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Apt. (Source)
Preach to the choir
Icon religion.svg
Crux of the matter
Speak of the devil
An act of faith
Now I understand a prayer can work:
A particular prayer in a particular church
In a particular style with a particular stuff
And for particular problems that aren't particularly tough,
And for particular people, preferably white
And for particular senses, preferably sight
A particular prayer in a particular spot
To a particular version of a particular God
And if you get that right, He just might
Take a break from giving babies malaria
And pop down to your local area
And fix the cataracts of your mum!
—Tim Minchin, Thank you God[1]

A prayer (from Latin precari "ask earnestly, beg") is a form of spell or incantation, usually cast or recited to a specific God or demon. Believers assert that their God hears their prayers and might even, if in a good mood, grant the requests contained within said prayers — a kind of celestial bonus package. On occasion, prayers are made to some third party who is believed to have the power to intercede on behalf of the petitioner, such as a saint or "the Lord's anointed" (royalty, religious leaders etc.).

Though many "studies" have attempted to prove that prayer gets results, there is no evidence of divine intercession actually occurring, other than occasional applications of the Texas sharpshooter logical fallacy.


First you get down on your knees,

Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,

And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
—"The Vatican Rag" by Tom Lehrer

Generic prayers[edit]

Lincoln Six-Echo: What's "God"?
McCord: Well, you know when you want something really really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy who ignores you.
The Island[2]

Generic "prayers" are often offered by public figures, or people who run websites, or people who wish they did, in order to suck up to the vaguely religious majority of the population, thinking that they're free, and, who knows, they might help, and lawyers attempting to gain favor from judges. While these prayers are directed at manipulating the faithful (regardless whether the manipulator is themselves actually a believer), the overall mechanism of praying is sucking up to God.

Politicians offer prayers or request prayers for victims of the latest school shooting or other mass shooting. This makes the politicians look good and prayful while they accept ..... from the NRA and do nothing to improve gun safety. See Aftermath to 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting for an example.


— Jed Bartlet, The West Wing

Intercessory prayer is the act of praying for something to happen to someone else. It usually refers to a religious person praying for the health of another individual, but there is no reason it cannot refer to prayer with less altruistic purposes.

Unlike prayer for personal guidance, there is no reason that intercessory prayer cannot be tested through the scientific method. Praying for something to happen to someone else is a stated goal, and an expected result that can be tested for. For example, either prayer causes someone to improve their prognosis for a cancer treatment, or it does not. In this respect, it is no different from any other medical intervention, natural, supernatural, or otherwise. The nature of the intervention is not under scrutiny, but the effect is — as the effect is very much in the natural world. This puts it firmly within Science's field, even if you subscribe to a position such as NOMA. Accept no bullshit from people saying otherwise—because if something has a real effect on the real world, it can be tested.

Perhaps because of the influence of fundamentalist Christians in the U.S., intercessory prayer has undergone much more study than other forms of faith healing. The results are not encouraging. A large-scale review of the available evidence failed to show medical utility to the practice.[3]

Several large, randomized controlled trials have showed little or no effect of prayer. A double-blind study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet demonstrated no effect of prayer for patients undergoing heart surgery.[4]

Another study, supported by the Templeton foundation[5] in the respected American Heart Journal,[6] showed little effect. Furthermore, and somewhat disappointingly for the Foundation, the only effect noticed was a negative effect in respect of those patients who knew they were being prayed for. It has been speculated that this was the result of "performance anxiety" on the part of the prayees.[7]

When studies are designed well and double-blind, the effect of intercessory prayer disappears. This strongly suggests that any purported effects of prayer are due to placebo effects or poor research design.

