The power of prayer

This was amply demonstrated last week by a primary school teacher and a Government Minister.

Ms Gwynette Rosales of St Gabriel’s RC, who taught SEA top scorer Danielle Stewart, said that the reason the children did well was because "they were willing to work hard and they followed my instructions and we prayed." The school’s principal, Elaine Golah, took a similar line, saying, "We have been working hard ... To God be the glory."

But which was the true reason for the students’ success: the hard work or the prayers? Let us ignore for the moment the sheer irrationality of assuming that a Supreme Being, if it exists, actually helps children to pass a primary school examination. The fact is, if the eight students from St Gabriel’s go on to higher education, they are less likely to keep praying. Michael Shermer, author of Why We Believe, notes that "education negatively correlates with religiosity — as education goes up, religiosity goes down." So, since most educated people are non-believers, this implies that there is no connection between prayer and academic achievement.

Indeed, religious belief may even be a barrier to intellectual success. A 1997 US study by James Larson and Larry Witham found that only 40 percent of scientists believe in God as compared to 90 percent of the general American populace. Moreover, the more eminent a scientist was the less likely he or she was to be religious. (The odds are therefore against Stephan Gift actually achieving anything scientifically.) And when agnosticism and doubt were factored in, belief in God among eminent scientists dropped to a mere seven percent.

Other studies confirm a negative correlation between religions and educational levels. Sociologists divide religion into four categories of a strictness continuum: liberal mainline; moderate mainline; conservatives and evangelicals; fundamentalists, pentecostals and sects. The British Anglican church is an example of the first category, Jehovah’s Witnesses an example of the last. In his book Darwin’s Cathedral, evolutionary anthropologist David Sloan Wilson notes that "household income and level of education decline with increasing strictness. Members of liberal churches tend to be wealthier and better educated than members of sects." This is partially borne out by the Presbyterian schools here whose church, although conservative, is traditionally mild in its religious rhetoric. But there is no real data about Trinidad and Tobago on this topic.

However, I note that the CSO has one percent of the general population not stating their religion, while an audit of a UWI questionnaire showed 14 percent of students not doing so.

Which brings me to the Government Minister. I do not know if Ken Valley went to university but, if he did, he is in the minority of educated persons who have retained their superstitious beliefs. Addressing a gathering of business people last week, Mr Valley said, "I do believe that all of us ought to pray for our country. When I look at what is happening, the type of crime and so on, I have to feel that there is some element of unnaturalness in what is happening. I have to believe there is a spiritual side to what is happening."

Valley is of course highly motivated to believe this.

The alternative would be to admit that, as a senior PNM member and several-time government Minister, he bears significant culpability for what is happening.

But, be that as it may, would prayer help reduce crime and poverty and other social problems? To the logical mind, this is an empirical problem — it is either that God answers prayers or he does not. But believers always hedge when challenged, saying that God only answers prayers when people help themselves or that sometimes God’s answer is no answer — which, of course, makes it impossible to prove or disprove whether prayer works.

Despite this, it is still possible to adopt an empirical approach to the question of whether prayer exalts a nation. Different countries have different levels of religiosity. It is reasonable to assume

that, in countries with high levels of religiosity, most people pray. It is also reasonable to assume that many of them pray for things which will benefit themselves and other people. By the same token, countries with a low religiosity level would have fewer prayers. Thus, if God exists and answers prayers, then those countries with high religiosity levels should be better off than countries with low religiosity.

Do the statistics bear this out? Using data pooled from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey between 1981 and 2001, political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris in their book Rising Tide note that "...societies with widespread literacy, education, affluence, security, and access to multiple sources of information from the mass media tend to be the most secular. By contrast, the poorest and least developed nations, such as Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana and India are the most religious in their values, beliefs and behaviour." The least religious countries are China, East Germany, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Sweden.

However, this picture is skewed because those countries which were once under Communist rule had an imposed atheism — or, more precisely, followed the imposed religion of Communism. If we eliminate these countries, we find that the five least religious nations are South Korea, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Norway — all countries which are outstanding for their prosperity, low crime rates, and social stability.

It is therefore reasonable to conclude that prayer has only one power: to comfort those who believe in it.

And nothing is wrong with that. What is wrong is when educators and government ministers propose prayer as a method of pedagogy and public policy, since it is clear that prayer is then just a waste of breath.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com

Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh