Talk:Efficacy of prayer

"Studies"

[1] - good removal I think. Yes, if the content is about studies, it should be supported by scientific sources (however, none of them in this field seems to be particularly strong or convincing). The claims by religious writers and Pope are not science and do not need such sources, but then they should not be in the section entitled "studies". My very best wishes (talk) 16:32, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

But that was a very bad edit I think. The subject of this page is not really a question of science, but also a matter of religion and personal beliefs. The science (if any) and religion should be described separately, if possible, but simply removing all well sourced religious aspects of the subject is not acceptable. My very best wishes (talk) 23:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

There is another article on the spiritual meaning of Intercession. Isn't this article specifically about what science has to say? Jzsj (talk) 23:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

What makes something "efficacious"? If we are to talk about outcomes, it would have to be something measurable. I pray and this needle moves, e.g. If you think there should be another definition, I think it has to be contextualized. Intercession, e.g., is well contextualized. jps (talk) 03:38, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps the word "science" is misleading. "Controlled studies" would better describe this kind of science: less mechanical. Jzsj (talk) 06:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

"Controlled studies of prayer" might be a better title for the article, agreed. jps (talk) 12:38, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Note that over two years after this article was created (23 November 2007) another more precise article was created, Studies on intercessory prayer (8 April 2010), and the suggestion that they be merged received no response (15 August 2015). The "Studies" article receives about 1800-3400 hits a month, while this "Efficacy of prayer" article receives about 2500-5000 hits a month. The article on Intercession receives 5500 to 8500 hits a month. Faith healing receives 5000 to about 15000 with one exceptional month of c. 45000. Intercession of saints receives 3500-7000 hits a month. My question is, what remains in this article when one removes the material covered in these other articles? Do people come here looking for an answer that is not in these other articles? If so, what do we have to offer? I suggest that we are promising more than we can deliver. If one could prove the existence of the spiritual and of God, then there would be no faith. And those who are seeking some sort of physical substance between prayers and those prayed for should wait until some evidence of such a substance exists. I suggest that, given the state of the article now, it should become a redirect to Studies on intercessory prayer, where the other articles mentioned should be under "See also". Jzsj (talk) 13:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I think redirecting this article to "studies of intercessory prayer" makes a whole lot of sense. jps (talk) 15:32, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, I am just saying that religious beliefs can be included to this page if they are clearly defined on the page as not science, notable and well sourced. My very best wishes (talk) 14:24, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

The question remains as to what this article covers that is not covered in more specific, carefully circumscribed articles? Jzsj (talk) 14:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I think this page should first define what is the "efficacy of prayer". At the first glance, this is something simple. Let's say a believer asks God to give him a parking spot for his car. How often such prayer would result in success compare to a control experiment when someone else is looking for a parking spot in the same place? But I am not aware of such experiments or scientific literature. My very best wishes (talk) 15:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

As discussed in the section below, we have identified at least three reasons that people pray: to make requests, for psychological benefits, and for spiritual growth. The efficacy of prayer as a way to get things has been well tested (at least in medicine) and debunked. The question of psychological benefits is more complex. When we consider that prayer (without western bias) can be so broadly defined as to include things like meditation, the question of psychological benefits should be seriously considered. The third reason (spiritual growth) includes things like asking God to forgive sins, which is clearly untestable. This deserves a note, but not too much emphasis as it is mostly outside the scope of the article. Wikiman2718 (talk) 22:37, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that all sound reasonable, but ... If that has been completely debunked in medicine (yes, that is what I thought), what a hell the USA government is funding such studies in 2020 [2]. Someone had to authorize it, and it was not Trump, but an NIH Study Section. My very best wishes (talk) 19:53, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

That's a good point. Unfortunately, most research funding is wasted (see metascience). Wikiman2718 (talk) 21:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

They do provide link to already published refs [3]. First one: Religious coping and depression among elderly, hospitalized medically ill men. According to authors, the prayer (and apparently other related activities) helps to fight depression ("These findings suggest that religious coping is a common behavior that is inversely related to depression in hospitalized elderly men."). That sounds plausible. I have no reason to think they fabricated data or whatever. That's the efficacy of prayer. My very best wishes (talk) 15:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

That study is non-preferred because it is old (1992) and because it is not a review or a meta-analysis. While it is on a relevant subject, it would be better to use studies that discuss prayer specifically, rather than the more general "religious coping". With $5 million a year in research going to this, I expect that there are some top quality sources out there. this search returns over 1000 results. Wikiman2718 (talk) 21:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Fortunately, a lot of them are actually about Physical therapy and exercise, but yes, you are right. My very best wishes (talk) 21:39, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

"Medical views" section

In this section the practice of public faith healers should be distinguished from the practice of individuals who might believe in the (rare) possibility of miracles, and who trust in the power of prayer to benefit in a variety of ways that are diverse and less accessible to statistical studies. Faith in, or denial of, a spiritual aspect to human nature will impact one's approach to this aspect of prayer. This section fails to make clear the necessary distinctions. Jzsj (talk) 06:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Without a clear empirical basis, it's pretty hard to know how to make such a distinction. Small effects are still effects, after all, and even if a miracle was "rare", if the effect exists it should be measurable given enough data. Those who have faith in miracles but say that they are not measurable typically are not making an empirical argument but rather one that seems based more on a radical skepticism of empiricism. Is that routinized? jps (talk) 12:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

