Prayer can kill you. It's true!

[Piggy]

The latest (and largest) study of the health effects of Xian intercessory prayer finds that people who were prayed for, and knew it, tended to fare worse....

A major study of Christian intercessory prayer for cardiac patients has found no significant effect on reducing complications, but patients who knew they were receiving the prayer had a slightly higher rate of complications....

The latest study, released Thursday, was the most extensive. It involved 1,802 coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients from six hospitals who were divided into three groups: 604 received intercessory prayer after learning they might or might not be prayed for by others; 597 did not receive prayer after learning they might or might not receive it; 601 received intercessory prayer after learning they would receive it.

Investigators found that complications occurred in 52 percent of the first group, 51 percent of the second group and 59 percent of the third group....

The study, to be published Tuesday in the American Heart Journal, analyzed patients between January 1998 and November 2000....

What an appropriate day to publish, don't you think?

Disclaimer: I know the thread title isn't accurate. But I think that should be obvious from the actual post.

 

[westphalia]

Here's another link:

http://heraldnet.com/stories/06/03/31/100wir_a9prayer001.cfm

 

[Piggy]

From westphalia's link:

But for some faithful who regularly pray for people they don't necessarily know, there is no scientific inquiry that can prove their efforts fruitless.

"This is a very hard thing to measure," said Sister Patricia Scanlon, one of many Carmelite nuns at a monastery in Towson, Md., who regularly beseech God to heal strangers.

"We pray for complete healing, and sometimes that takes different forms. It could be spiritual healing, or sometimes an attitude, an acceptance, a preparedness, maybe not being physically healed. Many are being prepared for whatever the next stage of that person's life may be," she said.​

2 words: Ba Loney!

How can Sister Patricia honestly claim that an increased chance of physical complications is some "different form" of "complete healing"?

Either this business works, or it doesn't.

There's nothing "hard to measure" about it. Have people pray for physical healing. Certainly that's what the patients are hoping for. If the faithful claim that this isn't valid, that we can only pray for God to do what God sees fit, then we can call off the whole show b/c God is presumably already doing what God sees fit and will continue to do so.