designing a convincing prayer experiment

My goal in this thread is to consider the Thomas problem of faith.Thomas did not, could not, believe in the risen Yeshua. So, he called for an experiment. If Yeshua would appear before him, and he could put his (Thomas') hands in His wounds, he would believe. Yeshua gave him the data asked for, and Thomas believed.Jehovah, through the prophet, Malachi, proposed another experiment, to anyone who felt the need to "prove" Him. I will state it in full here, (3:10-12)"Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove me now in this," says the Lord of host, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field. And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land." says the Lord of hosts. (NKJV)This is a fairly clear statement describing an experiment that will prove God, to be real, faithful to His promises, a source of life and protection. The statement itself, of course, was to the nation of Israel. But it reveals that Thomas was right in his hope that, if he needed evidence, God was willing to provide it.Today, we have several to many published scientific studies on prayer, many of which have produced statistically significant results demonstrating some sort of power to prayer. (Larry Dossey in his book 'Healing Hands' summarizes the older data.) In most cases, those praying were assuming that God was answering these prayers partly to allow Himself to be proved. Many theologians have challenged that assumption, and the application of the results to a Thomas-like increase in faith through some sort of tangible experience. But, it seems reasonable.Our task is to see if we can design an experiment that, if the God Jehovah is out there, will let Him prove Himself. A literalist might want to insist on a tithing experiment, with predetermined and well-defined outcomes, that will constitute an objective test. Others may want to set up prayer experiments, that test the effects of different ways of praying. The idea would be to think up different prayers that would separate out the various alternative gods, or hypotheses, that might explain why prayer studies seem to often work. We might think about praying for irrelevant things, such as the sprouting rates of seedling, or for important things, such as the elimination or reduction of violence in the middle east.Now, this will work best if some of the persons participating in the discussion and the experiments have some faith to begin with. We would also need some real skeptics. Who knows, perhaps God will bend over backwards to show a skeptic a thing or two.The guy who started all this, Frank Loehr, did kitchen table experiments with seedling sprouting and growth rates. (The power of prayer on plants). I've done experiments of this sort with skeptics, where they did all the work, and I did all the praying, with interesting results.Anyone interested?Stephen

Abshalom, No, Loehr was a scientist, and all his experiments were double-blinded. If we replicate his projects, we will each need several helpers.Stephen

phatboy,Greetings in return. You note and ask, Well, my first prayer was hypothetical. "God, if you are out there, please let me know somehow, so I can deal with you however I must, in order to live." And God responded. But, I had a lot of people praying for me, asking God to choose me for His kingdom. And, I was a "my word is my bond" sort of person, and deep down inside dreaded finding out that God was real, because I knew that I would have to make a lot of changes in my life if He revealed Himself. Anyway, He responded, revealed Himself, and set me on the path of making the dramatic changes I feared. Gently, I might add. A lot more patiently than I anticipated.Death and life, so it is written, are in the power of the tongue. I would very much like to see what would happen to a skeptic prayer experiment including and excluding a testimony that "I choose life."Move the table one inch? That's probably praying amiss, looking for a sign as an evil generation. But praying for thriving sprouts, that you intend to eat for good health....just good sense. Unless you intend to use your good health to do evil, or something selfish.I am watching the drought in Kansas break down the state economy and the ability to fund education. That drought began a few days after Kansans voted out the school board that wanted to de-emphasize evolutionary teaching in the schools. People are praying here and there against the drought, with some, but spotty success. Are their prayers unsuccessful because the prosperity rain brings would be used to further provide a stumbling block to the faith of their children? When I ask God what's up, that's what He tells me. What are you hearing?Hope we get some ideas and projects started.Stephen

