Recent research into prayer seems to show that intercessory prayer is ineffective when it comes to the recovery of patients. Philosopher Richard Swinburne has an interesting take on why this might be the case:
“So what is the point of petitionary prayer? The answer must be that sometimes, perhaps often, it is equally good that what we should pray for should occur as it should not occur, and that God wants to interact with us by answering our requests — so long as we ask for right reasons. Of course God wants to do for the person praying what that person wants just because that person wants it for a right reason.
One right reason is that he prays for a particular sufferer out of love and compassion. In the STEP prayer study, the people praying were not praying out of love and compassion for the particular sufferer. Although the form of their prayer might — dishonestly — suggest that they wanted the well-being of the patient for its own sake, that was not why they were praying. They were praying to test a scientific hypothesis.
Why should a good God pay any attention to these prayers? One might say: “In order to show us more evidentially that he exists.” But if there is a God, he does not need to answer such prayers to do this. If he wanted to do that, he could fill the world with “super miracles.”
There is quite a lot of evidence anyway of God's existence, and too much might not be good for us. The negative result of the STEP study is entirely predictable based on the hypothesis of a loving God who sometimes answers prayers of genuine compassion”. (read entire article)
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