Intercessory prayer is different from other forms of pseudoscience in that a lot of people, particularly Americans, seem to believe in it. Despite this widespread belief, medical science has failed to confirm any significant beneficial effects from the practice. It would be wise to stop wasting resources on studies, given that most studies have been negative and no plausible explanation for the efficacy of the practice exists. However, the use of prayer is unlikely to cease due to a lack of evidence as people who truly believe in it will say that science can't measure it anyway.[note 1]


An evil miracle is still technically a miracle.
—Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater[8]
Psalm 40:7

Imprecatory prayer is prayer asking God to kill, maim, curse, send into eternal damnation, or otherwise harm an enemy. Perhaps the most well-known imprecatory prayer is found in the Bible in Psalm 109, a Psalm which generally gets overlooked by sermon-writers. The Psalms is cursed with them (5, 6, 11, 12, 35, 37, 40, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, 94, 109, 137, 139, and 143), but there are also imprecatory prayers in the New Testament: Matthew 23:13, Matthew 26:23-24, 1 Corinthians 16:22, Galatians 1:8-9, Galatians 5:12, 2 Timothy 4:14, and Revelation 6:10.[9]

"Love your enemies"? Not a chance. The teachings of Jesus go out the window here.[note 2] Those who say imprecatory prayer is scriptural point to Psalms, which contains several such prayers.[10]

The practice seems to be increasing in popularity lately:

  • Peter J. Peters leads his radio listeners in an imprecatory prayer against the "enemies of God" during almost every show...which might just work against him, if his image of God isn't the exact right one.
  • Fred Phelps used to say an imprecatory prayer against the whole world every hour, by the sound of it.
  • Psalm 109 is one of the imprecatory prayers found in the Psalms with "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109" bumper stickers and T-shirts.[14] Probably sold through the same outlets selling WWJD trinkets.[15]

On the other hand, proponents of name it and claim it theology teach that the words that come out of your mouth are a "creative force" which actually speaks something into being[note 3]. Therefore, they warn, watch what you say because anything you say can work against you as an imprecatory prayer. According to this teaching, if you say, "I don't feel so good today", you have just literally prayed an imprecatory prayer over yourself making yourself sick.[note 4] Don't say "damn it!" either because saying so is praying an imprecatory prayer over your current situation asking God to send you (or whomever) to Hell. If, by chance, you were born with the soul of a dragon and happen to say things in dragon language, this effect will of course be much stronger. So say only positive things which will speak health and wealth into your life, or don't say anything at all. Why multiple proponents of this haven't won the lottery remains a mystery.


Drying laundry Sacred prayer flags in La Bolsa

The Tibetans have actually brought prayer into the Industrial Age by mechanizing it in the form of prayer wheels that turn a scripture on a scroll inside a drum, acting as an automatic prayer. In Nepal, prayer flags are used to make the prayer physical in the world.

Prayer cloth[edit]

A prayer cloth is a trinket mailed to gullible donors by certain televangelists in return for donating. It is blessed by the televangelist in question through the laying on of hands, making said piece of cloth a conduit for the Holy Spirit. This supposedly gives the cloth magical powers such as faith healing.

This bit of woo comes from the Bible, Book of Acts, Chapter 19: "And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them."

Disgraced televangelist Peter Popoff currently runs such a racket, since being discredited as a faith healer by James Randi. Popoff's particular trinkets include "Miracle Spring Water" and "Miracle Manna Bread". YouTuber Dprjones experienced regulatory indifference to the continued broadcasts of Popoff's TV programmes in the UK.[16]


Prayer logic
Prayer: How to do nothing and still think you're helping.
—Common "de-motivator" poster

When prayer has been scientifically studied, it has shown that prayer has no noticeable effect.[17]

Can it be tested?[edit]

—Emo Phillips[18]

The empirical testing of prayer is a controversial issue.

