Studies Show Prayer is Useless for Healing: No Relief in Belief

One of the most ubiquitous and meaningless phrases is ‘our thoughts and prayers’ are with someone. 

It is a convenient way to show that you care when you don’t. And that you’d like to help when you won’t.

Where this really proves to be valueless is in the realm of illness. People will pray for someone, invoking an entity that might not exist to combat a disease or a disability that definitely exists.

Now, that might offend some true believers. And some non-believers will be shaking their heads in agreement, but let’s get to the studies and the facts contained within them.

Harvard Medical School, (which probably has at least a few people who know something about healing and what treatments may be effective, and which may not), did a 10-year study of the effectiveness of prayer on cardiac bypass patients — over eighteen hundred of them.

What they concluded was, ‘there was no difference in the rate of complications for patients who were prayed for and those who were not. Nothing. Zero.’[1]

About 65% of those patients in the study strongly believed in the power of prayer.[2]

What’s even worse, ‘patients who knew prayers were being said for them had more complications after surgery than those who did not know.’[3]

Even one of the guys on the side of God, pastor Mark Karris, stated in a guest piece in the Patheos website said:

‘We cannot afford to spend our time engaging in immature forms of petitionary prayer and superstitious practices. We cannot engage in spiritual activities that cause us to feel good, thinking we are accomplishing great things, but ultimately do not achieve the good they set out to accomplish.’[4]

In a 2000 piece in the South Medical Journal, regarding prayer with respect to rheumatoid arthritis, it was concluded that, ‘distant intercessory prayer offers no additional benefits.’[5]

Now, some people have come to the conclusion that the Mayo Clinic might know a thing about medicine and studies related thereto. In their 2001 article in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Volume 76, Issue 12) their conclusion regarding this issue was ‘intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit.’

This was a two year study of 799 patients.[6]

How many times have we seen videos and/or articles about phony pastors pushing prayer as a cure all for what ails us?

Pastor Mike Signorelli, in an article on his website, poses the question:

‘[From] a rational Perspective, many believers in reformed and other intellectual traditions would contend Genuine faith healing ended with the apostles and the age of miracles. If god still healed so tangibly wouldn’t it be obvious and even scientifically verifiable?’[7]

Yeah, Mike, it would, and it wasn’t.

Your big guy came up short when studies were done by people who are Medical Doctors, and not Doctors of Divinity or some such other meaningless credential.

There are instances where faith healing, whether by remote prayer or hands on by some ‘religious leader,’ is not only ineffective, but it can be downright fatal.

As a paper from the Ohio State University notes:

‘Faith healing can cause tremendous amounts of harm, for example: In Oregon, there was a case where someone died due a congenital condition that was easily treatable, but his church suggested faith healing. In California, a case was reported where a man had a rash and heard about faith healing on the radio, instead of going to a doctor he went to a faith healer and later died, the apparent healer was charged with manslaughter.’[8]

Here’s another example, ‘In one unfortunate case a woman was encouraged to get up out of her wheelchair and discard her braces at church. The faith healer proclaimed her “healed.” Unfortunately her cancer of the spine had weakened her bones, and the activity caused bones in her spine to collapse; she died not long after.”’[9]

In her article in Science Based Medicine, ‘Faith Healing,’ writer Harriet Hall mentions a well-known ironic outcome of faith healing:

‘Many years ago the Journal of the American Medical Association used to have a regular feature where there would be a testimonial on one page describing how a patient was cured of cancer. On the opposite page, they would print the patient’s death certificate showing that he had died of that cancer shortly after providing the testimonial.’[10]

Hall further states, ‘When faith healings have been diligently investigated by qualified doctors, they have found no evidence that the patients were actually helped in any objective sense.’

This of course is backed up by the studies of Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic. Maybe it’s time that religion sticks to its own neighborhood, and gets the Hell out of healing. (Pun definitely intended).

Want another medical opinion from someone who practices medicine?

In his 2009 article on Quackwatch, Stephen Barrett, MD had this to say, ‘A study of the effects of intercessory prayer on 40 recovering alcoholics also found no benefit.’ So, watch out with that communion wine, believers, don’t get carried away.

So how does one evaluate the efficacy (or the opposite) of intercessory prayer? Barrett in his article, offers three criteria, ‘In my opinion, three criteria must be met: (1) the ailment must be one that normally doesn’t recover without treatment; (2) there must not have been any medical treatment that would be expected to influence the ailment; and (3) both diagnosis and recovery must be demonstrable by detailed medical evidence.’[11]

Of course, that kind of analysis hasn’t been performed by the religious crew, and Barrett concludes, ‘Thus, as far as I am concerned, there is no reason to believe that faith healing has ever cured anyone of an organic disease.’

Why You Should Care

When you, or a loved one are ill, you obviously want the best medical care for them, the most efficacious treatments, backed up by science and not mumbo jumbo dressed in a dog collar. You want real healing of real conditions, you don’t want ‘a laying on of hands,’ or an invocation to some god, savior, or saint.

The peddlers of the healing powers of prayer, praising Jesus, (or the non-functional, non-Abrahamic equivalent thereof), have proven not only to be ineffective, but in some cases their faith cures have led to fatalities.

Giving the sick false hopes, phony cures, and prescriptions written on the pulpit pad, is not only dangerous, sometimes deadly, but it is evil.

You do not have to abandon your beliefs to believe in the realities of medicine and science, but if you focus on faith cures, you may be abandoning all hope, ye who enter there.

[1] Strobel & Mittleberg, https://thinke.org/blog/havent-studies-proven-that-prayer-doesnt-make-any-difference-lee-strobel-amp-mark-mittelberg

[2] Largest Study of Prayer to Date Finds It Has No Power to Heal Gellene & Maugh III, 3/31/06 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-mar-31-sci-prayer31-story.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] 4 Reasons Why Prayer Is Ineffective, Harmful, And Makes A Good God Look Really Bad 1/25/18 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allsetfree/2018/01/4-reasons-prayer-ineffective-harmful-makes-good-god-look-really-bad/

[5] National Library of Medicine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11142453/

[6] MAYO CLINIC PROCEEDINGS VOL 76 ISSUE 12 https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)62794-8/abstract

[7] The Truth About Faith Healing: Exposing What’s Real and What’s Not 2/22/24 https://mikesignorelli.com/the-truth-about-faith-healers-exposing-whats-real-and-whats-not/

[8] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXTRAORDINARY BELIEFS, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 3/18/18 https://u.osu.edu/vanzandt/2018/04/18/faith-healing-2/

[9] SCIENCE BASED MEDICINE, Hall, Harriet “Faith Healing” 1/26/10  https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/faith-healing/

[10] IBID.

[11] SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT FAITH HEALING, BARRETT MD, 121/27/09 https://quackwatch.org/related/faith/