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Prayer Does Not Help Heart Patients
mu22le writes "A recent study conducted by the Duke University Medical Center on 700 patients, found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf.
This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors that reported "cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer in addition to coronary stenting appeared to have better clinical outcomes than those treated with standard stenting therapy alone"."
The issue is to debunk pseudoscience and other mystic entities. If it actually takes a funded scientific study to finally convince people, then so be it. Remember, we live in a society where "psychics" such as Miss Cleo actually make money for their "services".
Now that they have two conflicting results they'll need a new grant to conduct another study so they can conclude which of their first two studies was correct. Yay! 5 more years of research funding.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
As summed up on BoingBoing.. Maybe they were praying to the wrong god?
-- jimmycarter
As a heart patient myself, it always gave me a mental boost to know that others were taking time to pray for me when I had to go in for surgery. Even though prayer may not directly affect the outcome of a surgery, letting the patient know that there are people who care about them can make a big difference.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Thought experiment: Replace 'God' with 'The King of the Potato People'. We'd call someone sending messages to the King of the Potato People to help their loved ones 'delusional', and put them on medication, and possibly in a padded cell.
Are you sure prayer is indicative of a healthy mental state? If so, explain how 'God' is different to 'The King of the Potato People', and why belief in one is delusional and psychiatrically treatable while the other is not.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I don't want to have to make this point, but I feel obligated in light of all the Smug that's about to enter the thread -- but this study isn't really useful for debunking anything except the previous "studies" that it did help patients. "Prayer is more about changing the person doing the praying, than about bringing changes to world events." "Even if all the things that people prayed for happened -- which they do not -- this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable "success" in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something more like magic -- a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature." (C.S. Lewis) I'm not religious by any means, but I think Lewis has a fair point.
Of course the real problem is that God is too busy helping rappers get their bling bling. This is obvious if you've ever watched a music awards show.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
It's worse than that. The bible has built-in defences against this kind of thing: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God (Matthew 4:7, according to bible-kjv). You're sunk either way - if God doesn't exist then prayer has no effect (except maybe the placebo effect). If he does exist he'll hide his hand so that you can't make him do stuff...
Also, you can't control for how-many-million Christians in the world praying for "all the sick and infirm of this world", some of them adding "particularly John Smith, member of our church". If you don't control for it, you're implicitly assuming it has no effect.
Note: I'm an atheist. I'm also a scientist. This experiment doesn't convince me...
I
Parent poster wrote:
If it actually takes a funded scientific study to finally convince people,
Article said:
This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors
So, question to the original poster. Did the original study "convince" you that prayer was effective? If not, why would this study hold any more water than the previous (other than the obvious point that its outcome matched your particular views)?
Funny strip, but don't confuse humor and science/logic. No self respecting creationist denies that species adapt to different environmental conditions, such as new drugs. That's microevolution, changes within a species, genus, or some upper limitation of the extent those changes can go. It's been proven, and it's easily observed. Macroevolution, which is essentially the progression from paramecia to humans, isn't nearly as clean cut or easily proven, and that's where the point of contention is. Even still, a lot of creationists do believe in macroevolution, or at least some form of it.
About the OT, there's obviously a lot more research to be done. Thus far, there have been two studies on this topic, and the results contradicted each other, so unless you're just an antagonist who exists solely to rant against religion every time you get the chance, you'll suspend judgement for now. That's just the obvious conclusion of anyone with a good, scientific mindset.
Exactly. But I certainly hope you weren't referring to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His noodly appendage, otherwise I'm going to have to ask you to step outside.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
As to what Creationists accept, that has changed over time. Ten years ago there were plenty of Creationists who went around saying "adaption only within kinds". When sufficient numbers of examples of speciation were thrown in their face, they suddenly started doing odd things like redefining "kinds" and producing their own private definitions of what micro- and macro-evolution are. In fact, some are now quite happy to accept any form of evolution providing it does not have humans in the tree.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
all this study does is confirm that either (1) there is no God or (2) God isn't amused by pseudoscientific studies. so the results support both the Atheist and orthodox Christian worldviews, and are only troubling to wishy-washy new agey-types that believe thinking happy thoughts should magically help other people. wee.
Oh, I see..The scientist were praying wrong ... Well that explains everything then...
"But this one goes to 11!"
And how is that different from the other side wanting to prevent people from believing,
Nobody is making any attempts whatsoever to use the law against believers in any way.
to force gay marrige on a community,
This isn't happenning in any way. It turns out that the constitution doesn't allow this kind of discrimination and so a bunch of asshats jumped up to pass a bunch of discriminatory laws and are even attempting to amend the constitution because they are too cowardly to live in a free country.
to help assisted suicide?
A person's life is there own. It's again, as always, the other side trying to shove their morality on others. If I want to kill myself and want to get help doing it how could that possibly be any of your business? It isn't. Not in any way.
The only difference is which side you agree with.
Not at all. This is a blatantly false statement. The difference is that one side is consistently trying to limit other people's freedom because they are too cowardly to live in a free country.
If it's "your side" then it's good to force your ideas and beliefs on the community, if it's the "other side" then it's a bad thing.
There is a deep fundamental difference between choosing to live your life according to your own beliefs and forcing your beliefs on others. Every single example the OP gave was of cowards trying to shove their beliefs down other people's throats. Every nonsense counter example you made up is not happening in any way.
Nice try though.
If you want to believe some hokey retarded old nonsense, knock yourself out.
If you don't want to marry somebody of the same sex, don't.
If you want to uselessly suffer through a terminal illness draining your savings into the medical industry instead of leaving it to your family, that's your choice and nobody is saying otherwise.
Nobody is trying to force you into anything. They're only trying to prevent you from sticking your nose into their business. That's the only issue.
But those who actually *believe* in hogwash like that aren't going to be convinced by a scientific study, are they? Cognitive dissonance and stupidity are a mixture that's very difficult to overcome.
The first thought that comes to mind on this is the Christian attempt to prove the world was indeed round
Most people try to spin this the other way around though.
In 1492, every educated man knew that the world was round. So did every ocean-going sailor. The "bigoted church leaders of Spain" did not oppose Columbus. Columbus had in fact been housed, supported, advised, and greatly aided by Spanish monks who encouraged him to present his proposal to the King and Queen. A Dominican priest, later Archbishop of Seville was one of his greatest supporters at the court. There was a University Commission which concluded that plans for his voyage were impractical. But the Commission agreed with Columbus that the world was round and gave no indication that they believed the Bible taught that the world was flat.
The "hogwash" most atheists use to describe religion these days is usually fact based on fiction such as Washington Irving's novel about Columbus that stated the Christians (not the scientists) were the ones saying the world was flat.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I think his point was that God appears to care more about his own ego than the needs of suffering people. You're just picking at his wording of it.
Also, the point you make raises one of the problems I have with mainstream religion; it's that it often devalues humanity and life (this life). All that is good and virtuous and extricated from humanity and placed in the symbol of "God," leaving humanity a base creature whose only salvation is in groveling at the feet of this perfect and vastly superior being. People glorify the afterlife and in return devalue the life they are living now, which is also earthly and "impermanent," as you say.
So why persue science and medicine at all? why make discoveries? why create art? why listen to music? why start a family? Why not just spend our entire lives cloistered and worshipping this divine being who gives our life its only true meaning?