| Jul 24 @ 2:54 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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yashaenka
Posts: 3,422
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The notion that prayer, divine intervention or the ministrations of an individual healer can cure illness has been popular throughout history. Miraculous recoveries have been attributed to a myriad of techniques commonly lumped together as "faith healing. During the past forty years, several investigators have studied this subject closely and written about their findings.
Louis Rose, a British psychiatrist, investigated hundreds of alleged faith-healing cures. As his interest became well known, he received communications from healers and patients throughout the world. He sent each correspondent a questionnaire and sought corroborating information from physicians. In Faith Healing [Penguin Books 1971], he concluded, "I have been unsuccessful. After nearly twenty years of work I have yet to find one 'miracle cure'; and without that (or, alternatively, massive statistics which others must provide) I cannot be convinced of the efficacy of what is commonly termed faith healing." [1]
During the early 1970s, Minnesota surgeon William Nolen, M.D., attended a service conducted by Katherine Kuhlman, the leading evangelical healer of that period. After noting the names of 25 people who had been "miraculously healed," he was able to perform follow-up interviews and examinations. Among other things, he discovered that one woman who had been announced as cured of "lung cancer" actually had Hodgkin's disease -- which was unaffected by the experience. Another woman with cancer of the spine had discarded her brace and followed Ms. Kuhlman's enthusiastic command to run across the stage. The following day her backbone collapsed, and four months later she died. Overall, not one person with organic disease had been helped. Dr. Nolen reported his findings, which included observations of several other healers, in Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle , a book that I heartily recommend [2].
C. Eugene Emery, Jr., a science writer for the Providence Journal, has looked closely at the work of Reverend Ralph DiOrio, a Roman Catholic priest whose healing services attract people by the thousands. In 1987 Emery attended one of DiOrio's services and recorded the names of nine people who had been blessed during the service and nine others who had been proclaimed cured. DiOrio's organization provided ten more cases that supposedly provided irrefutable proof of the priest's ability to cure. During a six-month investigation, Emery found no evidence that any of these 28 individuals had been helped [3].
The most comprehensive examination of contemporary "healers" is James Randi's The Faith Healers [4]. The book describes how many of the leading evangelistic healers have enriched themselves with the help of deception and fraud. Some of Randi's evidence came from former associates of the evangelists who got disgusted with what they had observed.
Randi's most noteworthy experience was the unmasking of Peter Popoff, an evangelist who would call out the names of people in the audience and describe their ailments. Popoff said he received this information from God, but it was actually obtained by confederates who mingled with the audience before each performance. Pertinent data would be given to Popoff's wife, who would broadcast it from backstage to a tiny receiver in Popoff's ear. After recording one of Mrs. Popoff's radio transmissions, Randi exposed the deception on the Johnny Carson Show. First he played a videotape showing Popoff interacting with someone in the audience. Then he replayed the tape with Mrs. Popoff's voice audible to illustrate how Popoff used the information.
Randi also exposed the techniques used by evangelist W.V. Grant, who calls out people in the audience by name and describes their ailments. Grant obtains this information from letters people send him and by mingling with the audience before his show. To help his memory, he uses crib sheets and gets hand signals from associates who also use crib sheets. After one performance, Randi was able to retrieve a complete set from the trash Grant left behind! Following another performance, Randi found that some members of the audience had given false information about themselves, their ailments, and their medical care. For example, after "Dr. Jesus" had "put a new heart" into a man supposedly awaiting open-heart surgery, Randi found that the details (including the doctor and hospital named by Grant) could not be corroborated.
Grant's subjects typically are "slain in the spirit" and fall backward into the arms of his assistants. In 1986 I observed from a few feet away what happened when he encountered an elderly woman who did not wish to fall backward when he touched her forehead. Grant pushed his fingers into her neck so hard that she could not remain standing. I also watched him "lengthen" the leg of a man who limped up to the stage, supposedly because one of his legs was shorter than the other. The audience may have been impressed with this feat, but I was not. Before the show began, I noted that the man was one of Grant's assistants and walked normally.