Trixie,One of my trials with this proceeded this way.My skeptical friends took an egg carton, filled the pockets with potting soil, numbered them 1-12, and planted 6 seeds in each. I randomly chose six numbers from a random number table, from the 12 available, put copies of those numbers in a sealed envelope and sent it to them. They watered the seeds, while I prayed for the six random numbered pockets. When the seeds sprouted, they were to measure the results, for percentage sprouting, and growth rate, keeping the data by pocket separately. Then, we would come together, open the envelope, and analyze the data by the numbers there-in.In the event, as the time to come together drew near, my friend called and said something was all messed up, some pockets sprouted seeds and others didn't at all. So, he decided to throw it all out. I asked whether there was any association between the pockets that sprouted, and the numbers in the envelope, but he said that he lost the envelope. Nor was he interested in redoing the experiment. I enjoyed his company greatly in other matters, so I didn't push it.Loehr, if memory serves, took two jugs of water into a prayer meeting, where one was passed around and prayed for, the other set aside. They were labelled by those praying, A or B, at random, and the two jugs given to a third party. That person watered some trays of sprouting seeds with one jug, other trays with the other, not knowing which had been prayed for. Yet a fourth party came in to measure the trays of seedlings, not knowing which had been watered by which jug. (Hence, what I call double blind). The data were then analyzed by the third party grouping the tray figures by jug, and seeing if there was a difference. Those who had prayed then revealed which jug had been prayed for. I'm really not sure whether Loehr had any controls to keep fraud out of the picture--whether the third party had to tell which trays were to be watered by which jug in some sealed written statement before there was any watering, or data analysis. But, that ought to be done in any replication. And, of course, assigning trays to jugs ought to be random.Your point about negative data seems valid, so the experiment does not really threaten anyone's faith. A failed result simply does not refute the null hypothesis, but that could be because God didn't want to be tested. But, a statistically significant result, consistently achieved, (as seemed to be the case in Loehr's report) confirms God's presence, power, and willingness to be tested this way. I tend to think that prophecy ought to be brought in, so that experiments where some prophet says that they heard God say that He would honor experiment A, but not experiment B, would be good.In praying over why the Mantra II studies at Duke did not confirm earlier result (Mantra I) or those already published, I believe I heard Jehovah say that "Mantras are the devil's business, not Mine. Koenig is on record saying that prayer experiments are not about prayer, meaning that as he conducts them, they confirm nothing about Me. So, why should I answer the prayers in such an experiment?" Made sense to me.I tend to agree, that doing the experiment thinking about eating the sprouts, or not, would be interesting. There are lots of ways of varying the prayer, to see what sorts of prayers get answered more dramatically.I tend to be very careful separating faith from dogmatic opinionation, by the way. Faith, to me, comes from hearing, and is always based on some experience. To "only believe" seems to me to put too much on me. I am responsible for choosing to believe, and working to believe. But, my own belief always comes from some sort of action of God, an asked for gift, in some cases, or a consequence of some sort of experience. I seem functionally unable to make myself believe anything. Of course, by belief I mean a state of mind that makes astonishing things happen. I love the prayer, "I believe, help thou my unbelief." When I only say, "I believe, I believe!" nothing happens.Your thoughts?Stephen

Abshalom,You wonder, I would mostly pray that God would deliver us from evil as we do the experiment, keeping the devil out of the picture. But, clearly, we might learn something by praying that way, or not, and seeing if we get a different sort of result. The problem, of course, would be to keep the design blinded from the devil. Many think that this is possible, that with God's help, we can trick the devil into showing his hand. Others say that curses can be studied, that the devil can be made by God to do stuff that he might not want to do.But, if allowed to mess with the experiments, the devil might try to enhance the growth of the controls, so that it looks like prayer did nothing.We just have to pretend that we are counter-espionage agents, in figuring all this out.Stephen

Percy,In my reply to Trixie, I explain why I regarded Loehr's trials as double-blind, but I concede that I may not be using the term in the usual way. In any case, althought the studies were done in a kitchen, he did do his best to insure that he wasn't fooling himself. So can we.Stephen

Percy,You claim, without support, that .But, I and others who look at prayer studies, and honestly at the Bible, can easily demonstrate that this isn't true. If Jehovah is out there, and says that it isn't true, and shows how to blend the two, who are you to argue? As the creator of both faith and science, shouldn't He know what He did? As soon as He said,"prove Me now in this," He put the two together. So, either the faith realm doesn't exist at all, or it blends with science. And science can tell you whether it exists at all. So far, there is a lot of evidence that it does.You can accuse me of "bollixing" the discussion all you like. It only confirms one of the predictions Jehovah gave us in the Bible. That all those who love the truth and want to approach righteous living through Yeshua, will be persecuted, by having others say, unjustly, all manner of evil against them.And you haven't convinced me that I was wrong in my assessment, that something is seriously missing from your understanding of science.StephenBut do a google on hypothetico-deductive.

