The Pointlessness of Prayer

[Non Quixote]

I apologize in advance if the subject has been done to death, but does prayer also seem pointless to the majority of atheists who post here?  I don't mean for yourselves, of course it is pointless to pray to a god that you are certain doesn't exist, I mean pointless even if you do believe in the Christian god?

If the Christian god is omnipotent and is truly the Alpha and Omega to his followers, it reasonably follows that he is omniscient.  If he is omniscient then he is prescient.  If he is prescient he knows every single event that will happen unto the end of time. 

Absolute knowledge is what I mean, knowledge of events that is completely and wholly immutable.  Not a particle can change its position in the universe that the Christian god did not already foresee.

So will prayer change a future that is already written and known down to the smallest immutable event by the omnipotent Christian god?

I know this subject is interwoven with the illusion of free will, but I was hoping to address just prayer.  May not be possible to separate the two though.

The counter to this may be that the Christian god has already foreseen that he is going to grant these prayers.

And he has foreseen that that the person is going to pray.  Still immutable since it doesn't change anything.

[Non Quixote]

I don't necessarily disagree with anything that you said, and I was referring to materialistic prayers, thanks for pointing that out.  The placebo effect of prayer is one that I can't deny, I've felt it myself.

My thought was how can an otherwise rational creature (I'm assuming that at least some Christians are rational outside of religion) not see the fallacy of influencing a future that is already written and cannot be changed?

Compartmentalization is the obvious cheap choice, and simply not thinking about the process certainly works for folks who can do that.  But they must have other ways of coping with the paradox.

Here is an interesting article that I found. Written by theists. Experiments on Distant Intercessory Prayer
They set out to measure the effects of distant prayer, but in formulating their experiment plan they gave up.

Interesting thought, but controlling the variables would be a nightmare. 

Do all subjects have the same strength of faith?  How do you measure strength of faith?

Are they all praying straight to the Christian god or through an intermediary like Mary or Jesus (which can be argued as praying to an aspect of YHVH, but that would quickly become controversial)? 

Are they each reading from a scripted prayer or do they all just make something up on the fly?  Are they solo praying or do they have help?  If they have help (a family or congregation) how much help do they have? 

Do they pray at specific times or is it a random throughout the day thing?  How do you know that prayer made any difference, in other words, how do you know that they would have not gotten better if they did not pray?

Etc., etc., etc.  ad infinitum.

How do you quantify the quality, the quantity and the sincerity of a prayer?

[Stevil]

Interesting thought, but controlling the variables would be a nightmare. 

Do all subjects have the same strength of faith?  How do you measure strength of faith?
Etc., etc., etc.  ad infinitum.

How do you quantify the quality, the quantity and the sincerity of a prayer?

This would be a discovery process.
First, just do some blanket experiments. Include many people of different faiths, different denominations, different styles, let them use their own personal styles.

If this shows no significant statistical advantage. Then for most people, in most cases prayer doesn't work.

If it shows that there is a significant statistical advantage then further experiments would be required to try to find important aspects. Obvious ones would be different faiths, quantity and frequency. The experiments might show no significant statistical advantage based on quantity and frequency, but it might show a significant statistical advantage based on a particular faith.

The aspects that show no advantage, could improve people's lives because then they wouldn't waste time on that aspect. E.g. repetition praying, or spending time to choose one faith over another etc.
If it is discovered that request prayer is not answered then people can stop performing that type or prayer.

In my mind, going under the premise that the universe operates in exactly the way it would as if there is no god, then any prayer which expects any type of physical response from a god is a prayer that won't "work".

The smart spiritual people keep everything in the conceptual realm, never crossing over into physical realm. E.g. the Catholic belief that bread and wine becomes blood and flesh but remains physically as bread and wine.
Thus the world is consistent with the no god view, and thus god can't be disproven but people can choose to believe anyway.

[Non Quixote]

Interesting thought, but controlling the variables would be a nightmare. 

Do all subjects have the same strength of faith?  How do you measure strength of faith?
Etc., etc., etc.  ad infinitum.

How do you quantify the quality, the quantity and the sincerity of a prayer?

This would be a discovery process.
First, just do some blanket experiments. Include many people of different faiths, different denominations, different styles, let them use their own personal styles.

If this shows no significant statistical advantage. Then for most people, in most cases prayer doesn't work.

If it shows that there is a significant statistical advantage then further experiments would be required to try to find important aspects. Obvious ones would be different faiths, quantity and frequency. The experiments might show no significant statistical advantage based on quantity and frequency, but it might show a significant statistical advantage based on a particular faith.

