These two topics are polar opposites. We usually do no associate concepts, related to God and Science, together. The beliefs behind both are extremely different. There are many disputes regarding the topics.
“Does prayer heal?” Andrew presented two lectures in class that helped to understand the collision of these completely different topics. Prayer is defined as “a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship.”
“More than half (55%) of Americans said they pray every day, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, while 23% said they pray weekly or monthly and 21% said they seldom or never pray. Even among those who are religiously unaffiliated, 21% said they pray daily. Women (65%) are more likely than men (46%) to pray every day. Older people (60%) are more likely than younger adults (45%) to say they pray daily.”
Science can be defined in a few ways. Below are three from our August 27th slides:
- “systematic collection of data through observation and experiments”
- “development of theories to organize and explain all this”
- “use of professional institutions and norms such as peer review to subject claims to scrutiny thus develop reliable knowledge”
Hypothesis will be conducted before observations and experiments take place. These would be the null and alternative hypotheses. For this topic on prayer with science, our null hypothesis states that prayer does not heal. The alternative is that prayer does make a difference. The x-variable [independent] is being used to measure prayer and the y-variable [dependent] is being used to measure how many patients stay in the hospital, die, heal or how quickly each heals.
Let us put these concepts into action. A study revolving around prayer was conducted by the Rabin Medical Center in Israel, from 1990-1996. The patients with bloodstream bacterial infections, about 3393, were part of a random double blind placebo trial. Individuals were placed into two separate groups. The one group was prayed for daily, while the other group was not, or controlled. The idea behind this study was to determine if prayer healed. After the trial was completed, the results concluded that “28.1% of the prayed-for people died, while 30.2% of the controlled people died” as well. The alternative hypothesis would then be rejected because the action of praying for the one group of individuals did not make a difference. In other words, both groups had a specific percentage of deaths.
Results can be placed into three different categories. These are correct decision, false positive and false negative. The sectors are formed from two sources; state of the world and scientist’s decisions. The negative and positives do not initially mean the test was wrong or correct. It means that something may or may not be occurring with the observation or experiment. For example, false positive is when it is stated that prayer helps people heal when in-fact it does not. False negative is when it is stated that prayer does not help people heal but actually it does.
The study resulted in a false positive because prayer did not heal the individuals with bloodstream infections. If we think back to our resulted percentages, not everyone that was prayed for ended up dying. This makes it possible for the study to also have a false negative. Those percentages show that “prayer reduced morality by 2.1%.”
“Could this difference be due to chance alone?” Since the study initially ended with both a false positive and negative, the overall “conclusion may not be right or wrong.” Chance definitely plays a huge role in science. There can be several underlying factors that cause the results obtained from a study.
Chance can also be apart of prayer. I had arthritis since I was three years old. Everyone prayed for me and now it is in remission. This being said, I always took medicine and used therapy exercises. Would I still have this if there was no medicine involved? Would the prayers be enough? Chance with prayer also relates back to your own religious beliefs.
It would be incredible if we could predict the outcomes of studies. Since we can’t predict, we must work with all possible data to create a hypothesis, conduct an observational or experimental study, evaluate all theories and use peer review to help conclude your results. Each one of these steps was portrayed with this study. Therefore, we are able to put prayer and science together. This was done in a more low-key way. There is science in everything, even if you choose not to believe it.
