designing a convincing prayer experiment

I seriously doubt that prayer would have any effect on the plants but that is my own bias . I would propose that the plants-"prayed-upon and non-prayed upon" not be seperated into their respective groups. I would think that this may set up some imbalance due to natural effects, more light for one over another, more moisture, etc. I think if the plants were mixed together with some marking, say a "prayer stick" placed to mark the plants being prayed upon, this would allow for those natural effects to be mitigated.by the way, not sure if anyone has mentioned this but why would "prayer" for the plants have to be "in-situ"? Why couldn't someone pray for the plants inside some building away from the plants. I'm sure god is smart enough to figure out which ones are being prayed upon without it being physically pointed out to him like some blind watchmaker.

I noticed that Ned posted a nice setup for this kind of experiment. At least it looked really close to what I was trying to propose. I probably should have read a little further.You're absolutely right about testing ones biases. I wonder though if any such test is even worth attempting. It can always be said that god's will is unknowable or that god doesn't want to be tested if such tests fail. No amount of negative results would stop certain individuals from promoting the "power" of prayer I suspect.

Stephen writes: I assume you are talking about Kekule but just as an fyi, in was NOT an insurmountable problem and their were other scientists hot on the trail for the stucture of the benzene ring. In fact, four years before Kekule's proposal their was an Austrian Chemist-physicist Johann Loschmidt who drew a ring structure for benzene.(edit: Since Chemistry is one of my passions I thought I might add a little more. Perhaps unecessary though highly interesting) In fact Kekule was not entirely correct in his drawing of the benzene ring. He did not account for resonance stabilization and that there are actually TWO kekule forms that are appropriate. Differing in the distribution of their electrons in the p-orbitals but not their atoms.Saying that such and such a problem is insoluble gives little credit to the creativity of human beings. It's a little like saying "Goddidit and lets be done with it". Where is the value in that?[This message has been edited by DBlevins, 01-28-2004]