Arizona Professor Analyzes Research on Whether Prayer "Works"
The therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer, scientific research, and intense personal communion with God
David R. Hodge, a professor in the social work program at Arizona State University, West Campus, in Phoenix, has analyzed seventeen major studies of whether intercessory prayer actually helps patients and clients. His conclusion is that it has a “small, but significant, effect.”
Yet “intercessory prayer must be classified as an experimental intervention” instead of standard practice, he wrote. Until additional “research is conducted, the use of intercessory prayer should generally be avoided in practice settings.” These “findings are unlikely to satisfy either the proponents or opponents of intercessory prayer,” he stated. He published his findings in Research on Social Work Practice.
Hodge, who is also affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, initiated his analysis because so many social workers use intercessory prayer in their work.
In one survey of those who are affiliated with National Association of Social Workers, 28 percent report praying with their clients and another 57 percent pray for their clients on their own. In another study of those who specialize in caring for elderly people, 43 percent pray with their patients and 67 percent pray “sometimes” or “often”for them. He wrote that “The extant data suggest that most social workers use intercessory prayer as a professional intervention.”
Hodge began his research by conducting “a key word search of Social Work Abstracts, PsychInfo, and Medline” for the term prayer. He then set aside all but seventeen of the studies, either because they were on topics other than intercessory prayer or because they were not well enough designed or implemented.
He assessed the seventeen studies in three steps. He began by evaluating them in harmony with the way those in medicine do such reviews. As is frequently done in social work research, his next move was to study them in light of standards developed by the American Psychological Association. He then subjected the studies to an established procedure many know as “Compressive Meta-Analysis.”
Hodge skirted questions about the existence of God. Recognizing that “it is possible that prayer taps into presently undiscovered natural mechanisms,” he wrote that “prayer may effect change supernaturally, naturally or none at all.” He was interested in what prayer does in the lives of those who pray without regard to whether the one(s) to whom they pray are “really there.”
In eleven of the studies, intercessory prayer exhibited no or only marginally statistically significant effects. Although they were less than statistically significant, six of these eleven studies showed trends in the direction of effectiveness. Six studies in addition to the eleven exhibited statistically significant indicators of intercessory prayer’s value for helping sick or needy people.
The earliest of the studies was reported in 1988, the most recent in 2002. Virtually all of the studies were prospective double-blind randomized control trials. They put people by chance into either an experimental group for whom intercessory prayer was offered and a control group that went without. Neither the participants nor those actually conducting the experiments knew which of the participants was being prayed for.
K. Y. Cha and D. P. Worth probably conducted the most controversial study. They reported that in in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer procedures women “were significantly more likely to become pregnant” when those in “Tier 1” prayed that they would become pregnant and those in “Tier 2” prayed for greater efficiency in the process. This difference occurred among women who were thirty or more years old. Intercessory prayer made no statistically significant difference among younger women. These findings were published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
J. M. Aviles and colleagues conducted one of the studies that had results that exhibited possibly positive trends even though they were not statistically significant. In their study, five Christian prayer groups who prayed at least once a week for twenty-six weeks for each of four hundred men “wrestling with heart disease” appeared to have some positive effect. These results were published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Funded primarily by the Templeton Foundation, Herbert Benson and his colleagues at the Mind/Body Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted the “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Prayer, also known as “STEP.” It is the most extensive and reliable study to date.
STEP found that after receiving coronary artery bypass grafts, intercessory prayer had no effect on those who did not know they were being prayed for. Those who knew this did somewhat worse, not better. These outcomes were published in the American Heart Journal.
We can anticipate several reactions to Hodge’s analysis. On one extreme, there will be those who see it as further evidence that those of us who pray are deluded. On the other extreme, there will be those who will see it as precisely the kind of outcomes that we should expect from secular institutions like Arizona State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts General Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard University.
Most people will probably take more moderate positions. Some will hold that no matter what such statistical studies show people will continue to pray, as they have since human history began, because enough of them receive sufficient benefits as they judge them to continue the practice. A second moderate position will be that all the studies were flawed in one way or another. Controlling all variables other than prayer is exceedingly difficult. Many would say that it is impossible. Those who conducted STEP wrote that its results “may be due to the study limitations.” This is not entirely surprising. A third response is likely to be that these studies proceeded on assumptions about the nature and practice of prayer that are questionable. This is the likely reaction that interests me the most.