The aspects that show no advantage, could improve people's lives because then they wouldn't waste time on that aspect. E.g. repetition praying, or spending time to choose one faith over another etc.
If it is discovered that request prayer is not answered then people can stop performing that type or prayer.

In my mind, going under the premise that the universe operates in exactly the way it would as if there is no god, then any prayer which expects any type of physical response from a god is a prayer that won't "work".

The smart spiritual people keep everything in the conceptual realm, never crossing over into physical realm. E.g. the Catholic belief that bread and wine becomes blood and flesh but remains physically as bread and wine.
Thus the world is consistent with the no god view, and thus god can't be disproven but people can choose to believe anyway.

To say that people who have pets live longer lives is fine.  You can see the pet and you can easily find out how long a person lives.  Two things that are easily quantifiable in a real, scientific sense.  Even then it does not follow that the two things are related.

"Prayer" is a nebulous thing which may mean something different to each member of the same congregation.  There is no way to verify a "prayer" unless you force everyone to pray out loud and in range of recording equipment, otherwise I could claim to be praying while I'm really just rerunning I Love Lucy in my head.

If it is to be a completely unscientific survey then fair enough, but until you quantify what a "prayer" consists of, and are able to measure it in a clinical setting you can't even begin to study what the effects are, if any.

I'm sure that you realize that this is a complete derail btw...

[Stevil]

To say that people who have pets live longer lives is fine.  You can see the pet and you can easily find out how long a person lives.  Two things that are easily quantifiable in a real, scientific sense.  Even then it does not follow that the two things are related.

"Prayer" is a nebulous thing which may mean something different to each member of the same congregation.  There is no way to verify a "prayer" unless you force everyone to pray out loud and in range of recording equipment, otherwise I could claim to be praying while I'm really just rerunning I Love Lucy in my head.

If it is to be a completely unscientific survey then fair enough, but until you quantify what a "prayer" consists of, and are able to measure it in a clinical setting you can't even begin to study what the effects are, if any.

I'm sure that you realize that this is a complete derail btw...

I disagree

If it has been tested and is consistently recreatable that people whom have pets live longer, then I would state if a person wants to live longer then owning a pet may impact that goal.

Now, let's say a person decides to go out and buy themselves a pet turtle, in order to live longer. This does not guarantee that they will live longer, and it does not necessarily increase the probability that this person lives longer.

Without any knowledge of turtles and the correlation of owner's life longevity, it would seem a good choice to buy a pet (albeit a turtle) and it would be reasonable to suggest that this will increase the probability of living longer. Because on average, pet owners live longer.

If further studies are performed and they find out that pet turtle owners on average live shorter lives, then we would know that the person has shortened their life span by owning the turtle, thus it was the wrong choice. But they weren't to know, given the previous information, they made the right choice in buying a pet (but maybe it would have been wiser to purchase the most commonly owned pet type).

Now we take turtle ownership out of the previous data and this shows us a more significant increase in longevity based on non turtle pet ownership. Of course it would make sense, knowing that pet type is important, to test each of the most common pet types. Thus we are now getting closer to knowing the truth and understanding how a person can use pets to improve their longevity.

There is one case which might confuse us. That is in the case where the current demographics of pet ownership exactly equals a balance where +ve life expectancy pets and –ve life expectancy pets cancel each other out thus the result would be equal to the life expectancy of people whom don't own pets. If pet type does impact life expectancy then it would be much more likely to see an overall –ve or +ve effect than an exact balance. If doing a general test consistently shows a difference then we are onto something really interesting.

Same thing can be applied to prayer.

[En_Route]

I apologize in advance if the subject has been done to death, but does prayer also seem pointless to the majority of atheists who post here?  I don't mean for yourselves, of course it is pointless to pray to a god that you are certain doesn't exist, I mean pointless even if you do believe in the Christian god?

If the Christian god is omnipotent and is truly the Alpha and Omega to his followers, it reasonably follows that he is omniscient.  If he is omniscient then he is prescient.  If he is prescient he knows every single event that will happen unto the end of time.  

Absolute knowledge is what I mean, knowledge of events that is completely and wholly immutable.  Not a particle can change its position in the universe that the Christian god did not already foresee.

So will prayer change a future that is already written and known down to the smallest immutable event by the omnipotent Christian god?

I know this subject is interwoven with the illusion of free will, but I was hoping to address just prayer.  May not be possible to separate the two though.

The counter to this may be that the Christian god has already foreseen that he is going to grant these prayers.

And he has foreseen that that the person is going to pray.  Still immutable since it doesn't change anything.

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist. Let us assume that someone with magical powers can foresee that because I have written this post and given your personality, personal circumstances etc. you will respond to it and not simply ignore it; that does not mean that my writing this post is not a cause of you composing a reply and a cause of the form which your reply will take.

