It depends on your definition of "harm" and what you think is medically ethical.

http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/201..._jme_ahead_tab

I intend to read the article itself when I get to campus and am likely to have access to the journal.

This article is not the basis of the MB link, but the one dereds linked.

The discussion in the article seems pretty straightforward, focusing also on ethnic backgrounds as well as religious perspectives. The only thing that I would note about the article is the following:

So if I'm reading this correctly, "non-response rate bias towards terminal illness and cancer deaths" indicates that these people were less likely to respond, and that would be consistent with people recognizing the ethical difficulties that arise from such situations and choosing not to respond to the survey.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1490160/

This article is just a survey and draws no specific conclusions pertaining to religious viewpoints and medical practice.

Yes, I think this is straightforward.

If all you were saying was that Christians believe in God then we wouldn't have much to discuss.

If someone believes in God you know what they think, not how they think. It doesn't work to make blanket judgements about a groups ability to reason. There are thoughtful and smart people in all camps (Christian, Hindu, Atheist etc.)

Also I think many people hold some form of religious belief solely as a function of culture. For example if one grows up in a Muslim majority country one will probably self identify as a Muslim. For many Muslim countries the idea of nationality and religious identity are inextricably wound.

I can't presume to know how one individual Muslim would think based on what I think I know about Muslims in general.

I don't see the advantage of holding to your broad view such as "if you are religious then "x" ", whereas there are many drawbacks in making generalizations.

Assuming God exists. Yes.

Leaving aside that I think "proof" and "proving" things is probably not the point to be made here, it is accurate to say the supernatural is not tangible the same way the natural world is.

It is more a matter of evidence that gauging what is "proven". The evidence for a god or the supernatural is compelling to some people and not compelling to others.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, many people just believe in a god because that is what they were born into. It is not necessarily a lapse in reasoning or even a conscious choice.

I wonder if you think that I'm making assumptions about someone's character or that I think that I 'know' them based on knowing that they believe in a god, I'm not and I don't.

I don't personally know every priest or vicar in the world, there are many different types, but knowing what they chose to spend their life doing tells me something (generally speaking) about how they view the world, about their philosophical outlook. If you think that it doesn't, then I'm not sure what would tell you something about someone.

I don't think you're using 'supernatural' correctly, It means 'above and beyond natural law'. When something supernatural is shown to have a natural explanation, it's not supernatural anymore. Up till then, it's something for which there's not enough proof to say 'this is real'. So supernatural means, 'not proven to be real'.

If you have proof of something that something currently considered supernatural is actually real, can you tell me what it is?

But you're not talking about priests and vicars. You're talking about doctors. And you're not talking about some sort of vague "philosophical outlook." You're talking about medical competence.

This does not follow. You're using "natural law" in two distinct ways. One is what humans declare is "natural law" on the basis of scientific investigation. The other is the "Natural Law" of the universe, which may or may not behave in ways that conform to what we believe and can "prove" about it scientifically.

Furthermore, there's a potential distinction (depending on your perspective) that the universe may "normally" behave under certain rules but also that under certain circumstances those rules can be broken.

I like the direction you are heading here and am always a fan of adding qualifying statements. Your comments highlight the underlying problem of black and white thinking. "God is powerful therefore he can do anything... even defy logic" seems to be taking God's character beyond what Scriptures say. Maybe reality is something more like God's power is great relative to humans.

Adding qualifications to benevolence is probably a good idea too. I have logical problems thinking about a god that has "good will" all the time because it seems to be clearly false based on life experience.

Usually when theology is stated in absolute terms it is incorrect.

God is full of contradictions and I think his actions are arbitrary. I say this only taking into account biblical texts not based on what we see in modern times.

Sometimes God answers prayers and sometimes He doesn't. Sometimes God does things for people who don't believe in him at all.

As I am sure you agree prayer is more complicated than a transactional "I ask for x and then I get x".

Also the quality of faith that YHWH & Christ typically reference goes far beyond a minimum requirement of believing a god exists or directing prayers.

We can offer up prayers with a very poor quality of faith.

Anyway not to nitpick you I just think that your initial statement requires a bit more fleshing out to be accurate.

Here is what I've come to realize about prayer, or intention, which to me are the same. Receiving what we intend for early on is meant to wake us up, to make us more conscious and ignite our free will. The beginner's luck is supposed to act as an invitation to pursue it more deeply, to put more energy and effort into it.

Instead most people mistakenly think that it is supposed to be a passive process and they either backward rationalize their early results and give up or they blame something else for their current failures. One of the biggest spiritual lessons is the realization that each of us is supposed to "save" ourselves. There isn't supposed to be anything passive about it.

Typically, people will take a few minutes from their day to pray and then move on. They should see what happens if they hold that prayer every second of the day, for days, or weeks, or longer. Then, they might begin to understand what is really going on.

Not at all, I appreciate your input. To be honest, I often wonder if people are actually reading this.

You're most assuredly right about the subtleties, but for the sake of this conversation, I'm trying to keep it pretty black and white and general, going off of what James says about prayer, mainly that one must believe what he asks. I've also been keeping the focus on petition prayer, since that's what MB is specifically focusing on.

MB is really disputing the fundamentals, so I don't think it's necessary to examine anything other than the basics, but perhaps I'm wrong. In any case, I'm largely ignoring the exceptions, whether right or wrong.

