Praying for the wrong thing?

PoleStar

PDN wrote:

Many people resort to other options (magic, superstition, religion) more as a safety net to cover the gaps left by science. So, if they're told an operation has an 80% survival rate, they start praying about the other 20%.

Just saw this and had to start a new thread.

When someone faced with such odds of 80/20 and they start praying, I guess they never think of the irony of the flipside: When they pray to god to avoid complications, what they are really praying is "Please god let the guy in the bed next to me have a complication so I am spared". Isnt that a bit mean?

Or am I just bad

Zillah

Yes your understanding is bad. You are assuming that God will obey the 80/20 and change the 20%, rather than simply render it 81/19 for now.

PoleStar

Zillah wrote:

Yes your understanding is bad. You are assuming that God will obey the 80/20 and change the 20%, rather than simply render it 81/19 for now.

No my understanding is not bad, I thought I might get a reply like this but perhaps I should have been more thorough in my post! Apologies.

Assuming a Christian for example accepts the doctors advice that of all patients done in the past, 80% go well and 20 % bad. Well then if they accept the fact that those stats exist despite potential divine intervention in the past, then in effect what they are praying for is to be in the 80%, and that conversely means someone has to be in the 20%, and as they are hoping its not them, they are praying that it will be someone else!

Scofflaw

PoleStar wrote:

No my understanding is not bad, I thought I might get a reply like this but perhaps I should have been more thorough in my post! Apologies.

Assuming a Christian for example accepts the doctors advice that of all patients done in the past, 80% go well and 20 % bad. Well then if they accept the fact that those stats exist despite potential divine intervention in the past, then in effect what they are praying for is to be in the 80%, and that conversely means someone has to be in the 20%, and as they are hoping its not them, they are praying that it will be someone else!

"Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt."

It's part of the faith, you see.

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN

PoleStar wrote:

No my understanding is not bad, I thought I might get a reply like this but perhaps I should have been more thorough in my post! Apologies.

Assuming a Christian for example accepts the doctors advice that of all patients done in the past, 80% go well and 20 % bad. Well then if they accept the fact that those stats exist despite potential divine intervention in the past, then in effect what they are praying for is to be in the 80%, and that conversely means someone has to be in the 20%, and as they are hoping its not them, they are praying that it will be someone else!

Think of it this way. If I flip a coin, then it has a 50% chance of turning up heads rather than tails. However, only an nincompoop would think that my coin, by turning up heads, is thereby increasing the possibility of someone else's coin turning up tails.

Zombrex

PoleStar wrote:

Just saw this and had to start a new thread.

When someone faced with such odds of 80/20 and they start praying, I guess they never think of the irony of the flipside: When they pray to god to avoid complications, what they are really praying is "Please god let the guy in the bed next to me have a complication so I am spared". Isnt that a bit mean?

Or am I just bad

Why I always bring a bomb onto an aeroplane with me. The odds of 2 bombs being on a plane are astronomically small

aidan24326

Wicknight wrote:

Why I always bring a bomb onto an aeroplane with me. The odds of 2 bombs being on a plane are astronomically small

I'm gonna bring two bombs onto my next flight just to spite you.:p

PoleStar

PDN wrote:

Think of it this way. If I flip a coin, then it has a 50% chance of turning up heads rather than tails. However, only an nincompoop would think that my coin, by turning up heads, is thereby increasing the possibility of someone else's coin turning up tails.

You still dont get it. I completely undestand what you are saying. And in fact to take your point further, if I flip a coin a million times and each time by some bizarre fluke they are all heads up, it still doesnt mean that next time it just HAS to be tails.

We are speaking about divine intervention and peoples perceptions of prayer and its influence.

Ok let me simplify it. If 100 Christians are in hospital, all the same age, sex and medical history, and are all undergoing the same operation. Then when they all pray together, in effect they are saying "please god let it be someone else not me", unless they become completely blind to the fact that all previous population studies with the same operation have shown an 80/20 risk.

Clearer?

PDN

PoleStar wrote:

You still dont get it. I completely undestand what you are saying. And in fact to take your point further, if I flip a coin a million times and each time by some bizarre fluke they are all heads up, it still doesnt mean that next time it just HAS to be tails.

We are speaking about divine intervention and peoples perceptions of prayer and its influence.

