Biology professor Dr. Paul Myers (scroll down) has weighed in on the prayer debate. Dr. Myers’ rhetorical style seems more closely to resemble mockery than debate, but maybe I just need to get to know him better. Also, although he holds a Ph.D. and enjoys an bona fide academic appointment, presumptive amateur Raving Atheist ironically did a better job of confronting the ideas in the original post than he did. I suspect this is just due to impatience with theists rather than lack of ability.

I’m judging from his post that he thinks its real substance lies in his treatment of my methodological criticisms of the original study. This would be understandable, since he is a bona fide scientist who applies scrupulously designed methods to tests things, all day, every day (in an idealized world with no undergraduates and no need for grant applications). Actually, I’m not terribly interested in discussing my first two objections further, since they were offered merely as a reductio (informally, “crazy talk”) in the first place. I could respond to his suggestions that I have made “childish excuses,” that I suggested a “ridiculous experiment,” or that I am hypocritically suggesting better tests when I generally denying the propriety of scientific testing of prayer in the first place, but space and time are at a premium, and it would be better to pick our issues more strategically.

Cutting through his overly-lively rhetoric, he does raise a helpful point that could use some clarification:

The idea that the efficacy of god cannot be evaluated simply doesn’t hold up. When you read the testimonials of the religious, they are full of praises for the power and wonder and glory of god. Some estimation of his performance is implicit in such descriptions. I don’t think people actually mean, “God seems to be great, although I can’t really see any difference between the results of his actions and random chance…” Is it just that god is mathophobic, and gets all queasy when people start measuring and calculating and doing statistics?

To clarify: if I have said that all effects God causes are un-testable and unobservable, then I retract the statement forthwith. My point was that we have reason to believe that prayer ought not to be testable in this way, nor indeed in any formal way that I can think of. I am not undertaking the task of trying to design a theologically valid prayer experiment, nor to circumscribe the whole boundary between what can and cannot be known about the being and activity of God, and how we should go about learning it. I would like to leave the door open to all kinds of theologically meaningful tests, just not on prayer, at least not like this, and probably not at all. Anyone trying to extend my remarks beyond those modest boundaries is simply wrong.

Dr. Myers describes my proposed theology of prayer as “long-winded,” “bizarre,” and “six mostly incoherent paragraphs.” I regret that when we get to the meat of the argument, he apparently runs out of enthusiasm for the discussion. I would point out again that Raving Atheist seemed to be able to wade through my putatively impenetrable prose fairly well, even going so far as to identify what will probably turn out to be a key assumption in the debate (the nature of freedom) that will keep him and me from being able to reach any consensus. Now, I don’t mean to convey that I was extremely pleased with R.A.’s response, but at least he was able to interact with the more complicated theological and philosophical ideas and offer a response that was on balance intelligible.

Exasperated with me but still willing to take a stab at it, Professor Myers says:

[The description of the relational dimension of prayer] is just a variation on his excuse #1, that the scientists didn’t do the experiment correctly, but prayer really does have an effect. All he’s doing here is adding additional, baseless conditions (postulating a vague “relationship” with invisible, unobserved entities is nothing but an ad hoc complication) to shoo away a result he doesn’t like.

If “prayer” means something like what I have suggested it means, then the relationship with the invisible entity is central to the question at hand. Considering prayer without considering how the faithful relate to God seems much like taking fish eggs out of water. It would be silly to label Dr. Myers’ criticism that “These Danio embryos were dried out” as an ad hoc complication, even if the experiment was not intended to test anything about water itself.

Most tellingly, he says:

Either prayer has a measurable, material effect, or it doesn’t.

Actually, I see a glimmer of hope here. Just as Raving Atheist touched on the question of freedom, Dr. Myers may have touched on a just as consequential an axiom. My original question might fairly be rephrased, “Should prayer have measurable effects in the way that the laws of physics and chemistry do?” which clearly would disqualify his statement from being offered as a premise in any counterargument. I suspect that a commitment to metaphysical naturalism (which commitment Dr. Myers would have to express; I am not intending to make one for him) would require that one view prayer in the way he does. A commitment to theism (or any compatible metaphysical system that is reasonably distinct from naturalism) wouldn’t necessarily predicate a property of “testability” to prayer, and indeed might recommend against it, as I have attempted to explain.

If Professor Myers wants to say, “Yes, I’m a metaphysical naturalist, and I insist that anything that has being is testable in any way I can think of testing it, subject to engineering limitations,” then I’ll be perfectly satisfied. We’ll disagree, but I’ll understand why. If he wants to call me long-winded, bizarre, or other pejoratives again, I’ll be disappointed.

UPDATE: Dr. Myers strikes back; I judge life to be too short to continue this.

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• Posted by Tim on Sunday, November 9, 2003 at 11:33:47 pm PST
• Category: Theology
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