Just wanted to see if we can all find common ground on the topic of faith healers.
One thing I feel is anyone practicing this horrible act should be put in jail. This not only is dishonest but can harm and even kill people if they listen.
What do you think about faith healers?
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They're the worst kind of human vultures. At the very least they should be denied all access to conventional medicine. Let them heal themselves.
I don't understand how they have been allowed to continue!
A distinction must be made, I think. One kind of faith healing I can agree with, the other, I cannot.
1. If a person is told not to seek medical attention because prayers will heal him, I'd agree that this is bad practice and should be weeded out.
2. If a person is already under medical attention and nothing has worked then the family decides that prayer is the only thing they can keep on doing - this I can accept.
Sure if a family wants someone to pray for them ok but if that person gives them false hope that god will save them, that is wrong. Remember prayer works at the same rate as chance.
Sure. I however do believe in the power of prayers. I also believe that modern medicine is an answered prayer so I'm not going to throw away modern medicine and just pray.
Again prayers have been showed to work at the rate of chance so there is no good reason to think prayers work any better than laughter or luck. Once you claim that your prayer WILL fix the problem in someone that's when you become a monster in my eyes. Also medicine is not from god, but that is only my opinion.
Burny, God can and sometimes does perform miracles. However, televised faith healing for profit is not one of them in my opinion.
"God can and sometimes do miracles"
Do you have any evidence to support this assertion sir?
You!!
I assure you If god does exist Satan created me ;)
There has never been a miracle...EVER!
Are you sure about this? For a saint to be canonized, at least two miracles have to be attributed to them. There are more than 10,000 canonized saints. Below is a link showing the process of approving a miracle.
https://www.livescience.com/38033-how-vatican-identifies-miracles.html
I have read your article and didn't see where they should what miricle he had preformed and how they proved that it was a miracle and not luck or chance. Maybe JOC you are to easily convinced or you just have a bias on what you consider to be a miracle.
Sure. That was just a little snippet. I can't find the link right now but basically, the Catholic Church is probably the most cautious religious institution when proclaiming a miracle has happened and yet the Church has thousands of documented and verified miracles. A team composed of non-believers are usually made and they look into all the evidence. It is this team that says that the miracle cannot indeed be explained by science. Medical miracles also require that the healing be instantaneous, that there is no possibility for healing on the part of the patient.
I would question who they have verifing these claims surely a entity with as much money as the Catholic Church can pay a few people off huh?
Sure they can. If they really want someone to be a saint. But you see, the Vatican and the Pope gain nothing from canonizing new saints. Unless, I'm missing something. Maybe we could ask some of the people who have been on such committees and ask them if they've been paid off. Needless to say though, these people were paid... their wages.
I have a real problem with faith healers, snake oil salesman, prayer vigils, liars, cheats, false promisers, and every kind of deception, to include propagandist.
What's up mykcob4? How have you been
I'm cool how are you buddy?
Doing great trying to study as much as I can! What I thought were basic understandings turned out to be some people's worst nightmares. But hey I love learning new things!
@Burn your Bible
I agree with you and I must say that this kind of cancer is not exclusive to Christianity.I come from an orthodox Muslim society and it is as prominent in our culture as yours.The only difference is that here the faith healing industry is really diverse.You will find many kinds, but people for some reason prefer to seek help from those who happen to be deranged and mentally unstable(literally).They will wander the streets naked, slap your back after spitting on it in the name of treatment and what not.
It's disgusting how people believe they have some sort of 'connection' with god.
@Mohammad Ali
It is absolutely disgusting how people will throw away their humanity and logic in times of desperation, my main issue is with the ones who take advantage of the weak! Also I will be the first to say I am ignorant to outside cultures but that being said I am learning and trying to study as much as I can. My primary focus is on the Bible because that is where most of my knowledge is but I am currently reading the Quran to expand that knowledge. But to touch upon your last sentence "It's disgusting how people believe they have some sort of 'connection' with god." in America I fully believe that the "faith healers" know that what they do is fake and it is only for money.
I absolutely agree with you on that it is a conscious exploitation of vulnerability of the 'weak'.That is also an important aspect here.A mother of an ailing child would literally do anything for him/her to be cured and that's when these so called faith healers try to manipulate people's emotions just to make a fortune.