Ok let me simplify it. If 100 Christians are in hospital, all the same age, sex and medical history, and are all undergoing the same operation. Then when they all pray together, in effect they are saying "please god let it be someone else not me", unless they become completely blind to the fact that all previous population studies with the same operation have shown an 80/20 risk.

Clearer?

Not clearer. Nobody is praying, "please god let it be someone else not me". It is perfectly possible for all 100 Christians to successfully survive the operation. Previous population studies can only provide a guess of what the future holds. Therefore the survival of any one patient has zero implications for the survival of any others. Your argument would only hold true under the absurd assumption that it is inevitable that the future success rate of the operation would remain 80%.

Christians, when they pray, do not see God as being constrained by that 80% figure. They do not believe that divine intervention means swapping people's fates around but still being constrained by a statistic that, in the end, is nothing but a historical record of what has occurred hitherto.

Dades

Polestar, you are trying to redefine your question until you get the answer you are looking for.

Think of it like this - the statistic 80/20 is determined directly or indirectly by God, as He decides who out of those that undergo the operation lives or dies. If He decides to allow more people survive, doctors will notice, revise their stats and cheekily attribute the increased success to medical science.

PoleStar

PDN wrote:

It is perfectly possible for all 100 Christians to successfully survive the operation. Previous population studies can only provide a guess of what the future holds. Therefore the survival of any one patient has zero implications for the survival of any others. Your argument would only hold true under the absurd assumption that it is inevitable that the future success rate of the operation would remain 80%.

As someone in the medical field I can say that population studies are way more than just a guess. All medical treatments that are currently used are in fact based on studies, so if that is the case then all medical treatment is based on guesswork? No, that is not the case. What statistics do in for example the case I mentioned where the risk is shown to be 80/20 is extrapolate from a small sample to a bigger population and if previous stats are found to be reliable and significant (p values less than 0.05 for those interested!) then its pretty much taken as fact and not guesswork. This is how medical practice works. Now I know it doesnt apply for an individual, but unless we ignore the whole statistical basis of the medical treatment in question which has a success of 80/20, then we can take it that the next 100 patients done will have 20 complications.

Thus what I am saying is, if a patient accepts what the doctor tells him that he has an 80/20 success, then the patient is praying to be in the successful 80% and thus conversely that the 20% is someone else. Now I know that you may argue that the Christian in my example is praying for all to be cured, I dont think it is as simple as this. While they may be open to the idea of divine intervention, most will not live completely with their heads in the clouds, and will accept the fact that there will be an 80/20 success rate. And from experience I know people who will say "please god dont let it be me".

Am I getting there?

PDN

PoleStar wrote:

As someone in the medical field I can say that population studies are way more than just a guess. All medical treatments that are currently used are in fact based on studies, so if that is the case then all medical treatment is based on guesswork? No, that is not the case. What statistics do in for example the case I mentioned where the risk is shown to be 80/20 is extrapolate from a small sample to a bigger population and if previous stats are found to be reliable and significant (p values less than 0.05 for those interested!) then its pretty much taken as fact and not guesswork. This is how medical practice works. Now I know it doesnt apply for an individual, but unless we ignore the whole statistical basis of the medical treatment in question which has a success of 80/20, then we can take it that the next 100 patients done will have 20 complications.

Thus what I am saying is, if a patient accepts what the doctor tells him that he has an 80/20 success, then the patient is praying to be in the successful 80% and thus conversely that the 20% is someone else. Now I know that you may argue that the Christian in my example is praying for all to be cured, I dont think it is as simple as this. While they may be open to the idea of divine intervention, most will not live completely with their heads in the clouds, and will accept the fact that there will be an 80/20 success rate. And from experience I know people who will say "please god dont let it be me".

Am I getting there?

No, you're not getting there. Logic isn't your strong point, is it?

PoleStar

PDN wrote:

No, you're not getting there. Logic isn't your strong point, is it?

Please dont be smart and make it personal.

Perhaps its your inability to understand straightforward statsitical concepts that is the problem........................

See I can be smart too!!!

Dades

PoleStar wrote:

Am I getting there?

Nope.
You are desperately clinging to the idea that those who pray for recovery believe medical statistics work on some kind of see-saw effect. Nobody believes that God would bump another person off the list just because you get better. Except you, it seems.

PDN

PoleStar wrote:

Please dont be smart and make it personal.

