Prayers, do they help?

Have you ever seen prayers work for a patient? There is a common belief that if you pray for someone, somehow, it helps him/her to recover! Personally, I have never seen one. We hear a lot of stories that someone was told that s/he had a incurable disease and miraculously s/he got better! I think it actually shows we do not know much about diseases. Still we cannot predict the behavior of cancers. The number we usually quote for our patients are population based. For example, end stage breast cancer has a very poor prognosis and 5 year survival is less than 20%. One patient may die in 2 months and another lives more than 5 years! You can easily convince yourself that praying help patients to live longer!
What about storms or earthquakes or flood? Do they help?

Iran

Brilliant shot from Saeed Abbasi

Childish superstition

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
This quote from Einstein has been very popular and many people are convinced that he was a religious man! I recently saw a documentary on Canadian TV showing he was a member of faith. I think this letter helps to understand his position on belief. Dawkins thinks that Einstein used "God" as a metaphor rather than an independent entity who created the universe.