I have seen a few mentions out there on the internet about prayer and entanglement. I have not taken even 5 minutes investigate this. However, the gist seems to involve how we are connected to God and each other via prayer similar to quantum entanglement. I made an assumption it was just people trying use science to bolster faith.
Below is just a quick example.
Any thoughts on this?
Seems to me the key word there is “similar.” I think it works as a metaphor just fine. What will not work is making the suggestion that science can establish the value of prayer. That is not the case.
As with all metaphors there are limitations. They fail when it is taken too far. The biggest failure I see is that there is no physical distance between us and God.
Definitely.
If you want a high-level model of our relation to God, my older brother’s view of God as a “parallel” universe in contact with ours at every point is much better! Then if you want to talk entanglement the connection is a “bridge” (in the physics sense) between God and us – a bridge with no length, only connection.
Given:
In what world do I have to live where two “parallel universes” can be in contact with each other at every point and non-intersecting simultaneously?
Does entanglement work more than like 0.1% of the time?..……
I was under the impression almost every time prayer just seems to not make a difference. Like Christian kids die from cancer at the same rate as atheist and Buddhist kids. Christians loses loved ones at the same rate as atheists. If you are a crippled in a wheelchair and a Christian, jew, Buddhists, Wiccan or atheists you’ll probably stay in there regardless of what supernatural rituals and pleas you make.
This struck me pretty funny. This guy doesn’t seem to know that Buddhists pray. Here is a Buddhist prayer for the sick…
And what about atheists? Are you sure nothing they do cannot be seen by God as a prayer for the sick? I would not be so sure.
Personally I don’t believe God is willing to alter the laws of nature which largely consists of probability distributions. But no I don’t think this means that prayer is ineffective. But likewise I don’t put so much confidence in the methodology of scientific medicine which requires statistically significant successes (but all too often come with equally statistically significant side effects). Sometimes it seems to me that the Hippocratic oath is long forgotten.
Me and a friend were making an observation that the placebo effect is as great as 30% and frankly another 30% of people just get better on their own. This applies just as much to those going to see a doctor as anything else. And what of the remaining 40% do you think? Frankly I think as many as 20% have a bad result from what the doctors do… mostly because the doctors simply don’t know what is wrong and try to do their best with antibiotics or other unnecessary procedures.
Don’t get me wrong. For some things doctors are the BEST! Especially if it is broken and bleeding… in that case, go to the hospital, prayer and alternative medicines are not a better alternative in that case. Doctors do save lives. There is no doubt about it.
But I can guarantee you one thing. A prayer will do no harm. And 60% of the time it may get the same result as a doctor (and 20% of the time it might even be better). LOL
Multi-dimensional geometry, I think.
My brother talked about n-dimensional geometry but I could never grasp how you can do geometry when you don’t know how many dimensions you’re working with.
Why would you think I don’t think Buddhists pray? I studied with the late Lama Chuck of Kansas City when I was in the military for several years before he retired and moved to Oregon.
So what I did, and I can tell it went over you, was showcase how religious and non religious people seem to have the same basic outcome to life. Later on I mentioned several more faiths and how those who do and don’t do religious rituals and petitions to the supernatural seem to have the same outcomes.
No… you didn’t showcase any such thing.
Besides I think it misses the point. Religion works a lot better for some people and atheism works a lot better for others. Both make a difference to those people.
What I will certainly agree is that theism is no solution to world problems. It causes problems as well as solving problems.
Sorry you did not understand after the second time. But I’ll be honest. I’ve realized that about you a while back. It’s why I mostly don’t bother with you.
Feel free to get the last word. I’m sure someone will read it.
Lots of truth there. I remember looking at studies of antidepressants. It is not uncommon to see your 30 percent improvement in the placebo group, with the treatment group having a 34% improvement, and that 4 percent difference being considered significant. The funny thing is to see a dropout rate from the study of around 30% the people taking placebos because they suffered intolerable side effects. From the placebo. People are hard subjects.
One of my doctors said he wished he had a hundred of me for some research because I never believed any medication was going to work until it did.
Ooh, that’s creative!
I will admit that my first response to seeing the fake equation was to (1) ascertain what the variables stood for and (2) determine whether the relationships indicated by the equation’s structure had anything to do with the subjects the equation was attached to.
My trouble with math is that anything beyond vector calculus and four-dimensional geometry is beyond my reach.
You’ve got me beat. I never learned anything beyond Precalculus and now my heart races when I see a quadratic equation.
I didn’t have to read past your title and OP before I started to feel my jaw clenching and my eyes rolling. So I guess you could say I have a lot of thoughts on this topic 
I have no doubt that entangled states exist in God’s Creation and that God uses these states in ways our human minds want to understand but probably can’t. But for us to suggest that in a universe that contains innumerable numbers of galaxies (and within those galaxies, innumerable numbers of stars and solar systems), God would grant the human words of human prayers some sort of exceptional power over the laws of physics in the universe, is just . . . uggh.
Of course it’s important for us to be in conversation with God – to quietly listen to God, to quietly trust God’s guidance, to quietly share our thoughts and concerns and fears with God. But somehow I suspect this isn’t the kind of prayer that “prayer entanglement enthusiasts” are talking about.
God doesn’t need me, in my capacity as a human being who reads the news and watches CNN, to inform God that there are problems in the world. God knows all about the latest news before any of the rest of us, and God is wise enough and loving enough to decide what needs to be done without waiting for intercessory prayers to arrive via the Divine Internet.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to God about the problems. We absolutely should, because we need all the Divine help we can get. I’m just saying we shouldn’t be trying to use prayer to boss God around. And, as others have pointed out, this kind of prayer doesn’t work anyway.
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