Those who did the research in STEP, the most generously funded and highly regarded of the studies, wrote that “The strict study instructions for providing intercessory prayer do not permit us to explore relationships between presence or absence of complications and the amount, duration and timing of intercessory prayer [emphasis supplied]. But when we are thinking about prayer, these are among the most significant considerations.
For Christians and many others, prayer is intense communion with God as with a very close and highly respected friend. In any intense relationship, the amount, duration, and timing of the time spent together are decisive. Genuine prayer takes time, not minutes, hours, days or weeks but months, years, decades, and lifetimes.
STEP seems blissfully unaware that prayer is often agonizingly difficult, as in the prayers of Jesus to be spared his cruel death and Paul’s reminder that we know so little about how to pray that the Spirit intercedes for us with unutterable groans.
Jesus taught us to pray in private, not conduct highly publicized studies of what happens when we commune with God. Often when Jesus healed people he asked them not to noise it about. James tells us that our faith is of no value if we ourselves do not actually help those in need. Most Christians know that God very rarely performs miracles as they are often defined and that this has always been the case. Worst of all, intercession is a very small part of prayer as it is in most human relationships.
The seventeen studies that Hodge analyzed display what happens when prayer devolves into a crass and almost commercial exchange: “When I pray, I want results!”
There is one thing worse than not praying at all and it is to pray as did those in these research endeavors. This kind of prayer is neither therapeutically effective nor theologically viable. It is next to worthless.
Those of us who are Christians cannot have it both ways. We cannot dismiss as fatally flowed those studies that demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this kind of prayer but trumpet “our success” when similar studies show that it has some therapeutic value. We should dismiss both the positive and the negative findings whenever prayer is understood as it is in these studies. Either way, these outcomes tell us nothing other than that we have no idea what prayer is all about.
“What are you going to do?” I asked one of my colleagues in another state who holds doctorates in both law and philosophy not long before he retired. “My wife and I are moving to Oregon to be closer to our families, we are going to spend even more time riding our bicycles in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, and I am going to pray,” he responded.
“You’re going to pray?” I asked, inwardly alarmed that something had gone dreadfully wrong. “Yes, he said with the eagerness of those going on a first date. “It takes a long time to pray, doesn’t it Dave?”
David Larson teaches in the School of Religion at Loma Linda University.
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From a scientific standpoint, these intercessory prayer studies cannot have a control group. Anytime a 7 year old child kneels down before bed and prays, "And God bless all the sick people," there goes your control group. You cannot divide people into prayed for and unprayed for.
Therefore you cannot conclude that prayer is the outcome you are controlling for. You can say correctly that you are measuring the effectiveness of Group A's prayers and could conclude that the prayers of Group A are helpful/unhelpful but not prayer in general. And I don't think anyone is really interested in knowing whether one group of Christian's prayers are more effective than another's. Could be an interesting way to pit denominations against each other but I wouldn't recommend it.
Honestly these prayer studies are just a disaster and I cringe every time I hear them trumpeted. One showed a significant effect of prayer. Many outcomes including death rate, length of hospital stay, post-op complications etc were measured and they got one significant finding on reducing the amount of time a surgery patient needs a catheter. No effect on death outcome mind you, just catheter time. So what can we conclude about God from that?
I would add that there is a difference between intercessory prayer and personal prayer which you seemed to be alluding to Dave. It is important to keep them straight. One could do decent research on the effect of prayer on the person doing it.
There have been many studies previously, of the affects of prayer: those that knew they were being prayed for and those who did not. I have yet to see any study showing that prayer has made any distinctive difference.
"STEP found that after receiving coronary artery bypass grafts, intercessory prayer had no effect on those who did not know they were being prayed for. Those who knew this did somewhat worse, not better. These outcomes were published in the American Heart Journal."
The above conclusion should blow the idea of effectiveness of prayer for physical healing. As for mental illnesses--if the patient knew of it, the placebo affect would be questioned. The whole idea puts prayer into a very trivial exercise.
I agree with you, Beth,.
Beth
Maybe having some catheters is a fate worse than death! <:)<><><
I'm with you on how hard it is to control all the variables. I hadn't thought of the seven-year old praying that God "bless all the sick people." As you say, so much for the control group!
I think that "the real" but now deceased David Larson and Herold Koenig have looked at prayer and mental health and so forth.
