Yes, my main argument is that you're going to run into too many unknown factors...in order to run an experiment you've got to get an entirely closed system, and I'm not convinced we could do that with prayer. And when you can't do that, you can't run a scientific experiment.
About this notion of energy, I guess I didn't do too good of a job there, explaining. What I'm trying to get into is the notion that prayer is not intended to be a passive process, which is what I get the impression this experiment would restrict the subject to. Yes, there are times for passive contemplation, but at other times, I believe that we are called upon to respond
actively, to expend some degree of energy that is within us (physical certainly, and while just as untestable as prayer itself, I would also say spiritual). That is, sometimes the response to a prayer is a call to action. If you take out the possibility for an experimental subject to take any action, you're potentially interfering with the process, and thus contaminating the results of the experiment.
As for a summation of what the problems would be, on one hand, you'd have some that resulted from too many outside factors (known and unknown) on the experiment, and on the other you could run into problems by
removing too many factors that might turn out to be necessary, and thus interfering with the very thing you're trying to study. Now, you give an example where your criterion measure is a tangible thing, but I'm afraid the variable in question isn't quite a sensible one. After all, whether or not one agrees about the origin of it, we have already got a process by which our hair will grow without our consideration of it. Now, I
have heard of experiments run in which some people with serious illnesses were prayed for--the patients themselves who were in fact being prayed for were not told this was the case. While I can't remember the exact setup nor where I read this, I would assume that in a sound experimental procedure this would've been a double-blind experiment...that is, their caretakers wouldn't know which was which, either (this keeps a "placebo effect" from occurring). I remember reading that some sort of correlation did emerge, but cannot remember anything about how strong it may have been. Of course, in THAT case, a lot of external factors had to be allowed in (their particular health issues and medical histories could perhaps be made close but would still have tremendous variation, they'd be influenced by caretakers, families, individual mindsets, patients' OWN prayers which we may not even know about, etc.). So, I recognize that you've got something that, while interesting, is still not going to be acceptable to the scientific community. In general, it's my reasoning that prayer and faith simply defy empirical measurement, and these are the main reasons why.
As for my spiritual background, I have deliberately refused to speak of it until this point, because I preferred for you to see my reasoning first, and form an impression of me first based on that. I am Christian, Methodist specifically, and I have been since I was old enough to understand the concept. I'd describe myself as having come from (in a religious sense) a liberal background--that is, I don't come from a literalist tradition, and have never been discouraged from reasoning or asking questions. I have done a pretty thorough investigation into other traditions and philosophies, but found nothing else that satisfied me...that's including philosophical grounds as well as my feeling, as I've never felt that "blind faith" did anyone any good. Basically, I'd describe myself as the kind of person who can easily irritate both the extremely liberal and the extremely conservative at the very same time!