Perhaps its your inability to understand straightforward statsitical concepts that is the problem........................

See I can be smart too!!!

I certainly do not understand a statistical concept that argues that because one person survives an operation then someone else must be condemned to die in order to fulfill some predestined & inescapable statistic. The very idea is nonsense.

robindch

The Atheist wrote:

Nobody believes that God would bump another person off the list just because you get better.

Seems to me to be the only course of action open to the deity, if he's believed to be receiving prayers and expected to act upon them, while not affecting the recovery stats.

As the Templeton study showed, god doesn't seem to be acting upon intercessory prayer, so the issue doesn't arise. But PoleStar's hypothetical is an interesting question. All the more so because it's not received a straight answer yet.

cavedave

Say the prayer was rephrased
"I pray that I will get into X college course"
This person is asking God to alter their exam results so that someone else does not get a college course and they do. I have heard such prayers before.
This example is different in that rather then praying that 80/20 becomes 81/19 there is a set number of (say 80 places) in a college course and the person is praying that they become part of that 80, so someone else must no longer be part of those 80 where they would have been without the prayer.

So is such a prayer immoral?

robindch

PDN wrote:

The very idea is nonsense.

The idea is unfortunately not nonsense at all -- it's called "Regression to the Mean" and there's more about it here.

PDN

robindch wrote:

The idea is unfortunately not nonsense at all -- it's called "Regression to the Mean" and there's more about it here.

Do you really think that is relevant? Regression to the mean is relative, dealing with where you score in relation to others. It does not deal with objective criteria such as whether someone lives or dies.

PDN

robindch wrote:

Seems to me to be the only course of action open to the deity, if he's believed to be receiving prayers and expected to act upon them, while not affecting the recovery stats.

As the Templeton study showed, god doesn't seem to be acting upon intercessory prayer, so the issue doesn't arise. But PoleStar's hypothetical is an interesting question. All the more so because it's not received a straight answer yet.

You want a straight answer as to whether it is immoral to pray to a God who is potent to intervene in a particular operation, but is not potent enough to affect the recovery stats? Unfortunately, to get a straight answer, you would have to find someone who believes in a God of such selective and limited powers.

Good luck!

PDN

cavedave wrote:

Say the prayer was rephrased
"I pray that I will get into X college course"
This person is asking God to alter their exam results so that someone else does not get a college course and they do. I have heard such prayers before.
This example is different in that rather then praying that 80/20 becomes 81/19 there is a set number of (say 80 places) in a college course and the person is praying that they become part of that 80, so someone else must no longer be part of those 80 where they would have been without the prayer.

So is such a prayer immoral?

Now, this is more of a sensible question. I would have difficulty with someone who wants God to "change" their exam results. I would think it is entirely proper for them to ask God to help them remember what they have learned and to express it to the very best of their ability.

I also have great difficulty with the idea of sportsmen praying for victory. If I thought that God was predetermining the result of a football match then I would never attend another Eircom League match ever again. Similarly, it struck me as particularly stupid that in the Falklands War Argentine and English clergymen were both praying for God to grant victory to their respective armies.

I am reminded of a woman I know in Northern Ireland who, when she heard that a policeman had been killed, would pray that it wouldn't be her son. Then, when she discovered that her son was still alive, she would feel guilty because another mother had suffered such grief. I tried to explain to her that the person was already dead, so her prayers were hardly going to change the identity of the corpse, but she still felt guilty.

rockbeer

PDN wrote:

I am reminded of a woman I know in Northern Ireland who, when she heard that a policeman had been killed, would pray that it wouldn't be her son. Then, when she discovered that her son was still alive, she would feel guilty because another mother had suffered such grief. I tried to explain to her that the person was already dead, so her prayers were hardly going to change the identity of the corpse, but she still felt guilty.

PDN did it ever occur to you that you might be too intelligent for your faith?

robindch

PDN wrote:

Do you really think that is relevant?

I wouldn't have put it in if I had thought it irrelevant.

PDN wrote:

a God who is potent to intervene in a particular operation, but is not potent enough to affect the recovery stats?

So can I conclude that you belief is in a god who is able to cure somebody, and is also able to alter the overall recovery stats? And if this is your belief, then is your explanation as to why the Templeton-funded study failed to show such an alteration, that the people doing the praying were doing it incorrectly (ie, to the wrong god, making the request in an inappropriate manner or something else?)