My colleague Jim Walters has a grant from the NIH to see if there are any correlations between religous lifestyles and overall health.
They have a huge bunch of data to which we can address any question we want. "Can the data tell me whether among those in the sample there is a stronger correlation between brown eyes and belief in God than blue eyes?" I asked him. His answer: Yes!
But I think that even if they find that having daily family worship correlates in a statistically significant way with better health, given some agreed upon measure, this will be so only for families in which daily family worship is the pattern for many years. Having family worship once a week for twenty-six weeks isn't going to amount to much, I suspect.
Here is a possible analogy: It is dangerous for someone who is out of shape to sprint for long. I sometimes think the same is true of prayer. Either take it seriously or forget it because dabbling with it may hurt you.
Elaine
I'm not sure what to understand when you write, "The whole idea puts prayer into a very trivial exercise." When you have time, might you elaborate this?
Thank you!
Dave
David,
You asked that I elaborate on the whole idea that puts prayer into a trivial exercise.
First, the studies referred to was no different, IMO, than silently "wishing" for good luck, or a winning lottery ticket (but then, first you have to buy it). If prayer can be silent, why can't simply wishing for something also be unheard? How is prayer different?
If there is a big Santa Claus in the sky, it probably would thrill little children to believe that he answered their letter addressed to him. Later, they learn that their parents are Santa.
Adults, however, not believing in Santa, address God and ask for favors: relief from sickness, cure from disease, and hasty recovery. When adults pray are they asking God, like Santa, to grant their requests?
Reminds me of many years ago hearing a pastor grateful that God had healed a member who had been hospitalized for a heart attack. The wife of the cardiologist who had cared for him, whispered to me "I think the doctor had something to do with it." A good point. We praise God for healing; do we also curse him when our prayers are not answered, or maybe a loved one dies? If he can heal us, it still means we will die sometime.
"God helps those who help themselves" may not be a Bible text, but none of us in need of medical help would limit ourselves to prayer. We want the very best medical advice and care possible.
There is no study that I'm aware of comparing the effects of prayer and those who do not seek proper medical care. Of course, it would be illegal and worse to perform such a test.
So, if prayer consoles some people, let 'em keep on praying. I'm convinced that in my long life I've ever seen someone who was "miraculously cured" by prayer; they might have personally believed it, but as you know too well, without medical evidence, it's only anecdotal--and there are lot of those stories.
I like the illustration of a child praying for all the sick people in the world. Now, that destroys the test, doesn't it? Does he hear it, and what is his response? We'll never know for certain about the efficacy of any prayers. So, if it helps some folks, placebos have about the same "cure rate" as the real medicine much of the time.
Someone will surely correct me with a personal experience. I've heard many, but living with a pathologist for nearly 60 years makes me a little skeptical of "supposed" cures. The old definition of a pathologist was one who saw all the mistakes doctors make. An unscruplous one could spark hundreds of law suits if he talked.
Praying before a difficult exam might help; much better would be to study a lot and be prepared.
There was an interesting study by Leibovici who found a significant difference in outcomes for patients who were prayed for 4-10 years after they were actually treated. In other words, he pulled old patient records without looking at outcomes, had people pray over half of them, and then looked at the outcomes that had already happened 4-10 years ago and found the prayed for group did better. His point was an argument that one must ground the hypothesis on some sort of reasonable information tied to what we know. Though some cited the study as evidence for something (I'm not sure what - time travel?) the author was just trying to show that if you make up wild studies you can get wild results that really aren't that helpful in the pursuit of knowledge.
For anyone with either a lot of time on their hands or a real strong interest in the subject - here's a link to an interesting review of the literature of intercessory prayer. It spends a lot of time on experimental design so be forewarned :)
norvig.com/prayer.html
I'm not sure that it would take a long time to show a difference in positive outcome for family worship - though I suppose that would depend on the outcome being measured. If it is physical health, it might take a bit longer, I don't know. The important variable, I would argue though, is actually daily family time spent together, especially in a family ritual. Family worship would fall in that category but so would some secular things. Would family worship be better for health than, say, taking a walk together as a family and talking every evening after supper? I doubt the fact that it is religious would give an added statistical benefit. And even if it did, I doubt that the fact it is Christian worship would - most other daily religious rituals done as a family would probably also give the same benefit. So one would have to be restrained in interpreting the results.
