Prayer - For Science!

Atheism for children

Praying for the control group

Longevity and “concentrated well-wishing”

IYH's Uncertainty Principle

Conclusion

Rebbetzin Fastag adds

Español- Gracias a Debbie Rubinstein y Google Translate. No se utilizó IA.

Atheism For Children

In the USSR, teachers would say “Children, ask God for bread.”

No bread miraculously appeared.

Then the teacher would say, “Now, children, ask Comrade Stalin for bread.”

Someone outside the classroom would come and give each child bread. The teacher would say, “See? There is no God! But Stalin is real, and he gives you bread.”¹

My prayer for the control group

It would be simple to design a scientific study proving that prayer works. Divide people into two groups: one group is prayed for, the other is not. In scientific terms, that’s your experimental group and your control group.

And what is the result when they do that? Let's briefly cover some scientifi studies and their relevant results. See footnote 2 for citations.²

1988: Nearly 400 patients at San Francisco General Hospital were randomly assigned to “prayed-for” and/or “control” groups. Home-based praying Christians prayed daily for “rapid recovery and prevention of complications.”

Result: Patients who were prayed for had somewhat better outcomes.

1999: A randomized, controlled, double-blind trial in cardiac patients admitted to the coronary care unit, who were assigned to remote intercessory prayer versus usual care.

Result: Modestly better experiences in the prayer group.

2006: The Harvard STEP study, which was designed to evaluate whether prayer had any effect on recovery after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The study involved over 1,800 patients, divided into three groups: those who were prayed for and knew it, those who were prayed for but unaware, and those who were not prayed for.

Result: No benefit was observed from intercessory prayer.

2023: The COVID-19 Intercessory Prayer Trial, a double-blind, randomized controlled trial in São Paulo, Brazil, evaluated intercessory prayer by spiritual leaders for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Result: no evidence that prayer influenced mortality, hospitalization time, ICU time, or mechanical ventilation time.

So we have scientific evidence for both outcomes. As the authoritative Cochrane review noted in 2009, “it is only possible to state that intercessory prayer is neither significantly beneficial nor harmful for those who are sick. Further studies which are better designed and reported would be necessary to draw firmer conclusions.” In short, these studies are inconclusive.³ ⁴

Confession: this is my fault. And I'm not sorry.

See, when I learned about this, I felt really bad for all the people who might not be prayed for. How could I stand by while other people deliberately did not pray for people who need prayers?

So I prayed:

Master of the world, I pray for all the people in the control group of scientific studies about prayer - You know, the ones that aren't supposed to be prayed for.
May they be comforted, healed, and uplifted— whether or not they were supposed to be, according to the approved experimental model —- for the sake of Your great Name. May everyone have peace and good.⁵
Amen.

Longevity and “concentrated well-wishing”

The first attempt to scientifically study the effect of prayer was recorded by Francis Galton in 1872. He compared the longevity of royalty, clergy, and others to see if “concentrated well-wishing” made a difference to longevity. He concluded that it did not.

“The belief so frequently expressed in the Psalms—that the descendants of the righteous shall continue, and that those of the wicked shall surely fail—is not fulfilled in the history of our English peerage.”⁶

He meant to imply that the wicked of the English aristocracy did not fail. Consider this was written in 1872. Prayer data, as we've observed, seems inconclusive. In fact, had he waited a few decades, his data would have pointed to the opposite conclusion:

At the outset of the 1870s, the British aristocracy could rightly consider themselves the most fortunate people on earth: they held the lion's share of land, wealth, and power in the world's greatest empire. By the end of the 1930s they had lost not only a generation of sons in the First World War, but also much of their prosperity, prestige, and political significance.⁷

Pride goes before a fall.⁸

Galton also argued that

“The notion that a missionary or other pious enterprise carries any immunity from danger has never been entertained by insurance companies.”

This is ironic, as by now, 150 years later, there is plenty of data that religious people do things associated with longer life. And that they do lead, on average, enjoy longer and happier lives. Even if studies cannot prove it conclusively. Which brings us to The Isha Yiras Hashem Theological Uncertainty Principle of Prayer.

