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.
