'God' and healing

[afleitch]

Many Christians claim that their god, through prayer can heal physical and mental ailments. People have come forward to testify that they have been cured of tumours, cancer and semi-paralysis for example through prayer. Medical science would contend however that spontaneous recovery is not out of the question; cancer can go into remission etc. Also such recoveries are recorded in people who are not religious or indeed of a different religion and attributed to their god and may include a larger element of ‘human intervention’ than the sufferer would care to admit.

However what would assist the religious in their claim, would be evidence that there has been recovery from illnesses that specifically cannot be explained away or ‘mended’ through medicine. Two examples perhaps would be a quadriplegic and a child with significant physical and mental disabilities. Yet there have been no reliable reports of bones and sinew growing back to form legs and feet, no reports of pathways reforming in the brain and children regaining their abilities. Why is god able to ‘rid’ countless people of cancer, sore backs and every ailment you cant think of but can’t re-grow lost limbs through prayer? Would that not mean that he is perhaps not particularly skilled in his abilities and instead only heals illnesses and conditions that can already be (if the person is lucky) treated or that the body can recover from independently? Would that not lead you to believe that there is no intervention at all?

[afleitch]

What do you mean "no reports of pathways reforming in the brain"?

I meant someone who is seriously mentally disabled with retardation, cognitive difficulties and severe brain damage. That is pretty much non reversible.

[afleitch]

Speaking from personal experience, God can and does heal people. Alfweich, limbs being restored from amputation was common at the Azusua St. revival. I know a girl who much like myself had a condition which needed the use of glasses to correct. I was there when the healing took place.

Really? Were these people ever documented? Were they seen by a doctor? Because the growing of bone, cartilage, muscle, veins and skin from a 'stump' into a brand new leg would be world news. Seriously; it would make the first face transplant seem like childs play.

[afleitch]

Really? Were these people ever documented?

Andrew, you’ve known me and my testimony for a while now.  So, how it is you are asking for documented miraculous cases when you can’t even explain my own testimony, which I have documented in great detail?

You're going wildly off topic. I can summarise; as a rationalist your testimony of your religious 'revelation' is as relevant to me as is the testimony of someone who found Allah in the desert, someone who espouses the benefits of Dienetics or a farmer who has told me about his voyage to Sirius in a spacecraft. Any supernatural intervention is in essense a 'miracle' as it would go against our understanding of the world around us. Even if you choose to believe in the 'supernatural' then you still have to contend with others who believe in it to, but not in the manner to which you believe. To another man your testimony would be considered a 'deception' as it does not correlate with their understanding of the supernatural.

I would advise you to read David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[afleitch]

Andrew, your argument seems based upon the faulty premise that if there is a God, he should do whatever we want him to, and he should do it now and he should do it without charge.  (Sort of like how stereotypical left-wingers expect government to work, but I digress.) The problem is, the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament makes it quite clear that Elohim does not work that way.

That wasn’t my argument. Besides, making it clear he ‘doesn’t work that way’ is the eternal cop out.

My argument was that if God ‘heals’ why do his abilities appear so limited? Why are his abilities limited to recoveries that have been documented numerous times, can happen to the religious and non religious alike from recovery from depression to aggressive cancers going into remission? None of which of course require a supernatural explanation. Now if someone recovered from something really serious, something completely inexplicable just once, that was without any medical explanation then that would be really impressive.

As I said, if a full leg including bone, tissue, veins, muscles and digits grew back because a believer prayed then wow; wouldn’t that be something! Wouldn’t that be proof! I mean just think of it, the doctor in awe, , no need for a prosthesis, medical experts swarming to find out more about it. Even if the person shunned the limelight it would still come to the attention of his doctor, or chiropractor or social security office. But nothing. I’m not asking for regular examples. Just one that could be looked at with the conclusion ‘well, it has to be a miracle’

Now examples I could have used just a few years back; face transplants for example, I can no longer use. Now it can be done by medical professionals. So they can do something that a few years ago was out of their reach, but god has never done for anyone who prayed. Do you see where I’m coming from?

Now we get claims of course; hokum snake handlers claiming people have recovered from everything because of prayer. It has been the entire basis of the claim for Mother Theresa’s elevation to sainthood (a routine recovery claimed to be supernatural) for example. Of course in all cases, there is usually a natural explanation. People who recover from cancer after undergoing treatment often thank god either with or above the professionals and science; that’s just human nature. But if godly assistance exists, then it’s only apparent in rather banal or if not banal, impressive but explainable recoveries. Which means he’s not particularly good at dealing with the truly inexplicable as no examples exist. If they did, they would help people believe would they not?

[afleitch]

No, his argument is that there's no evidence for the claim that God heals.

If you believe the claim that God miraculously heals people then how would you go about demonstrating that the claim is actually true? How would you go about distinguishing between the healing that occurs by natural process and those that occur by divine intervention?

Indeed. There is no evidence that god heals because claims made by those who say ‘he healed me’ can be countered by medical evidence to the contrary. However medical science is now in the domain of repairing injuries that have never been repaired before. A face can now be transplanted (alongside underlying work) to give someone a new face after a serious deformity. This was impossible 10 years ago. When it was impossible in science, did we ever see any out of the blue examples of it happening to confirm that god could cure it without scientific intervention? Did we ever see anyone pray to make the impossible possible through God? No.

Also, now that it is possible, do we have people praying and it therefore happening without medical intervention as a result? No. Have we possibly had people undergo a once impossible surgery and then thank god, even though god never intervened prior to mankind learning how to repair it? Yes. So we therefore have people claiming that ‘god heals’ if it is something that mankind can already heal or that the body can spontaneously overcome (tumours, cancers etc)

If god had any abilities at all, surely examples of the impossible being cured would be occurring before medical science caught up or before study of the human body caught up? Indeed, now that we have caught up, some of the ‘miracles’ of the NT are in fact fairly banal. Even the very heart of the story; the death and resurrection of Jesus comes under scrutiny;

Can a man survive a crown of thorns? (yes)
3 days without water? (yes)
Being nailed to the cross (yes – see Meiji Japan and countless modern examples)
Being pierced in the side (yes – see contemporary skeletons of gladiators or a trip to a modern A&E award)
Being pronounced dead (yes – compare our understanding of what it means to be ‘dead’ which in itself is not 100% accurate with the understanding of the ancient world re comas, the Glasgow Scale etc)
Being in a cold tomb? (yes – ideal conditions in fact for resuscitation)

All survivable by themselves and together. If we take the NT account at it’s word (debatable if we should, but we can make the concession); what is more likely? That Jesus was not ‘dead’ however much the odds are against any many surviving all those injuries and concussion or coma…or that he was dead as we know dead to be and he defied the impossible by coming back to life through his god.