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Re: hi Chris (I tried) - Prayer. Is it scientific?

Posted by Opolonio on July 11, 2000, at 23:31:15

In reply to Re: hi Chris (I tried) - Prayer. Is it scientific?, posted by SLS on July 8, 2000, at 8:59:24

> > I'll keep praying for you Chris, no problem. My brother told me there is some kind of evidence (not quite scientific) that it works
>
> :-) Your brother is right.
>
> There have actually been scientific investigations into the ability of prayer to help produce improvements in various illnesses. In 1992, I had read some stuff by a Dr. Larry Dossey, who had been a field surgeon in Viet Nam. He's a pretty smart guy. I think he was affiliated with the Mind-Body Institute at that time. Dossey and his colleagues seem to believe that some of the concepts offered by modern physics may explain how someone in Moscow can pray for someone in Cleveland and produce statistically significant enhancements to their healing. There have been placebo controlled, blinded experiments conducted that have claimed positive results demonstrating this phenomenon. Non-locality.
>
> Interesting. Cool. I have an open mind. I certainly like the idea.
>
>
> - Scott
>
>
> P.S. Pray for me. I can use all the help I can get!
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
>
> The following appears on Medline:
>
>
> 19: Altern Ther Health Med 1996 Jan;2(1):66-73
>
> How prayer heals: a theoretical model.
>
> Levin JS
>
> Department of Family and Community Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School in
> Norfolk 23501, USA.
>
> This article presents a theoretical model that outlines various possible
> explanations for the healing effects of prayer. Four classes of mechanisms are
> defined on the basis of whether healing has naturalistic or supernatural origins
> and whether it operates locally or nonlocally. Through this framework, most of
> the currently proposed hypotheses for understanding absent healing and other
> related phenomena-hypotheses that invoke such concepts as subtle energy, psi,
> consciousness, morphic fields, and extended mind-are shown to be no less
> naturalistic than the Newtonian, mechanistic forces of allopathic biomedicine so
> often derided for their materialism. In proposing that prayer may heal through
> nonlocal means according to mechanisms and theories proposed by the new physics,
> Dossey is almost alone among medical scholars in suggesting the possible
> limitations and inadequacies of hypotheses based on energies, forces, and
> fields. Yet even such nonlocal effects can be conceived of as naturalistic; that
> is, they are explained by physical laws that may be unbelievable or unfamiliar
> to most physicians but that are nonetheless becoming recognized as operant laws
> of the natural universe. The concept of the supernatural, however, is something
> altogether different, and is, by definition, outside of or beyond nature. Herein
> may reside an either wholly or partly transcendent Creator-God who is believed
> by many to heal through means that transcend the laws of the created universe,
> both its local and nonlocal elements, and that are thus inherently inaccessible
> to and unknowable by science. Such an explanation for the effects of prayer
> merits consideration and, despite its unprovability by medical science, should
> not be dismissed out of hand.
>
> Publication Types:
> Review
> Review, tutorial
>
> PMID: 8795874, UI: 96388473

I believe that quantum physics will eventually underwrite the idea of good and bad 'vibrations'. It is unsound, in my opiniion, for scientists to entirely reject notions that are part of traditions dating back to prehistory. The idea that all minds are in some sense connected does not seem the least bit unreasonable to me.


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