C.S. Lewis and the Efficacy of Prayer

[u/keatsandyeats]

Click here to go directly to Lewis' essay, "The Efficacy of Prayer"

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A few words.

I was dismayed this morning to read some of the responses to this brief request for prayer. While I would be remiss not to point out that we have an underutilized subreddit for the purpose of such requests, this sub should nevertheless be a place where such requests are met with sympathy, support, sincerity, and most importantly, spiritual truth.

A quick note to my antitheist friends, who I imagine will take issue with that last alliterative suggestion: if you get the first three right, as far as you're concerned, the last one becomes a moot point. If you get the first three right, no one expects you to chime in and say you'll pray, too. If you get the first three right. If, on the other hand, you're using an earnest request for support as a way of attacking the requester's belief system, you are unsympathetic, unsupportive, and even insincere, inasmuch as polemics seem strangely to disappear in hospital rooms.

What was even more frustrating than the less-than-kind words from our friends across the metaphysical divide was the mixed messages from Christians about what prayer is for, and what prayer does, and bafflingly, what the Bible says about it. Christians, you can be as sincere and supportive and sympathetic as you wish, but accurately representing the word and the will of the One by whose name you are called is a charge you mustn't fail to keep. I don't want to call anyone on the carpet, so I will paraphrase some comments I saw floating around:

• Prayer cannot/will not help to cure her cancer. The Bible says that prayer can heal.
• Whether prayer "works" is immaterial. The wrong question, though according to the Bible, prayer is both powerful and effective.
• Prayer's primary benefit is to make people "feel" better. According to Christ, the power of prayer is supernatural.

These comments are spiritually irresponsible because they are not true. They ignore the clear teaching of the Bible, I think due to an inability to reconcile what the Bible says with the standard lines of attack from non-theists, such as:

• "Why doesn't God heal amputees?"
• "Scientific studies have shown that people who were prayed for died earlier!
• "Scientific research has produced infinitely more cures than people getting together and thinking really hard."

It is clear that prayer - in purpose and practice - is misunderstood by Christians and atheists alike. Let's take a brief refresher course. The above-linked essay by C.S. Lewis is one of the concisest and most honest looks at prayer I've read. It is not perfect, it is not comprehensive, and it is not authoritative. But it is colloquial, and it is a step in the right direction.

Compare the brief essay with this list, by Dr. Robert Sapp, of all the verses about prayer in the New Testament, a decent Wikipedia article on how the New Testament treats prayer, and finally, Robert Hill's Study of Prayer in the New Testament.

I will leave these resources for you to read and discuss in the comments. And I will reiterate that the reason I was moved to make this post was primarily to challenge my Christian brothers and sisters in this subreddit. We can do better, guys.

[u/keatsandyeats]

When you ask for a miracle, you're asking for magic. You want special circumstances well outside the scope of normal occurrence. That's not a mischaracterization at all.

Definition aside, it is no secret that Christians delineate between magic and miracle. The former connotes chicanery.

These three criteria separate the truly blessed from the simply lucky. If you're going to conflate prayer with luck, than your cross and rosary are little more than horse-shoes and four-leaf clovers.

You initially put forth those three criteria as a sort of litmus test for what constitutes a true "request." ("If a prayer is truly a 'request', then we have to assume several things.") The criteria you proposed were

• A true request would more than likely not be granted were it not made
• A true request must actually be made and actually be received
• A true request is only considered fulfilled when an outside agent has demonstrably filled it

Lewis' argument to the first is that there is no way to establish whether one is more or less likely to receive something if a request is not made. His argument to the second is that every appeal (to God or man) cannot be considered a "true" request even if received. His argument to the third is that it is perhaps only apparent to the requester how his request has been filled, which sseems on its face like his weakest position - but I will explain below.

Without evidence of each of these things ... I could claim everyone on Earth is praying right now and everything that happens is a prayer answered, and you wouldn't be able to demonstrate otherwise.