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| Jul 24 @ 2:55 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers |
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yashaenka
Posts: 3,422
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It just goes to show a fool can be fooled at anytime!
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| Jul 24 @ 3:16 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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uab_5
Posts: 2,370
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Yeah...whatever. 
My mother held on during her fight with cancer and MS longer than expected because her spirit was great.
When I was suffering severe depression, I caught every cold out there and my eyes went blurry.
I concur that TV faith healers are bogus, but without faith that one will heal, one will never heal.
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| Jul 24 @ 3:22 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers |
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yashaenka
Posts: 3,422
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You are speaking of the Will to live and doctors estimates are just estimates.
People with depression all have a lowering to their immune system doctors have know that for centuries.
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| Jul 24 @ 3:58 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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uab_5
Posts: 2,370
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I call it spirit or faith you call it will. same thing.
Regardless, that's something that must be nurtured for for the mind and body to work properly.
A person with a strong spirit can be beat anything for a period...alcohol, cigrarettes, sex, depression, cancer.
It's when that spirit gets damaged, that people quickly die or succumb to their addiction.
That's why I thouroughly resent Knotty and Hammer calling instutes that benefit people delusional or ignorant.
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| Jul 24 @ 4:06 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers |
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 14,401
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UAB - 
I don't care if someone believes in the Great Pumpkin, if it helps them get through the night, or helps give them the ability to climb out of the proverbial slough of despond or kick a bad case of addiction to drugs or alcohol, I'm all for it.
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| Jul 24 @ 4:30 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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LaughTillYaPuke
Posts: 1,822
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I think that whatever a person believes in has enormous power for that person. In the end...call it posative thinking if you will. I think that has just as much power as anything else. It is absolutly imperative!
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| Jul 28 @ 11:51 AM |
Faith Healing anf Healers |
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Thor1960303
Posts: 1,657
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This goes back to the old question, if faith healers were real, how come we never see an amputee grow another limb? I'm sure there are those like Bev, who would swear that such has happened in some remote part of the world, just like the same claims are made about dead people being resurrected. It's always in a remote part of the world, always somewhere where real, objective reporting can't verify and it can never be duplicated in a laboratory setting.
If it looks like BS, walks like BS, quacks like BS, then it's obviously BS.
My sister claims that she was faith healed of her Hep C. More than likely she was misdiagnosed and all of those treatments she got was from several docs in particular who were crooked as snakes and milking her disabilty for all it was worth. Faith healing worked for her because she never had Hep C to begin with. This is something I feel pretty strong about, though I will never discuss it with her unless she asks me. One doc she went to was a crook and a quack and when I saw her medical billing statements that her disability paid for it was absolutely criminal. There were doctors that she liked and trusted that billed her disability pay for all kinds of things that weren't done or used.
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| Jul 28 @ 11:59 AM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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eastham
Posts: 5,767
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What we need to separate, however, are some of the old remedies used by healers over the centuries. Many used herbs, etc that had efficacious properties, now overshadowed by modern pharmaceuticals.
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| Jul 28 @ 3:09 PM |
Faith Healing anf Healers |
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Thor1960303
Posts: 1,657
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What we need to separate, however, are some of the old remedies used by healers over the centuries. Many used herbs, etc that had efficacious properties, now overshadowed by modern pharmaceuticals.
Quite right. The Bible does list some things that were used as medicine in ancient times. The pomegranite for example has antiviral and antibacterial properties.
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| Jul 29 @ 9:02 AM |
Faith Healing anf Healers
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yashaenka
Posts: 3,422
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Back in the time of Jesus healers used peyote to alleviate pain as well as other naturally occurring hallucinogenics that came from natural sources.
In every region of the world Shamans, Witch Doctors. and other healers, faith and others used such remedies but tied it to the occult to enhance their status.
What else is new?
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