Is there like a gauge that measures the amount of prayer that is directed towards a person? And when it reaches full, the person is healed.
No, Buddhism consists of a lot more than just positive energy. But in regards to someone praying and God making it happen because he wants to or doesnt want to...I believe that when people come together for a cause, the emotional support from a number of people can help make something happen. I dont think its God deciding that he'll answer some prayers and not answer other prayers.
Ding ding! We have a winner. All the 'evidence' points to the fact that when people get sick, they either get better or they don't. Prayer is irrelevant. Most of these 'trials' are flawed.
If you pray and they get well then god did that. If you pray and nothing happens well it was gods will and they are in a better place. Its like athletes thanking god for victory. Didn't know god cheered for the yankees. Try your best and do good for others and hopefully all turns out well, but don't expect anything. It seems like people only pray when they need something.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=no-prayer-prescription One of the more common flaws is that the patient knows he is being prayed for (Placebo effect).
That's that a link to another study that found no effect - that's not a flaw in the studies that do show the effect. The study that I found most interesting was the one that had the people essentially on the other side of a wall - because it suggested that the body could simply detect thoughts as matter, as opposed to necessarily having a God connection. This study above has Church groups praying, so there's no proximity effect. It would require a third party (God) to relay the prayers from the people praying to the subject. I'm not saying these other studies are right - but they seem like fairly simple experiments to conduct that shouldn't have major flaws to them. You have patients. You have people praying / thinking about the subjects out of sight. You test to see if there are changes in body patterns and if they correspond to when the people were asked to think about those people. It *should* be pretty straightforward if done properly.
Shouldn't this be the way people who believe in god think? Its consistent. If a good result, god did it. If its a bad result, its still god's doing. These statements contradict each other. If people only pray when they need something, why would they be thanking god for a victory.
I've come to a realization about prayer. The word prayer in Arabic come from the root "connection". So prayer is not a "thank you" or a "please". It's a chance to connect. This all gets very complicated in Islam, since all our souls are considered to be from heaven to begin with. You are basically re-establishing that connection with what's NOT in the creation. Well, at least you're trying to. Now, I think that in order to make my "thanks" or "please" count, I need to establish that connection. In order to establish that connection, I really need to focus. I also need to be consistent and get better at it. I also don't think (As most Muslims do) that it depends on the positioning of your finger or the pronounciation of a couple of words. Do I believe prayer yields results? Maybe. When I pray, I expect nothing to happen. I do it selfishly, I do it because I want to strengthen that connection. If I ask for something, I do it with shame and desperation, but I know that it won't directly yield much. It is the equivalent of me being out in the middle of the ocean and yelling "HEEELP!!". It helps me to talk about it. It helps me to think about it while I'm in that state. But to think that "if i pray, this can happen", I think that's greedy. God will give everyone what He wants to give them, and your prayer won't change that. (Here's where I get a bit crazy) I do think that a group of people all praying at the same time for the same thing creates a bigger connection. It exponentially improves the "quality" of the connection for each person engaged in the prayer. I find that my view of prayer is not very different to a lot of other religions now. It is a form of meditation I suppose. It is striving for something, a higher state of mind I guess? I don't know. I know that I will still pray to God and occasionally beg for favors, because I'm human and I get desperate at times. But I know that the outcome won't be affected, except in that I'll help those around me establish that connection and hopefully include the person who currently can't say "hey everybody, let's all get together and do a mass prayer". I'm sure I wrote that way too fast lol. Also, I'm just in the middle of studying this side of Islam/prayer, so there are a lot of moving parts in the way I view things right now. But I know that I'm enjoying prayer much more than I did when I was told to follow a set of idiotic rules strictly. I couldn't focus on the words and the goal.
I don't pray for "outcomes." I pray to be in God's Will which basically means to have peace and harmony with whatever eventuates. I will do my best to live ethically, lovingly and honorably and plan to live harmoniously with the results. This eases disappointment and frustration and worry. Whatever happened happened for a reason-- not necessarily one that would please me. Life isn't about getting your way. It's about living bravely and faithfully with whatever confronts you. Yeah, easier said than done but also more rewarding and inspiring. That's what the Faith Walk is about.
Book of Job can get pretty nasty when thinking that only good things happen to good believers. I like Mathloom's interpretation of connection. Praying for others and being genuine about it is an opportunity for personal separation of what you are going through right now. That in itself can take a load off of your own struggles. It makes that broken iphone look less major than it is. To a believer, it's much more, but sometimes it's better to keep the major things simple.
Prayers != wishes I think most level-headed people pray for piece of mind and stuff like that - not for hitting the super-lotto or their local sports team going 9-7. Think moreso along the lines of a form of meditation.
The way I see it is, prayers are for the people making them and not for the sick. It gives loved ones a sense that they are doing something. It's the same with funerals. They are never for the dead, it's to consul the living whether they know it or not.
No, it's not straightforward at all. Which "body patterns" do you test for, and what is their baseline? If people pray for a speedy recovery, does a recovery that takes a bit of time, or a speedy one that eventually ends in relapse, count as a hit?
Whether it helps you recover or not is a whole different issue that the study didn't focus on. It measured whether the body responded to people's thoughts - despite not knowing that people were praying/thinking about them. And they did - I don't remember what the actual changes in body function were (and I can't seem to find the study, unfortunately), but that's not as important - if thoughts had no impact at all, there should be NO changes at all.
One could infer that the only thing Salvy as asking RM to have faith in is that his sister will get better: which I think is both sufficiently well-meaning and logically plausible as to not be an imposition of faith.
When all is said and done, whether you believe in god or not, if god exists, I doubt god really cares what we believe but is more interested in how we behave towards those around us. So we all have the same shot at whatever "reward" by just behaving the way we should be behaving anyway.