Miracles are bad. The fewer of them we have the better. Not many things are as destructive of authentic Christian living. God performs them very rarely and this is the way it has always been. This shows how smart God is and how unsmart we often are.
"Miracles are bad." Can you unpack that?
Inherently? or did you mean we as sinful humans always abuse a good thing to easily?
Hi Aryln!
Much depends upon how we define "miracles," of course.
One option is to go with David Hume and C. S. Lewis--unlikely comrades-- and define them as events that violate the laws of nature.
Probably a better way to think of them is as events that violate what we now know about the laws of nature. Lots of things that we take for granted George Washington might find miraculous and so forth.
My problem is that either way such events encourage us to find God in the extraordinary things of life, not the ordinary.
I think that if we want to find God we should study human anatomy, for example, rather than go to a "faith healing" meeting.
Then all the issues of fairness arise. If God does something extraordinary for me, why not for you too?
One more thing: the so-called miracles about which we hear often appear less miraculous when we examine them more closely.
This is one of the reasons I think the prayer studies are doomed before they get off the ground. Insofar as they trace the impact of religous practices over long periods of time, I'm on board. But to think that 400 men with cardiac problems are going to get better just because five groups of Christians pray for them at least once a week, for an unknown duration, for 26 weeks, strikes me as bazaar.
What did the researchers expect? That God was going to step in and unilaterally turn things around?
This is the sort of thing I have in mind. I'm interested in what others think too.
Thanks!
Dave
Thanks!
Dave
Intercessory prayer seems kind of like witchcraft to me to be a little blunt. If we say the right words or are "prayer warriors" or get enough people saying the right things, or really believe, or whatever the right combination is, than we can affect God (or fate as the case may be.)
I have a friend with a troubled marriage who was telling me that she always used to pray for God to open her husband's eyes so he could see the trouble. Then she realized that she needed to pray instead for his ears to be opened because he wasn't listening and lo and behold he started listening more. She assured me that it was because she prayed ears instead of eyes and all I could think was that she got the right spell. I just don't see God sitting around watching her marriage crumble and waiting for her to come up with ears instead of eyes so He can then jump in and override her husband's free will (who is agnostic and not praying at all.)
I understand the power of prayer for changing us but I don't get it for other people. When I pray for others I like to hold them in my mind and ask God if there is anything I can do but I feel foolish praying directly for them. It seems down right unloving and unchristian I know but there it is. You can't really tell people, "I won't be praying for you but I'll be praying about you."
Beth
I agree that intercessory prayer easily and swiftly takes a superstitious turn. I guess I would say the same thing about the other forms of prayer too.
The "butterfly effect" in chaos theory is the best analogy I have for intercessory prayer at the moment.
When I pray about someone else perhaps I change and perhaps that change in me has a positive ripple effect that might reach him or her.
But this ripple effect will be exceedingly thin, imperceptible to observers in most cases.
A pastor in my area of knowledge recently praised God for a turn around in a parishoner's wellbeing, the strong implication being that it was the congretation's prayer that made the difference. It was embarrassing a bit later to learn that the case was misdiagnosed in the first place.
This sort of thing happens too often. It could be avoided if we did what Jesus told many of the people he healed to do: Don't talk about it.
Even if you are certain that it was a true miracle, keep it secret. The tendency today is the opposite, to make miracles as public as possible.
I agree with your earlier comment that spending time together will benefit most families even if it is not in family worship. Some of those other ways may be even more effective, depending upon what happens in family worship.
Thanks!
Dave
While others are considering the need for an Adventist teaching company in another thread, what has been omitted is a reference to this site and Dave's column in particular. How about converting his introduction of a topic to a 5 to 10-minute podcast? My favorite idea casts are produced in some university centers. (Harvard Business Review online, Stanford Center for Social Innovation that I find very helpful since my background is not management.) Adventist academics, whether they serve within our system or not, deserve our support.
Thank you, Beth, for recommending the site by Peter Norvig of Google. His companion piece on experimental design is very informative, too, and I cannot agree more with the "Warning signs" he listed. One of three better studies, in Norvig's opinion, is from Duke U's Center for Spirituality, Health and Theology. The center publishes summaries of research by scholars/scientists at Duke as well as investigations that were done elsewhere. Here's one of particular interest to us:
Heuch I, Jacobsen BK, Fraser GE (2005). A cohort study found that earlier and longer Seventh-day Adventist church membership was associated with reduced male mortality.
