Proof that prayer 'works'? That God answers prayer?

Proof that prayer works:

A 1993 Israeli survey following 10,000 civil servants for 26 years found that Orthodox Jews were less likely to die of cardiovascular problems than "nonbelievers."

A 1995 study from Dartmouth College monitored 250 people after open-heart surgery concluded that those who had religious connections were 12 times less likely to die than those who had none.

Duke Univ. researchers assessed 1,000 hospital patients from 1987 to 1989; patients who prayed or were prayed for coped far better.

This occurs even when the sick person is prayed for and doesn't know it:

Cardiologist Randolph Byrd studied 393 patients admitted to the coronary-care unit at San Francisco General Hospital. Some were prayed for by home-prayer groups, others were not. All the men and women got medical care. In this randomized, double-blind study, neither the doctors and nurses nor the patients knew who would be the object of prayer.

The results surprised many scientists.The men and women whose medical care was supplemented with prayer needed fewer drugs and spent less time on ventilators. They fared better overall than their counterparts who received only medical care. The prayed-for patients were:

Significantly less likely to require antibiotics (3 versus 16)

" " " develop pulmonary edema (6 versus 18).

" " " require insertion of a tube into the throat to assist breathing (0 versus 12).

" " " less likely to die

.

Experiments in healing involve nonhuman subjects. In a survey of 131 controlled experiments, it was found that prayed-for rye grass grew taller; prayed-for yeast resisted the toxic effects of cyanide; prayed-for test-tube bacteria grew faster. These experiments don't involve humans, you can run them with fanatical precision and you can run them hundreds of times. It's the best evidence of all that prayer can change the world. And it operates as strongly on the other side of the Earth as it does at the bedside.

In his book, Healing Words, Larry Dossey, M.D. reviewed over 100 experiments on the effects of prayer. More than half showed an effect on everything from seed germination to wound healing.

Volunteers visualized stimulating or retarding the growth of bacteria and fungi and achieved significantly positive results from as far as 15 miles away.

At the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, researchers took blood samples from 32 volunteers, isolated their red blood cells and placed the samples in a room on the other side of the building. Then the researchers placed the RBCs in a solution designed to swell and burst them, a process that can be measured extremely accurately. Next the researchers asked volunteers to pray for the preservation of some of the RBCS. To help them the researchers projected color slides of healthy RBCS. The praying significantly slowed the swelling and bursting of the RBCS.

In another study at the Mind Science Foundation, volunteers in a room on one side of the building were asked to visualize volunteers in a room on the other side of the building becoming calmer or more agitated. Meanwhile, the "receivers" were hooked up to biofeedback-type equipment to gauge their reactions. The results showed that the "influencers" exerted a statistically significant effect on the receivers' moods.

Prayer can take many forms. Results occur not only when people pray for explicit outcomes, but also when they pray for nothing specific.

A simple "Thy will be done" approach was more powerful than when specific results were held in mind.

A simple attitude of prayerfulness and a feeling of empathy, caring, and compassion for the entity in need, seemed to set the stage for healing.

Experiments also showed that prayer positively affected:

High Blood Pressure

Wounds

Heart Attacks

Headaches

Anxiety

The subjects in these studies included:

Water

Enzymes

Bacteria

Fungi

Yeast

Red blood cells

Cancer cells

Pacemaker cells

Seeds

Plants

Algae

Moth larvae

Mice

Chicks

The processes that had been influenced by prayer were:

Activity of enzymes

The growth rate of leukemic white blood cells

Mutation rates of bacteria

Germination and growth rates of seeds

Firing rate of pacemaker cells

Healing of wounds

The size of goiters and tumors

Time required to awaken from anesthesia

Autonomic effects such as electrodermal activity of the skin, rates of hemolysis of red blood cells and hemoglobin levels.

It did not matter whether the praying person was with the person who was prayed for the prayer to work. You can pray for someone who is far away and still have an influence on the outcome.

Nothing seems to block or stop the effects of prayer - the object in one study was placed in a lead-lined room and in