[OldGit]

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist.

No, but it must mean that god is bored out of his skull.  Maybe that's why he loves having people burned and blown up and generally slaughtered - it's entertainment.

[En_Route]

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist.

No, but it must mean that god is bored out of his skull.  Maybe that's why he loves having people burned and blown up and generally slaughtered - it's entertainment.

It's a question I never considered- what on earth ( sorry, not on earth) does he do all day?

[hismikeness]

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist.

No, but it must mean that god is bored out of his skull.  Maybe that's why he loves having people burned and blown up and generally slaughtered - it's entertainment.

It's a question I never considered- what on earth ( sorry, not on earth) does he do all day?

Yes, especially because I've heard it said by many a Christian, "a day to God could be like a million years." 

[Stevil]

It's a question I never considered- what on earth ( sorry, not on earth) does he do all day?

"he" is busy making souls and fusing them to embrios, he is busy watching us, he is busy listening to "our" prayers.
He awaits/causes our deaths and is busy judging us.

Because of course, it is all about us.
We are so special, all of creation, all of time, was for us 

[Sandra Craft]

That's my take on prayer.  I think it's just to make the person praying feel better -- either by feeling they have more control than they do, or hooked into something comforting, whatever.  As long as we don't have laws compelling prayer, I'm fine with it.

[Non Quixote]

To say that people who have pets live longer lives is fine.  You can see the pet and you can easily find out how long a person lives.  Two things that are easily quantifiable in a real, scientific sense.  Even then it does not follow that the two things are related.

"Prayer" is a nebulous thing which may mean something different to each member of the same congregation.  There is no way to verify a "prayer" unless you force everyone to pray out loud and in range of recording equipment, otherwise I could claim to be praying while I'm really just rerunning I Love Lucy in my head.

If it is to be a completely unscientific survey then fair enough, but until you quantify what a "prayer" consists of, and are able to measure it in a clinical setting you can't even begin to study what the effects are, if any.

I'm sure that you realize that this is a complete derail btw...

I disagree

If it has been tested and is consistently recreatable that people whom have pets live longer, then I would state if a person wants to live longer then owning a pet may impact that goal.

Now, let's say a person decides to go out and buy themselves a pet turtle, in order to live longer. This does not guarantee that they will live longer, and it does not necessarily increase the probability that this person lives longer.

Without any knowledge of turtles and the correlation of owner's life longevity, it would seem a good choice to buy a pet (albeit a turtle) and it would be reasonable to suggest that this will increase the probability of living longer. Because on average, pet owners live longer.

If further studies are performed and they find out that pet turtle owners on average live shorter lives, then we would know that the person has shortened their life span by owning the turtle, thus it was the wrong choice. But they weren't to know, given the previous information, they made the right choice in buying a pet (but maybe it would have been wiser to purchase the most commonly owned pet type).

Now we take turtle ownership out of the previous data and this shows us a more significant increase in longevity based on non turtle pet ownership. Of course it would make sense, knowing that pet type is important, to test each of the most common pet types. Thus we are now getting closer to knowing the truth and understanding how a person can use pets to improve their longevity.

There is one case which might confuse us. That is in the case where the current demographics of pet ownership exactly equals a balance where +ve life expectancy pets and –ve life expectancy pets cancel each other out thus the result would be equal to the life expectancy of people whom don't own pets. If pet type does impact life expectancy then it would be much more likely to see an overall –ve or +ve effect than an exact balance. If doing a general test consistently shows a difference then we are onto something really interesting.

Same thing can be applied to prayer.

What you propose is akin to the ice cream drowning fallacy.  Just because there are more drowning deaths when ice cream sales are high doesn't mean that ice cream has anything to do with the drownings. 

That some pet owners live longer than the norm doesn't mean that buying a pet will grant you a longer lifespan.  I agree that studies regarding pet ownership and longevity are interesting but there are so many variables that the best that you will wind up with is a very general inferrence or probable trend. 

Unless of course you can clone a set of humans and absolutely control their lives from birth to death.  Then you would have something resembling a scientific study.

In order to conduct an experiment on whether or not prayer works the very first thing to be done is to define "prayer" rigidly enough to be studied.  Saying that prayer is when a person prays is an extremely ill defined criteria.  What defines a "prayer"?

[En_Route]

To say that people who have pets live longer lives is fine.  You can see the pet and you can easily find out how long a person lives.  Two things that are easily quantifiable in a real, scientific sense.  Even then it does not follow that the two things are related.

