Prayer is a waste of time
A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact.
-- Reuters
You can read the full details of the study in the American Heart Journal.
The $2.4 million Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer, or STEP, is the sixth and most expensive study to find that intercessory prayer has no real effect on the wellbeing of patients. The nine-year research project was partly supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which also funds Science & Theology News. -- Christine Casatelli, senior editor at Science & Theology News
Prayer itself has no effect. Prayer may have apparent benefits, but that view fails to account for other factors that have a real and significant effect as well as random events. The same could easily be said for meditation and the like; it would be just as effective... or rather ineffective. Clearly the prayer isn't calling into action any supernatural intervention.
Most research studies that claim to show how religious involvement is associated with better health fail to rule out other factors that might account for the relationship, or mistake chance findings for real ones. -- Dr. Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center
So is prayer a waste of time? I suppose it depends on your view of it. If you understand how it works (or rather doesn't), you aren't likely to get the plecebo effect. If you think it will have a positive effect, it just might, but not through any supernatural power. Ultimately it's up to the reader, but from a scientific understanding of the factors involved, prayer is a waste of time.
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