Why a "National Day of Prayer"?

Thursday, May 2nd 2013, was the "National Day of Prayer". For the life of me I can’t figure out why. Prayer seems quite pointless — and not only to me, but to both the scientific community and the Bible.

At least ten studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in past years, with mixed results. So a $2.4 million study, the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, was designed to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. This study began in the mid 1990s, took about a decade to complete, and involved more than 1,800 patients. In this study, the researchers monitored patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery. The patients were broken into three groups: two were prayed for, the third was not; half the patients who received prayers were told they were being prayed for, half were told that they might or might not receive prayers. The researchers asked the members of three congregations in, respectively, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Missouri, to deliver the prayers.

Analyzing this mountain of data, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not. Curiously, the study was led by Dr Herbert Benson, who in his work has emphasized the soothing power of personal prayer, and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. I’m guessing the study did not yield the results they had hoped for.

Also, there are statements in the Bible indicating the futility of prayer: we’re told that God already knows what we want before we ask (“Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.” Psalm 139:4) and, anyway, God won’t change his mind (“What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” Isaiah 46:11), so what’s the point?

Wouldn’t we be better off abandoning a day devoted to prayer, which, according to both scientific and religious sources, is ineffectual? Instead, let’s have a National Day of Reason and Science: instead of telling people what to think, let’s teach people how to think. Then, perhaps, we can solve some of the problems afflicting our nation. Praying certainly isn't doing the trick.