Pray For Me

Fom Friday's New York Times:

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.

Of course, even having this study is ridiculous. The ones who are inclined to refute these findings don't believe in science anyway.

Jehovah's Witnesses regularly come to my door and I talk with them all the time. Yesterday we were talking about the concept of heaven and when I asked where heaven was the woman told me "physically up". As in a physical place in our reality. I pressed her and asked if heaven was on a planet or freefloating, if time and distance were no hindrance, could a spacecraft reach it. In her entire life (70+ years) she admitted to never once wondering about the reality of it, she just knew it was there.