That is just sad..
They're disgusting.
However throwing them in jail is a challenging legal premise because where do you draw the line? Do you throw reiki practitioners in jail for example?
I'd also counter that there are studies pointing positivity being important in health and illness recovery. It surely follows that if someone else provides the positivity (through the idea of healing prayer etc.) it might follow that those people would experience a positive benefit. Admittedly most studies focus on mental disorders and blood pressure but there's some anecdotal evidence that it helps with more serious illness outcomes like recovery from heart attacks etc.
Having said that most faith healers don't claim benefits they claim cure for profit and that is a disgraceful thing to do to often terribly sick individuals and their families.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/optistic-women-live-longe...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-benefits-of-positive-thi...
I do not doubt that positivity can affect people in a positive way but faith healers specifically tell people to throw away medicine, stop using walkers, don't wear a neck brace, also when confronted about why the prayer didn't help me they say things like... you didn't have enough faith, you have hidden sin. I would say that if someone proclaims that they have the ability to heal through god and also suggests to people that they shouldn't follow the medical direction of their doctors, that's when it becomes a legal issue. If someone dies as a direct result of you telling them to stop taking their medicine you should be arrested. Also we have made laws at least here in America that tell people what they can and cannot do. For example cigarette sales to people under 21 is illegal, cannabis is illegal at the federal level.. what about outlawing non-medical practices that have been shown to do more harm then good.
Or educate the masses that this is not real and will not help.
Actually it kind of makes me think of the Bible and god... god won't tell people not to own another human yet no shellfish!!!
@ Jon the Catholic
1) sugar pills have the same effect as prayer. The exact same effect for the same reason. The reason is that people believe the pill?prayer will work, although it doesn't do anything, it makes them feel good because endorphins are secreted in the brain because they hope it will work.
2) Just because the catholic church each saint performed at least two miracles (I think the requirement is three) doesn't mean it happened...EVER. And it never did!
I remember Father Guido Sarducci complaining that the catholic church was going to canonize an American as a saint. He said, "....and you have to have 3 miracles, but I heard that the American had only two and one of them was a card trick..."
http://releasethecriton.blogspot.com/2005/08/father-guido-sarducci.html
The requirement is just two. It used to be more but now, it's just two. You and I have very different experiences with prayer. I tell myself the same thing when a prayer of mine gets answered.
"Was that an answered prayer or a very well-timed coincidence?" And then it happens again and again and again. A series of well-timed coincidences? Maybe. Then I encounter a prayer which does not get answered. And then I think, "Prayers don't really work, then." Then all of a sudden, I get something I never prayed for in place of what I did pray for. And it was even better.
I realize I'm speaking in general terms and you can't get much out of this but it's happened enough times in my life I simply cannot just say it was by a happy coincidence.
But I thought god had a divine plan.What happened to that.Do you want him to change the divine plan.And does he really change it.Then what's the point of having a divine plan in the first place.
Basically what you are telling god when you pray for something sounds something like this 'God i know you have a divine plan for everyone and you have gone through a lot to put it into practice and it's been working fine, but fuck your plan, I need a car'.
Sounds a little arrogant, doesn't it.
If you see it way, then maybe. But remember the classical theistic God exists outside of time and can see all of time in a single instant. So He’d be able to see my prayer to Him next month and already, that prayer had been incorporated into His plan even before I had said the prayer as He knows I will say it... or not say it.
There is a lot wrong with what you said there.
I fail to understand how you can claim to have the knowledge of god existing out of time.Where do you get that from.There is NO evidence for that.
Secondly, how did you pick 'month'.I'm sure you meant all of the timeline of the universe.In the latter case you should be able to say that everything is predetermined.Then where does the freewill come in? Everything is god's will including all the rapes, murders, genocides that have ever happened on the face of earth.HE is responsible for those actions.
That's not all.There is one more problem.If you believe that everything is predetermined, which you do as you said 'can see all of time in a single instant', and that God is all powerful we are faced with a logically incoherent conclusion.
Consider this.
Can god change the events of the timeline.If no, well then he is not all powerful.And, if yes then he is not all knowing ie everything is not a part of his plan.
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