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ORIGINAL: DarkSteven

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

You miss the entire reason that prayer is valuable. It is valuable for the same reasons meditation is valuable. It is of value to the person who is praying. The brain chemistry of someone praying changes the same way that it does in those who meditate....

There was a atheist cardiologist that wrote a book called The Relaxation Response... read it before being dismissive about the power of prayer, it saves lives, like in relieving stress, reducing high blood pressure, which prolongs life.

Not to mention those who pray when they are ill, not those who pray for the ill... do you not see the difference? Those who pray for better results often get them because they believe they will be effective, like the placebo effect, and before you dismiss the placebo effect, like many scientists do, the most powerful healing comes from within. People always heal themselves, medical science just helps create conditions to further the healing power of the human body, but healing takes place within, and is controlled by the brain...

So before you go around dismissing prayer, why not take a look at what it does for the prayerful, and not for the prayed for

I agree.  My concept of G-d is that he is not required to respond to prayer.  I mean, who's in charge here?  So expecting that prayer is a payment, and that services are required to be rendered strikes me as silly and a kind of hubris.

That said, if I feel that something is important enough to pray about, it is important enough for me to care about.  And act upon.  It is a prioritizing and focusing tool.

And if I could pray about something, it would be to have the opportunities, energy, and health of when I was 20, along with the smarts I've gotten since then.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

So yeh the question is still open but only because it is impractical as a scientific issue... I see the issue as nothing more than another psuedo-scientific para-normal diversion. Fun to speculate upon over a beer ot two but no way to falsify, so not science, no matter how you attempt to cloak it as such.

While I thank you for acknowledging that the question is still open, the rest of your comment is unadulterated bullshit. The ability of the human mind to remotely affect the outcomes of physical processes is an established fact, and given the implications for our current scientific paradigm there are few areas more demanding of further research. To dismiss the whole business as nonsense is a reactionary and anti-scientific attitude that serves no other purpose than to protect your ignorance from being exposed by a deeper and fuller understanding of our world.

K.

Say what you mean, Kirata. Don't hold back.

"The ability of the human mind to remotely affect the outcomes of physical processes is an established fact.." Everything with you is "demanding of further research" when in fact all such claims are based on anecdotal tales and there is absolutely no physical evidence that the human brain can transmit energy through distance. Jeez, man! How long have you been traveling on the good ship Enterprise? Time to return to your home galaxy. Damn, your comments are embarrassing.

From the Wiki article:

With the increase in parapsychological investigation, there came an increase in opposition to both the findings of parapsychologists and the granting of any formal recognition of the field. Criticisms of the field were focused in the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (1976), now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and its periodical, Skeptical Inquirer.[11] Eventually, more mainstream scientists became critical of parapsychology as an endeavor, and statements by the National Academies of Science and the National Science Foundation cast a pall on the claims of evidence for parapsychology. Today, many cite parapsychology as an example of a pseudoscience.

Though there are still some parapsychologists active today, interest and activity has waned considerably since the 1970s.[15] To date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal. [15]

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

So yeh the question is still open but only because it is impractical as a scientific issue... I see the issue as nothing more than another psuedo-scientific para-normal diversion. Fun to speculate upon over a beer ot two but no way to falsify, so not science, no matter how you attempt to cloak it as such.

While I thank you for acknowledging that the question is still open, the rest of your comment is unadulterated bullshit. The ability of the human mind to remotely affect the outcomes of physical processes is an established fact, and given the implications for our current scientific paradigm there are few areas more demanding of further research. To dismiss the whole business as nonsense is a reactionary and anti-scientific attitude that serves no other purpose than to protect your ignorance from being exposed by a deeper and fuller understanding of our world.

K.

Say what you mean, Kirata. Don't hold back.

"The ability of the human mind to remotely affect the outcomes of physical processes is an established fact.." Everything with you is "demanding of further research" when in fact all such claims are based on anecdotal tales and there is absolutely no physical evidence that the human brain can transmit energy through distance. Jeez, man! How long have you been traveling on the good ship Enterprise? Time to return to your home galaxy. Damn, your comments are embarrassing.

From the Wiki article:

With the increase in parapsychological investigation, there came an increase in opposition to both the findings of parapsychologists and the granting of any formal recognition of the field. Criticisms of the field were focused in the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (1976), now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and its periodical, Skeptical Inquirer.[11] Eventually, more mainstream scientists became critical of parapsychology as an endeavor, and statements by the National Academies of Science and the National Science Foundation cast a pall on the claims of evidence for parapsychology. Today, many cite parapsychology as an example of a pseudoscience.

Though there are still some parapsychologists active today, interest and activity has waned considerably since the 1970s.[15] To date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal. [15]

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Which brings to mind a discussion on Coast to Coast the other night...not Alex Jones..the other guy. It was an interview with a paranormal investigator who approaches his research from a religious point of view. One of the issues discussed was why the religious are so quick to dismiss paranormal activity on a scientific basis, yet cling to their religious beliefs without any scientific evidence to support them.

Or are you not religious, just a religion scholar?

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

So, how does this phenomenon relate to your original premise that the efficacy of intercessionary prayer to aid afflicted people should be studied further?

Oh ferchrissake, do you eat, sleep, and shit straw? With respect to the efficacy of prayer, all I said was that the question is at least still open. I did not recommend further prayer studies. Anywhere. Period.

K.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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studies of quantum entanglement disprove the assumption that energy must be transmitted for effects at a distance to occur -- or that if there is some unknown energy, then, that its propagation speed is not limited by the speed of light.

Quantum entanglement is the observation that photons at a distance have "information" or may effect each other's physical properties. We are talking here about subatomic particles that share wavelength. So, how does this phenomenon relate to your original premise that the efficacy of intercessionary prayer to aid afflicted people should be studied further?

Are you defining prayer as beseeching God to intervene and heal the afflicted?

Or are you defining prayer as some form of meditation that can transmit healing through "good vibrations" human to human without the agency of god?

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

if the question is still open what else is there to do but to study it further? Are you so dense you cannot connect those simple dots?

Connect these dots: You made a connection in your head, concluded it must have occurred in my head, and then claimed I said it.

I never recommended further prayer research. Clear on that? It's your idea. It arises, as you have just explained above, from another idea, which is also your idea, that there is no other way to investigate the ability of human beings to affect remote outcomes.

These are all your ideas, Vincent. You're arguing with yourself. Have a nice day.

K.

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I saw something or other on one of those science programs and they said they you can affect a molecule just by looking at it through a microscope.

Popeye, I think you are referring to the "observer effect," which may be more easily understood at the molecular level where you are using electron beams to form an image of a molecule but the notion becomes kinda controversial when you slide down into the area of subatomic particles .... electrons or photons.

Each electron has properties that are measurable as both energy and matter. That is it has wavelength of energy and mass of matter. An electron is both matter and energy.

And that brings us into the world of quantum physics which is mostly mathematical equations of probability energy states. WTF? Yeah, that's what I said to. I had a hard time weaning my students away from the old solar system model of an electron in orbit around the nucleus of an atom. (Bohr's model) It really made them whine. <lol>

Observer effect depends on which Quantum "school" you adhere to.

Here is a link for further reading if you wish to putz around with this stuff.

Have fun with Schroedinger's cat and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which is only loosely related to the observer effect but is also interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

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ORIGINAL: nancygirl34652

oh well...i tried to lighten things up

Thank you for trying, ng. Sometimes the lightbulb is burned out and not much can be done about it. Seems to be a residential hazard of message boards.

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It's dark, and you're hungry and in prison. What one thing do you pray for?