I received this email today from an old friend:<\/p>\n
\nHi mate,<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHope you’re well.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nI’m reading your little book of unholy questions at the moment and thought I’d share a prayer story with you. When XXXX\u00a0was pregnant with YYYY\u00a0and we had the 12 week scan, the physical measurements and blood factors indicated that YYYY\u00a0had a strong likelihood (60%+) of having a chromosomal disorder (Down\u2019s syndrome or worse). This was all very upsetting at the time, and though atheistic, we were happy for people to say they\u2019d pray for us.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAnyway, XXXX\u00a0had a procedure similar to amniocentesis to check the foetus\u2019s chromosomes, and everything\u00a0turned out to be\u00a0fine. We shared the news and of course all our friends and family who we had spoke to earlier were delighted. Then one of my colleagues, a very intelligent lady with a science degree who works in a scientific role, and a practicing Catholic, declared it a miracle.\u00a0I think “praise Jesus\u201d was even said. I was a little surprised at this of course but let it slide as I didn’t want to cause offence, particularly as it was on the back of such good news.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis, I think, is a fantastic example of where religious folks leap on simple chance and declare it the power or prayer. YYYY\u00a0never had a chromosomal disorder, and was never miraculously\u00a0cured. Furthermore,\u00a0the genetic material sampled was harvested before any prayers were even offered; therefore the record of her chromosomes could not have been affected by prayer.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe whole scenario arose only because of a statistical indication of a problem, not an actual diagnosis. Yes, statistically, and based on good science and a large dataset, over 60% of foetuses with the same indicators as YYYY\u00a0will have a chromosomal problem. But equally, nearly 40% must be fine, and YYYY \u00a0is and always was\u00a0in this camp. Prayer did not change anything and there was no miracle.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHappy for you to use this\u00a0story in your writing subject to anonymisation.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nPlease submit any other such stories!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I received this email today from an old friend:<\/p>\n
Hi mate,<\/p>\n
Hope you’re well.<\/p>\n
I’m reading your little book of unholy questions at the moment and thought I’d share a prayer story with you. When XXXX was pregnant with YYYY and we had the 12 week scan, the physical measurements and blood factors indicated that YYYY had a strong likelihood (60%+) of having a chromosomal disorder (Down\u2019s syndrome or worse).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1054,1502,23],"tags":[1651,541,104],"class_list":["post-4685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-prayer","category-skepticism","tag-medicine","tag-prayer","tag-science-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}