UJournal of Clinical EpidemiologyU 58(1):83-91.
Evidently, prayer is only one aspect of church life. Other factors, contributing to over all social support, complete the picture. One "variable", usually not included in most studies, for example, according to investigators at the Duke center, is the following:
"The benefits of religious involvement (or risk of non-involvement) may have already had there [sic] effects before subjects ever entered the study. Religious involvement is often preventative – i.e., it may prevent depression, increase social support, and prevent negative health outcomes. Highly religious subjects, then, may not have even gotten into this study (because they would be less likely to be depressed, less likely to have low social support, and less likely to have an AMI)."
- Blumenthal JA, Babyak MA, Ironson G, Thoresen C, Powell L, Czajkowski S, Burg M, Keefe FJ, Steffen P, Catellier D (2007). Spirituality, religion and clinical outcomes in patients recovering from an acute myocardial infarction. Psychosomatic Medicine 69:501-508
http://www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org/resources/pdfs/Research%20-%20l...
Belonging to community groups; social involvement with strong support groups is also a strong predictor of mental as well as physical health. Religion is one, but not the only source for such groups. Strong family groups are also most beneficial; knowing that one is loved, cared for, and others concered about you is one of the best support systems.
Investigators at Duke and other centers were extra careful to separate variables, such as social networks other than organized religion and private spirituality, that impact the health of their subjects. They've anticipated precisely the kind of questions someone like Elaine might ask.
1. Saxena S (2006). A cross-cultural study of spirituality, religion, and personal beliefs as components of quality of life. Social Science and Medicine 62(6):1486-1497
"Although not addressed in the article, the SRPB [spiritual, religious and personal beliefs] measure used in this study may have been contaminated by questions measuring mental health and social support (see Moreira-Almeida A, Koenig HG (2006). Commentary: Retaining the meaning of the words religiousness and spirituality."
2. Wink P, Larsen B, Dillon M (2005). Religion as moderator of the depression-health connection: Findings from a longitudinal study. Research on Aging 27(2):197-220.
Religiousness means participation in organized religion. Spirituality is by and large private and personal.
"Results indicated that religiousness buffered against depression associated with poor physical in later life, with the highest level of depression being found in those with low religiousness and poor physical health. This effect was independent of social support and was predicted longitudinally by religiousness that was assessed 30 years previously. Interestingly, spirituality as described above did not have a similar buffering effect."
Other titles are self-explanatory.
3. la Cour P, Avlund K, Schultz-Larsen K (2006). Religion and survival in a secular region. A twenty year follow-up of 734 Danish adults born in 1914. Social Science & Medicine
62:157-164.
4. Braam AW, Beekman AT, Van den Eeden DJ, Knipscheer KP, van Tilburg W (1999). Religious climate and geographical distribution of depressive symptoms in older Dutch citizens. Journal of Affective Disorders 54(1-2):149-159
Briefly, reformed Calvinists in Holland had the least depressive symptoms compared to liberal Protestants.
Joselito
Thank you for these excellent references and for your contributions to this discussion.
I was struck by your last sentence: "Briefly, reformed Calvinists in Holland had the least depressive symptons compared to liberal Protestants."
I gather that this was a study of different groups in Holland, not between them and groups elewhere.
Do Braam et. al. reflect on why it appears that the "Reformed Calvinists" seem to be doing better than "Liberal Protestsnts?"
I wouldn't be surprised if Pat pounces on this. That's OK!
Thank you!
Dave
Who is prayer to help? Who is to be changed by prayer? Does a Christian include God in his/her plans? How does one measure benefit? Answers? How does one control the variables in prayer? Is it a subject for science?
My life with prayer has been a great help and comfort to me. I believe I have had direct answers to prayer. None of which are subject to scientific verification. I plan to continue a prayer life that goes beyond: "Please help the starving children of the world." I shall continue to ask for guidance and support for my grandchildren to which I add my tuition money and vocal support as well. I believe put your money where your mouth and heart are! The hungry and the growing have my attention and I ask God for His as well. It seems we both need more help. Tom
I always liked the saying, "When you have a toothache, the best prayer to pray is on the way to the dentist."
