This wprayer_3eek, we take a look at the belief that prayer can be a useful medical tool.  Not so much the idea that you can pray away cancer but more the idea that prayer can help doctors do a better job.  Is prayer that is basically being used to comfort people who are powerless in the face of a catastrophic health emergency harmful?  We talk through a few recent experiences to explore our feelings about prayer and doctors.  We also read off the last five answers to our original five questions!

Show notes below the fold:

Here’s a link to the Last Week Tonight piece about Televangelists.

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3 Responses

  1. I recently had to make a trip from SC back to MN because my father in law suffered a cardiac arrest due to a blood clot. He was with out oxygen for anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. He was brain dead and surviving on life support. My mother in law is very religious and was determined prayer would save him despite many doctors telling her otherwise. She had church members come and pray with her the few times she even visited him in the hospital. She was very rude to hospital staff by insisting she pray over him while they had necessary care to provide to him or doctors were there to talk to her. It was finally her pastor who told her if god was going to save him she was impeding the process by keeping him on life support. Twelve days after the arrest she finally agreed to end support. And then she would not even go to the hospital. There is much more to the story but it would be a book by the time I was done. In the end it has caused my husband and his brother to no longer talk to each other. That same brother is not speaking to his mom and blames my husband for it all because we moved to the south and I am atheist. (he doesn’t know his brother is now one too)
    But my main point is prayer tore this family apart. In no way did it help my father in law. Or any of the family.
    Thanks for your great podcasts and I look forward to them each week. Especially Ronn Bauman. (I am listening to it as I type this) I’ve had a crush on him for YEARS!!!

  2. For those that don’t bother to take the time to experience the raised consciousness and awareness that takes place when you engage in this spiritual union of the self and the creator, there is by the very nature of depriving the soul of this awakening practice a void that the human being craves to fill deep down, this is especially true of athiests. When one abandons the very core that the human intellect craves which is the truth of our existence in favor of constant, incessant thoughts of only earthly things…passions, desires, power, ego, pride, etc., one finds themselves seeking one pleasure after another to fill this void. It’s an existence which leads to a never ending circle of attempts to create a harmony which simply can’t exist.

    1. While you are certainly welcome to your opinion, I can say that when it comes to what atheists think and feel, you have literally no idea what you are talking about.

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