| If prayer is therapy should it require consent? [message #263] |
Thu, 12 November 2009 12:36 |
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 Matthew
Messages: 24
Registered: April 2007 |
Junior Member |
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As our transatlantic cousins ponder on the merits of Universal Health care their "christian scientists" are lobbying for prayer to be legally recognised as medicine. That any health plan must make provision for patients who wish to pay someone to pray for them.
Surprisingly prayer has undergone the same sort of double blind placebo controlled clinical trials as other suggested medical interventions. The results are in.
The good news: Science says prayer appears to be entirely safe with no discernible side effects.
The bad news, it appears to be no more effective in any other respect than the placebos it has been compared against.
You'd think then that would be the end of the discussion. American citizens would refuse to pool their risk with people who insisted that the central purse be used to pay for ineffective therapies like prayer.
However it's not he end of the matter. Faith is belief without proof or even in the face of contradictory evidence, and the belief in the healing power of prayer is based in faith and not reason. Mere facts make no difference. I'm sure that positive evidence from such trials would have been seized upon. Just look at the way certain parties were quick to endorse the one outlying trial that did seem to show a massive effect. "Does Prayer Influence the Success of In Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer?" but which many commentators suspect to be fraudulent. For people with faith negative evidence can be ignored first and reasoned away later.
Excuses for the failed trials include the Gods desire not to be put to the test. The suggestion that an omniscient being couldn't be blind to the control group and effected them too. However any explanation which gives a reason for hiding the effect of intercessory prayer surely has the potential to explain why side effects weren't observed either. It seems to me that you can't undermine a study which found prayer to be ineffective without also undermining the finding that it is at least safe.
If you imagine Faustian prayers directed to Satan it's easy to see how bargaining with powerful supernatural entities might have undesired consequences. If we disregard the scientific evidence of inefficacy then the only reason for believing intercessory prayer to be safe is faith in the omnibenevolence of the God to which the prayers are directed. Considering the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge we see how prayer directed at the creator may be received by a mad and evil god and thus how such faith in an omni benevolent response to prayer could conceivably be misplaced.
So such legal recognition of prayer as therapy would have to treat the intervention, just as any other medical intervention except for noting that it had an unknown reward with unknown risks. It seems to me then that we'd be legally mandating the idea that praying for someone requires their informed consent.
It's a legal minefield which could lead to the prosecution of well meaning people of faith, by grandstanding secularists or people of opposing beliefs wanting a cheap headline.
Can you imagine a grieving fundamentalist christian family finding out that their recently deceased mother was prayed for by a Muslim doctor. Something they see as prayer to a false God. If prayer is legally recognised as medicine then Dr Patel isn't just getting a slapped wrist for inappropriate religiosity at work. He's defending himself in a medical malpractice suit.
Thankfully I have the solution.
Before there's any federal statute on the books that treats prayer as medicine. Before consent is required before you can pray for anyone I shall take it upon myself to pray for everyone. From here in the UK,outside of their legislative jurisdiction.
Everyone alive now or yet to be born at any time they're ever sick or otherwise in need of any Gods help. I hereby ask God/Jesus/Allah/Buddha or anybody who's listening up there to be omnisciently aware of just when such help is appropriate and do what he omnipotently can to help out. Amen!
There you go. Done deal. Any further intercessory prayer is entirely superfluous. If the US government wishes to send me all the money that these health plans would otherwise have given to the Christian Science ministry then they know where to find me.
But I don't do it for the money or for the plaudits. No need to thank me, just the knowledge that I've had an imperceptible effect many billions of times over and will continue to do so for eternity, is enough to warm the cockles of my heart (imperceptibly).
[Updated on: Fri, 20 November 2009 13:20]
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible"
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