Do you have any evidence to support this theory? I very much doubt this holds any truth. Time is not an indication of truth, empirical evidence is.
People have being praying for thousands of years, yet I have seen no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness.
The question I was asking, and which your response does not address, is whether or not a certain activity that claims to be beneficial becomes beneficial purely on the basis that it is practiced over 'x' period of time. Which I do not believe to be true. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it.
Keep in mind, practiced over 'x' amount of time where x > 2000 years.
>"if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use."
Whereby time was the factor by which something is considered 'of use'. The things you've mentioned evolution, the wheel, research papers etc. Have more concrete evidence than just time to back them up.
Although on the topic of food, do you have any evidence to support that?
From an anecdotal perspective, I found that I suffered more stress and frustration via praying than not.
Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things.
Do you have any evidence to support the benefits of a placebo effect in relation to religion and/or prayer?
>"plus there's the social benefits of people focusing on good things and potentially manifesting them, and the community benefit of coming together to pray, and psychological benefits are a possibility,"
What social benefits? What good things? What psychological benefits?
>"Although I don't think that's well-studied (or even measurable?) enough to start that debate."
Seems very convenient to me.
>"Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things."
What certain things?
Your comment seems awfully shallow in content to me, lacking in any specifics.
tl/dr; inconclusive, hard to get funding.
So, you are implying that there is a switch that will magically turn off beneficial parts of human biology (such as some well known and researched mechanisms like the placebo effect) for those and only those humans that engage in activities that you find personally disgusting (such as religion and prayer).
That's the most overtly religious belief I have seen expressed by a self professed rationalist, you know...
If someone makes a particular claim, the burden of proof is on them.
What you are saying is that if the "cure" in question is prayer instead of sugar pill, then this requires extra burden of proof because the universe is somehow bound to not listen to religious people. Or, to put it more bluntly, prayer would have to be extra harmful in order to counter whatever placebo effect might be at play.
This is a very peculiar belief, not rational but political in nature. In the economics of rhetoric there is a zero sum game: "for my argument to win my opponents must be seen to be in the wrong".
Praying isn't likely to mess with the metabolism. It is, in fact, entirely difficult to tell what it would mess with. Fasting is relatively easy to observe: if it fails, people starve to death.
Meanwhile, people all over the world incorporate fasting into their world intentionally. Far before civilization, they probably did so unintentionally. I highly doubt the body is not equipped in some form to deal with regular period of not eating. It is only extremely recently that the median human has reliable food sources.
But it's a far jump from there to "very likely to be of use." The body is adapted to withstand all sorts of cultural practices that we no longer think are particularly medically useful, like haircuts, shaving, piercings, circumcision, branding, tattoos, foot binding, neck lengthening, bleeding (leeching), etc.
Take the example of sacrifice. In dozens of cultures spanning ((in some cases) hundreds of) thousands of years, people have believed that the sacrifice of <insert species here> will stop the rain/volcano/thunder & lightning/etc. we now know this to be completely false, even though many of these cultures have writings and other 'empirical evidence' that says it does work.
But of course, it is really easy to demand more evidence for the facts we "very much doubt" that for those that confirm our preexisting ideas.