RE: [asa] God disproven by science?

I did not mean to say that written or liturgical prayers cannot be done in
faith, nor that extemporaneous prayers are necessarily done in faith. In
Matt 17:14-21, the disciples couldn't heal a man, even though I'm sure they
prayed earnestly and with what they believed was faith. Yet Jesus stated
they not only needed greater faith, but that "fasting and prayer" were
needed.

I know that faith has definitions of "belief" and "trust" as well as
"faithfulness", etc., but I have another working definition of faith as
"power." [Heb 11:1] "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen." Assurance and evidence are not things we can
create ourselves - I see within faith an element of power that is given to
us by God, which implies an expression of His will, which is why I mentioned
that as well. We might pray as sincerely and earnestly as anyone could,
asking for God to miraculously produce bread in an empty cupboard. We might
believe with all our hearts that God can do this (and surely he can - I've
heard testimonies of this happening in reality, when a desperate need
existed), and yet it won't happen in the majority of cases, I dare to say.
In this case, it's not our lack of belief that's the problem, but if we are
asking for something that is not God's will, we can have no assurance of
something that God doesn't will to happen.

This touches on at least part of what I meant to say, that the effectiveness
of prayer is not based on the mechanics of the procedure, but on other
intangible factors. Prayer studies can only observe and quantify the
mechanics of prayer (the "natural" aspects), but can never truly deal with
the intangibles, such as the quantity of faith, or the will of God.

Jon Tandy

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of George Murphy
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:18 PM
To: Murray Hogg; ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] God disproven by science?

Murray -

Good point about contamination. As to your 1st paragraph, I frankly wasn't
aware that there was an "interminable debate" about what constitutes a
"prayer of faith." Why would the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, or
any similar resource, not be "prayers of faith" if prayed by people of faith
who have some degree of confidence that God wants us to pray and will
respond to prayer? Of course such prayers can be rattled off by rote but
that doesn't disqualify all such prayers.

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Murray Hogg" <muzhogg@netspace.net.au>
To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] God disproven by science?

> Hi Jon:
>
> Point taken about the prayer of faith vs. liturgical or rote prayer. But
> that simply pushes us back to that interminable debate over what
> constitutes "the prayer of faith." Presumably those who follow the
> Anglican prayer book would claim that theirs IS a "prayer of faith"
> whether we might agree or not. That said, I agree wholeheartedly with your

> main point: unless we can find means of identifying the "prayer of faith"
> then attempting scientifically to assess its veracity would seem to be an
> impossible exercise.
>
> I should, by the way, have added Christian doctors and nurses to my list
> of people who pray for patients - whether the later request it or not -
> and that they often do so "incognito". I simply can't see how prayer
> studies manage to avoid this sort of "contamination" of their sample
> groups.
>
> Blessings,
> Murray
>
> Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>> Hi Jon-
>>
>> Maybe it boils down to the ability to measure. We can't know who is
>> praying for who, so maybe prayer can't be studied scientifically. But if

>> we do know someone self-identifies as a Christian, we can then measure
>> their temperament (or marriage failure rate, etc.) and report such
>> findings, to see if there's a correlation.
>>
>> ...Bernie
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Jon Tandy
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 9:14 AM
>> To: 'ASA'
>> Subject: RE: [asa] God disproven by science?
>>
>> Murray,
>>
>> Probably more I'd like to say, but just briefly: the problem of prayer
>> studies is much deeper than just the control group, as I'm sure you
>> recognize. We aren't healed just because of liturgical prayer, or rote
>> prayer, but the "prayer of faith" in accordance with the will of God. If

>> science can come up with a method of measuring the quantity of faith that

>> we possess, and quantitatively identifying God's will, then it might be
>> capable of investigating prayer studies using methodological naturalism.
>>
>> However, to take the idea of "human-social science" in a practical
>> direction, would it be possible for sociologists to study the effects of
>> faith in an individual, or in group studies? One example could be
>> studies which show that people of faith are more likely to give to
>> charities than others. Another example might be that people of faith are

>> able to survive prisoner of war experiences better (in general) than
>> those without any professed faith. This doesn't prove what any
>> individual in the study might do under the same circumstances, but it
>> does reflect trends that seem to have some rational explanation. Could
>> such studies fall in the category of science? On the other hand, if
>> scientific studies demonstrate that fundamentalist Christians are more
>> likely than others to be angry and intolerant toward people with whom
>> they disagree, maybe we will decide we don't want science investigating
>> matters of faith and personal belief. Or maybe, we should welcome such
>> findings a
>
>
>
>
> s !
>> a useful corrective to Christian morals and practice. Do the kinds of
>> studies I suggest above fall in the category of "methodological
>> naturalism", or in a different category? If they aren't MN, would they
>> be considered "scientific" within the relevant disciplines? If they are
>> scientific but not MN, does that show that MN is not an all encompassing
>> to define "science"? I'm just throwing out ideas to stimulate thought.
>> Jon Tandy
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Murray Hogg
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 6:41 AM
>> To: ASA
>> Subject: Re: [asa] God disproven by science?
>>
>> Just a couple of thoughts on this thread;
>>
>> First, following on from what Louise wrote:
>>> God, as a presumably free-will agent operating through an unknown
>>> physical (or perhaps unknowable "supernatural") mechanism can choose to

>>> answer prayer differently even if circumstances, from our human
>>> perspective, are practically identical for both patients and
>>> petitioners. Or, as one of the students put it last spring, "if I were
>>> God and people were doing a prayer study with me, I'd just mess with
>>> them!"
>>
>> There is a similar sentiment from John Polkinghorne, Science and
>> Creation: the search for understanding (London: SPCK, 1988), p.87;
>>
>> <cite>
>> Another power we lose in personal encounter is the ability to predict.
>> Only in the event itself is its meaning to be found. It cannot be laid
>> down beforehand nor prescribed by those who are merely observers and not
>> participants. The religious believer is ill and prays for the gift of
>> wholeness in the experience. He may find it in physical recovery or in
>> the acceptance of disability or death. What will happen to him cannot be
>> predicted, nor may any but he say whether the experience, when it comes,
>> is one of wholeness or of disintegration.
>>
>> Scientific knowledge is concerned with generalities, what all can find if

>> they choose to look. In consequence it has a repeatable, and so
>> shareable, character to it. Personal encounter is always idiosyncratic,
>> because each individual is unique. We may find analogies in the
>> experience of others but never identity. We all hear a Beethoven quartet
>> differently, and we ourselves never quite hear it in the same way twice.
>> Hence the scandal of particularity, which for Christian theology finds
>> its most startling exemplification in the unique status claimed for Jesus

>> Christ. While such a claim clearly calls for the most careful assessment,

>> it is a rational possibility in the sphere of the personal that God
>> should have made himself uniquely known in a particular man.
>>
>>
>> </cite>
>>
>> Second, on prayer studies in hospitals, one of the greatest problems is
>> the fact that we simply can't establish any sort of control group. We
>> cannot stop patients praying for themselves, nor can we stop family or
>> friends doing so. And even if patients are die-hard atheists who insist
>> that neither they nor any of their acquaintances are praying for healing,

>> there are still hospital chaplains and local church prayer teams. Daily
>> prayer for all the afflicted is also set down in the Anglican prayer book

>> as well as forming part of the liturgy of many Catholic and other
>> traditions. In short, there's no such thing as "not being prayed for."
>> Consequently no way, in practice, to test the claim that "prayer has no
>> effect on healing".
>>
>> Blessings,
>> Murray To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>>
>>
>>
>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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Received on Fri Apr 24 08:28:24 2009