Rationalists might offer the task to prayerful people to cause some slight change in the world via the power of prayer, such as tipping a pen off their desk. Religionists might respond that such tasks are beneath the dignity of their gods, so as to avoid the inevitable loss of face at being unable to do so. A search in PubMed on "intercessory prayer" shows that much of the medical ethical boards and philosophy gurus are all dubious if one can even study such a thing.[19]

Some woo-meisters take the position that prayer and other religious twaddle can have documented effects on a person's health. In some cases they go so far as to claim that they put a sick person in one room, and an alternative guru in another room behind a two-sided mirror, and that when the guru prayed, the sick person got better.[20]

Case study: the Pope[edit]

Every time a pope falls ill and ends up on his deathbed, we may assume that a sizable fraction of the one billion Catholics in the world all pray for his recovery. Despite this enormous effort of prayer, 100% of popes eventually die.[citation NOT needed][note 5]

Prayer in the Bible[edit]

British Roman Catholic theologian Gerald VannWikipedia addressed the lack of meaningful outcomes resulting from prayer, pointing out how people tend to treat prayer as some kind of childish butler bell for wishgranting, implying that prayers only appear to go unanswered due to the excessively inflated expectations of the praying.

—Gerald Vann

The actual problem, however, is that this is precisely how Jesus himself defines prayer in multiple places in the Bible, corroborated by all four gospels[21] — thus effectively closing the door on any attempts by Christian theologians to invent some kind of requirement that prayer must be "modest" or consist of "realistic demands" to be likely to be answered.

Jesus (Mark 11:24-25), instructing the faithful on how to tell if a prayer worked or not, and what to expect in terms of results.

Jesus in fact stresses the flamboyant disproportionality of answered prayers as the definitive proof of their success, underscoring that the only mechanism causative of unanswered prayer is a lack of faith, however obscure this splinter of doubt may be even to the praying individuals themselves — and not any divine regulation against supposedly "over-the-top" demands in prayer (since the whole point of prayer is that faithful worshipers may be rewarded by an omnipotent God).

Jesus (Mark 6:5), telling the faithful that praying just to be seen praying isn't getting you anywhere.

This is a problematic state of affairs regarding Christian prayer theology, since an imaginary opportunity for the church to get away with specifying prayer as "only that which is so subtle as to blend in perfectly with random chance" would at the very least allow for reliances on vagueness in the defence of prayer — strategies with their own set of problems.

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer[edit]

The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) is an experiment that was carried out by the Templeton Foundation on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer on patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft surgery (e.g., to treat heart disease).[22]

Like all things Templeton, this project was created to provide scientific evidence for religious action (specifically of the Christian variety). The team, under the leadership of Harvard Medical School doctors Herbert Benson and Jeffery A. Dusek, et al., was granted a large research grant (USD $2.4M) to test the efficacy of this type of prayer.


1,802 subjects, all receiving the same surgery and who generally believed that prayer works, were divided into three groups:

  1. Patients who would be receiving prayers, but didn't know it.
  2. Patients who would be receiving prayers and were told about it ahead of time.
  3. Patients who would not be receiving prayers (the control group).

Three groups of religious folk (two Catholic, one Protestant) from religious states (Kansas, Minnesota) provided prayers to the study subjects in groups 1 and 2 (whom they did not know) throughout the course of the study.

Results and reaction[edit]

Søren Kierkegaard

The results found no differences in the complications of groups 1 and 3, which a rational scientist would expect. Unexpectedly, however, patients in group 2 actually had more complications during surgery… a psychosomatic result of knowing about the prayers, perhaps? Indeed, in the study quoted, prayer had a small negative effect on the health of the patients prayed for.[23]

Of course the atheism community had a field day with these results. Richard Dawkins mentions the experiment in The God Delusion, and offers up the possibility that because prayer empirically made matters worse for the patients, that they might have a legal case against their well-wishers for willfully aggravating their conditions![note 6]

The Templeton Foundation, required to release the results of the study lest they lose face as a legitimate scientific institution, panned the results and did their best to play it down in the media.

Our study was never intended to address the existence of God or the presence or absence of intelligent design in the universe. The study did not endeavor, either, to compare the efficacy of one prayer form over another or to assess participants' understanding of the nature and purpose of prayer. Finally, it was not our objective to discover whether prayers from one religious group work better than prayers from another.

