RE: prayer and healing

There may be a sort of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which indicates that when one measures some aspect of a system some other aspect, canonically conjugate to the first, is messed up. Perhaps that is the case with attempts of "measuring" the effectiveness of prayers. Any guess of what the canonically conjugate quantity to prayers is. Could it be the will of God?

Moorad

From: Pim van Meurs
Sent: Sat 4/1/2006 12:01 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: prayer and healing

Janice cut and pasted some random statements about prayer which shows that we should not take everything we read in the Bible literally. Let this be a warning to those who believe that the Bible requires a young earth for instance.
When earlier research suggested that there existed a 'power of prayer' which could be scientifically detected, some were quick to embrace the findings. However, by placing God under scientific scrutiny they have also opened up the 'power of prayer' to falsification.
The potential costs of relying on science to 'prove' faith is not just damaging to science but can be devastating to faith.
Seems there should be a lesson here for many an ID activist.

Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:

So we are left with this: Skeptics like Barker can only vaguely claim that something "clearly in line" with God's will wasn't granted. Barker has no roll of God's will that I know of; indeed, how could he know the will of a being he does not believe in? Health and wealth advocates may qualify by claiming it is God's will that we be rich -- an issue that must be addressed and defeated on other hermeneutical grounds. The bottom line: These passages are not magical mantras, and should not be used as such.
Received on Sat Apr 1 12:24:09 2006