Green Witch wrote:real life wrote:Green Witch wrote:real life wrote:If you want to know if prayer (as described in the Bible) 'works' or not:
--Find out under what conditions God says He will answer prayer;
--Be completely certain that you meet those conditions; and
--Pray
For those of you who favor a scientific/ experimental approach, I can't see how you would have any objection to this.
Many studies have been done concerning prayer and healing. The overwhelming conclusions are that prayer has no effect on the sick
None of the studies you refer to are scientific studies.
Huh? These were studies I used to read about in medical journals that were given to me by a relative who is a physician . Most of them had been done in Switzerland and Germany. I recall that the last study I sited was done by students at the Rockefeller Medical Center in NY in the 1980's. It's really not that hard to find such studies on the web, and you can pick the non-religious university or medical facility you prefer.
A scientific study would use standardization.
These studies have no standardization of what verbiage the subjects prayed, nor of the varied situations that they prayed for.
Since a large part of prayer is belief, there should also be standardization of what the pray-ers believed, as well as what the sick folks that they prayed for believed. None of that either.
These may have been 'studies', but they weren't scientific.
Just because they were published in a medical journal doesn't make them scientific either.