*About prayer* A couple of months back, I read a news item, it was about a leading medical journal; a blind study of more than 2000 patients in hospitals was cited. Physicians that did the study reported, ''Patients who prayed or had prayers said for them by others-- improved or were healed completely in much larger numbers than patients without any prayers at all. (You or others here may have seen this news article.) NOW / Here's the rub: The doctors concluded by this in-depth study, prayer does help, it shows excellent results. It helps the healing process, although they couldn't explain why. They now agree that-- if a person falls ill, then he/she might try prayer; it can't hurt, and get others to pray as well. ''Prayer is powerful, in some unexplained way,'' they said.

To which, my question is, ''Why in the world should prayer help, if nobody is up there to answer it? Prayer is not therapy, or is it? Does prayer get all the credit, or is God hearing it and answering?''

-- Eugene Chavez (rechavez@popmail.ucsd.edu), April 27, 2000

Answers

Eugene, credit is not being given to the prayers themselves, as though they were magic formulae.
Believing physicians will give credit to God's hearing and answering of the prayers.
Agnostic/atheistic physicians will say that the patient's very expectation of a healing from above has such a positive influence that it generates some kind of self-induced healing process. They will say that "psycho-somatic cures" balance "psycho-somatic diseases."
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jgecik@desc.dla.mil), April 28, 2000.

And then there are those who attribute the effectiveness of prayer to a new age "mystical" ability to heal as if there is some sort of psychic "power" that can be projected by our thoughts. Much along the lines of alternative medicine's belief in the "laying on of hands" healing technique which is simply a demonic counterfeit of God's true healing ministry. Some scientists are willing to believe almost anything to avoid confronting the possibility that there could be a God.

-- David Bowerman (jamatt02@excite.com), April 28, 2000.

''Prayer in Therapy'' is the gist of the medical study in that particular case. I wonder if prayers to Shiva, prayers to Quetzalcoatl, prayers to Moloch-- would support a conclusion like the one reached by these scientific physicians?

While privately they may agree that God is healing the patients, they never allow this to be stated in the medical journals.

I realise they lead to that inference ; but even the documented cases at Lourdes, for instance, are viewed skeptically by the medical community. It's the ingrained hubris associated with ''modern medicine.'' You have to suppose one reason for the silence about God is; once He is acknowledged, abortion, sex-changes, indifference to depraved conduct and ''safe sex'' must all be condemned.

-- Eugene Chavez (rechavez@popmail.ucsd.edu), April 28, 2000.