Praying for Jamey didn't work out so well

When I first moved to Columbia, I saw lots of bumper stickers that said, "I'm praying for Jamey."

I finally found out what they're about: a guy who got pancreatic cancer. Well, he died this January (9 months ago). I have a feeling a lot of people will take those stickers off without even reflecting on their effect...that is, their lack thereof.

In one of my posts at Debunking Christianity, I looked at the question of whether or not there really is any scientific evidence that "prayer works" or a correlation between faith and health. Unsurprisingly, I found none.

The core methodology of such studies is flawed for three reasons:

1) Some studies examine how frequent churchgoing relates to health. The problem with this methodology is that the same correlation would appear between frequent football game attendance as well; anyone healthy enough to frequently attend anything that they enjoy will do so, and the more unhealthy you get, the less you will be able to attend...and so church attendance is not special.

2) Another big problem with studies designed to measure the "prayer effect" is that the people are often receiving medical care while being studied, and it is impossible to say that the prayer had an effect compared to their treatment. If you could study only patients who have exactly the same disease at exactly the same stage and receive exactly the same treatments, then you could truly control these other variables. However, it is basically impossible to control the other variables that will affect the prognosis.

3) The final problem is that it is impossible to separate people into "prayed for" and "not prayed for" groups by virtue of the fact that you'd have to ask each person and their extended families and their entire churches not to pray...and do you think that is going to work? If someone has a serious condition and is religious, they're going to stop praying for a few weeks or months? No. And so many of the people in the "not prayed for" group whose situation turns bad are lumped in as "evidence" that those who don't receive prayer are worse off...even though the people themselves as well as their families and church members were praying for them, especially if the health condition is serious, like cancer or heart disease.

And those are just the core methodology problems. In other studies, the ones cited as "evidence prayer works", the sample sizes are very small (n<20), and therefore the probability values are unimpressive: p>0.05. Whether or not you agree that the standard for statistical significance should be p<0.05, when p values approach 0.2, you have very little statistical evidence to back up a claim of a significant impact from whatever variable you're studying. But people conveniently ignore this when touting these meager studies.

In the only double blind, multi-year, multi-thousand-patient study ever conducted on the effect of prayer on health, God failed the test. Big time. Every empirical study has shown the same thing -- that nothing fails like prayer. Don't believe me? Find one documented amputee whose limb grew back from prayer. One. Ever.

Some studies purporting to support the idea that prayer works have been literally written by criminals and frauds.

Dr. Richard Sloan (M.D., not Ph.D.) has done a lot of work in examining these sorts of issues and wrote a book recently summarizing the facts -- there is no valid study supporting the idea that prayer changes anything (valid in the sense that they used a competent methodology and a large sample size and got a good p value).

On the logical side of things:

Does prayer move God to act? If yes, then God is callous/cruel, and God is not totally sovereign. If no, then God will act regardless of whether you pray or not.

If the desired goal does not happen after you pray, would you admit that God wanted things to turn out the way that they did, or do you believe that God wanted things to turn out differently? If God wanted things to turn out the way that they did, then your prayers don't matter, because God is sovereign. If God wanted things to turn out differently, then your God is weak or stupid or both.

See, God gets the credit when the desired goal occurs, but none of the blame when it doesn't.

So both from the logical and evidential sides, you really have an uphill climb in trying to show that praying for someone even makes sense.

The logical incoherence of prayer

I'm sure everyone has heard of or seen idiot Gov. Sonny Purdue howling to Jesus for water. I'm not mad about that; he's just another stupid politician who scheduled his "rain prayer" (on government property during his own taxpayer-funded workday) on a day that it was already supposed to rain according to the weather service (though it didn't). What makes me mad is this:

Twenty-two protesters were forced to stay more than a block away, out of earshot and out of sight of the prayer service, on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. They were members of the Atlanta Freethought Society. Signs include "Hail Priest-King Perdue" or "Pray on the Church Steps, not the Capitol Steps."

Now that, friends, pisses me off. Preventing a group of freethinkers' First Amendment-given right to freedom of speech, assembly and petition is just over the frigging top. That sort of thing should bring a lawsuit against every government office from dogcatcher to the "guvnah" himself.

Rational people already understand the logical conundrums that render prayer completely incoherent:

Imagine for a moment that Sonny's wisely-planned timing had paid off and it had begun to rain at the end of the day, as was predicted a week ahead of time (when he planned the event) by the weather services. Of course, everyone there would have claimed that their prayers had moved God to act on their behalf. Ditto if it rains the next day or the next...and basically up to and including the day it finally does rain -- prayer will be credited with the rain.