The distinction is between those who are in the business of faith healing and those who pray privately for strength and help, and on rare occasions claim a supernatural response. The latter would probably deny the provability of faith, while accepting that in rare cases healings do happen in the context of intercessory prayer. Controlled studies (to prove the existence of some sort of God or spiritual world) are most likely abhorrent to most believers. It's not the way that the God they believe in works! Jzsj (talk) 13:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Understood. The problem, then, becomes one of definition and focus. I think it's fine to mention that some believers think there are instances of miraculous events and are philosophically resistant to subjecting these beliefs to controlled study, but that probably can be done in a single sentence (we already have some sources in the article which indicate this). I don't know that much more can be said about the subject, however, because there really is no other way to define efficacy in the context of faith healing. Unfortunately, faith healing itself is a rather peculiar topic because it's sometimes defined strictly and sometimes defined broadly and there does not seem to be a consensus on which definition is correct. jps (talk) 15:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

This seems to me to throw the focus back onto the previous section here on "Studies". Does this article have a niche at all, or is it just a repetition of other articles, with Studies on intercessory prayer arising later better targeted than this article. Jzsj (talk) 15:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't know. Much of what I removed from the article was a mishmash of material that was completely unrelated to questions of "efficacy", at least what I could see. "Efficacy" is a very well-defined idea in the context of medicine. C.S. Lewis wrote a book on the efficacy of prayer (with that as a title) which, in typical Lewis fashion, tried to redefine what is meant by "efficacy" in the context of modern Christian belief, but as far as I can tell this new definition is nowhere adopted except by admirers and (by means of rejection) by detractors. So I also am not sure what's left. jps (talk) 15:46, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I propose that this article, since it has such a broad title, become a summary article with all coverage in detail directed to the several other articles which I mention in the section above on "Studies". The other alternative seems to me to be to simply eliminate the article and make it a redirect to Studies on intercessory prayer. Jzsj (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

It seems like both these articles are on exactly the same subject. Why not just merge them? Wikiman2718 (talk) 23:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if this article will ever fulfill its apparent purpose, of explaining the efficacy of the whole realm of prayers. There seems to be no well-defined limit in the article on what prayer it is speaking about. While the current first sentence in the lead speaks of intercessory prayer, for oneself or others, the second sentence expands this to include what is said here about other forms of prayer such as meditation. I've extended the "See also" section at the end of the article to indicate most of the Wikipedia articles on intercessory-type prayer. But "Christian prayer" gives a sense of the full extent of the topic of prayer. Where are we to go from here? Jzsj (talk) 23:53, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Now that you point it out, I guess that meditation is a kind of prayer. That makes this whole efficacy discussion a bit more interesting. I would rather have one big article that discusses the efficacy of every kind of prayer imaginable. If for some types of prayer there is too much text to fit in one article, we can break them off into a separate article and link to it from the main article. Wikiman2718 (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm leaning toward the break-off idea, and eliminate this attempt to handle them all together. Each type of prayer has its own efficacy, and there is great diversity even in the "main four" for Catholics: adoration, repentance, thanksgiving, supplication. Add to these the diverse prayers mentioned under Christian prayer and I suspect that this article will end up more defining the different purposes of prayer than giving a fair evaluation of the efficacy of most of them, since even the intended effects are in many cases difficult to delimit or tie down. We see how little can be learned from "Studies on intercessory prayer"; will it be any easier for the more complex forms of prayer? Jzsj (talk) 00:26, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

So far I have seen that there are at least two types of prayer-- asking for things (which seems not to work) and prayer done for psychological benefit (which might possibly work). Are there other reasons that people pray? Wikiman2718 (talk) 00:36, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

For mature believers, spiritual growth is by far the main benefit sought from their prayer, alone or together, but the effectiveness is hardly open to scientific proof, and since there are about the same number of declared atheists/agnostics and of declared Christians editing Wikipedia (about 4000 in each Wiki-category), hard proof would likely be demanded for any statement made. Jzsj (talk) 00:47, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I certainly agree that science cannot measure spiritual growth, but the other two things (psychological outcomes and requests delivered) are most certainly in the realm of science. If we can agree that these are the three things a person may get from prayer, we may be able to write a good article on this subject. Wikiman2718 (talk) 00:51, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Both these have been the subject of scientific studies reported in the article Studies on intercessory prayer, with hardly any notable results. Jzsj (talk) 01:00, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Notable results or not, we can use what we've got. I would be very interested in writing an article on the efficacy of prayer based on these three definitions of efficacy. Wikiman2718 (talk) 01:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Studies on intercessory prayer

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. Chhandama (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

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These two articles are on basically the same subject. I propose that we merge them. Wikiman2718 (talk) 21:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support. Daask (talk) 13:33, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
• Note. It was also proposed in 2013.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.