Makes a lot of sense. If prayers can affect anyone it's the people praying. The worry is, as with all placebos, that it may displace a more useful activity.

I'm pretty certain there have been enough MILLIONS of people who, although they prayed, were NOT healed... that amount of empirical evidence pretty much ends this debate..

Of course prayer doesn't heal people. It's delusional.

"A parent who denies his or her child necessary medical care could face the following consequences:

1. Loss of custody. The state may find that the parent is neglecting the child and place the child in state custody in order to protect the child.

2. Criminal charges. The parent may face child abuse, child neglect and / or assault charges for failing to provide the necessary medical care for the child.

Religious Beliefs are Not a Defense for Denying Medical Treatment to a Minor

"Adults have the right to refuse medical care for religious or personal reasons. However, they may not impose religious practices or personal beliefs which endanger the welfare of a child on minor children. Instead, most states require parents to provide a reasonable degree of medical care for their children or else face legal consequences.

[resources.lawinfo.com]

I reckon he’s on the slide towards rational thought and disbelief in God...the logical conclusion that it’s the human capacity for love and empathy that is needed in the kind of situations he talks of, and that the realisation that prayer only brings us together as people and has no other effect is already firmly implanted in his head. He has also realised that to accept that god is so uncaring that he isn’t moved to act is antipathetic to believing in a loving caring god. If he thinks prayer is useless in moving god to act, the next step should be to realise that it’s not prayer of any kind that makes people pull together in a crisis, but common humanity...and that an appeal human to human to show kindness and compassion towards each other may actually have an even more profound result than “praying” together.

Prayer doesn't heal people. Prayer is used to make people feel good for praying for someone. I think the pastor who wrote about pray is starting to doubt his belief in god.

He's getting there, but hasn't yet figured out that an absent god, an indifferent god, a non-interventionist god, and a non-existent god can't be told one from the other, because they all behave the same. Which is to say, identical to random happenstance.

He's just decided to stop cherry picking the countless, lavish, detailed scriptures promising various forms of grace and healing and even largesse for the faithful. Since he's at least honest enough to admit that god doesn't uniformly (or even statistically) "bless the righteous and confound the wicked", he's just going to let that go and pretend that all prayer is supposed to be meditative and devotional rather than petitioning.

He's above average for an evangelical preacher, but still can't admit to himself that it's ALL bullshit, all the way down.

Prayer is just one form of meditation. An inward looking and calming.

Meditations are subject to stupidity. But what matters is the individual's belief that healing is possible.

The science is clear, positive thoughts, and lots of laughs, do made people weller, faster.

i do not care if someone thinks they did not heal themselves. I only care that they don't proclaim a godly miracle and thereby can demand laws be changed.

Sounds like reality and rationality is creeping into his thinking. The seeds of reason are planted. I'm betting he's struggling with reality. It's a difficult dilemma when a preacher realizes he has been preaching a lie. He may be middle aged with no other training no other way to earn a living, no home or other assets to speak of and maybe a family to support. What do you do? Keep lying to the congregation for your own survival or come clean.

I think of prayer as an attempt to communicate but in the wrong direction.

As an agnostic, I'm 99% sure there is no such thing as a "god." Gods are and always have been imaginary. However, "praying" to non-existent gods can have some benefit--to a believer's psyche. If a believer imagines that god will heal him, that can have a positive effect on his mind.

Instead of praying to something that doesn't exist, I've learned that by going deep within myself, I can get in touch with a deeper knowledge and power which--for me--actually does help me heal, grow, and stay happier than I otherwise would. Some people like to call that "the god within," but it's no god. It's simply a result of opening my conscious thinking mind to other parts of my mind that aren't normally accessible.

So rather than pray, I practice Zen meditation--where I almost always get real results.

