Is There a “Scientific” Benefit to Prayer?

A 1997 poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe in the “healing power of prayer,” 64 percent believe that doctors should pray with their patients if they request it, and 28 percent believe that faith healers have the ability to heal, and 28 percent believe in therapeutic touch.1  Prayer is popular in the fields of herbal medicine, naturopathy, and the holistic practice.  In fact, New Age psychian, Deepak Chopra offers his healing approach as an alternative to biblical prayer:  “I satisfy a spiritual yearning without making [people] think they have to worry about God and punishment.”2

Robert Schuller claims that possibility thinking is a form of prayer.  However, on what basis could someone think their desires and by believing actually receive those things.  The idea of possibility thinking as prayer is on common grounds with occultism, rather than Scripture.  Michael Harner, a practicing shaman, points out that positive attitude to actuate a universal force is technique “long practiced in shamanism.”  Likewise, mental and emotional expressions of personal will for health and healing is a shamanistic practice reinvented, in the field of holistic practice, for Western consumption.3

It does not matter what religion or spiritual approach works, as long as it produces results.  Robert Schuller repeats this idea:  “You don’t know what power you have within you…!  You make the world into anything you choose.”4  There simply is no power of belief in prayer; it is belief in the One who hears your prayers.  The opposite view has been at the heart of paganism since time immemorial.

The “scientific” benefit of prayer is a placebo effect at best and demonic manipulation at worst.  Largely through the writings of Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, and the Word of Faith teachers, “faith” has become a scientific term.  God has no part in answering prayer, one only needs to believe enough and he will receive the desired results.

Peale was one of the first clergymen to consult with a doctor in hopes of bridging the gap between science and religion.  He was not concerned with the particular faith of the doctor; his only concern was for “a psychiatrist who was a man of faith.”  Peale found his answer in doctor Smiley Blanton.  The Blanton-Peale Institute was founded on the uniting of “pastoral counseling with psychological medicine.”5

The scientific belief in prayer is classic pantheism.  The idea is that mankind is a part of the whole.  Quantum physics asserts that matter and energy are interchangeable, hence, man is a manifestation of the infinite universe, not an individual.  The material is only illusion because mankind’s material bodies are part of the universal body, which is spirit, and mankind’s mind is part of the universal mind.  Man only needs to realize the divine within and tap into the vast reservoir of energy that is in his true self.

Mental attitudes can trigger the brain to release chemicals that go into the blood stream, and bring physical healing.  A relaxed and joyful attitude can stimulate the brain and nervous system to begin a process of self-healing, but this is quite distinct from the belief that man possesses unlimited potential.  Psychosomatic problems can be healed with a placebo, but to mix science and religion will produce grand deception.

Christians should not have to take a “leap of faith” into the dark, but should know why they believe (1 Pet. 3:15).  Genuine biblical faith results from a relationship with the true God.  God grants prayers only as they coincide with His will, not the power of belief in something.  Christianity is not true because it works, but because it is based on the evidence of history (Lk. 1:1-4; Acts 1:3; Rom. 1:4; 1 Thess. 2:5; 2 Pet. 1:16).

1 Elizabeth Turner, “Is it Therapy or Is it Prayer?,” Self, December 1997, p. 166.

2 John Leland and Carla Power, “Deepak’s Instant Karma, Newsweek, 20 October 1997, p. 56.

3 Harner, Shaman, p. 136.

4 Robert Schuller, “Possibility Thinking:  Goals,”  Amway Corporation, audiotape.

5 Turner, “Is it Therapy,” p. 166.