What about the fact that there is already a terrible drought that has cost the state a great deal of money? And that it is only going to get worse from here? How many farmers or residents with gardens have lost a great deal of money (the former maybe even being bankrupted, the latter having to buy food they planned to grow)? Whether God did it that very day, the next day, next week, month, year...the negative consequences of failing to act ahead of time still deserve to be accounted for. And how will theists do it?

They will blame US, of course! They'll say that God is angry about abortion or gay marriage or whatever. The funniest thing is the idea that God will stop being mad if people pray about it, or after some arbitrary amount of time punishing us all.

Basically God has the perfect system: getting all the credit for "answers" and none of the blame for "failures"! Think of it this way: heads, God wins; and tails, you lose!

If God exists, and wants to do something, then God will do it, right? Why does God need your help (prayer) to do it? Is God lacking confidence? Does God need encouragement? Or is God forgetful, and you're like the helpful pager that goes off before a meeting? He's got Alzheimer's?

Perhaps all prayer is horizontal -- for our own benefit?

Perhaps people think God doesn't really give a shit about things, and they have to raise God's conscientiousness about it...? That little girl dying of leukemia will just have to suffer and die, because God doesn't f-ing care...until you pray, that is. If God doesn't care enough to actually act until asked to do so, what kind of "goodness" does God possess, anyway?

God's like a grumpy old uncle whose ties to the family are so weak that he has to be prodded to attend holiday dinners, but, importantly, still cares just enough such that he can still be prodded to do so. He won't come on his own, though...

Perhaps they think that God is democratic in nature, and that a tally of votes is necessary for God to act -- God only cares about majority popularity: argumentum ad populum, anyone?

The only answer to these questions that renders coherence to reality at all is the simplest answer, and the most likely to be true: there is no God or gods, and if there are, then they don't give a shit and your prayers are you, as a grown-up adult, talking to your invisible magic friend, just like you did when you were a little child. Every empirical study has shown the same thing -- that prayers do nothing. Don't believe me? Find one documented amputee whose limb grew back from prayer. One. Ever. Here are documented cases of the flaws in these studies I've cited, and here are some of my thoughts on those studies.

"...nothing fails like prayer..."

But apparently these dolts don't realize it yet:

The 35-member Congressional Prayer Caucus at a press conference on Wednesday launched an initiative to encourage every American to spend five minutes a week praying for the nation. Today's Detroit Free Press reports on the effort. The group has created a "Wall of Prayer Around America" page on the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation website. Using a graphic of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it seeks individuals to sign up for specific times to pray so that all times are covered. Reacting to the effort, Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: "Lawmakers should stick to their constitutional duties and leave religious decisions to individuals.... Religion is too important to become a political football." Additional coverage of the story is on Blog from the Capitol and Melissa Rogers websites.

It's a simple question, really: why pray?

If God exists, and wants to do something, then God will do it, right? Why does God need your help to do it? Is God lacking confidence? Does God need encouragement? Or is God forgetful, and you're like the helpful pager that goes off before a meeting? He's got Alzheimer's?

Perhaps all prayer is horizontal -- for our own benefit?

Perhaps people think God doesn't really give a shit about things, and they have to raise God's conscientiousness about it...? That little girl dying of leukemia will just have to suffer and die, because God doesn't fu*&ing care...until you pray, that is. God's like a grumpy old uncle whose ties to the family are so weak that he has to be prodded to attend holiday dinners, but, importantly, still cares just enough such that he can still be prodded to do so.

Perhaps they think that God is democratic in nature, and that a tally of votes is necessary for God to act -- God only cares about majority popularity.

And what's up with how prayers get answered?

A priest and his wife gave birth to conjoined twins, who will now possibly die in the separation surgery, and if they do live, it will only be by virtue of advanced surgical technology. No matter how much you prayed 150 years ago, these girls would have died. Were they born in this era by God's will? Does God get the credit for our medical advances, but not for witholding the information from us for thousands of years while people needlessly suffered and died of simple medical ailments (infections and poisons and etc.)? Does God get the credit if the girls live through this, or the surgeons, or both? Does God get the blame for their being this way in the first place, or the devil?

Who made the devil? Why?

Did this happen due to the priest's lack of prayer? His wife's lack of prayer? Did this priest not pray enough, and thus his daughters were born conjoined at the head, but if he prays now, God will fix it?

And if God sees, ahead of time, that people will completely lose faith in God's own existence when seeing pictures like that, why believe that God gives a shit if you believe in God or not?

Here's one stab at answers from some Catholics:

Upon the answer to this enquiry depends the whole business of our success or failure in prayer. Success and failure to be judged in God's terms, not ours.

Interesting. Basically, if your prayer gets answered, then praise Gawd! And if it doesn't? Well, it was your fault, of course, since God never fails!

