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Author | Topic: Looking for dicussion on how to explain faith healing in a naturalist manner | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kairyu Member (Idle past 204 days) Posts: 162 From: netherlands Joined: |
Some of the members on this forum may remember me. I created a precious topic on the subject before, but I have a clear ''goal'' of sorts in mind.
I used to be a fresh atheist, but before things settled down, due my habit of seeking religious news out, I heard some additional things about faith healing. Specifically a Dutch one, Jan Zeilstra, I leave it to possible Dutch members to comment on him, but it's irrelevant to the main picture. Upon hearing stories like a girl who got her birth-defected deaf ear and blind eye healed, and several other ones like that, I struggled to explain this. I'm aware of the evidence for atheism, but naturalism(at least for me)falls flat when there are such glaring stories I can't explain rationally. I fell into a mild depression at first, also because several things that made me a atheist, such as neurology, made no sense to me, and the objective nastier bits of it, did God do that on purpose? I also felt like, if such a Evangelical heals people, does that make his views right? Why else would God give him the power to heal? A christian friend I restored contact, and who's a liberal, gave me some examples of his own, but assured me that ''God can work though people, even if their theology is wrong'' This at least restored my composure, but I was left with many questions. Even if it would be easier to accept liberal Christianity, it still leaves my many issues with the bible(I know about the documentary hypothesis and such now), and much of the new discoveries regarding neurology are severly at odds with Christian beliefs(which I also made topic about, in a way, although it was a statement of doubt at the time) I recently began to realize I'm still a closet Atheist, even though I don't accept it formally, deep within my belief seems to be there has to be a natural explanation, and atheism seems still more logical to me. I currently feel like a dual idiot because not accepting either side fully, so in the end I decided to make a topic about it again here. I know much is unknown about it, that one of it has been 100% proven, but still, on the other hand,where do all these stories come from? My friend told me he had seen a X-ray before and after the healing, and apparently the bones had mended mysteriously, and he said he has seen a more of it. I haven't got a clue how this can be rationalised, let alone explained. Does anyone here has a serious argument why it's most likely naturalistic? One that makes as few assumptions as possible?
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Thread copied here from the Looking for dicussion on how to explain faith healing in a naturalist manner thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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Upon hearing stories like a girl who got her birth-defected deaf ear and blind eye healed, and several other ones like that, I struggled to explain this. There are many explanations that don't involve supernatural beings by their divine grace healing people afflicted with these illnesses. One is that the person lied about what happened. We know there are liars. We know there are people that can profit from lying about healing. Another is that the initial condition was not as permanent as it is being sold and that it healed naturally as part of development. For instance, some people are born with a hole in their hearts than naturally closes as they grow up. I'll quote Tim Minchin who put it into catch verse:
quote: I'm aware of the evidence for atheism, but naturalism(at least for me)falls flat when there are such glaring stories I can't explain rationally. This is actually quite arrogant if you stop and think about it. What you are saying is that because you can't explain something naturally, that must therefore mean there is no natural explanation. Because you are so great that if a natural explanation exists you would surely have figured it out. Even if no human presently on earth can explain it naturally, this still does not mean no natural explanation exists. For most of human's existence they have been ignorant of all those wonderful facts we take for granted. Thunderstorms and disease are famous examples of things that lacked natural explanations for most of human history. And only very very recently did we figure out that a lot of disease is caused by the actions of invisible (to the naked eye) microorganisms, genetic mutations etc.
I also felt like, if such a Evangelical heals people, does that make his views right? Probably not. Otherwise that would mean the mutually exclusive religions that also claims healings are also right. That is a logical impossibility. Therefore either most of them are wrong, or they all are.
Why else would God give him the power to heal? Maybe it wasn't God. Maybe it was an angel, or an alien, or bigfoot, or a leszi, or a healing spirit, or a devil (with some cunning plan afoot), or unreported modern medicine, or .... If you are going to allow unsupported entities like God to serve as an explanation you have to also allow all other unsupported entities as well as presumably the supported ones. And you end up in a confused muddle of woo-woo thinking.