Frank
Dave and Joselito,
Hey... when one believes God really exists, that He knows the future as well as being in the process of creating His purposes for the future while still offering us significant freedom and salvation...that He loves us...why not be happy? We should be sorrowful for our "liberal" friends that they "might have life and have it more abundantly" in a live Jesus.
:~)
pat
Is it too simplistic to ask if a similar study was made on agnostics, or even atheisits comparing them to religious folk? Wouldn't that be a better "proof study"?
Dave
Did Dr. Hodge, certainly not the Dr. Hodge of Princton, examine the following prayers: The prayer of Hannah the mother of Samuel; The prayer of David to spare his son with Bathsheba; The Prayer for Wisdom of Solomon; The Prayer of Jesus in the Garden; The Prayer of Jesus "Forgive them for then know not what the do!", the Prayer of Paul and Silas in Prison?
I believe that prayer accomplishes much in/for me if not in God. I do believe that He has answered all my prayers. In His wisdom a lot were of course NO! As I grow older the requests are fewer and better thought-out and more frequently ansswered yes. At 83 I am confidence that God hears and answers earnest rational prayer. Even when He says No. the Grace and comfort is there to sustain the one who prays in confidence and eanest.
More to the point. It is folly to use science to test God.
He is neither obligated nor bound to the laws or postulates of science. Furthermore, science is a very poor tool for social studies in the first place. Story telling is much more revealing of human nature than tests. Tom
"Story telling is much more revealing of human nature than tests." I would agree with you, Tom, and N.T.Wright.
Frank
Pat
I thought we might hear from you! Great!! I agree with you 1,000%, make that 1,000,000%!
If I am a Calvinist who has perfect assurance that I have been elected by God for salvation from all eternity, unlike those whom God has passed over or explicitly elected for damnnation, I am certainly among the most secure, serene and confident people on earth!!
Many think that the doctrine of election leads to fatalistic quietism. As you know more than I, the study of history shows that it has actually been the opposite.
Calvinists have aggressively done amazing things all over the world for both good and evil partly because they are so certain that they are God's elect.
How can we Arminians/Wesleyans/Methodists/SDAs possibly compete? We can't, at least not on that playing field.
Yet those Calvinists who weren't so sure about their election, and those who suspected that they might be destined to suffer damnation for all eternity through no fault of their own, weren't always so upbeat.
The same holds for those who wondered if their dearest friends and relatives may not have been elected to salvation.
One response is that if you haven't been elected for salvation you won't worry about such things. I'm not entirely convinced.
So........If I were a thoroughgoing Calvinist, in order to stay true to God's love I would have to be a universalist too. There are worse things!
Yet we have to keep reminding ourselves that not all Calvinists believe these things today and we should not hang what their spiritual ancestors believed around their necks. Just as many of us who are SDAs are among the most allergic to specifying the time of the end of this age, so many Calvinists are among the most eager to reject traditional doctrines of election.
We need to be fair in both cases.
Tom
In principle I am not opposed to the scientific studies of the possible relationships--both ways--between religious thinking and living, on the one hand, and some definition of comprehensive human flourishing on the other. But as you say, as a matter of fact it is so difficult to design and implement a truly significant study that one can be forgiven for wondering if its worth the try.
One problem is that for many of us Christianity is not a part of our lives but the whole of it. Any attempt to isolate how we pray, for example, from everything else we do, is doomed from the start. Lots of us are silently praying while we are hard at work at other things.
I think you and I can agree that it is very important that we believers don't try to have it both ways by citing these studies when they favor what we think and do and discounting them when they don't.
The prayers in Scripture that you bring to our memories are so much more authentic and compelling than the prayers people "study" today!
Whether our prayers change God is a tricky question. I think it more likely that they do in the sense that when we pray God can do things through us and others that might have been more difficult otherwise. Did God change? It all depends up what we mean by "change."
Are you only 83? All this time I thought you were 93!
Elaine
Certainly! To the extent that we can do so in ways that are scientifically sound, we ought to compare believers of various sorts with agnostic, atheists and other kinds of believers. The more we know about such things the better!
Frank
The man who said "I don't know about these things. All I know is that I once was blind and now I see!" made your point too.
Thank you!
Dave
Hi Dave.
I would suggest that the same view can apply to the Arminian AS I WORDED THE ANSWER. Richard's and others OT is different from both Arminian and Calvinist View as you have noted and I suggest PT on many points including creation.
