A study that had a prayer, but still didn’t suceed

A new study on the effectiveness of intercessionary prayer in reducing complications following heart surgery seemed to show that having strangers pray for you didn’t help people recover any better than not having strangers pray for you.

(In an odd twist, viagra canada cialis patients who KNEW other people were praying for them actually fared worse than any other group in the study.)

A guest on Kathleen Dunn’s show on WPR this morning used this study as an example of why we shouldn’t mix our science and religion.

As I’ve said before, viagra I think science and relgion should just leave each other alone.

But imagine if this study HAD proven something.

What if prayer not only had a measurable effect, but it only seemed to work for a single denomination?

Maybe only Catholics got better faster.

Or Hindus.

What sort of impact would that have had on our religous beliefs?

Would it have had any at all?

Or would believers stick to their own faiths in the face of positive evidence as stubbornly as they stick to it in the face of negative evidence?

Which raises a question I’ve always been interested in: why does God work so hard to hide himself in the modern world?

In the Old Testament he spoke to us.

In the New Testament he became one of us.

When did He get so shy?

Where’s my burning bush?

Where’s my mana from heaven?

Pillars of salt? Partings of seas?

Did God suddenly become insistent on blind faith?

Or have we always just turned a blind eye to anything that disputes our faith?

(Unsurprisingly Shark and Shepherd has his own take. (A lovely one, by the way.))

4 comments April 3rd, 2006