One wonders what their remarks would have been if the results had turned out in favor of the efficacy of prayer. And if these five things that they assert weren't part of the purpose of the study, then why spend so much money on it?

They suggested other possible reasons for the results (e.g., maybe if the patients knew they were being prayed for by loved ones instead of random strangers at a distant church), but no follow-up study was ever issued.

Quantity of prayer[edit]

The man who prays is the one who thinks that God has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct God how to put them right.
Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

Congregations are frequently exhorted to pray for something or someone. The idea apparently being that if entire groups of people pray for something, then the being being prayed to is more likely to perform miracles — not unlike the idea that the more people shake a vending machine, the faster it dispenses treats.

Exactly why they believe this is not clear. Possibilities include:

  • They believe their eternally perfect supreme being may, in fact, be slightly hearing impaired.
  • They believe that as the being has to listen to all the prayers, it simply gets bored and performs a miracle to shut the believers up.
  • They believe that if more people demonstrate faith then their God will be more impressed than if only one person demonstrates it.
  • They believe that a certain number of "prayer hours" are necessary for each miracle and consequently collective action gets things done more quickly (essentially a real life equivalent to the very dignified process of "grinding and farming" in video games).
  • They believe that prayer is like a lottery: one gets picked out of the hat each day so the more entries you have the more likely thy will be done.

Many of these "get blessed quick schemes" constitute textbook examples of magical thinking, and the suggestion that "the more people who perform the prayer, the more power it has" implies that the faithful don't really believe in an omniscient deity after all, or perhaps don't really believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God who helps His people without being repeatedly asked.

Rarely do the faithful connect this supposed need for some kind of game theory-inspired "prayer meta" to affect the output of an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent eternal creator, with the suggestion that: maybe your pointless suffering is noted and even intended?

Paradox of prayer[edit]

Trillions and trillions of prayers every day asking and begging and pleading for favors. 'Do this' 'Gimme that' 'I want a new car' 'I want a better job'. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday. And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But...what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago God made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in God's divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down schmuck with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have: suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's God's will. God's will be done.' Fine, but if it's God's will and he's going to do whatever he wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?
George Carlin, You Are All Diseased

A number of paradoxes appear to take place anytime prayer is seriously considered. One strange aspect of prayer is that the deed being prayed for has often been rendered necessary by the actions of the deity prayed to. A natural disaster or "act of God" often leads to prayers to the same God to alleviate the consequent harm. It would seem to give more bangs for the prayer bucks to pray for there to be a reduction in such disasters.[note 7]

Prayers themselves can also lead to impossible paradoxes. To give an example imagine two teams competing in a major sporting event. There are likely prayers for both team to win, leading to a question of how God could possibly answer both prayers at the same time. Prayers for prosperity or material wealth often fall into this realm, as there is only so much available material wealth in the world it is likely impossible for every praying individual to receive the degree of material wealth they requested at the same time before one runs out of material wealth to distribute. There have even been a number of historic wars where both sides claimed that God was on their side and would ensure their victory.

Another obvious problem is that prayer entails the idea of attempting to make an allegedly omniscient entity aware of something. It also involves messing with an allegedly divine plan, and divine plan or — indirectly arguing that the person praying could somehow improve upon God's intent or design.

To complicate matters further, the logic behind designing and creating life forms intelligent enough to not reliably offer uncritical praise, yet perpetually demand this of them unwaveringly seems to land our diagnosis of said creator somewhere between "unintelligent" and "malevolent".

