[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:
[B]/B][/QUOTE]
The variables would be interesting. You would need account for:
who or what was being prayed to;
who or what was being prayed for;
who or what was praying, the sincerity of their beliefe, their sincerity of wishes etc;
distinguish between praying for and just wishing good will towards;
for those just wishing good will towards a subject, include the variables of their sincerity, etc.
In other words, one could possibly do it, but it would not be a single experiment, rather a sustained program of research over many years, subjects and dsiciplines.
And then there is the fatal flaw: if the prayers are directed to an omnipresent, omniscient deity, then
a: the deity knows the result of the experiment in the advance
b: the deity can never be double-blind tested
c: there is the possibility that some of the variables (the sincerity of the prayer) are unreliably measurable by the experiments, but perfectly known by the deity
etc, etc.
Even just thinking along these lines for a few minutes should be enough to put the kibosh on the whole attempt. Unfalsifiable in the extreme.
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