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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Faith healing | 4/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_healing | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:19:41.997043+00:00 | kb-cron |
If we are sick, and ask the Lord to heal us, and to do all for us that is necessary to be done, according to my understanding of the Gospel of salvation, I might as well ask the Lord to cause my wheat and corn to grow, without my plowing the ground and casting in the seed. It appears consistent to me to apply every remedy that comes within the range of my knowledge, and to ask my Father in Heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ, to sanctify that application to the healing of my body. But suppose we were traveling in the mountains, ... and one or two were taken sick, without anything in the world in the shape of healing medicine within our reach, what should we do? According to my faith, ask the Lord Almighty to ... heal the sick. This is our privilege, when so situated that we cannot get anything to help ourselves. Then the Lord and his servants can do all. But it is my duty to do, when I have it in my power.
We lay hands on the sick and wish them to be healed, and pray the Lord to heal them, but we cannot always say that he will.
=== Islam === A number of healing traditions exist among Muslims. Some healers are particularly focused on diagnosing cases of possession by jinn or demons.
=== Buddhism === Chinese-born Australian businessman Jun Hong Lu was a prominent proponent of the "Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door", claiming that practicing the three "golden practices" of reciting texts and mantras, liberation of beings, and making vows, laid a solid foundation for improved physical, mental, and psychological well-being, with many followers publicly attesting to have been healed through practice.
=== Ancient Greek paganism === The Ancient Greeks believed in several forms of divine healing. Religious healing of bodily illnesses was usually sought at temples of Asclepius, god of medicine, where patients would, after purifying ritual and prayer, sleep in the temple; of the people supposedly cured thereby, some were healed immediately, but often they would have a dream in which the god came to them and prescribed a treatment, which might be mundanely medical (e.g., a change of diet) or ritual. In the archaic period there were also priests of Apollo who supposedly cured plagues. However, religious healing was applied especially to mental illness, which was thought of as sent by a god and therefore curable by appeasing that god; the gods appealed to were most commonly Dionysus, or Cybele and the Korybantes, but might also include Hecate, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Pan, or the heroes. Such religious cures, especially those invoking the Korybantes, often involved special hymns, music, and dancing.
=== Scientology === Some critics of Scientology have referred to some of its practices as being similar to faith healing, based on claims made by L. Ron Hubbard in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and other writings.
== Scientific investigation ==
Nearly all scientists dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience. Believers assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation. Scientists and doctors generally find that faith healing lacks biological plausibility or epistemic warrant, which is one of the criteria used to judge whether clinical research is ethical and financially justified. A Cochrane review of intercessory prayer found "although some of the results of individual studies suggest a positive effect of intercessory prayer, the majority do not". The authors concluded: "We are not convinced that further trials of this intervention should be undertaken and would prefer to see any resources available for such a trial used to investigate other questions in health care". A review in 1954 investigated spiritual healing, therapeutic touch and faith healing. Of the hundred cases reviewed, none revealed that the healer's intervention alone resulted in any improvement or cure of a measurable organic disability. In addition, at least one study has suggested that adult Christian Scientists, who generally use prayer rather than medical care, have a higher death rate than other people of the same age.
== Criticism == I have visited Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal, healing shrines of the Christian Virgin Mary. I have also visited Epidaurus in Greece and Pergamum in Turkey, healing shrines of the pagan god Asklepios. The miraculous healings recorded in both places were remarkably the same. There are, for example, many crutches hanging in the grotto of Lourdes, mute witness to those who arrived lame and left whole. There are, however, no prosthetic limbs among them, no witnesses to paraplegics whose lost limbs were restored. Skeptics of faith healing offer primarily two explanations for anecdotes of cures or improvements, relieving any need to appeal to the supernatural. 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. 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. According to the American Cancer Society: