The Irrelevance of Prayer Study.

The problem of the study on prayers that just came out is that it once again mixes science and religion. It is as ridiculous as having religious people deny scientific truth (biology, the theory of evolution, etc...)

Faith and prayers cannot be measured. It seems to me that the point of science is not to study supernatural phenomenon. Besides, how do you measure that the prayer is 'genuine'? How do you make sure that people have real faith in their prayers?
From a Christian perspective there is no point in proving the power of faith and prayer - that's what faith is all about. Besides, you are not even supposed to test God (Remember Mat. 4 when Jesus answered the devil, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'?).

"The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia

So either way, the study is irrelevant. It is a waste of time and money but some people must have a lot of both! If this latest study was privately funded, according to The NYTimes, the US government has spent more than $ 2.3 million on prayer research since 2000...