Well the whole issue of prayer and health comes down like this. Let's take the most extreme example. If someone were able to prove that if I pray for you, that you were more likely to recover, it would be the greatest scientific discovery, I guess, since the beginning of mankind... nothing short of that. So we will not take lightly any research that comes out supporting that. There have been such attempts to do with animals. What they did is they labeled some animals, say, every odd animal, 1,3,5,7,9. Then they got people to pray very intensely for those animals. They use the other, even-numbered, animals as controls to see if they could get an effect. To date we have not come up with that. Now let‟s talk about certain religious groups. Some have better health statistics ---like Seventh Day Adventists --- they live longer, they have less health risks, less heart disease, etc. In their case, their religion advocates a vegetarian diet; they don‟t eat a lot of meat --- (although some of them do). I‟ve seen Seventh Day Adventists load up on a lot of saturated fat, butter and sugar and all of that stuff --- but in general they are much healthier than average as a group because of the life style that their religion dictates. Now let‟s look at prayer in and of itself. I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that prayer and meditation will help you feel better, will help you get and will help you heal. But the mechanism is something we could argue about until the end of time. We already know that if I were to give you a pill and tell you that this pill will cure you, when it has nothing but sawdust in it --- it WILL help you; that‟s called the placebo effect. If you believe that pill will help you or you believe prayer will help you it probably will. We know that meditation and focusing the mind can help people with certain health problems and help with relaxation, high blood pressure, etc. So prayer and faith, via that mechanism might help people. So you see, it‟s complicated. It‟s not as easy to say what prayer does without all of these qualifiers. The bottom line is that, yes, it can help, I would never advise people of faith not to. The question is how much CAN it do, by what mechanism, etc. There are a lot of people out there who want to prove that prayer does this or does that. I‟m much less interested in that, than where it is appropriate to use prayer. In other words, I get really upset when I see kids die because their parents didn‟t give them the insulin they needed, because they wanted to rely only on prayer. That we consider to be tantamount to child abuse in our culture. We had a case recently where, a woman who was psychotic, was waiting for the “spirit” to come. She was starving herself and her daughter. They found the two of them in their bedroom at death‟s door, because they were literally wasting away. Well, that lady was a little psychotic, (not that anyone who is religious is psychotic). You‟ve got to be very careful when you step into this area, because we're looking for the truth, and we need to maintain an even keel here, to look for what‟s right, what‟s objective and what‟s real. What is definitely real is that if you pray or meditate, it can definitely help some people. It‟s kind of like the old classic joke, which some of you might not appreciate, but ---- they‟re at a funeral. There‟s a little old man in the back. He keeps yelling out during the eulogy, “Give „em some chicken soup, give „em some chicken soup!” They people keep saying, “Shhhhh, Mister, be quiet!” But he keeps yelling, “Give „em some chicken soup!” So finally someone approaches the guy, takes him off in the corner and says, “Listen, listen! Mr. Smith is dead! He‟s dead! Will you stop yelling „give him some chicken soup?!‟ ” Then the little old man says, “Well! ---- IT WOULDN‟T HOIT!!” Right?! Can‟t hurt you!