Does Prayer Work?

MAN’S DELUSIONAL ESCAPE

Image courtesy of Crosswalk.com

By Ronald Michael Quijano, LPT

We always tend to hear someone asking for prayers, or sometimes, they offer prayers. The majority of Bible-based religion believes that prayer is the most powerful tool that connects man with God. Questions arise from these beliefs; Does it really work? Not just the functionality of this action demands evidence and reason, but also its operation. On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked 3 airplanes, the terrorists are praying to God for their success, while the passengers are desperately praying for the terrorists’ failure, the question is; how did prayer work that day? Which are answered?  For people who are religious, believe that prayer has benefits for those who pray and for whom the prayer is for. For this issue, the discussion will be under the roof of the Judeo-Christian god believers, or the god of the bible since it strongly implies the habitual praying of its followers. There are different types of prayers, but let us focus on one that is mostly exercised by almost everyone.

¹Petitionary, praying for something to happen, or not to happen, or otherwise asking God for a favor. All of it, when performed by believers, claimed to have benefits and comfort, but one must take note that just because it gives comfort doesn't mean it's real, and credits are not to be given by prayers that easy. Imagine having a successful operation and giving credits to the god whom you prayed to and not to the surgeons who performed the operations. As usual, believers turn to the scriptures or God's words, to provide answers, in that case, let us do the same. Here are some of the verses from the bible that believers usually use to prove that prayer is truly the key; (1)“Call to me and I will answer you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3 I wonder what does this really mean? If it pertains to knowledge, I hope we would not use the bible for any scientific reference. Somehow, it gives a ring about things that cannot be searched, the problem is that, if it cannot be searched, therefore it cannot be known. What things in the world that Christians know that the rest of the world doesn't? (2)“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”1 John 5:14. 2 things we need to take note from these verses, petitionary prayer, and God's will. Contemporary philosopher, Eleonore Stump argued that asking God for something doesn't actually make a difference. It simply goes like this; If God is omniscient, therefore knows everything, including the future. And if God is omnipotent, therefore can bring about any state of affairs. And if God is Omnibenevolent, therefore wants to bring the best state of affairs, then God already decided what’s going to happen in every single case. To Everyone. Always. If God already decided what to do according to his will, in which case your prayer effective? In short, if God knows what's best for you, why would you want to change his mind? Typhoon Haiyan, known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, was one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded. Before the typhoon hits the country, prayers and vigils were offered all over the nation, but that doesn't stop the typhoon from destroying houses, and even lives in November of 2013. 6, 340 fatalities were reported and confirmed by the government of the Philippines. In this case, how does their prayer worked on that day? Most excuses you can hear when their prayers are unanswered is that “It is God's will not to fulfill my wishes, he has a greater plan”, indeed, if that's the case, what's the point of praying?

Researchers have been trying to prove and measure the effectivity of prayers. In 2006, the Harvard Medical School conducted an experiment about prayers. “The primary goal of STEP was to evaluate whether intercessory prayer or the knowledge of receiving it would influence recovery after bypass surgery,” said co-author Jeffery A. Dusek, Harvard Medical School instructor of medicine and Associate Research Director at the Mind/Body Medical Institute. Cardiologist Herbert Benson and his colleagues, with support from the Templeton Foundation, randomly assigned 1802 cardiac bypass patients to one of three conditions:
Group 1: those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who weren't)
Group 2: those told they may or may not be prayed for (and who were)
Group 3: those told they would be prayed for (and who were) Results are that some patients who were told that they may or may not receive intercessory prayer had complications in 52 percent of those who received prayer versus 51 percent of those who did not receive prayer. Complications also observed in 59 percent of patients who were told they would receive prayer versus 52 percent, who also received prayer, but were uncertain of receiving it.  More serious complications were similar across the three groups. Not only did prayer not help the patients, those that were told they were being prayed for experienced more serious complications. It's quick to say for the researchers that the study does not challenge the existence of God, or even address religious inquiry, it simply aims to validate prayer quantitatively. “The primary goal of the study was limited to evaluating whether intercessory prayer or the knowledge of receiving it would influence recovery after bypass surgery," notes Jeffery Dusek, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Prayer seems to be a convoy away from responsibility and gives deceptive hope - ignis fatuus - to anyone who prays and to whom the prayer is offered. It is an escape from the duty of this world, that stanch our efforts to act on the reality of life. Prayer creates a matrix that satisfies the wishes of a man. Zora Neale Hurston, an influential author of African-American literature and anthropologist stated in her book Dust Track on a Road that prayer seems to her a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. One must accept the challenge of responsibility. “Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.” She added. Prayer evidently shows no use for the progress of a community or even a nation. It neither gives a contribution or effects to anything; from ethics, economics, education, politics, nor to any form of sciences. It doesn't help. The only help it gave to humanity is to strengthen their delusion to escape the reality of life. A wish is only a word without fulfillment if action is nowhere to be found. An illness would never heal with a wish but with a cure. A surgery would never be successful with a wish but with a skilled surgeon. The world will never change with a wish, but with a movement. A lie might give you comfort, but that doesn’t change how the cosmos operates. Epistemic responsibility comes in different degrees, failure to fulfill such duty might lead to corrupt mindset and being deluded.