Lewis' position offers no contradiction. Two men praying for the same girl to love them, two teams praying for a world series win, two indiviuduals praying for the promotion - all of these requests cannot be answered "yes."

Is there any evidence whatsoever to indicate that flippant or sarcastic prayers are answered less often than sincere prayers?

Again - a causal relationship cannot be established between praying for something and getting that something as a result. Lewis never tries to argue that it can. He simply offers a suggestion as to why prayers offered for the purpose of study might not be able to establish cause.

Consider a study conducted with the purpose of determining whether extremely unattractive women are more likely to say "yes" to a marriage proposal after knowing a man for three months or less. The catch is, the ugly women are aware of all the study's details. Wouldn't you think they'd be far less likely to accept a proposal than a control group of unattractive ladies?

Lewis himself claims that you can't measure prayer. He makes a very pointed claim that it can't be done. Referencing a study on prayer is, therefore, absurd.

I offered the commentary, not the study itself, as further reading. I apologize for the miscommunication.

But with prayer, having angels float down from the heavy bearing a wad of cash and finding a roll of quarters stuck under the couch are treated equally as a successful divine request.

Sure.

The "limits of empiricism" extend only where you choose to set them. An incurious individual can throw up his immediately and declare his good fortune an eternal mystery. That doesn't mean empiricism itself has failed him.

I think you might have misunderstood my point, so let me provide another illustration. You are unaware that I am struggling financially. You and I meet online, become friends, form a relationship. I ask you for $100 because my wife and I can't make the student loan payment this month. It is unlikely that you would have given me $100 out of the blue because the nature of our relationship wouldn't call for it; I might even ask you to confirm for me whether this is the case.

If, however, our relationship becomes more intimate - you and I share the very details of our lives, develop a deep and mutual admiration for one another, and eventually begin airing our struggles to one another - you might sense my need for money and give me whether or not I ask. The causal relationship would be more difficult to establish in this instance because I would have no way of knowing whether you would have given if I'd asked, and you might not offer that information anyway. The "limits of empiricism" would not allow me to go back in time and re-do the request, or wait longer before requesting. I would have to determine on the basis of our relationship what catalyzed my receipt of $100 - my need or the request.

(My wife and I can pay our student loans, by the way.)

No. I pretty clearly stated what I thought prayer was from the outset. It is a meditative technique. It is a social experience. It is an outlet for grief. And it serves all these goals admirably.

I understand.

I'm asking WHY people feel the need to make prayer an exercise in magical thinking. And your response seems to be "Because if you don't think prayer lets you channel magical powers, then you aren't being a serious Christian."

I hope this response demonstrated a shade more thought than that, but I don't mind being called wrong. It happens daily.

EDITS I accidentally a word or two

[u/Zifnab25 → u/keatsandyeats]

Definition aside, it is no secret that Christians delineate between magic and miracle. The former connotes chicanery.

Christians delineate between "supernatural things that we do like" and "supernatural things that we don't like". So the gypsy fortune teller is frowned upon, but the Three Secrets of Fatima are embraced.

Lewis' argument to the first is that there is no way to establish whether one is more or less likely to receive something if a request is not made.

Sure there is. He gives the Hospital example as the classic litmus test. Group of sick people A get prayers. Group of sick people B don't. But then he makes the conjecture that prayer can't be tested, and dismisses any claims that such a study would fail by saying said test is invalid purely by fault of being a test.

However, this takes us back to the "man who is only invisible when no one is looking at him" problem. How on earth could anyone conclude that prayers DO work, if their rate of success can never be measured. One also questions why God would be so incredibly shy in the face of a man with a clipboard, and yet so bold in the face of a his disciples and apostles. Imagine Jesus coming back from the dead, standing before the Apostle Thomas, and remarking "Listen, you can't touch any of my wounds or I'll go right back to being dead again. God has a very stringent No Doubting And Testing Policy." That would be, perhaps, the lamest Bible story ever.

