The Power of Prayer

WAIT!  Didn't you say you are an atheist?  And you are writing about the power of prayer?  Isn't that just a wee bit contradictory?

Not at all, my friend.  Just because I think prayer has power doesn't mean I think that power originates from a magical, supreme being.  Doctors have long known that placebos work (at least to a degree greater than one would expect from random happenstance).  Just as with prayer, the reason for this is not fully explainable with our current knowledge.  There are several possible explanations for why prayer might work, though.  I can't promise that those explanations are definitive answers to the question, but I feel any or most of the explanations make more sense that a mythical being granting your wishes.

Let us take an example.  Given two college students, both are of approximately the same mental acuity.  Both have the same comprehension level.  Both study the same number of hours.  Both approach test hour apprehensively.  One prays to a god, believes that god will help him, and goes into the testing room calmly and with a certainty of his knowledge.  The other is still apprehensive as he takes the test.  Is it any wonder that the one who prayed might do better?  Was it the hand of God?  Or was it the demeanor of the student?  It is my contention that while the prayer helped place the student into a "test taking" mode, rubbing a lucky stone or wearing lucky socks would have done the same thing if the person believed it would. 

So "prayer" worked.  It just didn't work because some magical being intervened.

Ok, that covers part of it.  But what, you ask, about prayer that heals the sick?

How about this?  IT JUST DOESN'T FREAKING HAPPEN!   Sure, some people who get prayed for get better.  But so do some people that no one in their right mind would want to get better.  Attitude of the patient has much to do with cure rate.  You can literally die of a broken heart.  Yes, you can think yourself dead!  And you can (often...or at least sometimes) think yourself well.  The human body is a wonderful thing and you can cure yourself (many times) just by deciding to get better.  No supreme being involved.  But if that belief in a supreme being, as wrong as it might be, is a true belief, then your prayers to the (false) supreme being can be fruitful. 

Confidence is a great healer.  It would be, in my mind, best if that confidence is based on the knowledge of human capabilities.  But even confidence based on a fallacious belief works to the same end.  It would be wrong (at least to my present thinking) to remove a crutch to confidence built on a fallacy (belief in a god) without replacing it with the confidence built on knowledge.  Healing is healing, even if the source of that healing is wrongly identified. 

There is one other possible explanation of the efficacy of prayer.  This explanation also explains to a degree why some might say divination methods such as crystal balls, tarot, or even esp might work.  I will leave an in depth discussion of that and those to another post.  For now, just a brief description of a, I repeat, possible! way in which prayer might be seen as working.

I think most people today are aware that the brain sends out energy in the form of brain waves.  Those waves  ARE energy and can be measured as energy.  Can those brain waves IMPART that energy to another?  Will others be influenced by the energy sent out by a strong sender? 

There are people who can walk into a room and people just KNOW that person has arrived.  Hey, there are used car salesmen who can sell a Ford to the local GM dealer!  My hypothesis is that there really are people with such strong brain waves that they can control (at least in a limited way) the actions, thoughts, and beliefs of others.  Billy Graham and Hitler are two examples.  What makes charisma?  Brainwaves?  I don't know.  But it's worth considering. 

WRONG AGAIN!

Let's see...where did I leave this?  Oh, yes, God had just gotten P'd O (the literally correct abbreviation for what the hoi polloi call po'd) and drowned the world.  Except, of course, for the most honorable and faithful Noah and family.  Noah...who, as soon as he knew it was safe...got drunk and knocked up his daughters.

GOT IT WRONG AGAIN, BIG G! 

God was real big on destroying His own creations.  (Remind you of a precocious, self-centered two year old?)
Take a look at Sodom and Gomorrah.  God decided to wipe out all them there evil folk and once again He's going to let His one faithful servant, Lot, survive.  So He sends down a couple of angels to warn Lot.  Lot meets them on the street and says, "Hey, cool.  Come on over to the pad for a cold one and lets talk about this."  The angels (who, you should remember, are immortal.  As in, they're not worried about where they're going to get a hot dog or a place to sleep, and muggers just aren't a realistic concern) say they're fine on the street, but Lot insists that they drop by the house.
So, they do, being polite angels of destruction that they are.  Now, seems the townspeople saw the strangers and went over to Lots demanding to know just who the heck they were; wanted them to come out and explain themselves. 
So what does Lot do?  Not wanting these indestructible angels to be inconvenienced in any way, Lot sends his virgin daughters out to the crowd and tells the crowd to have fun with them.  Just don't bother the visitors...who couldn't be harmed by the crowd in a million years.
Ain't religion fun?  How would YOU like to be the daughter of a righteous man like Lot?   

Is God a masochist?

Does He like being hurt?  Does He have a self-image problem?  Is He self destructive?
Hey, now, there's a question.  If God is all powerful and can do all things, can He  just stop being?  Can He kill himself?  Would the world stop if He did?

But I digress.  The reason I asked the questions at the beginning of this rambling is that it seems very strange that an omniscient, omnipotent being should fail at everything  He attempts. 

Take a look!

 First we are expected to believe that God has always existed.  Yep, He existed for quadrillions and quadrillions and quadrillions of years BEFORE He existed for another quadrillions and quadrillions of years.  I guess He was just up there in Heaven walking on those streets of gold, admiring the gates of pearl, and wondering what He was going to do with that hot place down the road.

 Then He got lonely; or maybe He just wanted someone or something to admire Him.  So He invented angels.  Made 'em immortal and all.  And we know how that ended up.  Revolt!  Yep, these God creations who spent every day up close and personal with Him just didn't like His management style.  Fully one third of them said to heck with Him and went their own way.  And I wonder how many of the rest wanted to go but just didn't have the guts!

Ok, so angels didn't work out all that well.  At least it gave Him a purpose for the hot place; He let the revolters run it.  What next?  Hey, how about something mortal; something that will self destruct in a few years?  Might they not be easier to get to listen?  Especially if I promise them immortality eventually if they do what I say?  Them folk gonna be so happy!  They gonna love me so much!

 Oops, again!  The very first two out of the chute messed up.  Looks like He just couldn't get anything right.

Now what?  Well, He figured if He made them work for a living maybe they'd see how great it would be to bow down to Him.  So He just let them fend for themselves.  And guess what!  They LIKED it!  Plenty of sex, plenty of fruits and nuts and animals to eat.  A glass of beer every evening.  Roll up a little herb and smoke it every now and then.  Life was great!  So He got pissed and drowned them.