If prayer actually worked there would be no world, either consciously or subconsciously everyone would be the subject of another persons prayer for them to fail or die.
For every healing prayer their would be a prayer for genocide of one race or another, for every good thing that happened to anyone there would be a prayer for them to suffer as unworthy of that good fortune.
For everyone suffering as the answer to a prayer there would be a prayer to kill the god who granted it and the supplicant who asked for it.

Prayer is a way for priests to play the odds, if you pray and it is apparently answered, that proves god, if it is not, you're faith was not strong enough, or god said no for purposes of the greater good.
Win win win situation.

So the Christian God does awful things and doesn’t listen to the prayers of his followers either? Sounds like a great guy; where do I sign up?

That he’s talking about; empathy, shared experience and sacred kindness - very interesting, but he’s still cherry picking parts of popular culture and associating it with his, (confused/ ever changing and developing) religion. On the plus side he’s still got an open mind to change and questions

Prayer can have a placebo effect, which proves nothing.

I read a lot of "belief" words, most could have been replaced by "think". I agree with other sentiments here that the author seemed to be struggling with facing reality.

The author has it exactly right."I believe prayer changes our hearts as we pray, it tethers us to one another, and it increases hope in otherwise hopeless situations." Of course the important thing here is how it changes our hearts. Many Christians pray for negative outcomes and it only increases their negative feelings toward themselves and others.. This is how we wind up with bigotry, racism, misogyny and overall ignorance in the Christian Church. Prayer can be used to reinforce negative or even fatalistic conformation bias as easily as it can open ourselves to our higher consciousness. Its like fire or any other form of energy. its good or bad depending how we use it.

It might have the same results as placebo. It all depends what’s meant by “heal”.

Gee whiz, he noticed.

If prayer worked as a healing agent. Then why has there ever been an amputee who grew back a limb.,,, ever?
There have, and will always be some kind of back and forth about the healing power of prayer. But that question is fairly paramount to me. There really is no argument against it. JMHO.

If prayer did anything at all we would all pray and be healthy, rich, and influential. Since we are not, prayer does not work. It is that simple.

I'm sure it can help people die peacefully!

Prayer is a placebo. Sometime a sugar pill will cure an illness because the person believes it will. Same with prayer

Not as far as religion but do you believe there is any power in faith?

I heard a while back it did
I'd like to believe that and I figure it couldn't hurt

Prayer, the scientific experiment. Once up on a Time there was this undefinable infinite singularity of all powerful dot. Then the dot decided to no longer be all powerful so scientific myth says that the dot said "Bang" and began releasing it's all powerfulness pushing back anti-space creating the scientific space-time bubble.

Using the knowledge of good and evil, positive and negative, proton and electron the infinite power spred it's all powerfulness into those things as the power and energy transfered into the elements.

To make a long story short, let's say just few days later, the energy of the positive and negative protons and electrons along with neutrons built people with thinking ability.

So, as the once all powerful was transfering its powerfulness into existence it got to the point that it no longer had all-knowing capabilities because its knowing capabilities was spread thru out the brains of the people that started becoming created.

The once all-powerful was able to get the people to pray so that the once all knowing would hear what the people were thinking about to get an understanding of what it was like to be a person and what issues people would address to what they thought was an all-powerful, all- loving , all- present creator. It took a lot of work to get people to begin praying because people thought it was ridiculous to pray to what people thought was already an all knowing thing. People just couldn't believe that there was any reason why they should pray and talk to something they thought was all-knowing but little did people know that the all-power, all-knowing was in recession from being those all- things.

When those few people would pray the less-than-all-powerful would muster up a little whiz bang to tickle peoples fancy reassuring them to keep up their prayers. Then finally the once-all-powerful decided to finish up its existance and turn over exist to those that had the knowledge of how to manage human animals. Then the once-all-powerful said it was finished and made arrangements to float into the sky to once and for all be in non-existance with the non-existent flying spaghetti monster sky God.

John 19:29-30 28 After this, Jesus, [a]knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

Acts 1:9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

Nope it doesn't