How do Atheists explain "faith healers"?

Ok, so, as far as the whole world of Christianity goes- there's been one thing that has always left me confused and puzzled- and that's these so called "faith healers" that you sometimes see at Churches. One minute- there'll be a blind woman with a cane who can't see or walk- and then next minute the pastor says a blessing on the woman- and she can see and doesn't need to even walk with the cane anymore. So- to me- I'm not sure whether to call these kinds of things "Miracles" or "a divine prescence" or just a mere coincidence? Anyways, just something to keep your mind pondering.....

 

It's a ploy used to sell tickets and shit.

Complete BS.

 

Yes, miracles do occasionally happen....and when they do, it is divine intervention....

But why would an atheist be concerned about such? There is so much more interesting stuff to occupy one's attention out there. These events are doings in the realms of the theists...

 

I believe an atheist's name for a faith healer is bullshit.

 

Atheists can explain it as they wish , pretty much like anyone else, but here is the Scientific view:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_healing


According to the American Cancer Society:

Available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith healing can cure cancer or any other disease. Even the "miraculous" cures at the French shrine of Lourdes, after careful study by the Catholic Church, do not outnumber the historical percentage of spontaneous remissions seen among people with cancer. However, faith healing may promote peace of mind, reduce stress, relieve pain and anxiety, and strengthen the will to live.[3]


Inefficacy and alternative explanations
While faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science,[47][48] claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation. A Cochrane review of intercessory prayer[49] found essentially no effect, and a recent study not included in the review found similar results for the effect of intercessory prayer on outcome for heart surgery.[50] The American Medical Association considers that prayer as therapy should not be a medically reimbursable or deductible expense.[51] Skeptics of faith healing offer primarily two explanations for anecdotes of cures or improvements, relieving any need to appeal to the supernatural.[52][53] The first is post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that a genuine improvement or spontaneous remission may have been experienced coincidental with but independent from anything the faith healer or patient did or said. These patients would have improved just as well even had they done nothing. The second is the placebo effect, through which a person may experience genuine pain relief and other symptomatic alleviation. In this case, the patient genuinely has been helped by the faith healer or faith-based remedy, not through any mysterious or numinous function, but by the power of their own belief that they would be healed.[54][55] In both cases the patient may experience a real reduction in symptoms, though in neither case has anything miraculous or inexplicable occurred. Both cases, however, are strictly limited to the body's natural abilities.

There have been case studies of claims made. Following a Kathryn Kuhlman 1967 fellowship in Philadelphia, Dr. William A. Nolen conducted a case study of 23 people who claimed to have been cured during her services.[56][57][58][59] Nolen's long term follow-ups concluded there were no cures in those cases.[60][61] Furthermore, "one woman who was said to have been cured of spinal cancer threw away her brace and ran across the stage at Kuhlman's command; her spine collapsed the next day, according to Nolen, and she died four months later."[62] In 1976, Kuhlman died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, following open-heart surgery.[63]

There are also some cases of fraud (faking the condition) or ineffective healing (believing the condition has been healed immediately after the "healing", and later finding out it has not).


references:

