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Hello, why do people pray? Is it for the benefit of God or for our own sake?

Is it a good Christian weapon as Martin Luther defined it and as Mahatma Gandhi put it the most potent instrument of action?

Or is prayer simpler than the most essential form of self-analysis?

Or was it right to see prayers as a way of changing the mind of God when he wrote in the arts of love?

Even the gods are moved by the voice of in-treating

People seem to pray since the dawn of language, but why and has it done us any good?

With me to discuss the purpose of prayer is the physicist and religious writer Professor Russell Stunard

His latest book The God Experiment describes a project that involves three groups of 600 patients and will explore where the praying for the sick is effective

I'm also joined by Andrew Samuels, a leading Jungian analysis and professor of analytical psychology at the University of Essex

Russell Stunard, all cultures seem to have had religion at some time

Do you think that religious impulse is innate?

Yes, I do. I think that

you know, there have been

examples where people have claimed to have found a tribe in some fire of country which shows no signs of

having been religious, but when those claims have been

re-examined it's been found in every case that you know when you look at their artifacts and the way that they bury their dead

It's quite clear that religion is very much a universal

drive in all people at all times

So it's something which is very deeply rooted in the psyche. Why do you think it is rooted?

I mean, do you think it comes from culture? Do you think it comes from nature?

...