Failure in prayer is related to no personal love for God or mental attitude sins.

Now, how can one say something so mean?!?!? That it's your fault!?!?!? Well...they're just quoting the bibble:

21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. (1 John 3:21-22, NIV)

So, basically God has the perfect system: getting all the credit for "answers" and none of the blame for "failures"! Think of it this way: heads, God wins; and tails, you lose!

The only answer to these questions that renders coherence to reality at all is the simplest answer, and the most likely to be true: there is no God or gods, and your prayers are you, as a grown-up adult, talking to your invisible magic friend, just like you did when you were a little child. Every empirical study has shown the same thing -- that prayers do nothing. Don't believe me? Find one documented amputee whose limb grew back from prayer. One. Ever. (**update: here are documented cases of the flaws in these studies, and here are some of my thoughts on those studies**)

Grow up and deal with reality.

Wishful thinking doesn't change a goddamned thing.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Church-state, Politics

Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine

We have all heard the various arguments that religion is good for your health in some way or another. We have all heard that there are "numerous studies that show/support this"...where is the proof?

Some time back, I took a serious look at this question, and found, with no exception whatsoever, that no study had ever established any such correlation. (Make sure to check out the comments section of that post)

The problems with all studies purporting to support this correlation are consistently demographic and sociological in nature -- for example: studies that show that older people who attend church are twice as likely to be healthy as those who don't are flawed when they do not take into account the question of whether those who do not attend are still religious, and those who physically cannot go out to church because they are sick. That is, it is cherry-picking an already-healthy group (those who can go out [at all] every week) and comparing them to a group that certainly contains some bedridden and shut-in elderly persons.

These sorts of flaws pervade the studies claimed to support the contention that I have looked at, without exception. The best-controlled studies show no statistical significant effects of prayer or religion upon health, and many show the converse. The researchers are quick to point out that many sick persons adopt more religious beliefs as their illness progresses, though, in order to "protect" cherry-picking in the opposite way from that mentioned before. Also, the newest and most comprehensive studies on intercessory prayer proved to have no good effect whatsoever upon those being prayed for. See here for serious analysis of that study.

I have also pointed out that the correlation between health and religion is one we expect, given the numerous promises to "covenant health" throughout the Bible. Dr. Richard Sloan has done more research in this field than any other medical doctor I'm aware of, and he agrees that the bottom line is, "no evidence":

When you suggest that religious activity is associated with better health, you implicitly suggest quite the opposite: that poor health is a product of insufficient devotion, insufficient faith. It's bad enough to be sick. It's worse still to be catastrophically ill. To add the burden of guilt and remorse on top of that is simply unconscionable. And that happens all the time.

So for a variety of ethical reasons, it seems clear to me, regardless of what the empirical evidence is, that bringing religion into medicine not only makes no sense, it's simply wrong to do, even if there were solid evidence--which, of course, there isn't.

So . . . there's just no solid evidence, and the ethical problems are so serious they have to be addressed. We should simply not tolerate attempts to bring religion into medicine until these matters have been resolved.

I am posting below an excerpt from the Chronicle from his new book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, which takes the longest and most comprehensive look at the connection between medicine and religion that has ever been published. It will not help give the religious any more faith, and will instead present unequivocal evidence that their prayers are being uttered to uncaring, dead, empty space, rather than an all-loving and knowing Being. But, those I know who waste their time wailing to walls and uncaring air are somewhat unlikely to allow empirical evidence to sway their supernatural "feelings".

The Critical Distinction Between Science and Religion
By RICHARD P. SLOAN
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i11/11b01301.htm

The view that all human experience can be reduced to the function of biological activity may be satisfying to scientists, but it is anathema to theologians. The researchers Marguerite Lederberg and George Fitchett recognize this problem in an interesting article with the provocative title "Can You Measure a Sunbeam With a Ruler?" In it, they explore the scientific problems with attempts to reduce the experience of religion to the measurable quantities of science. The point of their title is to reiterate a longstanding concern in science: the difficulty of quantifying human experience. By attempting to measure a sunbeam and in so doing reduce it to that which can be quantified by a ruler, we lose the character of the sunbeam itself. While such measurement may be possible, it cannot capture the essence of the sunbeam and in fact may distort it.

Trying to quantify religious experience by counting the number of times a person reports attending church, the most commonly used index of religious involvement, is like trying to measure a sunbeam with a ruler: It may be possible, but the essential character of the experience is lost in the process. It is like trying to quantify the aesthetic experience of listening to a Beethoven symphony by counting the number of times a listener smiles. No doubt we could conduct brain-imaging studies to demonstrate differences in the activity of cerebral structures while listening to the Ninth Symphony and to white noise. Would that tell us anything about the aesthetic experience? Would it mean that this experience is explained by the activity of that specific brain region? Is that all there is to it? Is the majesty of listening to Beethoven, viewing the Grand Canyon, or appreciating the vastness of the universe merely the product of increased activity of certain regions in the brain? And could we reproduce these experiences simply by administering the right medication or electrical stimulation?