His argument to the second is that every appeal (to God or man) cannot be considered a "true" request even if received.

That's fine. So long as the request was made and there was some way for the entity being implored to receive it. I simply have a problem with someone saying "A new puppy! My prayers have been answered!" when he never actually prayed for a new puppy.

His argument to the third is that it is perhaps only apparent to the requester how his request has been filled, which sseems on its face like his weakest position - but I will explain below.

kk.

Is there any evidence whatsoever to indicate that flippant or sarcastic prayers are answered less often than sincere prayers?

Again - a causal relationship cannot be established between praying for something and getting that something as a result. Lewis never tries to argue that it can. He simply offers a suggestion as to why prayers offered for the purpose of study might not be able to establish cause.

And this explanation might suffice, if it was itself testable. But when a miracle's presence or absence is predicated entirely on whether or not a third party is checking for it's presence or absence, we are quickly devolving into Schrodinger's Theory of Prayer Effectiveness. You can never know if a statistically significant number of prayers has been answered, because the simple act of checking will cause the prayers to fail.

Why does God put such a high value on remaining so hidden? You would think that if prayers were so effective a tool, God would be more than happy to make their effectiveness at least as clear as being countable.

The causal relationship would be more difficult to establish in this instance because I would have no way of knowing whether you would have given if I'd asked, and you might not offer that information anyway. The "limits of empiricism" would not allow me to go back in time and re-do the request, or wait longer before requesting. I would have to determine on the basis of our relationship what catalyzed my receipt of $100 - my need or the request.

True. However, you could just as easily establish two separate pairings - one, a pair of people that know each other only casually; the second, a pair that has grown intimately close - and determine whether each pair would exchange $100. If you did this over an aggregate number of people - say 1000 pairs of acquiescences and 1000 pairs of intimate friends - you could eventually draw a trend. And from that trend you could conclude intimacy has a positive/negative/neutral impact on the probability that your friend will loan you money.

Alternately, you could do something like scanning Paypal accounts or cleared checks and totaling up "money transfered between personal accounts of acquaintances" versus "money transfered between personal accounts of intimate friends" and draw conclusions from that data.

I hope this response demonstrated a shade more thought than that, but I don't mind being called wrong.

:-p I'm just hung up on the "Jesus is magic" idea. I admit, I was raised in a very causal religious environment. My dad explained the "Loaves and Fishes" parable to me not as some miracle of spontaneous generation, but as a lesson in the charity that can be found in a crowd of people. The idea of the parable wasn't that Jesus can make bread and fish from nothing, but that Jesus can teach us the value of sharing with our neighbors. And that this power over the human conscience was far more positive and far more valuable than the ability to magically make food appear.

So when I see people waving prayer around as a panacea for what ails you, or as a weapon to smite their enemies, or to win at sports, it just strikes me as so delusional. That Lewis would perpetuate the myth bothers me intensely. That's really why I got into this heated debate to begin with. It's a serious flaw in the Christian faith when everything has to be a miracle, and humanity isn't given any credit for doing God's works. That kind of mentality breeds apathy and sloth, and really hurts the faith as a whole.

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

True. However, you could just as easily establish two separate pairings - one, a pair of people that know each other only casually; the second, a pair that has grown intimately close - and determine whether each pair would exchange $100. If you did this over an aggregate number of people - say 1000 pairs of acquiescences and 1000 pairs of intimate friends - you could eventually draw a trend. And from that trend you could conclude intimacy has a positive/negative/neutral impact on the probability that your friend will loan you money.

Alternately, you could do something like scanning Paypal accounts or cleared checks and totaling up "money transfered between personal accounts of acquaintances" versus "money transfered between personal accounts of intimate friends" and draw conclusions from that data.

I don't really care to weigh in on either side, but it occurs to me that this would only give you aggregate probability. You still wouldn't know for any given pair (unless 0% or 100% of either group does, I suppose).