I recently began to realize I'm still a closet Atheist, even though I don't accept it formally, deep within my belief seems to be there has to be a natural explanation, and atheism seems still more logical to me. Atheism isn't an explanation. An explanation might atheistic. Most explanations are.
I currently feel like a dual idiot because not accepting either side fully, so in the end I decided to make a topic about it again here. You are not an idiot. Your brain is human, and evolved to deal with an environment quite different than the one we operate in today. Your confusion is perfectly natural and no doubt has occurred to many very intelligent people.
I know much is unknown about it, that one of it has been 100% proven, but still, on the other hand,where do all these stories come from? When something anomolous occurs, people naturally think there is some significance to it. Whether it is a comet in the sky being seen as an omen, to someone getting better some time after someone wished they got better. Everybody wishes they will get better, and if they are told they are better they may even feel better and thus report that they are in fact, better.
My friend told me he had seen a X-ray before and after the healing, and apparently the bones had mended mysteriously, and he said he has seen a more of it. What was mysterious about bones healing? That's what they do. Did it happen especially fast? Is your friend overstating a perfectly natural occurrence to make it more impressive (again, a perfectly natural thing for humans to do), is he misremembering something important? Did the initial x-ray simply look like it was worse than it was? Did the second x-ray simply look better than it really was? Did the original doctors mis-interpret the evidence (more human things to do)
Does anyone here has a serious argument why it's most likely naturalistic? One that makes as few assumptions as possible? To summarise:Lies Poor recollection Confirmation bias Initial misdiagnosis Mis- prognosis Mis interpretation of medical results that apparently show a result. Spontaeous remission. Unusual, but naturally fast healing The problem with this kind of thing is that what we aren't naturally inclined to do is look at this statistically. How many people with the same condition get better on their own? How many people get worse when someone does faith healing on them? How many people get no affects beyond the psychological? Many of these things don't get reported, generally. So what we might be seeing with the actual anomolous results is the tail end of a Bell curve. A doctor that says you have 5 years to live might just saying that in 95% of cases mortality has occurred within 5-10 years. If you live for another twenty years it is not a miracle, just that you happened for whatever reason to be in the tiny minority of long term survivors. This makes no assumptions. Reporting bias, confirmation bias, wishful thinking, lies, mis-recall are all observed phenomena. So far, faith healers have not shown themselves to be better than nature at performing 'miracle' cures.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
There is one thing that really bothers me about faith healers: why do they heal so few people? If they have this supernatural gift to heal people shouldn't they be building hospitals around this guy and healing thousands of people every day? When penicillin was discovered did they just give to a few people with infections that the penicillin could cure? No, they gave it to everyone. So why not do the same with faith healing if it works so well?
I have also found that some gamblers are a good model for why we get pulled in by faith healers. First, gamblers tend to have stronger emotions to winning than losing. This gives them a false impression that they can get ahead even though they statistically lose more often than win. They also associate "lucky charms" with winning. If they happen to stand on one leg and get a good roll of the dice they may think that standing on one foot somehow influences the outcome. As Modulous explains so well, the human brain is always trying to make associations between events, and often arrives at a relationship between cause and effect that is just plain false. In our evolutionary history this was probably an advantage. For every false cause/effect we probably found 5 that were not false, 5 associations that were very helpful to us. Movement in the grass? That's a predator. Rain makes the grass greener? Water is needed for agriculture. It rains after the shaman dances? Religion. Win some and lose some.
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3238 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined: |
So why not do the same with faith healing if it works so well? Perhaps they're worried about some new mutation in diseases that would make them immune to faith healing, much like so-called Superbugs are becomming immune to antibiotics.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So why not do the same with faith healing if it works so well?