Here's a question for you - what do you make of the verse that says it's impossible to please God without faith? Do you take this at face value, or are there exceptions?

I am not quoting all this to be pedantic, I just thought it would be helpful to provide a sort of summary of the thread from my perspective.

You are making assumptions about character.

I am hoping to actually change your mind or least assist you in being more self aware. I have tried to be wary of excessive nittery or pedantic argumentation. If you read your below comments afresh and still don't think your views are prejudice then so be it.

Even when you are not overt in your statements the implications are clear.
"Anyone who believes in the supernatural probably shouldn't be practicing modern medicine..."

"Maybe people with religious beliefs will provide inferior care..."


from another thread:

A conversation around proof and evidence is probably thread worthy on its own. There are various forms of evidence but I would not consider "proof" to necessarily even be a goal.

Theists obviously get "taken hostage" by their peers who have very high levels of religiosity. Obviously a theist doesn't need to be religious (in the sense that she does not necessarily adhere to a central doctrine or follow an organized system of spiritual belief) nor does she has to have a high level of religiosity when she is.

Still, in my book, anyone who believes (for example) the Bible's more outlandish and miraculous claims are superstitious. I don't think such superstition necessarily has to make someone a worse doctor, but (and this is very important) I think it can make them worse doctors, and even more importantly I don't think it ever makes them better doctors.

Does god 'answer' prayers though? Or do prayers sometimes coincide (harmonise) with his will? In which case, was there any point praying 'for' something in the first place?

I can't see a good argument for the efficacy of intercessory prayer and there's certainly no evidence to support it. At least one study that I'm aware of showed that it can actually be harmful.

Care to post that?

I don't think prayer works as in there's a god who is actually answering someone, but I know that outlook can have a significant effect on whether a patient pulls through. So if it makes someone feel like God is listening when they're prayed over I'm all for it.

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of lntercessory Prayer

Harvard Medical School press release about it.

Largest Study of Third-Party (Intercessory) Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not Effective In Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery
I should have been more specific, it was only the patients who knew that they were being prayed for who did worse. The theory is that it caused them stress because of expectation, or something long those lines. It probably didn't occur to me to say that because if you prayed for someone who didn't know it was happening and it harmed them, that would prove that prayer worked, or had some external effect, and of course my line is that it doesn't.

This study has been analyzed before. The problem with the design of the study is that people who were asked if they wanted prayer had no prior relationship with the patient, and many of the normal types of interactions associated with prayer were removed.

This also meant that the patient was potentially primed for negative outcomes, as patients who are suddenly asked if they want prayer from random people do probably interpret that as an indication that things are going poorly, and we know that patients' mental attitude towards outcomes can often impact the outcomes.

(Edit: Actually, I don't remember whether they were asked or simply told they were being prayed for...)

From the link:

And if you read the actual study, you would see that people just walked up to a list of names and said some sort of nominal prayer for them. And that was it. In my mind, it was more of a study of magical chants than it was a study of intercessory prayer.

If you search hard enough, you'll find other times when this study has been brought up and analyzed.

I just skimmed over the study. There were two types of information provided to the patient. Either they were told that they "may or may not" be prayed for and the other was told they "will" be prayed for. But there were actually three groups for the study.

1) Prayer, patients informed they "may or may not" be prayed for
2) No prayer, patients informed they "may or may not" be prayed for
3) Prayer, patients informed they "will" be prayed for

The patients in group 3 did worse than groups 1 and 2, and groups 1 and 2 were not distinguishable from each other.

Well, we can state with reasonable certainty that the prayers did not achieve the (hopefully) intended effects.

Which isn't really a shocker. If prayer achieved intended effects, even only a small portion of prayers, I'm fairly certain we would have known this very well by now. There isn't a lack of trying.

There are plenty of known effects of prayer. I've already linked one study ITT. It's not hard to find others. You can use your friend Google Scholar and search for phrases like "prayer therapy" and every single article in the first 30 pages that positively address the effects of prayer will address prayer positively!

But seriously, there are many known psychological and emotional effects of prayer.

This doesn't mean that every type of prayer achieves its intended effects. That would be like saying that the failure of certain homeopathic remedies shows that medicine doesn't work.

Also, if prayers only worked on a small portion of prayers, people would label it as nothing more than the placebo effect. Oh wait... people do that.

So while prayer might have some 'earthly' effects (makes people feel good, demonstrates faith etc etc) I wonder why they don't seem to have any divine effects.

I think you've got that entirely backwards. Physical healing is an "earthly" effect that studies demonstrate prayer doesn't reliably have. Arguably so are emotional effects, and I haven't looked at the studies, but if Christians were to speak about spiritual (they wouldn't say divine) effects of prayer it would be things like peace and joy and kindness and gentleness and love

How would you know that there aren't any divine effects?

Earthly results maybe, but not divinely caused. What I'm saying is that there is nothing but earthly effects of prayer, that they have no divine effect at all. So in effect, it wouldn't matter whether or not god actually existed, prayer would still have the same effect.

Of course, if god didn't exist, then praying for people who don't know that you're praying for them would have no effect, which what all the studies seem to show. I wonder if the complete lack of any effect from prayer is actually 'proof' of a sort that there are no gods.