In Reply to: Re: A ray of HOPE posted by Screaming Banshee on August 10, 2005 at 20:12:34:
I wonder if praying benefits the person praying more than the person prayed for, similar to the way funerals are for the benefit of those left behind rather than for the deceased? By benefit I mean making the person praying feel better for having done something. As you point out in Merry's case, there's not really anything most of us can do to support her other than pray, so those who believe in such things can pray for her and then leave it in God's hands. For those who don't believe in prayer, if there is no practical, concrete way they can support Merry they may feel discouraged or at least not feel the same sense of self-satisfaction a praying person might have. Don't get me wrong. By self-satisfaction I don't mean self-righteous smugness, but simply the satisfaction you have when you feel you've done all you can.
It's been suggested here before that there are studies showing the effectiveness of prayer. The author of this article, http://www.alternet.org/story/24000/ makes the following claim: "To date, no statistically significant evidence of successful remote intercessory prayer has been published." Does anyone know if that is a factual statement? Perhaps the studies people have referred to here have to do with local, i.e. in person prayer or hands on prayer, rather than remote prayer?
Though I no longer believe in a divinity that intervenes in human affairs, I am interested in what you refer to as energy and the interconnectedness of everything at the quantum level. It may be that people use different terminology for the same thing, depending on their cultural frame of reference.