Perhaps they're worried about some new mutation in diseases that would make them immune to faith healing, much like so-called Superbugs are becomming immune to antibiotics.
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3238 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined:
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Yes. Yes I am.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Upon hearing stories like a girl who got her birth-defected deaf ear and blind eye healed, and several other ones like that, I struggled to explain this. I'm aware of the evidence for atheism, but naturalism(at least for me)falls flat when there are such glaring stories I can't explain rationally. Well I heard a story about a boy who became a wizard and went to a magical wizarding school called Hogwarts. Hearing stories barely needs an explanation at all. Hard evidence needs an explanation.
I know much is unknown about it, that one of it has been 100% proven, but still, on the other hand,where do all these stories come from? Where do fantastic stories usually come from? There's plenty of fraud out there, look at the exposure of Peter Popoff for example. Peter Popoff is now claiming to be able to miraculously cure people of debt. By mail order. And he has plenty of stories to back him up. Here's Derren Brown teaching a guy to be a faith healer. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of faith healing a priori, but given that people do make things up, any really remarkable claim needs really solid evidence to be credible. Let someone heal the broken leg of a man certified by doctors to have a broken leg, while the doctors watch. And let me randomly select the doctors from a medical register so as to rule out collusion. And then we might have something.
My friend told me he had seen a X-ray before and after the healing, and apparently the bones had mended mysteriously, and he said he has seen a more of it. How would the X-rays prove that the bones mended mysteriously? To know that you'd have to see it happen. You say "apparently" they did so. How was this apparent?
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hooah212002 Member (Idle past 802 days) Posts: 3193 Joined:
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The JREF challenge is still open if anyone (OP) thinks there IS some naturalist explanation for faith healing or anything of the sort....
Mythology is what we call someone else’s religion. Joseph Campbell |
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Tangle Member Posts: 9489 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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One single case of an amputee regrowing a limb spontaneously or similar miraculous feat would prove faith healing beyond ANY doubt. But it has never happened and we must form a negative inference from that.
Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Life, don't talk to me about life. |
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Kairyu Member (Idle past 204 days) Posts: 162 From: netherlands Joined: |
(posting error, please delete)
Edited by WSW24, : No reason given.
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Kairyu Member (Idle past 204 days) Posts: 162 From: netherlands Joined: |
Because I got a very trusting nature. Which is bogus rationally, I'm very well aware of that. To be exact, he also said he has seen more, also a bit more impressive ''miracles'' then spontaneous bone mending. Most of you are telling me to not automatically believe it without evidence. Which I don't fully, hence why I'm still in doubt. However,(this might be stupid but..) he has no reason to lie to me. At least in the meaning of ''not telling the truth on purpose'' The only thing I'm sure of he has witnessed unusual things. I read the earlier posts, so rationally, he would either have misobserved, or the placebo of the prayers would trigger something that had already healed, or it was misdiagnosed.
In case of the broken bone I have more information of he said (on chat ) : he had an x-ray days before and it was very, very broken. And: i saw (i was praying!) a guy get healed from a broken arm. i know the guy, and it was genuinely broken. the cast just came off he went to doctor to confirm and the doctor was baffled. So, what I know it: the bone looked broken on the X-ray. I do not know how much ''it was very, very broken'' is a hyperbole or not. I know the doctor himself ended up being surprised. I have no direct evidence, I will admit that. For proving that faith healing is a reality, this evidence is weak. However, my personal problem here is, that I am unable to disprove nothing supernatural happened without a shade of doubt it with any of the possible explanations. Laying the burden of disproving by myself may be unrational, but that's because of the emotional side of it, being brought up Christian(although liberal without faith healing or the like), I still am vulnerable to the status quo fallacy. Call it a confirmation bias for things I don't like. Am I asking for the impossible with this mindset? Individual examples may be difficult to 100% disprove without sending a team of rationalists with expert medical knowledge. What I would like to see is various sources of hard evidence of cases that were researched and debunked. I don't know if much medical research has been done about the body's ability to heal beyond what is observed in most people, but that would work as well. My existing reasons for atheism already places much pressure on the miracle claims. Furthermore, I know people have died because they blindly relied on faith healing, others were left psychologically crushed because nothing happened to them, frauds are common, and some of the ''healed'' ended up having their medical condition reermerge later, with the ''healers'' being completely. If God truly governs these healings, why does is he being so inconsistent? Especially the self-professed faith healers have some stains and blunders This completely undermines the ''goal'' of faith healing, to provide a testimony of Christianity being true Or any other religion of belief that heals supernaturally. Also a problem. Putting all of this in typed words already makes it feel more bizarre to me, but yet, my request still stands. I'm not sure if this somewhat unusual ''playing to lose'' approach I'm taking is in line with this forum's guidelines, but then again ''understanding through discussion'' is my exact goal here. I'm most likely also have argumental flaws all over, since I have been stuck with this so long I have stared myself blind on the subject, so comments on that are welcome as well.
