prayer does not help healing diseases

[mr_j]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/he...ewanted=1&_r=1

long story short

In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.
The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.
The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St. Paul's Monastery in St. Paul; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients' first names and the first initials of their last names.
The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications."
Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

awaiting arguments and debates

[SysTaMatIcS]

ofcourse it wont work , it must be coming from the heart , they asked strangers to pray for stranger O_O

[Kenny5]

the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them.

"One conclusion from this is that the role of awareness of prayer should be studied further,"

"The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion,"

the study said nothing about the power of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and friends

being aware of the strangers' prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety

the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

based on that i think this study is not reliable and we can't count on it...

[Confucius]

wlak chou 3am bi bi3o batata ?! the prayers must come from the heart, w if they REALLY mean it, ba3ed fi Alla ma tzeko 3leh ya3neh...

1 word to describe this TEST ---> Habal

[mr_j]

it did come from the heart
they asked priests and people in monestaries to pray
the same people that pray for world peace and famine and bla bla bla they just went to them and politely asked them to pray for these people, which they did. how come when saint charbel prayed people don't say 3am bibi3 batata

give me better excuses ...

[Confucius]

well u can put it in any way u like, bas i still think the same..
plus u really convinced me when u compared Mar Charbel bi 3alam 3am byetzeko 3a Allah, i guess praying for a person who sinned and not praying for a person that has lived a saint's life doesn't change the fact that some1 deserves to be looked at from above more than the other, bas i guess what Jesus tought us enno ma nsannef el 3alam in that way and that everyone deserves a chance, so tbh this test has alot of aspects they didn't think through, u can't just undergo such tests and expect an actual result out of it, sometimes the biggest Mo-Fo gets rich and lives a long happy life whilst the guy that prays everyday and lives a sins free life, lives a miserable life and then dies young. It's God's way i guess to test us and our faith in him (...)

[mr_j]

so God would not answer a prayer if he knows people are expecting it? or because one guy was collecting info and seing what would happen?
the study took years, ma kenet men afa idoun ma3moulé, the people praying in the monastaries were not bribed to pray and may even not be in on it, and the patients certainly were not aware of what is going on
they do not walk up to people and say "we're conducting a study and we will not pray for you and see if you will die "
the study was an observation on whether or not praying to people help, the doctor himself was not praying for the sake of the study

the study took time and money, I think whoever spent 2 million dollars and went through the trouble of monitering and collecting and studying data of 1800 people, took measures that even you would nto think about

edit: basicly what you said was my original point: prayers do not change anything

[Confucius]

Originally Posted by mr_j

so God would not answer a prayer if he knows people are expecting it? or because one guy was collecting info and seing what would happen?
the study took years, ma kenet men afa idoun ma3moulé, the people praying in the monastaries were not bribed to pray and may even not be in on it, and the patients certainly were not aware of what is going on
they do not walk up to people and say "we're conducting a study and we will not pray for you and see if you will die "
the study was an observation on whether or not praying to people help, the doctor himself was not praying for the sake of the study

the study took time and money, I think whoever spent 2 million dollars and went through the trouble of monitering and collecting and studying data of 1800 people, took measures that even you would nto think about

edit: basicly what you said was my original point: prayers do not change anything

- Basically the person who spends 2 millions on THAT study is a fool.
- Prayers do not change anything if u only pray when u're in need, and when u're not, u go out and kill people. I think everyone has a destiny i suppose and how u handle the problems along the road in that destiny of urs, decides if u're going to the top floor or the ground floor, and at times this destiny of urs changes, miracles do happen in my thoughts, and that's what they are. a change of destiny given to u as a chance to make up for our sins, or as a reward, or or or or.....no1 can really understand God's way in handling things, what u're doing here is simplifying God's acts and our purpose in ONLY PRAYERS! as if prayers are the only thing that God is, alright prayers are good, it's a good way to ask from God to look merciful'y down upon us and give us another chance, but it's not the soul purpose of ones death, or tragedy, other purposes are included, that we don't, as simple human beings understand, maybe testing someone else close to that person who died, or maybe giving the survivor a little slap on the head so he can wake up and start fixing his sins before he actually dies and has to deal with God on judgment day, it may be several other reasons we don't know...so u can't just simplify death or survival by getting 1800 ppl to pray for some1, it's not the case, u're hoping here for a miracle that happens so few times for reasons i can't claim to understand cz i don't...

[mr_j]

it's the reverse, people were praying for 1800...for 1200 actualy, 600 were not prayed for

what that study was hoping for is to get a 5% or more difference to the better between those who were prayed for and those who were not
just 5%
it would not have been decisive, it is not meant to be decisive, but to at least show something... if only 30 more people out of the 600 got better in the prayer group than in the non praying group, we could have had some evidence that prayers help

the significance of that study is that despite that we were comparing 600 people in one group to 600 people in the other(talking about the 600 of the group that were prayed for without knowign so and the group that was not prayed for) despite 600 being a fairly high number, the difference was practicly invisible
no one was expecting or hoping that the prayer group was going to have a very much better performance than the group without prayer
if the results were for example 300/600 to 330/600 in the 2 groups, it would have been enough to say that we have evidence that prayers have an effect(cause usualy 5% is statisticly significant). but even that did not occur

[Kenny5]

Originally Posted by Confucius

- Basically the person who spends 2 millions on THAT study is a fool.

the basic purpose of this study is to know if people think that prayers will make them better

its like the study that shows that the patients who take placebo will have an amelioration by 40%

this study is almost the same...but it had shown that no relations between prayers and recovery...

Besides a study like this which had cost 2 millions do you think it didn't pass a commity and took an aproval for the cost?
its not lebanon they don't spend money for nothing...