The world's largest study into the effects of prayer on patients undergoing heart surgery has found it appears to make no difference.
The MANTRA study, run from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, involved 750 patients.
Before their operations, they were randomly split into two groups, and half were prayed for by Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. However, checks revealed they had fared no better than those not prayed for.
The power of intercessory prayer has once again been found to be lacking.
Intercessory Prayer does not work. In fact, if Christians actually studied their faith's dogma they would understand why prayer can not possibly work.
Does it make sense to believe that an all-knowing, all-powerful and all benevolent God has to be reminded that their followers need help? And does God pay more attention to the situation when we pray?
Christians believe that God has a divine plan for everyone so praying is pointless. This means that if God has everything planned out then things are going to happen the way God planned it, whether you pray or not.
In fact, when Christians pray, they are paving their own way to hell.
According to their beliefs, God has a plan for us all and has our best interests at heart. So, when they pray to Him they are, in effect, saying "hey God, I don't like the way you are running things and this is what I want you to do..." which is a violation of one of the Big Ten - they are not honouring their Father.
Apart from being sacrilegious, and probably blasphemous, they are demonstrating a lack of faith and trust in their Lord - a big no-no and a sure-fire way of having the Pearly Gates slammed in their faces.
Besides, He just doesn't have the time to deal with every piddling little prayer request; don't they know that He's got a couple of bijillion cubic light-years of universe to run? He's tried delegation, both inside and outside the family firm - JC, Mohammed, etc. but we all know the trouble they've caused.
If they are still listening and haven't called you a tool of Satan, damned you to hell or otherwise manifested their Christian love, tell them that as an atheist you are more likely than them to end up with a harp and halo because you're not afraid to use your God given logic and reason rather than hiding their lights under a bushel and following the rest of the sheep.
Prayer does not affect outcomes anymore than animal sacrifices, astrological events, or voodoo spells. The fact that prayer never works in situations where the desired result is not already probable within reason, is either proof that prayer does not work at all or that "God" is limited in power.