A friend in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, after learning that I don’t believe in God, said she would pray for me. She should have prayed for her husband, who died weeks later. Nevertheless, she is just one of many people claiming to pray for me.
Actually,
it’s hard to go anywhere in this society without seeing someone praying for someone or something. Many athletes clearly offer prayers or say
thanks after some feat in a game. Prayers
precede all NASCAR races, among other events.
They are standard fare in hospitals, religious settings and rituals,
such as weddings.
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| Muslim prayer |
Muslims
are obligated to pray five times a day. Orthodox Jews are supposed to pray
three times a day. Christians are encouraged to pray. In fact, virtually all religions include
prayers in various ceremonies. In the once-popular movie, Bruce Almighty, the main character is confronted with multitude of
prayers God supposedly sees on a daily basis and answers all of them
positively, although only affecting a small cluster in the Buffalo area.
That
idea that God listens to prayers remains pervasive, in and out of the movie
theater. Look at the reaction after one
of the horrible mass shootings in this country.
Everyone offers prayers.
That
raises the question: Do prayers actually have any effect?
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| Galton |
Ask
any religious folks, and they are sure to insist prayer does help. Scientists, however, have been studying the
effect of prayers since the 1800s. They
have found some very different results.
The
scholar approach was kicked off by Sir Francis Galton, a 19th
century English scientist best known for his studies of human intelligence. In the 1870s, he decided to investigate
prayer using a rigid methodology in an effort to show what effect, if any,
prayer had. His study appeared in the 1872 Fortnightly Review and was
reprinted in August 2012 in the International
Journal of Epidemiology, Volume
41, Issue 4.
In
it, Galton began with a search of literature and reported, “I have been able to
discover hardly any instance in which a medical man of any repute has
attributed recovery to the influence of prayer.” He added that many people have
a “general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer” but no one could offer a
specific example.
He then conducted a study of the mean
age attained by males of various classes who had survived their 30th year, from
1758 to 1843. He said kings probably
were the targets of more prayers than the average person, but “literally (were)
the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of affluence. The prayer has
therefore no efficacy.”
His study also included clergy,
lawyers and medical men, noting for clergy that it’s “their profession to pray,
and they have the practice of offering morning and evening family prayers in
addition to their private devotions.”
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| 1800s clergyman |
Clergy, he found, show a life-value
of 69.49, as against 68.14 for the lawyers, and 67.31 for the medical men. Sounds positive, but, Galton added, “this
difference is reversed when the comparison is made between distinguished
members of the three classes … the value of life among the clergy, lawyers and
medical men is as 66.42, 66.51 and 67.07, respectively, the clergy being the
shortest lived of the three. Hence, the prayers of the clergy for protection
against the perils and dangers of the night, for protection during the day and
for recovery from sickness, appear to be futile in result.”
Galton
went on to examine missionaries, who travel amid a cloud of prayers. “The painful experience of many years shows
only too clearly that the missionary is not supernaturally endowed with health.
He does not live longer than other
people, “ Galton concluded.
Naturally, there have been plenty of
studies ever since. Several supported the
idea that prayers have a positive effect.
However, attempts to duplicate the results invariably have failed. Several touted studies have been discredited,
including one where the main author turned out not to have participated in the
study and was given help to write it.
Valid,
uncontested studies, however, are consistent.
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| Open heart surgery |
A 2001 Mayo Clinic double-blind study that covered 799 discharged
coronary surgery patients concluded "intercessory
prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a
coronary care unit."
A 2006 Harvard study, the largest of its kind, reported that “not only did prayer not help the patients, those that were told they were
being prayed for experienced more complications.” The research, published in the April 4 issues
of the American Heart Journal, included
1,800
people who underwent coronary bypass surgery at six different hospitals.
Not only that, but patients who
knew that others were praying for them fared worse than those who did not
receive such spiritual support, or who did but were not aware of it.
More recently, research by
Chittaranjan Andrade and Rajiv Radhakrishman, published in the 2009
October-December issue of the Indian
Journal of Psychiatry, found “intercessory prayer did not influence the
26-week outcome after discharge from a coronary care unit.”
In
addition, the researchers reported, “Remote intercessory prayer did not improve
outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In fact, the knowledge of
being prayed for was associated with a slightly but significantly higher rate
of postsurgical complications.”
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| Orthodox Jews in prayer |
Prayers
apparently are dangerous. Psychiatrists
suggest that people being prayed for think they are worse off and therefore see
their health decline.
Regardless,
the evidence clearly shows that prayer has no positive effect, whether offered
for a friend, a patient or the victims of mass shootings.
I don’t
recommend stopping prayer, but, based on extensive research, proper medicine and
stronger laws likely will have a more beneficial impact.
Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly
writes about religion and religious history with an occasional foray into
American culture. He holds an ABD in
American Studies from Case Western Reserve University. He also speaks at various religious
organizations throughout Florida. You
can reach him at wplazarus@aol.com. He is the author of the recently published novel
The
Great Seer Nostradamus Tells All as well as a variety of nonfiction
books, including The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information;
Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion. His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.
He can also be followed on Twitter.