Regards
Pat
Dave,
PS. I think you may be confusing the doctrine of election and predestination which arminians share with the Calvinist without the view of "particular election" and "reprobation"...is that possible?
pt
Pat
It most certainly is possible!
I have noticed more than once your references to "particular election" and "reprobation." Also, was it from you or someone else I learned the term "hypercalvinism?"
In any case, in school I learned about infralapsarianism and surpralapsarianism; however, to the best of my recollection, I did not learn about "particular election," the opposite of which must be "general election," I'm guessing.
Any help you can give me will be greeted with gratitude.
Thanks!
Dave
Hi Dave,
So many terms aren't they. I don't believe many SDA's understand that EGW, I suggest, believed in both predestination and election.
As you correctly note supralapsarian,infralapsarian,and postlapsarian predestination views exist.
EGW's quotes, I believe would show she believed in infralapsarian predestination and "general election."
Hypercalvinism believes in Supralapsarian P. That is, God not only foreknew the fall of man but he ordained it. IFL P. suggest God knew of the fall but did not ordain it would have to occur.Some "Calvinist" are Infralapsarian...I think Spurgeon.
Arminians and SDA type Arminians have felt that "general election" takes place and that it is God that calls the elect through the work of the HS to salvation in Christ.This body constitutes the elect.
Calvinism would say that from before the foundation of the world God chose "particular" elect individuals to be saved and "particular" individuals to be "passed over" for salvation. I don't accept this view personally...as you.
The first response I gave above, " Hey... when one believes God really exists, that He knows the future as well as being in the process of creating His purposes for the future while still offering us significant freedom and salvation...that He loves us...why not be happy? We should be sorrowful for our "liberal" friends that they "might have life and have it more abundantly" in a live Jesus."
This "general" statement could apply to Arminians, EGW, and infralapsarian Calvinists I suggest. You see I work for the unity of the faith after all!
If you feel my factual understanding of the issues are wrong, I will also be glad to learn differently.
Regards
Pat
Elaine
I am young for my age. I just talk old times. Some Battle Creek folk retired to E.M.C. I would deliver their paper and listen to them at prayer meeting. I met Dr. Kellogg several times in his summer home on Gull Lake. Of course from an early age I was slated to be of no account--I ate between meals, I worked right up to the minute of Sun Down, I liked girls. My hair wouldn't stay in place--now I keep it in a box. I always knew my memory verses, but my brother could say them better. Worst of all, I asked too many questions. Tom
Tom
Sounds like you've always been you! Great!!
But please, are you 93 or 83? If it is only the later, you are younger than my recently deceased father and he wasn't "old." Parkinsonism, unlike God, has no mercy.
Pat
Thanks for the clarifications. Thanks, too, for making room for some aspects of process thought. I saw this early on but I didn't comment because I was not sure that it was intentional.
All the best!
Dave
Pat
I am 83 years young. Thank you for asking.
I had a dear friend 64 who just passed away a week ago from complications from Parkinson's. He was lead tenor in the Choir. He was chair of many faculty inquiries into alleged misconduct by other faculty. He had a sound mind and a great love of God. The President and I always accepted his counsel. We were nover over turned by the federal courts. He is and will be missed. Tom
Is it too simplistic to ask if a similar study was made on agnostics, or even atheists comparing them to religious folk? Wouldn't that be a better "proof study"?
Posted by: Elaine | 14 March 2008 at 10:16
The study by la Cour et al, on the Duke Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health list, may be the closest answer to your query. It was a 20-year follow-up of 734 Danish adults, starting when they were all at least 70 years of age. I don't know about Danes, but profession of religiosity among their fellow Scandinavians, the Swedes in particular, is reportedly no more than 2 per cent of the population. Nevertheless, these elderly Danes were classified according to religious characteristics such as: self-reported importance of affiliation, church attendance, and listening to religious media. Controlling for gender, education, physical and mental health, social support and health behaviors, help given and received by the subjects, their overall relative hazards (RH) of dying yielded a score of 0.82. This was "weaker" than the RH 0.72 by Koenig et all (1999, North Carolina) and RH 0.77 by Strawbridge et al (1997 California), but still significant. Evidently, a higher score means greater mortality risk. Closer to the norm.
These studies are not conducted to offer "proof". Attempts to replicate previous scientific experiments, in point of fact, are aimed to falsify their conclusions. Falsifiability distinguishes the better ones, IOW.
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