Quote:
The study's goal is to see if they can objectively measure the effects of prayer. Since it's commonly believed that prayer can help heal the sick, they chose that as the basis of their experiment. Everything else appears to have been designed using the usual sorts of scientific controls. If the "God vending machine" delivered the goods more often than random chance, then they'd be able to measure it.
Yeah, I understand it- but the implication here is that prayers work like a vending machine, and that's the part I don't like. It reinforces a belief that shouldn't be reinforced. You have all kinds of people praying things and then expecting them to happen because they follow a formula or say the right incantation. Certainly if that were so then it'd be measurable, but at least from a Biblical perspective I don't think prayer is presented that way.

To put this in a little more personal perspective- I had a close friend in High School die because she was diabetic and her parents took her to the church rather than the hospital. They believed if they prayed hard enough they could bend God to their will, and that just didn't happen. She could have been fine, however, if they'd just taken her to the doctor like they should have.

This experience really shook me up, but it didn't make me doubt the value of prayer- it did serve as a powerful example of what prayer is NOT, and that is a holy vending machine that we can avail ourselves to in times of need (or want, as seems more typical today). I believe God does answer prayer (sometimes with a firm "no"), but if He intervens then it is by His grace, not because He must.

It also should be noted that even in the Bible, where we think of the miraculous as kind of typical, there are really only three different time periods in which God was in the "Big showy miracles" business. A large portion of the Bible has absolutely no obviously supernatural stuff at all. Yet we expect it every day in this culture. Rather the point is to experience the relational aspect of God more than the miraculous side of HIm- that's what prayer is for.

That's not to say we shouldn't pray for the sick. I have and I do. I pray believing that God has the power to change events if they are in His will. And I believe that He has and I've witnessed it (a friend of mine was healed from a life threatening condition without any sign it had ever been there). But I've also prayed for many people that never got physically better.

So I do believe in the power of prayer- the power to meet and know God. Prayer always "works" from that perspective- it's the miraculous that we can't expect or measure.

Ugh- I'm ranting and I'm off topic. Sorry- didn't mean to. Probably should have just stayed out of this thread. Just a hot button with me I guess.

Anyway, all that to say that you're right. The study makes sense from the perspective they're approaching. And it's a popular perspective. It just rubs me the wrong way. I'm also not suprised that the findings were inconclusive. It just doesn't work that way.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.