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3238 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined: |
All you need to remember is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If someone says "I saw faith healing! This guy's armw as broken, then it wasn't!" I'd ask for proof. Two x-rays don't cut it. Maybe speaking to the doctor would count. Then I could see fi the doctor had any explanation besides faith healing. Ultimately, you're looking at this the wrong way. It is not your job to disprove these claims, it is their job to prove them. Until proof is offered, there's nothing to be conflicted about.
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subbie Member (Idle past 1255 days) Posts: 3509 Joined: |
There have been more frauds and scam artists running this con than you can shake a stick at. A great many of them operate within fundamentalist churches, where there's no end of credulous marks just looking for someone to give their money to. If there were any truth to their claims, they would be able to perform them in controlled circumstances. Nobody ever has. But many, many of them have been exposed as liars and cheats. Several examples have been mentioned in this thread.
Amazingly, even after being exposed as liars and cheats, some of them have been able to continue to operate. Some people just want to believe and will hang their hat on any display of smoke and mirrors that isn't patently a fake, and some of the con artists are very good. Spotting a fake isn't always easy. But if you insist on a level of proof commensurate with the a priori likelihood that such a claim is true, you are a lot less likely to be taken in. And some guy's story, even if it happened to him, is far from extraordinary proof.Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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Am I asking for the impossible with this mindset? Individual examples may be difficult to 100% disprove without sending a team of rationalists with expert medical knowledge. You are probably thinking about it in a slightly incorrect fashion. Sure, any specific example is impossible to prove one way or the other since the requisite rigour could not be applied at the time. As such, you need to have broad plan for dealing with miraculous claims. David Hume famously wrote:
quote: What I would like to see is various sources of hard evidence of cases that were researched and debunked. The Derren Brown video has some examples of 'how it was done' for miracle cures often pervaded by faith healers. But if you want other specifics I wave in the direction of google, there are plenty of debunking articles out there. Look, here's one. But the woo-get-out-clause for these is that the individuals whose healing was debunked were frauds and charlatans, not real healers. The greatest faith healing feats are the ones that aren't filmed. Ever hear the story of the Indian Rope Trick? The story goes that nobody ever claims to have seen the full Indian Rope Trick, but if you asked around in India, everybody knew someone who had. Nobody asked had ever seen it, nobody has ever recorded it, no magician has replicated it. It's a story that has grown in the telling, probably by unconscious embellishments. Stage Magicians have insisted that they are not psychic, performed a mentalism routine, and some audience members are convinced that the magician is psychic despite their protestations to the contrary. People want to believe they have been touched by a miracle, so much so that their memory will embellish what actually happened to make it more magical. Good luck on your travels. This forum is quite small, I suggest you hang around some forums dedicated specifically to skepticism, read skeptic blogs etc. You'll see psychics, healers, and homeopaths taken apart with glee all over the place when you start looking.
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