"Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion"

Michael Shermer's quote, "Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and even worse religious beliefs", is a provocative review of attempts to fit together empirical methods with faith, particularly through the practice of prayer planned to produce tangible results. To unload this statement, it's essential to explore the tension in between science and faith as approaches for understanding the universe.

Shermer, a known skeptic and advocate of scientific reasoning, argues that using prayer as a scientific tool-- to be evaluated, determined, and examined-- minimizes the principle of God to that of a speculative topic. This perspective undermines the traditional role of faith, which is inherently esoteric and individual, not developed for empirical examination. By subjecting God to laboratory-like conditions, believers, according to Shermer, threat trivializing the divine to merely a variable or an outcome within a scientific experiment, consequently distorting both the nature of scientific questions and religious belief.

From the perspective of science, the clinical method depends upon concepts such as testability, falsifiability, and repeatability. Prayer, by its nature, does not conveniently fit within this structure. Attempts to empirically validate prayer can cause "bad science" due to the fact that they often lack rigorous controls, measurable outcomes, or repeatability, which are essential to credible scientific research studies.

Additionally, Shermer recommends that this approach results in "worse faith". The core tenets of the majority of spiritual customs emphasize faith, secret, and spirituality-- elements that do not quickly equate into empirical data points. When prayer is dealt with like a scientific hypothesis, it might lead to an utilitarian view of faith, where the worth is determined in erratic outcomes rather than in personal or spiritual development. This probably lessens the subjective, transformative elements of faith, lowering it to a type of transactional or conditional faith contingent upon observable outcomes.

In summary, Shermer's quote cautions against the conflation of scientific inquiry and religious faith, suggesting that efforts to clinically verify prayer distort and undermine the necessary concepts of both disciplines.