And where does that leave people who pray in circumstances where the stats cannot be altered in this way -- such as in cavedave's example above, where there are a fixed number of places available in a college and somebody who's praying must therefore expect somebody else (who didn't pray, perhaps?) to be bumped off the course? How does the deity cope with these requests?

Or the simpler notion that I always wondered about as a kid, when prayers were said for the success of the local gaelic football team, and corresponding prayers were presumably being said for the other side? The deity can't simultaneously satisfy both requests, so what do believers expect him to do?

robindch

PDN wrote:

I also have great difficulty with the idea of sportsmen praying for victory.

Crossed in the post!

So does your reply above quoting "great difficulty" mean that you believe that the deity does not honor prayer requests in certain circumstances?

Smellyirishman

cavedave wrote:

Say the prayer was rephrased
"I pray that I will get into X college course"
This person is asking God to alter their exam results so that someone else does not get a college course and they do. I have heard such prayers before.
This example is different in that rather then praying that 80/20 becomes 81/19 there is a set number of (say 80 places) in a college course and the person is praying that they become part of that 80, so someone else must no longer be part of those 80 where they would have been without the prayer.

So is such a prayer immoral?

So God can change your exam results, but not the placements in a course? For a guy that rules the world that seems kind of lame.

The question should be, if the success rate is 80/20 are the 20% dying because they are not praying?

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

I also have great difficulty with the idea of sportsmen praying for victory. If I thought that God was predetermining the result of a football match then I would never attend another Eircom League match ever again. Similarly, it struck me as particularly stupid that in the Falklands War Argentine and English clergymen were both praying for God to grant victory to their respective armies.

Doesn't Calvinism preach predeterminism? Does this mean that Presbyterians should not bother supporting Football teams, as God already knows the result?

Kindest Regards

Son Goku

PDN wrote:

You want a straight answer as to whether it is immoral to pray to a God who is potent to intervene in a particular operation, but is not potent enough to affect the recovery stats? Unfortunately, to get a straight answer, you would have to find someone who believes in a God of such selective and limited powers.

Good luck!

God would obviously be potent enough (he is omnipotent after all). However since the statistics of operation success* seem to always remain the same, God doesn't appear to actually effect the recovery stats. I can't see how God could help out too many without changing the stats. He'd have to stay within the statistical variance, which would be equivalent to doing things so subtely nobody can be sure you've done anything at all. God's action would be indistinguishable from a random variance and since random variance happens anyway, why pray?
(Aside from "Holy ****!, I don't want to die")

*assuming operations whose technology remains consistent for a reasonable length of time

PoleStar

Son Goku wrote:

God would obviously be potent enough (he is omnipotent after all). However since the statistics of operation success* seem to always remain the same, God doesn't appear to actually effect the recovery stats.

Exactly my point.

The stats do seem to remain the same with time (unless as you pointed out there are medical break throughs). And yes to all you other people I aint stupid however I am extrapolating from population statistics please realise that! And I know that a single persons outcome wont influence the outcome of the popultaion as a whole however the patient who is in hospital with his 99 pals undergoing the same operation is faced with the likelihood that of the 100 patients there will be 20 complications. Assuming he wants to be in the 80% then 20 of his pals must be in the complication group, thus my initial inference.

Why cant people grasp the concept of simple population statistics!


Although getting slightly off topic, this does occur in real life. As a medic I often tell people "there is a 5% chance that you will have a complication". However the patient's perception is "yeah thats 5%, but it wont be me right?".

Smellyirishman

PoleStar wrote:

Why cant people grasp the concept of simple population statistics!

They can, but when you throw an all-powerful God on top of it, the concept becomes whatever you want it to be. God does not play by the rules, he makes them. So when somebody prays for savior he does not say "Oh, well according to PoleStar I must keep the ratio at 4:1; I'll let you live, but your buddy dies". He says "Em, sure, you can live, I can do that, I'm God."

Of course, it's all nonsense because there is no all-powerful God.

PDN

robindch wrote:

Crossed in the post!

So does your reply above quoting "great difficulty" mean that you believe that the deity does not honor prayer requests in certain circumstances?

"When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." (James 4:3)

robindch

"Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask of you, a fish, will he give him a serpent?" (Matthew 7:9-10)