Thoughts and prayers



I have no doubt that some of my FB friends believe in the power of thoughts and prayers to affect the course of events. Of course, praying for any given outcome and seeing it is an experiment without a control, and an appeal to the elementary logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

This is the closest I've seen to an empirical test of the power of prayer. If the null hypothesis is that prayer doesn't help with longevity and/or health, then this study supports the null hypothesis:

"The sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of affluence. The prayer has therefore no efficacy, unless the very questionable hypothesis be raised, that the conditions of royal life may naturally be yet more fatal, and that their influence is partly, though incompletely, neutralized by the effects of public prayers.

It will be seen that the same table collates the longevity of clergy, lawyers and medical men. We are justified in considering the clergy to be a far more prayerful class than either of the other two. It is their profession to pray, and they have the practice of offering morning and evening family prayers in addition to their private devotions. A reference to any of the numerous published collections of family prayers will show that they are full of petitions for temporal benefits. We do not, however, find that the clergy are in any way more long lived in consequence. It is true that the clergy, as a whole, show a life-value of 69.49, as against 68.14 for the lawyers, and 67.31 for the medical men; but the easy country life and family repose of so many of the clergy are obvious sanatory conditions in their favour This difference is reversed when the comparison is made between distinguished members of the three classes—that is to say, between persons of sufficient note to have had their lives recorded in a biographical dictionary. When we examine this category, the value of life among the clergy, lawyers and medical men is as 66.42, 66.51 and 67.07, respectively, the clergy being the shortest lived of the three. Hence, the prayers of the clergy for protection against the perils and dangers of the night, for protection during the day and for recovery from sickness, appear to be futile in result."

As always, believe whatever you need to be happy. Science doesn't deal in beliefs, only in facts and evidence.

https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/41/4/923/689380

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