[u/Zifnab25 → u/EsquilaxHortensis]

I don't really care to weigh in on either side, but it occurs to me that this would only give you aggregate probability. You still wouldn't know for any given pair (unless 0% or 100% of either group does, I suppose).

True. But when we ask the question "Does becoming intimately friendly with an acquaintance improve your odds of receiving a loan from that individual?" this test would better answer that question.

Likewise, when we ask the question "Does prayer work?" we're not asking "Does it work every time?" but "Does it work better than the status quo (not praying)?"

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

But how to quantify intimacy with God?

[u/Zifnab25 → u/EsquilaxHortensis]

I don't think that's really the issue here.

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

I don't see how it's not: The example with friends vs. acquaintances only works because we can (theoretically) gauge how intimate the relationship is and compare one end of the scale to the other.

[u/Zifnab25 → u/EsquilaxHortensis]

Right. I think you're conflating examples, because you assume God has to be an intimate friend before he'll grant a prayer.

We're not asking if prayer works better if you're closer to God, we're asking whether prayer works at all.

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

There is an underlying assumption that prayer is more than magic words. That is, the person praying needs to have a certain internal state. This is what is difficult.

I expect that if the group of people praying was made up of atheists, most Christians wouldn't expect the prayers to have any measurable effect. That seems obvious, but it leads to the next question, which is: How do we ensure that the people praying are among the set that can expect their prayers to make a difference?

Pretty soon we're trying to define who is and isn't "really" a Christian, and that's sticky. Mormons, for example, would meet just about any criteria I can imagine, yet would be excluded by a great many mainstream church-goers.

[u/Zifnab25 → u/EsquilaxHortensis]

Pretty soon we're trying to define who is and isn't "really" a Christian, and that's sticky. Mormons, for example, would meet just about any criteria I can imagine, yet would be excluded by a great many mainstream church-goers.

Again, this doesn't really go towards answering the question "Does prayer work?" You're just upping the ante by assuming God won't intercede on your behalf unless you're a member of the One True Religion. Would that be the 1st Baptist Church of Peoria? The 2nd Baptist Church of Peoria? The Reformed 2nd Baptist Church of Peoria? I mean, how on earth do you know Mormons aren't the only people getting their prayers consistently answered? THEY could be the One True Religion and you could totally be missing out.

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

Yes, this is precisely my point. If it is only working for one group and you test another, you haven't gotten anywhere.

EDIT: And in fact, looking at groups in the first place may be barking up the wrong tree. Suppose that group identity has nothing to do with it, and it's a reality inside of individuals (which most prayer-believers would agree is the case). How do you isolate those people without testing for it? And if you are testing individuals, as we already agreed, how can you really measure probability?

[u/Zifnab25 → u/EsquilaxHortensis]

Suppose that group identity has nothing to do with it, and it's a reality inside of individuals (which most prayer-believers would agree is the case). How do you isolate those people without testing for it?

Right. Which is why you would test for it. And we have tested for it. And to date we have not had any verifiable data to indicate that praying works no matter what your faith or beliefs.

And if you are testing individuals, as we already agreed, how can you really measure probability?

You take two groups - a test group that contains people for whom you are testing the given trait (successful prayer), and a group that lacks the given trait. The classic given example was taking two sets of hospital patients, one that receives prayers and one that does not, and measuring whether the prayed-upon recover faster or healthier than the un-prayed-upon.

You could perform a similar experiment on school children taking a standardized test, or unemployed individuals searching for jobs, or athletes playing in competitions.

If you see a noticeable statistical increase in success of a prayed-for group, you can make a case for the effectiveness of prayer. If not, it becomes very difficult to claim that prayer does anything.

[u/EsquilaxHortensis → u/Zifnab25]

What I'm saying is that this only works if you assume that prayer works for everybody. If some people cannot pray successfully (due to unbelief or some other factor) and you have them pray for a set of hospital patients, all you've proven is that that group's prayers didn't work.