Subject: Scientific testing of prayer

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 13:32:44 +0200

This post is somewhat (?) off-topic, but I hope that some of the list members
will find it interesting, or at least amusing. This idea came up during
lunch (see what IBMers do doing lunch? ...)

The idea is to finally check, using scientific methods, whether prayer
works or not. This could have all sorts of theological and scientific
implications.

I suggest three experiments, to check the success of prayer, and what
kind of meta-physical limitations it might have.

Phase 1 - "I pray he gets well"
-------------------------------

This experiment is quite simple. Get a list of 1,000 current hospital
patients. Divide them randomly into two groups of 500 names, a "prayer
group" and a "control group". The researcher (or his favorite man of the
cloth) prays for the 500 people in the "prayer group", and does nothing
for the control group. For the experiment to be blind, the researcher does
not contact the patients and does not inform them on which group they are.
For it to be "double-blind", the groups are chosen randomly by a person who
knows nothing about their members (not even their names).

After some time (say, a year), the medical outcome of all 1,000 patients
is checked (how many survived, how much time did the survivers spend
hospitalized, their state of health after a year, etc.), and the researcher
checks whether there is a statistically-significant benefit in the prayer.

Phase 2 - "I pray he's ok"
--------------------------

The previous experiment dealt with prayer about the future. A person is
sick, and you pray that he gets well. The second experiment deals with
fait accompli: someone that may or may not be already dead, but you don't
know and you pray that he is in fact alive. A famous recent example is the
tsunami disaster, where people prayed for the lives of the missing persons,
even though at the time all these missing persons were already either alive
or already dead.

For this experiment, the researcher asks a hospital for a list of 1,000
patients from a year back. Again, this list is randomly (using a double-
blind method) broken into two lists of equal size, the "prayer group" and
the "control group". The researcher prays for the prayer group, and after
completing the prayer (and giving God enough time to act), checks the
medical outcome of the people in both groups (which is already known).
Did prayer have a statistically-significant effect in this experiment too?

Remember that in this experiement we are trying to change, with prayer,
something that has already happened. By the time of the experiments, all
patients had already died or recuperated. Nevertheless, the person praying
does not know anything about the fate of the people he's praying about,
and to him, both outcomes are still possible. Can something that nobody
knows about (or at least, you don't know about) still be changed? It's an
interesting philosophical question.

Phase 3 - "Shroedinger's prayer"
--------------------------------

To people versed in quantum physics, reading the above discussion reminds
of another scenario. What will happen if instead of praying for something
that had already happened to change, you pray for something that still
wasn't decided (as far as quantum physics is concerned), and both outcomes
are still possible?

Consider a farm with 1,000 "Shroedinger's cats": closed cages, each
containing a cat and a lethal gas capsule, which opens and kills the cat
with probability 1/2 (e.g., an alpha particle, which is emitted with 1/2
probability each hour, operates the trigger).

Now, you spend the entire hour praying for the well-being of the cats,
and then you open all the cages and count the number of live and dead
cats. If the number of live cats is statistically larger than 500, your
prayer worked! If the number of live cats is much lower than 500, then
your prayer worked, but did exactly the opposite from what you wanted :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Wednesday, Feb 9 2005, 30 Shevat 5765
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |All those who believe in psychokinesis,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |raise my hand.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 13:58:45 +0200

> works or not. This could have all sorts of theological and scientific

I guess that this is not such a new idea after all, and people already
tried these experiments, with different results. Check out, for example:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.html
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/chemistry/faculty/dvg/Prayer.ppt

and many more similar pages on Google.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Wednesday, Feb 9 2005, 30 Shevat 5765
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |This '|' is not a pipe.
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 13:59:38 +0200

> kind of meta-physical limitations it might have.

[... experiment descriptions have been snipped ...]

Another experiment is to have 1000 Jews try to pronounce the Sacred Name
("Hashem hameforash") and see if and how many of them have been smitten
by a lightning (the "promised" fate of people who dare to despoil the
Sacred name by uttering it).
                                          --- Omer
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---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 17:38:42 +0200

> Sacred name by uttering it).