Trixie,You say, Actually, that's pretty much where I'm at. Except that I currently believe that evolition is more plausible than evolution, that God, the devil, and man, as free-will beings, have artificially selected and genetically engineered organic living species, so that they are, in some sense, designed.I don't do, for myself, experiments with God anymore. Don't "test" Him. It is like getting married. Before the ceremony, I try to find out things about the gal, that will influence my decision to get hitched. Somebody comes around with a story that discredits them, I will hear and explore. But, once I make that decision, and make the commitment, I don't listen to anyone bad-talk my woman. What I need to know, she'll tell me.But, once upon a time, such experiments really helped me.Stephen

Abshalom,Re Loehr's study. I believe the jugs were prayed for a day or more before the watering. But, you are right. I also hope that we have people praying, doing mantra's, with and without the laying on of hands.Stephen

Paulk,I have a request into Koenig, asking if he has tried separating the Mantra data into subgroups based on what sort of prayer was prayed. We'll see.I also asked God why the unprayed for group in the fertility study were lower than normal. He said that when He heard that the study was going to be conducted, He fiddled with the randomization proceedure, so that couples that already had His favor got into the to-be-prayed-for group, to get more prayer, and a higher chance of success. He said, "While you guys think it's important to get this data, I'm more interested in couples getting babies that they know I sent, that they feel more responsible to raise the way I said to raise them. Everyone who knows about this study has the scriptures. If they want to believe, they can deal righteously with the law. Remember what My Son said. 'Even if one were to rise from the dead, they won't believe.'"(Rough translation.)So, there you have it.Stephen

Percy, That picture under your name keeps making more and more sense.Stephen

Abshalom, Right. So, you start praying in particular ways, to see if you can separate these factors. I could not see the devil making God look loving or good, so I did miss your point. The purpose of all this is to get people to see the possibility, the probability of success, if they want to connect up with the Jehovah self-described in the Bible. So that they can live better. But, I can see it producing all sorts of weird pagans as well.But, I do have confidence in the H-D method, that persistently applied, in a search for the One True God, He will be found if He is out there. Other gods, confusions, mistaken thoughts, fantasies, all get trimmed away, as you keep trying to come up with new predictions, new studies. I don't think other philosophies will survive the process, unless they are true, too. But then, the One True God isn't out there.Freedom. To have choices.Thanks, Stephen

Percy,Depends on how you prayed. But remember, you can only prove liklihood. If the prayers are formed correctly, you separate out the various hypothetical gods, so that some become more likely to be the cause of whatever results you got, others less likely. You just have to write the prayer based on what each one, hypothetically, wants to hear.The evil entity, Satan, being someone the God Jehovah has the inside info on, is best discerned by getting Jehovah validated. Then His description of what Satan is like becomes more plausible.Stephen

P. 1. Speculation, or any proposed self-description or other description of the hypothesized spirit being. Dreams, like the idea about benzene rings. Imagination, like the quantum ideas.2. You pray with and without the clause, "deliver us from the evil one." to the God, Jehovah, who is hypothesized to make the devil come or go. You also "curse" certain ones, asking Jehovah to make the devil mess with certain ones, a la Job.S.

A. As described, He will not allow tricksters if asked correctly. And so the repeated confirmations of surprising predictions will prove that this Jehovah guy is more and more plausibly out there. Moreover, as I have insisted eleswhere, once you "know His voice" He, because He is out there, is able tell you whatever you need to know to be able to bet your life you are not being tricked. Your science makes it likely you will get to that point, which makes it certain that you are where you hope to be. This is written, actually. These parlor games are there by grace, because we require them, not Him/Her.And remember, I don't see demons behind every physical event. But when the event is causing problems, I get suspicious. I can't imagine that they cannot do stuff that we can do, theoretically.S.