^ Gould, Stephen Jay (1997-03). "Nonoverlapping Magisteria". Natural History 106: 16–22. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
^ Flamm, Bruce (2004-09). "The Columbia University 'Miracle' Study: Flawed and Fraud". Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). http://csicop.org/si/2004-09/miracle-study.html. Retrieved 2008-01-17. "The "faith" in faith healing refers to an irrational belief, unsupported by evidence, that mysterious supernatural powers can eradicate disease. Science deals with evidence, not faith."
^ Roberts, L.; I. Ahmed, S. Hall (1997-10-20). "Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health". Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 4. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000368.pub2.
^ Benson, H.; Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Lam P, Bethea CF, Carpenter W, Levitsky S, Hill PC, Clem DW Jr, Jain MK, Drumel D, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Marek D, Rollins S, Hibberd PL (2006-04). "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer". American Heart Journal 151 (4): 934–942. doi:10.1016/j.ahj.2005.05.028. PMID 16569567.
^ a b "H-185.987 Prayer Fees Reimbursed As Medical Expenses". American Medical Association. http://www.ama-assn.org/apps/pf_new/pf_online?f_n=browse&doc=policyfiles/HnE/H-185.987.HTM. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
^ "Complementary and Alternative Therapies for Cancer Patients: Faith Healing". Moores UCSD Cancer Center. http://cancer.ucsd.edu/Outreach/PublicEducation/CAMs/faith.asp. Retrieved 2008-01-17. "Benefits may result because of the natural progression of the illness, rarely but regularly occurring spontaneous remission or through the placebo effect. "
^ Carroll, Robert Todd. "faith healing". The Skeptic's Dictionary. http://skepdic.com/faithhealing.html. Retrieved 2008-01-16.
^ a b Park, Robert L. (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 50–51. ISBN 0-19-513515-6.
^ "Complementary and Alternative Therapies for Cancer Patients: Faith Healing". Moores UCSD Cancer Center. http://cancer.ucsd.edu/Outreach/PublicEducation/CAMs/faith.asp. Retrieved 2008-01-17. "Patients who seek the assistance of a faith healer must believe strongly in the healer’s divine gifts and ability to focus them on the ill."
^ "Psychic Healing? Investigator declares no". The Greenville News. August 16, 1975. http://www.newspaperarchive.com/newspapers1/na0030/5967824/21003862_clean.html. Retrieved 2007-11-12. Also see: William Nolen, Healing: a doctor in search of a miracle. New York: Random House ISBN 0394490959
^ "Dr Nolen Looks at Faith Healing". The San Mateo Times. March 7, 1975. http://www.newspaperarchive.com/newspapers1/na0022/6795006/48320964_clean.html. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ Michaelson, Michael (February 2, 1975). "Men of medicine and a medicine man". The New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10F12F83D5C10708DDDAB0894DA405B858BF1D3. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ "Extra-Dispensary Perceptions". Time. March 17, 1975. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913003,00.html. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ "Inside Religion: Kuhlman Tested By md's Probe". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. November 8, 1975. http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...=5291,834959&dq=kathryn+kuhlman+william+nolen. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ "A follow-up study of 23 patients 'cured' in a Kathryn Kuhlman service". St. Petersburg Times. November 2, 1974. http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5343,1149932&dq=kathryn+kuhlman. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
^ Randi, James (1989). The Faith Healers. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-535-0 page 228.
^ "Kathryn Kuhlman, Evangelist And Faith Healer, Dies in Tulsa". New York Times. February 22, 1976. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B12F63C5511718DDDAB0A94DA405B868BF1D3. Retrieved 2007-11-12.

 

or what about the ones who are healed at revivals or during crusades. the ones who just hear of jesus being preached in there city. im refering to those of third world countries who are poverty stricken and face real disease. the ones who reach there hand out to the missionary in hope of a blessing. im speaking for the ones who it works for and are spreading there testimony all over the world .

 

There's a reasonable weight of scientific evidence that stress contributes to prolonged illness and the absence or relief of stress can aid recovery. A new approach to a condition can also help people overcome a sense of hopelessness if they've been through a course of treatment that hasn't been working or hasn't appeared to have been working.

Either way, I think the scorn here is undue. Most of the "tricks" that faith healers use to gain their patients' trust is not a million miles away from the reasons anyone trusts a doctor or a scientist because he happens to look like a doctor or a scientist.

 

Prove a so called "Faith healer" exists.... Well, you cant, so I call BS!

 

Prove a so called "obstetrician" exists... Well, you cant, so I call BS!

 

Haven't you heard of the placebo effect? It really works, better than most modern medicines. Give a person a sugar pill and tell them that it will cure what ails them. Statistically, the results are impressive! Faith healing works in any (or all) of four ways: (a) treating diseases based on hysteria (where the disease was in the mind in the first place; a person whose eyes, ears, limbs,etc., appear to be normal but they can't hear); (b) psychosomatic cures (mind affects body); (c) natural recovery that coincides with religious intervention; and (d) outright fakes, like Benny Hill. There are some kinds of medical problems it doesn't seem to work so well for, e.g., amputated limbs. Even Jesus didn't do much for those. By the way, I'm a Christian, so I guess technically this doesn't count, but I suspect atheists would explain faith healing the same way.

 

It is not possible to prove that faith healers exist because there is no evidence, no empirical data to support such claim. Anecodes and unverified stories do not count as proof.

See my earlier post.

Not a good analogy.
Obstetricians do exist and the effects of what they do can easily be verified by looking into available data.

 

My point was that the insistence that faith healers "do not exist" is wrong. People who call their occupation "faith healer" do exist, and this cannot be argued. Whether they serve a valid role is another matter, but the fact that the job "faith healer" exists is not dependent on the job working. It's more or less like saying that snake oil salesmen don't exist purely because snake oil doesn't work.

 

I said they don't exist meaning they don't exist as far as established validity of the occupation goes, not that there is a lack of people who claim to be the faith healers or cured by such.

 

This may help clarify faith healers a bit for you chum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y

 

I used to particularly enjoy the faith healings of the Rev. Jim Angleton, who used to grab the boobs of ladies with breast cancer and say :"I command the evil spirit to come out!" I've thought of trying that out myself, but I'm sure somebody would slap me with a sexual harassment lawsuit.

 

Hehe, I too wouldn't object to practicing faith healing in the field of let's say gynaecology

 

K. Personally I try to use words that mean what I want to say. But hey, your way's cool too.

BFFs.

 

Looks like you need some major healing in thAt department

 

Placebo effect. Faith Healers give faith. Simple as that