Diet, Exercise, and Pray

(Graphic from Brainy Quote)

After the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day impassioned protestors marched on the State legislature in Tallahassee. Statements like these were typical. [bold added]

“We’ve had enough of thoughts and prayers. If you supported us, you would have made a change long ago. So this is to every lawmaker out there: No longer can you take money from the NRA. We are coming after you. We are coming after every single one of you, demanding that you take action.”

No, this is not a post about gun control or gun rights; it's about prayer.

Denigrating prayer is, er, all the rage these days, especially by those who don't engage in it much. Your humble blogger prays at least once a week--in church on Sunday!--and has grown up with the tradition of saying grace before meals and to pray as soon as I can for those in extremis.

Prayer is a worthless undertaking if there is no One listening at the other end. And even if there is a One, he/she/it may not answer, or answer in the way we want. So what good is it?

Prayer seems to be good for one's health. [bold added]

A number of studies have shown associations between attending religious services and living a long time. One of the most comprehensive, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, found that women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period. Another study, published last year in PLOS One, found that regular service attendance was linked to reductions in the body’s stress responses and even in mortality–so much so that worshippers were 55% less likely to die during the up to 18-year follow-up period than people who didn’t frequent the temple, church or mosque.

...prayer has been shown to be powerful, in at least one way. It triggers the relaxation response, a state of mind-body rest that has been shown to decrease stress, heart rate and blood pressure; alleviate chronic disease symptoms; and even change gene expression. This state is typically linked to activities like meditation and yoga, and research suggests it can also be found through praying.

For the overwhelming majority of people who don't have the misfortune of being in an airplane crash or a school shooting or a raging firestorm, prayer seems to increase the odds of a longer life, specifically 33% to 55% higher. The science is settled.

Afterword:
Cynics may say that prayer was not helpful to the 17 people who died in the 2018 Valentine's Day massacre. Putting aside the question of how many of those murdered prayed during their last moments and whether their prayers were helpful in a spiritual reality that may exist, the rest of the 3,000 students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School did live.

How many of the 99.4% who survived prayed also? How many think that their prayers were answered? Have they come to some decisions about the rest of their lives? Are they enraged or grateful or both (though anger and gratitude don't often co-exist)?

I'd like to hear more from the silent survivors, but I doubt that we will, because to reveal any thoughts or emotions that deviate at all from the current angry narrative opens oneself up to social opprobrium, and no high-school kid needs that.