God-DOES-Answer-Your-Prayers

[A_C_C]

Tell me what does the person who believes in prayer claim the effects should be?

Praying is supposed to have an impact on something. Identify it, test to see if you get an effect, and look at the results.

You are mixing up proving a negative with proving a claim made by people who pray. Proving a negative would be proving there is no life anywhere in the Universe except on Earth. You can't test for life in every possible place in the Universe.

But if someone claims prayer has an effect, you test for the effect. You don't find it, their claim was not substantiated. There is no negative to prove, you never had anything to start with.

Read the whole post before answering, please.

[Note: I don't actually believe none of this. But I like to play devil's advocate., ironically enough]

 

[Fronzel]

Are you implying that there isn't a single amputee in this entire world with enough faith?

I was told God gives them prosthetics. Of course, he doesn't give them out for free and you were pretty much stuck with a hook or a peg until 50 years ago.


I just can't imagine being self deluded to the point of that being a valid answer.

 

[Paulhoff]

Tell me what does the person who believes in prayer claim the effects should be?

Praying is supposed to have an impact on something. Identify it, test to see if you get an effect, and look at the results.

Don’t forget the “He works in mysterious ways” clause.

Paul

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

God-DOES-Answer-Your-Prayers

Sure He does -- EVERYTIME. Except He seems to answer YES or NO purely at random. In the same random fashion the universe would if He did not exist.

 

[articulett]

Here's what I posted at both, Science Blog, and Mercola.com:

Bad science, take a closer look.

I went to a lot of trouble to look at that meta-analysis on the effects of prayer. The included studies were either poorly done, not blinded let alone double blinded, sample sizes of 10 give or take a few, claimed conclusions not supported by the evidence, and there was self selected bias in the meta-analysis not addressed. You can read the specific issues in this thread, Meta-Analysis Indicates Prayer Effective, on the JREF forum.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77095&highlight=answers+prayers

The thread is short and includes very specific criticisms of each study included in the meta-analysis. Needless to say, it's unfortunate such a poorly done analysis was included in a peer reviewed publication. The authors apparently made no effort to include only valid studies and/or conclusions. Even if any of the studies had revealed true positive results, the reviewers missed the most obvious, science 101, glaring error. If you do the end math and you have 10 studies with no effect and 1 study with an effect, what will your analysis show? A positive effect! They counted "no effect" as zero rather than a negative number.

Here we have more fodder for the cannons of the wishful thinkers who prefer fake/bad science which supports their beliefs rather than looking at what the evidence actually shows. And naturally, a review of this meta-analysis which is critical of it is tagged with the usual false premise, science has a bias against religion.

No, science isn't biased against religion, it is biased against bad science.

Science Blog posted it right away, Dr Mercola seems to have put it away for prior screening. We'll see.

Logging on to the Dr Mercola site was suspicious. They immediately went to data collecting on my practice. They even have the incredible request for my provider license numbers. What educated provider would put such information on a blog registration form. Then you were supposed to not just read some crap, but listen to a 10 minute spiel by Dr Mercola about the evils of the established medical community.

I don't know whether we should bother with these sites. Do we have any influence on their readers when we debunk the woo? It's great some of the members here monitor the stuff. But I wonder if there would be any benefit in a more systematic approach?

I don't know the answer, but your letter was great. Especially the last line.
Excellent.

 

[articulett]

Sure He does -- EVERYTIME. Except He seems to answer YES or NO purely at random. In the same random fashion the universe would if He did not exist.

Indeed. I find his prayer answering on par with star wishing. And you don't have to worship stars.

 

[Freethinker]

Yep, but it's impossible to do so without looking into the drawer, now, tell me, in what drawer should we look to prove that no prayer is answered?

Well, before we waste time trying to prove that no prayer is answered, we'd like to have a teeny bit of evidence that any prayer has EVER been answered. One teeny-tiny amputee having a limb regrow would do it. You surely can't claim that there has never been an amputee of sufficient faith that god would heal them, would you? Plenty of cancer patients credit god with their recoveries, yet not even one amputee. Not even one in the entire history of the known universe. To go Monty Python, the number is zero, and zero is the number of amputees that god has healed. Coincidentally, that's the same number that Satan, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and Elvis have healed. God truly hates amputees, but he loves him some cancer patients!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Read the whole post before answering, please.

[Note: I don't actually believe none of this. But I like to play devil's advocate., ironically enough]

I did read your whole post. So perhaps you could elaborate on what you think I missed. That is unless Freethinker, post 87, clarifies my post for you.

 

[thisninjascrazy]

Time for a George Carlin quote...

"I find that praying to Joe Pesci is about as effective as praying to God. In fact, he came through on some things God didn't. I prayed to God about my noisy neighbours for months. One visit from Joe Pesci sorted them out."

 

[A_C_C]

Time for a George Carlin quote...

"I find that praying to Joe Pesci is about as effective as praying to God. In fact, he came through on some things God didn't. I prayed to God about my noisy neighbours for months. One visit from Joe Pesci sorted them out."

 

[Ashles]

Yep, but it's impossible to do so without looking into the drawer, now, tell me, in what drawer should we look to prove that no prayer is answered?

Very odd response.
I was responding to the statement that it's impossible to prove a negative. In some cases it isn't.
I didn't say it is possible to prove a negative if we don't look in the drawer, or that we can/can't prove prayers are answered or anything else.
Read my post again.