Can you please join me in my effort to pray for u/211

submitted by Titanic from self.AskSaidIt

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (24 children)

Intercessory prayer has no discernible effect.

Are there demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer? A meta-analytic review

Prayer and Health: Review, Meta-Analysis, and Research Agenda

If you want to help, you need to find some more tangible way.

[–]Titanic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (23 children)

What religion were the people praying, and were they in the state of grace?

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (22 children)

What religion were the people praying,

Various. Biased towards Christian.

and were they in the state of grace?

I don't see that that was controlled for. So there would have been both amongst the people praying.

[–]Titanic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (21 children)

Well there's your problem.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (20 children)

You think they shouldn't have been Christian?

Or you think people praying not in a state of grace will cancel out the prayers of people in a state of grace?

[–]Titanic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

Not in a state of grace might not work as well as state of grace.

So if 99 of 100 were not, you'd get 99 weaker prayers and 1 strong one.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

So if 99 of 100 were not, you'd get 99 weaker prayers and 1 strong one.

Neither the strong ones nor the weak ones made a difference that was measurable.

[–]Titanic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

We don't know how many were strong and how many were weak

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

That's right. We only know that none of them worked better than not praying.

If you want to help people, you really need to find some tangible way to do it.

[–]Titanic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

Well if you repeat the study and ask people if they are obeying church teaching and doctrine and believe themselves to be in the state of grace and then try it again, then I'd be very curious to see.

It could be that the prayers were just too weak for God to change the course of history over.

Or maybe the prayers weren't genuine and they just did what they were told.

On the other hand, and this is unfalsifiable so take it with a grain of salt, maybe doing the test pissed God off because he says right in the bible that he hates being put to the test, and so he deliberately ignored it.