe you just don’t understand acupuncture practices so aren’t in a position to comment on them.
which makes the claim (yours in this case) as valid as someone else who self-verifies that they cured their cancer by eliminating liver flukes using Hulda Clarks zapper. Are you sure that is the category you want your claims placed into?
I’ve asked you before to cite the studies we should be looking at so we can discuss the methods used for the study, the data generated, and conclusions drawn.
So I guess you aren’t interested in answering my questions about the methodology used in the study you cited. That’s a shame. Why bother making the citation if you don’t want to discuss it.
ya gotta give folks a warning when you are about to post a comment like this. You just ruined many a irony meter!
Look PeterP,
This would be easier if you just dropped your caned atheist answers and listened to what the other side was saying.
Instead you are still acting as if this is some sort of contest that will be settled by counting hits and misses like a game of darts.
Why not take a breath and actually try and interact for a change.
I clearly stipulated that prayer is not a substitute for medical science and that our faith is a vital and integral part of what makes it efficacious.
Yet you are still acting as if Christians expect prayer to unleash some hidden physical substance that works instead of medical treatment
I also clearly explained that by design miracles should not be expected to reach the level of detailed medical case histories.
Yet you are still acting as if Christians expect miracles to be just those sorts of things.
I’m not sure what I should conclude from your actions other than you are not paying attention.
peace
That’s a fallacious argument. You don’t need to prove that minds exist to prove that requests for assistance among persons are effectual. Throwing “any mind” in the first premise is no more than a bad trick.
You say that like persons, God has a mind. With persons we have evidence, with Gods we don’t.