A question for those who believe in faith healing

Don't you think the instantaneous cure of blindness that Jesus performs qualifies?

 

You are making up your own definition. As long as you do that, you can always be right in whatever you say.

Puts me in mind of this kid in middle school, I beat him in chess, and so he made an illegal move to get out of it. "French rules" he said, "I play by French rules".

 

Now, personally I think that all the miracles attributed to him are made up and tacked on later to fluff up the status of the man. Which I personally think is deeply disrespectful to a man who may well have been a great and noble person, in no need of someone else making up stories
for him.

Regardless.... no it does not qualify, why even ask? I already said AMA / Lancet journal verifiable
not a story from long ago.

That is an unverifiable story, like any that might come out of the jungles of Africa.

A qualifying event would be one that can be demonstrated with today's medical / scientific rigor.

You know, the tests, xrays, etc ahead of time. The patient returning the condition miraculously cured. Like I already said.

Now, those are just the poor standards of us mere humans. God, in all his glory, should be
able to far exceed those.

 

You were talking about any that would qualify that specifically occur in the bible.
French rules?

 

No, actually in this case you are going the Topical route, and making something up.

I was not talking about the bible, you introduced that.

I made this statement about the claim that there are countless miracle cures going on in modern times.


Why is there not one "miracle" cure (something that could not happen by anything known to medicine, like, say a leg or eye grows back) that is recorded and authenticated by maybe
Lancet, or the AMA Journal? Something with full diagnosis, xrays, etc, before and after?

Of course no bible story can qualify. I want a modern story to qualify.

 

Prayer can't heal or reverse Cataracts either.

 

Here was the conversation. I didn't introduce anything.

 

Neuroscience has been reporting more and more evidence that placebos and psychotherapy create real changes in the body. Faith healing falls in with this despite scientific efforts to ignore it.

It can't heal everything of course. If I get a bullet to a major artery I will die quickly without real medical help. But loads of sicknesses seem to be alleviated by simple belief.

I am not religious. But the more I hear about it the more it seems like modern medicine has missed something important.

 

And if you are NOT healed by faith it means your faith is lacking.. See how it works?

 

Oh yea. This is the religion and philosophy forum.

My mistake.

 

try to follow a conversation, if you are following it.

 

I did. Didn't you say that there were no examples in the bible that would meet your criteria?

 

That was the magic spit and mud cure. It doesn't seem very sanitary for eye use.

Jesus was clearly a sorcerer. According to the rules he should have been killed on the spot.

 

I set out criteria. One of our heroes asked if anything in the bible meets those criteria.
It is stunningly obvious that nothing there could. But i said no, so as not to leave unanswered a q no matter how thick headed it was.

here is where you RE introduced the same senseless question:

So I stand corrected on a point of language usage, you re introduced the subject aka
dragged the dead cat back in.

Do you have an idea to express, or a point you want to make?

- - - Updated - - -

they didnt have germs in those days.

 

I already made it.
You haven't refuted it.
Hostility isn't argument.
Do you think the instantaneous cure of blindness could be quickly explained away by the AMA?
Since when is responding directly to a post the reintroduction of a topic?

 

What is with the 'quickly explained away"? Explain away means like, making up excuses.

There has never been a miraculous cure offered with proof, to the AMA or anyone else.

If there were, then we could look at how they would react.

Its a bit like what would the American Museum of Natural History do if you presented them with
a live Velociraptor. Explain it away, or.....

either way, it aint gonna happen.

 

All that means though is that faith healing is one of many extraneous and entirely unrelated things that can trigger a certain psychosomatic effect. You may be right that there is untapped potential in the placebo effect. But it nonetheless firmly puts 'faith healing' of the religious or supernatural kind in the same category as homeopathy, lucky rabbit's feet, and Master Shifu's magic bean pod.

 

Completely agree. Real desire and belief are necessary for a placebo to work, and some illnesses are just too strong for them to have any effect at all.

The struggle between the will to live and the will to die plays a part too. If it really is god doing the healing then maybe our hidden desire plays some part. Sometimes life has so many burdens that release is not such a bad thing, and if our will to live is only for appearances sake nothing will work, science or faith.

Traumatic pain from burns or back injury or from brain damage can kill the will to live, and no amount of faith can counter that. Medical progress does not necessarily help these people by keeping them alive.

Faith healing can only go so far and judging people who are beyond its reach does not seem like something religious people do. Why do we, more enlightened ones, try to convince believers that their god does not care about them? What good are we reaching for?

 

I remind you of someone who cheats because my experience doesn't conform to the consensus?

You remind me of a fascist.

 

The point of language is communication and communication furthers understanding.

Sometimes it even broadens definitions.



I think I've fairly clearly communicated that my experience of what 'faith healing' is is a little different from the consensus and narrow view of some kind of religious fakery (it is that, too) yet there appears to be some resistance to that narrow definition being expanded.

Sigh, it is stressful at times, being a pioneer.

 

Sure, as long as you state what your definition is, everything is good, but when the discussion started, I was using the normal definition and you attacked my statements using another definition. That's called equivocation and is a fallacy.

Words are defined by usage. If the entire English speaking community were using your definition, then that would be the definition. At the moment this is not the case. Definitions can drift, but as they do, it is not a good idea to assume that someone was using a new and unknown definition when they were just using the normal one.