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EDIT: Here's a news story with more details:
http://www.ctsix.org/1/2006/03/Study-fails-to-show-healing-power-of-prayer.cfm

I just now heard of this. I'm of the opinion that the entire idea of "scientifically" quantifying spirituality was rather presumptuous and irrelevant.

This also sounds somewhat suspicious to me, as apparently not only did the patients who knew they were being prayed for not heal any better than the ones who were not, but they actually had a higher rate of sickness and complications. That can't be a coincidence. >.>;

And it's so stupid how irreligious people are getting all excited over this. *cynical snort* As if they'd start to believe in God even if the prayer had miraculous results... all the atheists out there would just shrug it off as a placebo effect. I honestly have *no* idea what they were *really* trying to prove. n_n

This just proves that God doesn't enjoy being probed... Neither would we, consider the following experiment done in order to determine if you exist. A person asks you to grab a red ball just to see if you really exist. Because you have knowledge of the exeriment you just don't grab the ball, because once you grab the ball they will stick yet another ball out and say "now grab this one to prove you exist." (science requires hundreds of data points) The question is, how many times will God grab the ball, and this is directly related to how much he enjoys being manipulated. From "Do not tempt the Lord they God." I don't that he enjoys it too much. So I imagine that this wouldn't work too well. Also note that the scientific "proving" of God elliminates the premous of fatih to begin with. Once again, just my two cents.

I am reminded of Jesus refusing to perform miracles for those who just wanted a show...

Exactly... God doesn't arbitrarily answer prayers just because they are asked. I'm of the opinion that God would love nothing more than to answer every sincere, heartfelt prayer in the world -- but countless times in the Bible we are admonished to ask for the Holy Spirit as we pray, and also to pray in faith. We should have so much trust in the promises of God, that we are to thank Him for answering our prayers before He even acts! If you're simply going through the motions for the sake of some "experiment", that is not true prayer. Don't expect it to have any results.

Any in many cases, to have your prayers answered you must persevere. Your prayers might not be answered for a looooong time, but that doesn't mean they are being ignored. Elijah had to pray seven times for the drought in Israel to stop -- if he had given up the sixth time, he may have never been answered. In order for God's will to be worked here on Earth, prayer must be strong and diligent, and constant.

I found this story somewhat amusing as the study was doomed from the start. I think Kat is quite right, if this study had data showing prayer seemed to help with illness it would be dismissed as a placebo, and as the study showed no difference it will likely be heralded by certain groups as proof of the non-existance of God. In addition, I think this misses one of the really important aspects of prayer. Prayer is not intended to simply be a way to get things or a way to somehow convince God to heal someone, it is intended to be a way to interceed with God for someone and bring the person praying closer to God while giving their concerns to God. Prayer works two ways, and in my opinion the working of God in the person praying can be even more important than the fulfillment of a prayer request. Prayer develops a reliance upon God, which is a thing that cannot be measured in an experiment, so why does it really matter if a scientific test showed anything?

Kat Walker wrote:Any in many cases, to have your prayers answered you must persevere.

Tis true that you shouldn't just pray once and expect a miracle :/ Hmmm I also wonder if it "didn't work" also because maybe the prayers weren't being honest? Not to say they weren't, but because it was all for the sake of an experiment? *shrugs*

...Or maybe it's like on The Simpsons where the only way to heal people is if "you HAVE the power!"

Even if it did help they would just say its a placebo effect or makeup someother excuse. If God litterally opened up the skies and said here I am then they still would not believe. Course he kinda did do that when Jesus was baptized by john and they still didn't believe.

Yep. Sadly, that wouldn't be enough. Seeing God (or other "hard evidence" of His existence) won't necessarily make people love Him, nor would it make them turn away from their sins and want to become better people. It would destroy any need for faith, trust, or reliance on God.

At best it would probably just scare people into legalistic obedience, an attitude God obviously detests. I think there are very good reasons why He doesn't make guest appearances too often.

Really quite offtopic, but Pascal, I love your avatar. Ahem. Back on topic, yes I think it sounds like the whole "No miracles for show" Sort of thing.

It's a bit ridiculous to assume that prayer is a cure for anything. It's essentially going before God, presenting your requests and asking for His will to be done. Remember when Paul asked God to remove his "thorn in the flesh" (whatever it was), He said, "My grace is sufficient for you." I'm guessing they just wanted to prove either that it's God's fault these people weren't healed or that prayer doesn't work.

They really think they are going to prove some thing with this? You can't put God in an test tube.

I have read of similar studies where prayer was shown to be effective, only the patients were NOT told they were (or might be) being prayed for. *shrugs*

The problem is I don't think that no one, in such an experiment, can truly NOT be biased for his world view, be it pro-God or anti-God. This experiment is next to impossible to truly conduct without wanting to do one or the either, no matter how 'neutral' a scientist may be.

The supernatural lies outside the realm of the natural, hence the classification... This was testing some mystical quality of "prayer" and had nothing to do with a personal God that could choose whether he healed the person or not.

People always need to prove that what God did happened using natural means... If God can do anything, he doesn't always need natural means to do them. They're only "laws" to us. It's human terminology that called natural laws "laws."

In other words, a worthless endeavor.

As I recall, in the 90's there were some people going around promoting prayer as having good physical effects (People who pray reputed to live longer happier healthier lives). This study may have been brought about by that.

Still there is too much that cannot be measured. Sincerity, faith, trust, how seriously one takes religion, what one thinks of miracles. Too many variables for this study to be taken seriously.

Kat Walker wrote:Yep. Sadly, that wouldn't be enough. Seeing God (or other "hard evidence" of His existence) won't necessarily make people love Him, nor would it make them turn away from their sins and want to become better people. It would destroy any need for faith, trust, or reliance on God.

Tell that to Isaiah, Ezekiel, or other prophets. Actually seeing God and living tends to be a prelude to having to deal with very serious confrontation with power, major challenges and risks, very strange sounding commands, oppression and poverty, and often martyrdom. I say seeing God and living through it takes more faith than not.