As productive as this strategy of reductionism has been and as promising as it continues to be for science, we ought to question seriously what insights it yields in the study of religion. Religion and science are independent approaches to knowledge, and neither can be reduced to the other. Religion and science are fundamentally different, with the former relying on faith as a source of wisdom and the latter demanding evidence. Religious truths generally are considered to be enduring and not subject to change. Scientific truths, on the other hand, are completely dependent on evidence, and as new evidence emerges, scientific truths change accordingly.

For these reasons, attempts to understand religious experience by scientific means can never be satisfying to religion. They can satisfy only science.

Using the methods of science to examine religion has another seemingly unintended consequence: It has led to attempts to establish the relative merits of different religious traditions by scientific means. After all, if we can determine scientifically whether frequency of attendance or frequency of prayer is associated with health outcomes, then shouldn't we begin to test whether the type of service makes a difference? If we are truly interested in collecting information relevant to health outcomes, then we should want to know whether it is better for our health to attend a Catholic mass or a Quaker meeting. Are Orthodox Jewish services better for our health than Reform services? Is there a health advantage to praying five times a day, as Muslims do, as opposed to the three times of Orthodox Jews? Why is it acceptable to determine that more-frequent attendance at religious services is better for your health than less-frequent attendance, but it is not acceptable to determine that Christian services are better for your health than attending Jewish or Muslim services?

Most researchers in the field of religion and health do not address this matter. My guess is that if they were asked, they would oppose contrasting the health benefits of different religious denominations. But why should they object? Presumably, the objection to studying the different health effects of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, for example, is that it would be offensive if we discovered that one religion was superior to the other two. The offense lies in the implication that those who practice the medically less beneficial religions would be better off converting to the medically more beneficial one.

Such a recommendation would be seen as out of bounds by most people. But why should it be? Attending services at an Orthodox synagogue or a Catholic church is a religious behavior that we can measure, just like attending services more or less frequently. Why is recommending conversion from one religious denomination to another for hypothetical health benefits more offensive than recommending that people who attend services only once per month attend more frequently because the latter, some believe, is better for their health, or recommending that people increase the amount of time spent praying?

We are on dangerous ground here, and the danger lies once again in a critical distinction between science and religion. It is a distinction that proponents of the religion-health connection obliterate, whether they intend to or not. Science permits us, in principle, to answer these questions. Without a doubt, we could conduct a study contrasting the health effects of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, for example. It could be done in precisely the same way that researchers have examined the effects of higher versus lower frequency of attendance at religious services, or greater or lower frequency of private prayer or reading the Bible or listening to religious radio programming. From the scientific perspective, there is no fundamental difference between using religious denomination or religious attendance as the predictor variable.

Although science allows us to conduct such a study, ethics and religion ought to tell us how ridiculous such a comparison would be. In today's world (and in the past as well), we have ample evidence of religious strife. This should not diminish the value that religion has for many people, but no one can dismiss the fact that religious factionalism has been responsible for conflict at the societal and familial level for thousands of years. Even if we could, hypothetically, demonstrate that Protestant prayer is better for one's health than Catholic prayer, why would we ever want to do so?

It undoubtedly is true that we can submit religious ritual and experiences to scientific study to determine if they are associated with beneficial health outcomes. But to do so runs the risk of trivializing the religious experience, making it no different from other medical recommendations made by physicians. If attending religious services becomes no different than consuming a low-fat diet or getting regular exercise, a great deal will have been lost. Bringing religion into the world of the scientist must by definition reduce religion to measurable indices that strip it of the sense of transcendence that distinguishes it from other aspects of our lives. Doing this dumbs religion down, making it so bland and universally acceptable that it has lost all of its meaning.

Ironically, this reductionism is precisely the problem that many in the religious community have railed against. Steven Goldberg, author of Seduced by Science, wrote, "When prayer is innocuous, it is no rival to the materialistic view of the world." Bringing religion into the "laboratory" of the scientist cannot help but contribute to the inevitable comparisons of the "scientifically established" virtues of one religion, or one type of religious practice, over others. In a world riven with religious factionalism and strife, it's hard to think of a worse idea.

Richard P. Sloan is a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University. This essay is excerpted from Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, published this month by St. Martin's Press.

The Chronicle Review
Volume 53, Issue 11, Page B13
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