If every prayer uttered was logged into a database for a month and the sums totalled, I am CERTAIN the results would be:

ANSWERED: 50% NOT ANSWERED: 50%

Exactly the same as RANDOM CHANCE and WISHFUL THINKING.

Can I prove my claim with supporting data? Nope. But it doesn’t matter a damn. Praying makes the person/people doing it FEEL GOOD, like they’ve participated and tried. Such self delusion is a priceless diversion in this day and age of global chaotic insanity.

If it works, “God” has answered your prayers. If it doesn’t, then there’s something wrong with you or your prayer or that “God,” in His wisdom, has other plans to resolve the situation.

It’s all very funny, really. It’s insanity to even consider that the “creator of heaven and earth… the universe and everything in it” is just sitting there waiting for some smuck in Jerkoff, Kansas to finish asking for his acne to be cured before the prom.

It’s equally insane to think that this “God” will actually “Bless America"… the country that has engineered more invasions and caused more deaths and destruction than any other on the planet in the last 50 years. Anyone who actually believes this crap urgently requires medical attention.

“Dear Heavenly Father, we are gathered here tonight to pray for the speedy and uneventful recovery of Alan H.  We ask that You watch over him in his hour of need by keeping all harmful complications in abeyance.  We realize that there are infidels, yes unbelievers, who scoff at the mere mention of prayer.  Therefore, we humbly implore You, oh Lord, to show them Your awesome power that they might come to know You as the one true God and that they might come to live in Your glory forever.  In Jesus’ name, amen and amen.”

The earth spins, the stars look down in silence and Alan H. suffers a post-op myocardial infarction, which requires the immediate attention of medical science to save his life.

There is a history of these kinds of studies - none of the rigorous ones have shown any effect due to prayer when the prayed-for persons are not aware of the prayers for them. The ones that do claim to show a result have either been disavowed by their authors in retrospect, because they reconsidered and decided the results were intentionally messed-with, or have not been able to be replicated. So, once again, God hides out - what a sneaky guy - up there running everything and not showing his face when he has a chance of actually demonstrating his existence in a scientific manner.

Have to disagree bbeeenn--I’m more inclined to believe the fact that they were strangers diminished the power, if I’m to assign a supernatural reason to it.  Celestine Prophesy, pick it up.

Why not do the study with close friends and relatives praying?  I guess they couldn’t find a control group, people whose families weren’t praying for them…

It’s sad to see so much money spent by academic scholars and medical research specialists, supposedly smart enough to know better, on something as unmeasurable as the power of prayers instead of spending the money on something much more worthwhile like feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless, here or abroad.

Of course, there are many of us who could have saved you folks alot of time and wasted effort—many who could attest that prayer does indeed work.  Our lives are testimony to it.  But in our cases the successfulness was not based on the the prayer itself. It was the One to whom answered those prayers. Maybe you should consult Him next time you want some accurate results. Oh, and by the way, it’s free, too.

Shocker?? This is the least surprising result of a scientific test in recent memory. What a waste of money - hopefully there will be a positive result in that some will be persuaded to invest less effort and money in religion.

The prayed-for are actually more likely to suffer complications?

Guess it’s time to start praying for bush.

Mark Coppenger, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, believes in praying for others, but he questions the wisdom of measuring God’s response. “It’s my experience that God actually prompts our prayers,” Coppenger says. “But I don’t see him cooperating in a test.” [Taken from main article]

So, what the good professor is saying is that he has actually experienced God forcing him to pray and, further, that he knows God would not participate in such a test.  This worm and others like him really know how to wiggle around the evidence.  Why wouldn’t God use this opportunity to give us a hint of His presence and His influence upon our lives?  I can’t remember who made the following quote, and I’m only paraphrasing it here, but I think it fits the occasion:

“To pray is to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner who, by his or her own admission is unworthy.”

It just amazes me that it’s the year 2006 and we still need studies to prove what should be obvious.  Faith is the scourge of this earth.