Pray to End Cancer

I'm having a hard time understanding people religious enough to think that praying can cure cancer.  The sentiment is excellent.  If we can stop people from dying from cancer, that would be excellent.  I support us fixing our diets so we're not putting so much junk in our bodies.  I support us quitting smoking and quitting using carcinogenic products.  I support us reducing time demands on us at work to improve work/life balance and reduce stress.

And I wholeheartedly support those wonderful medical scientists who are working to find cures to the various types of cancer.  Those people should be commended and supported.

What the hell does praying have to do with solving a problem?  It doesn't actually work.  It doesn't accomplish anything except making the person who prayed feel a little better.  All beneficial results of prayer are psychosomatic.  Any beneficial event that occurs after praying is a coincidence or the result of some other effort.  The research is there.  We can show that prayer doesn't work.  A simple search online can give you lots of studies done that show it doesn't work.  You can also find lots of religious claims that it works, but those claims are unsupported except by anecdotal evidence, which doesn't count.  Saying "I prayed, and the cancer went away" doesn't prove the prayer worked because you're failing to take into account the doctors that worked their asses off to deal with the cancer.

Here's a screen shot of a post on Facebook I saw that infuriated me to the point where I'm writing this blog entry to vent enough to avoid berating the person who shared the post in the first place.

The idea that we as a group of people can solve the problem of cancer by praying is flat our ridiculous.  And it's offensive in that it suggests all the people actually working to help and cure people with cancer are being foolish.  Let me try to argue that prayer won't cure cancer via religion.

Perfect God?

God is all knowing and chose for the way all things are happening right?  So then when you pray to ask him to change his mind about something, why do you think your appeal would make him choose something different?  He chose to give that person cancer in the first place.  He made it happen that way.  Are you that arrogant to think praying for him to change his mind will make it happen?  Why didn't he just skip giving the person cancer in the first place?  Is your plea going to make him feel compassion that he didn't have before?  I thought God was supposed to love everyone and be compassionate and accepting toward everyone... even murderers and rapists can repent and be with God in Heaven right?  So why would God suddenly change his mind just because you asked him to?  "Oh whoops... my bad... I'll just go ahead and fix my mistake."

So you can't have it both ways.  God can't be all knowing, all powerful, compassionate, perfect, AND still allow things to happen that he might change his mind about.

Free Will?

If god knows everything and made everything happen, you might think we don't actually have free will.  But one of the assertions I've heard about Christianity is that God gave us free will.  We can choose our own paths.  Hooray!  A benevolent God that lets us choose for ourselves.  That's great.  And in that case praying to not get murdered might be a good idea.  Because free will seems to have resulted in humans abusing each other like crazy.

But then... can God actually do anything about that prayer?  Can God stop someone from murdering you?  If we have free will... the answer is "no".  God can't interfere with the free will of the person trying to murder you.  Right?  Doesn't that also make it impossible for God to be all-powerful?  Regardless of your excuses and weak explanations, if the assertion is made that God gave us free will, God can then not do anything about a prayer that would interfere with it.

But this post is about praying to end cancer.  Because a friend on Facebook posted what's in the screen shot.  So, if the reason you thought about free will was to suggest that God can't know everything we'll do (guess he's not omniscient), and so prayer accounts for those things that we do that God didn't include in his plan, I ask you this: What does cancer have to do with our free will?  Yup... smoking is a bad choice, and is likely to give us cancer and kill us horribly, but why does cancer exist in the first place?  If prayer can address cancer, does that mean that the very existence of cancer in the first place is somehow a result of our free will?  Did something create cancer in a lab and curse the world with it?  Nope.  Cancer is a naturally occurring thing.  God made it.  If you want God to unmake it, then we're back to the question of whether God will change his mind.  I mean... he supposedly is infinitely intelligent and wise, and supposedly he can't make mistakes.  He's perfect right?  So why is your prayer to end cancer more compelling than whatever reason he made cancer in the first place?

As A Punishment?

I'm chuckling as I write this one.  This would suggest that the people who get cancer are being punished for something.  For smoking maybe (exercising our free will)?  For some species-wide transgression a small subset of humanity gets cancer?  This is ridiculous too.  Isn't God powerful enough and intelligent enough to punish the people doing bad things?  Why not give terrorists cancer?  Why don't murderers and rapists suddenly develop cancer?  Why don't atheists all have cancer?  Why don't gay people all have cancer?  Why don't CEOs all have cancer who pay themselves millions while their employees don't even get a living wage?  Why doesn't that jerk in the left lane who's blocking traffic get sudden horrifying cancer?

Beyond the lack of alignment between those who do wrong and those who have cancer, if God did punish the person with cancer, why would your prayer change his mind?  "Oh, you don't think this person should have cancer?  I mean, I'm punishing them for something here... but I guess if you're vouching for them, I'll give them a pass."

Does prayer work?

Really.  Please think about it.  No amount of real world research and study has shown reliably that prayer works.  Literally all of the research done that stands up to scientific rigor (as in: the only effort made to solve this problem was prayer and something happened without any other kind of intervention) says that prayer does NOT work except with psychosomatic effect... no better than placebo medicine.  And if you work it through logically using religious fundamentals like God being all-knowing and all-powerful, prayer doesn't even make sense.  I understand that a person might feel powerless and might be able to make themselves feel better if they think prayer might work.  I get that it can make you feel better.  But it doesn't actually accomplish anything.

My last bit of venting...

It bothers me to no end that there are people in the world who vote and can affect the society we live in that believe they can cure cancer with prayer.  Hey... I don't care if they want to spend some of their time praying.  It's a waste of their time, not mine.  But if these people want to cure cancer so badly, I want them to actually do something about it.  Do a little research and find a charity that funds cancer research.  Donate some.  Then post on Facebook about that charity and share the research you did to make sure the charity is a good one and not a scam.

Or if you're looking to save lives, give blood.

Or if you're inclined this way, go to school for biology and medical research, and start trying to find a cure for cancer yourself.  You have that free will right?  You want to do something about protecting people from cancer right?  Actually doing something about it is excellent and worthy of praise!

Praying is just a crutch to make yourself feel better... as though you're contributing in some way.  Please stop encouraging other people to pray and instead use your power to do something useful.  Then encourage other people to do something useful too.  If you have influence... use it well.  Please.