I'm pretty sure the lightning is a Hollywood invention.

The bible says in the 3rd commandment, Exodus 20:7 (my translation as
I understand it): "Thou shalt not say the name of Jehova thy God in
vain, for Jehova shalt not absolve he who sayth his name in vain"

Other translations [1]:

KJV - 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for
the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

NRSV -7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your
God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

TEV - 7 "Do not use my name for evil purposes, for I, the LORD your
God, will punish anyone who misuses my name.

See? No lightning. All it does is make you "guilty" of an arguably
unabsolvable sin. You got to be precise with these things when you're
making a scientific experiment, it's human lives we're talking about.

However, in Kings I 18:36 - 18:39, Eliahu is calling Jehova and in
turn fire comes down from the sky and burns the sacrificial bull.
Perhaps Eliahu knew of the effects of saying His name, and moved just
in time for the lightening to strike the altar instead of him.

-- Arik

[1] http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/10commandments-texts.htm#3

---

From: "kamikaza_mic" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 17:24:57 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Arik Baratz <arik.baratz@g...> wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 13:59:38 +0200, Omer Zak <omerz@a...> wrote:
> 

Actaully the way I read all these is not that you shouldn't say the
Lords real name but more like

Don't dare say that I've sent you without a good reason or I really
won't like it and I won't forgive you for it.

> making a scientific experiment, it's human lives we're talking about.

And you don't know of numerous other vain scientific experiments that
deal with human (or near human monkeys or just lowly animals) for no
good reason.

Do you know how many vain experiments are done on monkeys just to make
sure that the old experiments still work as they claim since people
can't think of something better to do? (I may argue new ones and a
case by case basis although I don't support them, but reconducting old
ones ?!? although thats an all other discusion)

> in time for the lightening to strike the altar instead of him.

Probably he just wanted to start a fire to roast the bull and didn't
have a match so he desided to tount god instead ;-)

---

From: "kamikaza_mic" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 17:41:08 -0000

> Phase 1 - "I pray he gets well"
[ ... ]
> checks whether there is a statistically-significant benefit in the
prayer.

You have a problem here that you don't know if they contracted
something else in the mean time. You need to pray that they get and
STAY well for the next year.

> Phase 2 - "I pray he's ok"

[...]

I see this one more as comforting prayer since someone knows if the
person is ok or not, even if its only the person. This can be viewed
as oh god please take me to a parallel universe where the person
servived if s/he hasn't in this one.

On the other hand if you view time as a prameter instead of a
consecutive action (another spacial parameter) then the previous test
and the current one are actually the same.

Looking at the theory of realtivity BTW you can move in time if you
just move to a place of lesser/higher mass since then you are in a
place that's younger/older then where you were earlier (speed up or
move back in absolute time). The more difficult problem is of course
to move back in time at the current location you are at (to move
forward you can always go to a place where time travels slower and
then come back).

> Phase 3 - "Shroedinger's prayer"

If I understand the little quantum physics I know correctly, then
quantum physics is more in the direction of having two cats in to
boxes with independent poison capsules and by opening one box by the
state of the cat you know what happend in the other without opening
it, despite the two events being independent (the inconsistancy with
the theory of relativity since information seems to travel at an
infinite speed while the theory of relativity claims it can't go
faster then light).

> nyh@m...             |-----------------------------------------

---

From: Redbeard <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:50:50 +0200

<snipped>
> infinite speed while the theory of relativity claims it can't go
</snipped>

Quite wrong... The phenomenon you are referring to is called quantum
entanglement, or as Einstein referred to it "spooky action at a
distance". But it can't be used to pass any information, so there is
no inconsistency with the theory of relativity.

I'll over simplify, but essentially each quanta in an entangled pair
has properties (momentum, spin) that are unknown until a measurement
is performed on one particle or the other. When a property of one of
the particles is measured, corresponding information about its
entangled mate is instantly determined. But when you try to measure
one of the properties, you change the other and also the entangled
pair and thus no information can be passed. You can't influence which
spin it will turn to, for instance.

-Tal