Like any survey on the subject, I always imagine the writer feeling as though they know the answer before they do the research. ::shrug::

Prayer is not for the suffering, it's for the sufferer's loved ones. Let science take care of medical problems and if the families find prayer a balm for the soul, well, I see no reason to take it away from them.

I wasn't aware that prayers healed anything, ever.

Faith, on the other hand...

I wonder if the people who knew they were being prayed for felt some kind of added pressure to get well, thereby causing complications from stress.

Maybe some peope were praying for them to die? Were the prayers pre-approved and vetted?

I wonder if the people who knew they were being prayed for felt some kind of added pressure to get well, thereby causing complications from stress.

Or maybe they felt like the pressure was off, and they didn't need to work as hard to get well.

Or maybe the hubris of the scientists angered God.

I find this thread oddly healing.

YouCanCallMeAl, I was wondering something along those lines.

jonmc, that may well be true but then why do people always say "I'll say a prayer for you" and not "I'll say a prayer for your family"?

Space Coyote, yes, the prayers were standardized.

Probably the stupidest study undertaken. Prayer isn't about the act, its about the contact. They were prayed for, not with.

I have to fly tomorrow and I still have a cold and it feels like it might be migrating in to my sinuses...
pray for me.

I don't have a problem with the act of prayer, but it's hard for me to accept the idea of a god who deals out fate based on petitioning or popularity.

I think prayer is most helpful to the one who's doing the praying.

In other news, scientists discovered that wishing does not in fact make it so.

Oh Great. You've only gone and killed tinkerbell.

I have mixed feelings about this. I've prayed for some people and those prayers have been answered, so of course I feel like I've helped. But one or two of the times when I felt my prayers should have been answered, they weren't and I felt cheated. One of those times was when a very good Christian female friend of mine lost a baby in her second miscarriage in two years after she and her husband first started trying to have kids. If all my prayers and her family's and her church group's prayers couldn't help a good Christian woman, what good is prayer?

One good thing that came out of the second miscarriage is that they discovered that there was something medically that was causing them so maybe next time they'll be able to have a successful, full-term pregnancy. But it's sad to me that two potential souls had to die in order for them to find this out.

TrishLynn, isn't it said that sometimes God's answer isn't the one you want?