"In an unexpected twist, patients who knew prayers were being said for them had more complications after surgery than those who did not know, researchers reported Thursday.
The complications were minor, and doctors surmised that they could have been caused by the increased stress on patients worried that their conditions were so bad they needed prayers."
I’ve also heard the hypothesis that people felt that they should be getting better due to the prayer, but were perhaps not/as quickly, and so felt stressed, causing worse outcomes. Like a kind of religion-centered performance anxiety.
My random theory: people who have prayers said for them tend to be of more conservative families and generally less educated when it comes to things like nutritional science. Thus these people going in just tend to be starting at a worse baseline.
There’s probably some truth to that. I had a fundie friend who believed heavily in the “God knows the number of your days” thing and knew what doctors recommended, but still ate three-pound triple burgers with cheese and tons of fried food. “God knows the number of my days. He’ll take care of me, because I trust him,” he would say. He had a heart attack a few years ago and now lives with permanent heart disease.
Religious fundamentalism makes people do and believe really stupid things.
Man I grew up in it and I still don’t understand how people can go through adulthood with the cognitive dissonance that is recognizing Santa isn’t real and to think otherwise is absursa, but their God of thousands to exist does.
That we can’t widely accept a foundation of logic that builds our belief set means we have a lot to learn as a species.
Yup:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-mar-31-sci-prayer31-story.html
"In an unexpected twist, patients who knew prayers were being said for them had more complications after surgery than those who did not know, researchers reported Thursday.
The complications were minor, and doctors surmised that they could have been caused by the increased stress on patients worried that their conditions were so bad they needed prayers."
I’ve also heard the hypothesis that people felt that they should be getting better due to the prayer, but were perhaps not/as quickly, and so felt stressed, causing worse outcomes. Like a kind of religion-centered performance anxiety.
My random theory: people who have prayers said for them tend to be of more conservative families and generally less educated when it comes to things like nutritional science. Thus these people going in just tend to be starting at a worse baseline.
There’s probably some truth to that. I had a fundie friend who believed heavily in the “God knows the number of your days” thing and knew what doctors recommended, but still ate three-pound triple burgers with cheese and tons of fried food. “God knows the number of my days. He’ll take care of me, because I trust him,” he would say. He had a heart attack a few years ago and now lives with permanent heart disease.
Religious fundamentalism makes people do and believe really stupid things.
Man I grew up in it and I still don’t understand how people can go through adulthood with the cognitive dissonance that is recognizing Santa isn’t real and to think otherwise is absursa, but their God of thousands to exist does.
That we can’t widely accept a foundation of logic that builds our belief set means we have a lot to learn as a species.