cnn reports on a study that was done to see if prayer helped in the recovery of those people who were having heart bypass surgery.
Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" for specific patients, for whom they were given the first name and first initial of the last name.
what concerns me here is not that science proved anything or not. they don't prove that God exists or doesn't exist. just that having a control group of people pray for some surgery patients yielded no measurable results. last i knew miracles, courage, peace, rest, comfort, etc were not measurable. what concerns me is why. why does science feel the need to do such a study?
The study looked for any complications within 30 days of the surgery. Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility.
i saw an interview of Rabbi Harold Kushner and he had said that this was the greatest favor science could do for God as he's not a spiritual santa claus but one who gives out the things we feel we need to move through troubled times. his hope, i suppose is that this might actually help people to understand prayers of intercession more appropriately.
Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center, who did not take part in the study, said the results did not surprise him.
"There are no scientific grounds to expect a result and there are no real theological grounds to expect a result either," he said.
Science, he said, "is not designed to study the supernatural."
i'm curious to see what the next scientific experiment to prove or disprove a life of faith. times like these too i am grateful for thought like that of radical orthodoxy which brings theology as the primary study above all others, science included.
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