"Prayer" is a nebulous thing which may mean something different to each member of the same congregation.  There is no way to verify a "prayer" unless you force everyone to pray out loud and in range of recording equipment, otherwise I could claim to be praying while I'm really just rerunning I Love Lucy in my head.

If it is to be a completely unscientific survey then fair enough, but until you quantify what a "prayer" consists of, and are able to measure it in a clinical setting you can't even begin to study what the effects are, if any.

I'm sure that you realize that this is a complete derail btw...

I disagree

If it has been tested and is consistently recreatable that people whom have pets live longer, then I would state if a person wants to live longer then owning a pet may impact that goal.

Now, let's say a person decides to go out and buy themselves a pet turtle, in order to live longer. This does not guarantee that they will live longer, and it does not necessarily increase the probability that this person lives longer.

Without any knowledge of turtles and the correlation of owner's life longevity, it would seem a good choice to buy a pet (albeit a turtle) and it would be reasonable to suggest that this will increase the probability of living longer. Because on average, pet owners live longer.

If further studies are performed and they find out that pet turtle owners on average live shorter lives, then we would know that the person has shortened their life span by owning the turtle, thus it was the wrong choice. But they weren't to know, given the previous information, they made the right choice in buying a pet (but maybe it would have been wiser to purchase the most commonly owned pet type).

Now we take turtle ownership out of the previous data and this shows us a more significant increase in longevity based on non turtle pet ownership. Of course it would make sense, knowing that pet type is important, to test each of the most common pet types. Thus we are now getting closer to knowing the truth and understanding how a person can use pets to improve their longevity.

There is one case which might confuse us. That is in the case where the current demographics of pet ownership exactly equals a balance where +ve life expectancy pets and –ve life expectancy pets cancel each other out thus the result would be equal to the life expectancy of people whom don't own pets. If pet type does impact life expectancy then it would be much more likely to see an overall –ve or +ve effect than an exact balance. If doing a general test consistently shows a difference then we are onto something really interesting.

Same thing can be applied to prayer.

What you propose is akin to the ice cream drowning fallacy.  Just because there are more drowning deaths when ice cream sales are high doesn't mean that ice cream has anything to do with the drownings. 

That some pet owners live longer than the norm doesn't mean that buying a pet will grant you a longer lifespan.  I agree that studies regarding pet ownership and longevity are interesting but there are so many variables that the best that you will wind up with is a very general inferrence or probable trend. 

Unless of course you can clone a set of humans and absolutely control their lives from birth to death.  Then you would have something resembling a scientific study.

In order to conduct an experiment on whether or not prayer works the very first thing to be done is to define "prayer" rigidly enough to be studied.  Saying that prayer is when a person prays is an extremely ill defined criteria.  What defines a "prayer"?

There is  some research which indicates a correlation between health benefits  and pet ownership, taking into account co- factors such as age , income, sociability etc though the reasons for the linkage remain unclear. And of course a healthy scepticism needs to inform any discussion of medical research findings. There is plenty of social science research done which does not require anyone to regulate the lives of the human subjects. There has been a study done on testing the power of prayer which showed nil effect on the outcomes for medical patients.

[Non Quixote]

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist. Let us assume that someone with magical powers can foresee that because I have written this post and given your personality, personal circumstances etc. you will respond to it and not simply ignore it; that does not mean that my writing this post is not a cause of you composing a reply and a cause of the form which your reply will take.

You are implying that you or I had a choice to post or not to post.  If our actions are known beforehand we have no choice but to perform those actions.  If we have no choice other than one set course, then that becomes an action, not a choice.  We are actors in a film that has already been shot.

You cannot choose between the red pill or the blue pill if only the blue pill is available to you.

I would argue that the thing (creator) who caused the original motion is the only true cause and that free will is an illusion.  Not an original argument I know, but it's one that I completely agree with.

[En_Route]

The ability to foresee everything doesn't mean cause and effect cease to exist. Let us assume that someone with magical powers can foresee that because I have written this post and given your personality, personal circumstances etc. you will respond to it and not simply ignore it; that does not mean that my writing this post is not a cause of you composing a reply and a cause of the form which your reply will take.

You are implying that you or I had a choice to post or not to post.  If our actions are known beforehand we have no choice but to perform those actions.  If we have no choice other than one set course, then that becomes an action, not a choice.  We are actors in a film that has already been shot.

You cannot choose between the red pill or the blue pill if only the blue pill is available to you.

I would argue that the thing (creator) who caused the original motion is the only true cause and that free will is an illusion.  Not an original argument I know, but it's one that I completely agree with.

Merely knowing  advance in what someone will choose does not mean that they have not made a choice.
In my own view, free will cannot logically exist, irrespective of the existence of any alleged creator.