The Isha Yiras Hashem Theological Uncertainty Principle Of Prayer

How can you actually study prayer? It’s in the spiritual dimension.⁹ Even if it follows some rules, those rules might be like quantum mechanics, where the act of observing changes the particles. It makes sense that prayer doesn't follow the normal physics laws of the physical world.

Maybe prayer is like human psychology. Everyone accepts that if you study people in a lab, their behavior is different than it is privately at home. Entire fields of social science are centered around this problem. And we still don’t have a way of accounting for it or quantifying it.

But somehow, when it comes to prayer, the idea that being observed—or prayed for—might shift outcomes somehow sounds… irrational? Mystical? Superstitious?

If we’ve already accepted that observation can change reality at the quantum level, why draw the line at prayer?Why is it more rational to believe that subatomic particles ‘know’ that they are being observed than to believe spiritual rules might act differently under scientific scrutiny? I’m not saying that’s definitely what’s happening. I’m just saying it’s possible.

I dub this the Isha Yiras Hashem Uncertainty Principle of Prayer: Prayer, like particles, hates being observed.

Conclusion:

Which brings us all the way back to the prayer for the control group. Which is not to imply that it is possible to make a real control group in the first place. Even if the study design says “no one is designated to pray for Group B,” you can’t stop any random G-d-fearing person from designing a prayer just to ruin it.

Maybe the very fact that I felt compelled to say that prayer tells us something important: Prayer isn’t just about outcomes. It’s about connection to G-d and a refusal to be indifferent to the suffering of others.

In the end, maybe the real question isn’t “Does prayer make a difference?”
But “Are you the kind of person who prays even when no one’s watching?”

Because in that case, my answer is yes. Proudly.

Rebbetzin Fastag Adds:

• There are also rules that affect if and how much prayer works. If you do evil to others, it's not as likely that your prayer will be effective.

• The Secular media and scientists ignore the many stories of prayer helping.

• You can, for example, scientifically study how G-d treats Israel. The way missiles fall and casualty numbers is an outstanding subject.

• You can listen to Hershel Ganz on the Gulf War statistics. It came out with a number of 29 zeroes that what happened could actually happen. In other words, it couldn't —- but it did. And then it happened like that again a year and a quarter ago when Iran sent about 300 (or maybe 500?) missiles on motzei Shabbos HaGadol. And just last week — the building that was hit in Soroka Hospital was evacuated the night before. No other building there was hit, only the evacuated building. There are many, many more stories like this. I think it's important to know that one could really make scientific studies on this.

• When others help Israel, they, too, get special heavenly help.

1. Thus the teacher accidentally reinforced the idea that Stalin was but a tool in God's Hands.

This story is from the book Go, My Son by Chaim Shapiro. Thanks to my husband for the citation. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/087306500X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

2. Byrd RS. “Effect of Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit,” Southern Medical Journal (1988).

Harris WS, Gowda M, Kolb JW, et al. “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit,” Archives of Internal Medicine, 1999;159:2273–

Benson H, Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, et al. “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,” American Heart Journal, April 2006

“Frequency of Private Prayer Predicts Survival Over 6 Years in a Nationwide Sample of Chronically Ill Individuals,” Journal of Religion and Health, 2023.

“Prayer as a pain intervention: protocol of a systematic review,” BMJ Open 2021.

3. Roberts L, Ahmed I, Davison A. Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000368. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000368.pub3.

4. Rebbetzin Fastag comments: Also, if the people praying have a filthy mouth, make others miserable with biting comments, slander, embarrassing people, etc., then the prayers coming forth from their mouths might not be heard. So how could anyone do an honest study on the subject of prayer? There are so many variables that they do not take into consideration.

5. And to all you control group people in prayer efficacy studies, you should know that Isha Yiras Hashem will always pray especially for you, even if no one else does, and even though she isn’t supposed to.

6. Note the use of an em dash, prior to the existence of artificial intelligence.

7. https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/decline-and-fall-british-aristocracy

8. Galton used a different methodology, but the comparable mortality numbers are no longer available as the data is now linked to occupation, and neither clergy nor nobility is listed as a group. But the overall point stands. We now know that Galton saw only his specific moment in time, and the evils of colonization his country was happily imperializing are well-known today.

9. Whatever that is