One problem that at least one Christian has admitted that prayer won't solve is scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that can take the form of praying obsessively.[24] Martin Luther is believed to have suffered from scrupulosity.[25]

Friedrich Nietzsche


—Unnamed philosophy professor[26]

A godbotherer is a religious person who constantly "bothers" God with trivial requests, or so-called intellectual appeals to God as the necessary creator of everything, great and small. Godbotherers never seem to consider that their constant pleading of God might piss him off. Godbotherers place in God's hands everything, for instance (in order of importance):

  • the beginning of everything
  • the evolution of man
  • escaping the Babylonian exile
  • winning World War II
  • winning the Super Bowl
  • winning a high-school football game
  • surviving cancer
  • surviving the flu
  • waking up after surgery
  • waking up every morning
  • finding your soulmate
  • finding your car keys
  • getting a green light at the intersection
  • not getting fired at work for being an insufferable prig

The term godbotherer is also used to indicate anyone who bothers other people about God.

See also[edit]

Icon fun.svg For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about People to pray for.

External links[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Heiler, Friedrich: Prayer. A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion. (1997) ISBN 1851681434


  1. Would these people still say it couldn't be measured if science got a positive result in favor of prayer? Unlikely.
  2. Well, unless the word "love" means God's love
  3. interestingly, "I create as I speak" is the origin of the phrase abra cadabra.
  4. This is a theme, for example, in such books as The Tongue: A Creative Force by Charles Capps and Hung by the Tongue by Francis Martin.
  5. To be fair, we have no idea what the Muslims might be praying for. They might as well be praying for his death. There are 1.6+ billions of them and they pray like five times a day. Additionally, Jack Chick-style Fundangelicals really hate the pope, and likely do the same, and, if they are right that Arminianist fundamentalism is the one true faith, might have extra praying power to compensate for their low numbers.
  6. Dawkins says with tongue inserted firmly into his cheek, but this is just one bullet in the large chest of ammunition against the case for religion as a benevolent institution.
  7. Or an increase in specificity such that only the people God wants to harm gets harmed in said disasters.


  3. Roberts L. Ahmed I. Hall S. Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health. update of Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews 2000;(2):CD000368; PMID: 107963500. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. (1):CD000368, 2007.
  4. Krucoff, M.W., et al. (2005). Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II randomised study. The Lancet, 366(9481), 211-217.
  5. abstract prayer
  6. Benson H. Dusek JA. Sherwood JB. Lam P. Bethea CF. Carpenter W. Levitsky S. Hill PC. Clem DW Jr. Jain MK. Drumel D. Kopecky SL. Mueller PS. Marek D. Rollins S. Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal. 151(4):934-42, 2006 Apr.
  7. Performance anxiety problem
  9. See the Wikipedia article on Imprecatory Psalms.
  10. The prophet Elisha curses some children, and the Lord promptly sends some bears along to eat the cheeky little tykes
  11. "Pastor Wiley Drake Calls for Imprecatory Prayer against So-Called Religious Liberty Watchdog Group"
  12. "Curses, (Not) Foiled Again!"
  13. Death to Americans United for Separation of Church and State!, Talk to Action
  14. Psalm 109 is particularly nasty calling for the children of the person cursed to be lifelong beggars due to the sins of the father and more. Psalm 109:6
  16. [1]Dprjones's Popoff videos
  17. The Straight Dope: Have studies proven that prayer can help heal the sick? November 2, 2000
  18. The GuardianThe best God joke ever — and it's mine! (September 1980)
  19. The ethics of studying remote prayer.
  20. a review of studies on intercessory prayer
  21. listing relevant Jesus quotes on prayer from Mark, Matthew, Luke and John
  22. Templeton Foundation: Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer
  23. New York Times: Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer March 31, 2006
  24. Scrupulosity—Or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? No matter what you call it, it's no day in the park for believers by Katelyn Beaty (3/31/2008 02:14PM) Christianity Today.
  25. Aho JA. Confession and Bookkeeping: the Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting. Albany: State University of New York Press; 2005. ISBN 0-7914-6545-4. Martin Luther and scrupulosity. p. 95–8.
  26. "Praying for Parking Is Evil" on Beliefnet