Faith healing

From RationalWiki

Faith healing is a form of medical woo that attempts to cure a wide range of ailments through prayer (see intercessory prayer) and other supernatural means. Essentially, this method of "healing" uses God as a panacea for all diseases and injuries that could ever affect anybody. Appropriately, faith healing (or any similar method) has never been shown to be effective in a scientific study.

Faith healing is most closely linked to the televangelist who often use it to fleece millions of dollars from vulnerable people. Almost all of the major televangelist make faith healing a major component of their "services." Pat Robertson talks to God on his show the 700 Club and announces miraculous and spontaneous healings right before asking for donations. Benny Hinn's whole ministry is based around his "miraculous" healings with full blown stage shows where he brings up sick people and pushes them to the ground, screaming "be healed." Hinn also offers the chance to the television audience by placing his hands up in front of the camera and asking people to touch your hands to the screen and you will be healed. Peter Popoff had a neat trick of being able to announce the address of his victims patients gullible peons victims before "healing" them. He was able to milk millions from his followers until James Randi revealed that Popoff was using a radio ear-piece to pick up prompts from his wife instead of god.^[1]

[edit] Faith Healing in Christianity

Christianity is by and large the religion most often associated with faith healing, to the extent that an entire denomination (the Christian Science denomination) is devoted to the idea of faith healing.

[edit] Theological Justifications

Christian Scientists believe that faith healing was proven when Jesus healed a sick woman by faith alone.^[2] They also believe that the material world is an illusion, and that this will ultimately lead to a true spiritual understanding of God, and that fear, ignorance, and sin are the causes of all illness.

[edit] Scientific studies proving the effect of faith healing

[edit] Does it work?

It may be possible that faith healing works as a placebo (much like homeopathy), causing the patient to truly believe that they are being healed. Placebo treatments work in a complex manner - someone receiving a treatment may consciously or subconsciously alter their habits and improve their health or the treatment will just cause them to think positively and at least feel much better until the illness disappears on its own. Beyond this effect, which can be extremely powerful, there is no evidence to suggest that faith healing works. In particular, experiments on prayer have found no increase in people's recovery from surgery despite prayers being said for them. With regards to serious illnesses, the placebo effect may not be as much use.

[edit] Dangers of faith healing

Faith healing may seem like a joke when televangelists practice it on their television shows, like when a wheelchair-bound man can all of a sudden walk, but it can be deadly when taken seriously. The primary danger is that people will outright reject conventional and proven treatments so will instead stick only to faith healing. This can prove deadly in some circumstances where the illness is serious and medical attention is ignored completely.^[3] The organization Children's Health Care Is a Legal Duty has estimated that around 300 children have died in the US since 1975 due to people putting too much faith in faith-healing. This number, of course, doesn't include adults who may have intentionally kept themselves from medical treatment and certainly doesn't include probably tens of thousands more worldwide in places where culture hasn't necessarily caught up with the medical technology available.

This doesn't seem to bother most faith healers and those who trust them, however. Charges and sentences given to people "acting in faith" - or more specifically, acting in a religious faith, or even more specifically, a fundamentalist Christian faith - are often far more lenient compared to comparable neglect, manslaughter and even murder charges. The position of the law when dealing people who are "acting in faith" has been tricky due to the difficulties in striking a balance between objective and universal application of the law, and "respecting" people's religion and their rights to practice it.^[4]

[edit] Faith Healing and Alternative Medicine

Faith healing is also dotted across the landscape of alternative medicine with things like psychotic surgery and Ayurvedic medicine. Occasionally faith healing pops up in the peer-reviewed literature usually focused around whether intercessory prayer for a patient can improve their health or recovery. While a few studies have shown an effect^[5][6], these studies have come under extensive criticism and most studies have shown a null effect or even that prayer can be detrimental!^[7][8]

[edit] Footnotes