Finding Evidence for Intercessory Prayer? (re-visited)

From a scientific perspective, it is quite impossible to acquire empirical scientific evidence to test whether God intervenes with the health of patients. A scientist may try their very best to attain consistent results and data about the effects of intercessory prayer on patients, and I do respect their determination, but by the principles of logic, such results cannot ever be conclusive.

A researcher, whether religious or not, would have to first assume that God’s behavior and actions are very predictable. This is to say that God always follows a certain pattern of determining which patients to heal of their diseases and sicknesses. A researcher must assume that special favoritism does not exist, and that healing patterns are consistent everywhere, all around the globe – unless God is racist or prejudice? Anyway, this assumption should never be taken for it ignores the whole idea of God being omnipotent. God’s omnipotence means that he/she has the ultimate capacity to do whatever he/she decides to do – to heal patients when prayed to. The religious God requires that the Lord be omni- in every way, and not subject to anything.

The other assumption that follows from the predictability of God’s behavior and actions would be that intercessory prayer would cause God to heal the patients, whom are being prayed for. Again, not only does this assumption presume that God is predictable, but also that prayers will lead to influencing God to heal the patients. So then is God’s actions confined to the prayers, or his own decisions? What is for sure is that God is omnipotent, and thus has the authority to decide whether to follow his own plans or not. Humans cannot know God’s decisions, for humans are technically mortal – entities separate from Heaven itself. We have no way of knowing his/her current decisions on the matter of patients.

So whom do researchers look to for answers? Priests or pastors and supposed to be their best bet, as expected by religious individuals. They are supposed to be able to communicate with God more intimately, and are almost just like a receiver of Heaven. Therefore the other assumption goes that priests or pastors can indeed communicate with God himself/herself, and articulate the very messages that God so wishes them to speak. For many decades, this assumption has come under much criticism from scholars of psychology and biblical critics. The first question that would be asked by scholars and critics is if any empirical evidence were present to justify the credibility of the pastors or priests’ words; furthermore, that if it points to them being receivers of God’s messages, and not some other divine being. I believe the common answer is no. I am unsure about the common reasons they give, give this is not important here. What is important is that priests and pastors have no empirical justification for the credibility of their words. The other question scholars and critics may question is whether their words are based on God’s words or their own morals. It has been obvious to many that the decisions of a priest or pastor changes from century to century, from supporting the killing of witches to more support in sexual equality among less fundamentalist religious people.

Having assumed all of the mentioned indefinite or unreliable presumptions, the only one other assumption left is that the number of people engaging in intercessory prayer are presumed to be only those of whom the researchers have registered for to conduct the experiment. The obvious problem here is that a researcher can never determine exactly how many people are actually praying for the patient. Though she may have twelve people on her list for a lady, there may be three other family members overseas who may be also praying for the patient. Even if researchers attempt an experiment by using 500 over patients and various scientific precautions to confirm that all is well, they can never determine the number of people who are praying for a patient. The number of people is important because the other thing they might want to know about is if the number of people praying for a patient affects the progression of their health – towards a positive or negative result. Here, is God really concerned about how many people put in the effort to pray for a patient? Does God not have his/her own plan to follow when deciding which patient to heal?

Ultimately, it is very hard to determine whether intercessory prayer does in fact affect the health of patients. The assumptions made by researchers are so very broad and undefined that it is sometimes hard to determine if results do in fact conclude anything at all. Till this date I am not aware of any surveys or experiments that is conclusive about the effectiveness of prayer on health.


For a Little More Reading:

http://journals.medicinescomplete.com/journals/fact/current/fact1102a06d01.htm

http://godandscience.org/apologetics/smj.pdf

http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/Health/Readings/Prayer%20-%20in-vitro%20fertilization,%20JrRepMed-Skeptical%20Inquirer.doc