In my post on the Templeton prayer study, I did not mention the outcome least congenial to prayer enthusiasts: not only did prayer do no good, it also caused real harm. “A significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain [whether or not they were being prayed for”].
How could it happen that prayees did worse than patients who were just let alone? Dr. Charles Bethea, co-author of the Templeton study and cardiologist at the Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City proposed that "it may have made [patients] uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?" It's a possible scenario -- it’s no secret that depressed and anxious patients do worse than happy ones. But the “patient is anxious” explanation doesn’t work for those who didn’t know that they were on the receiving end of prayers. Among the group of unwitting prayees, “18 percent suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers.” Researchers offered no hypothesis for this unanticipated result except to say that it was a chance outcome.
So let us review: when prayees know that they’re being prayed for, their decline is a product of anxiety; when they don’t know that they're being prayed for, their decline is the result of chance. In both cases, the unwanted phenomenon is explained by natural rather than supernatural causes.
Let us now imagine that the study produced contrary results and that the prayees had lower rates of complications than the unprayed. Would there not have been banner headlines in newspapers and on Fox proclaiming that prayer has been proven to be effective remedy for the complications of surgery?
The error in logic is enormous and obvious. When prayer fails, it's for natural reasons. If and when prayer succeeds, it's because of supernatural intervention. It's a flagrant double standard where a symmetrical standard should be mandatory. If prayer succeeds because of divine intervention, it's only logical that it must fail because of symmetrical supernatural intrusions -- because, for example, malificent demonic forces located the prayer providers, hijacked their prayers mid-flight, and turned good into evil. It's a difficult hypothesis to prove, it's true, but it's exactly as credible as the ideas that are put forward by prayer science.
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