Gamblet

Hi,

For the past few weeks I have been searching for the truth about religion (mainly
Christianity) and where life came from. I've tried to keep an open mind, as if I were looking at everything for the first time. After taking into account evidence for both sides, there is only one thing that is stopping me from becoming in atheist: person experiences of believers.

On christian message boards I've talked to people who have seen or had miraculous healing. One lady prayed at church for God to help her son, who had a tilting pelvis bone or something that caused one leg to be longer than the other. While she was praying and holding her son, she felt bones
cracking and moving inside him. When the incident was over, the son had perfect legs. Another woman was unable to have children as she had no
fallopian tubes (this was verified by medical procedures). As her last hope she prayed, and somehow she 'received' fallopian tubes. Her doctors said it was impossible, but it happened.

Even a friend of mine, an enthusiastic Christian, has said that he has seen someone's leg grow back. You must understand that I have got to know these people well and know that they would not lie about these things. I can find no other explanation for these occurences than a God or supreme being, even though evidence is stacked against it in all other departments. How does atheism respond to these things?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Tom Gamble (15).

MortalWombat

What do you think about the personal experiences of believers from other religions?

Surely such astounding medical events must be documented in a medical journal somewhere.

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: MortalWombat ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

It is far more rational to believe that we don't yet completely understand how the human body works, than to believe that we do have a complete understanding, and 'God' simply 'negates' the 'rules', every now and then in order that a miracle can take place, with no explanation...for no apparent reason...

Keith.

Jerry Love

OK. I'm gonna run off on a tangent that will likely get my fellow sceptics staring at me.

Qi is the Chinese word for "breath". But in many oriental traditions, breath is the "life energy" of an creature (person). The Chinese therefore ave a group of practices that are collectively called "qigong" (breath work). A few years back, I took a course in qigong healing. To no one's amazement more than my own, I discovered that some of the claims I had dismissed could be established through testing (I can get into detail if someone is interested).

Since then I have interacted with a coupe people that perform religious healing (mostly wiccan). From what I have managed to discern, they are performing a less sophisticated qigong healing technique. They don't really understand what they are doing, but the effect is roughly the same.

I have yeat to really explore how much of what is claimed in qigong healing is truely credible. It would be an understatement to say I am skeptical of your claim of a regrown limb.

My point is this. If one accepts my claim regarding qi being real and manipulateable. Most of the lesser claims regarding religious healing can be answered between that, "luck", and exaggeration.

That said, I understand if I am alone in this belief. I did perform experiments to test, but you (collectively) could not imitate them ithout first investing in learning the material involved (about 20 hours of suprvised work).

Autonemesis

Then would it be a mistake to presume that you are still dropping LSD because of the personal experiences of its believers? I've heard many more vivid accounts and testimonies of profound spiritual insight from LSD believers than I have ever heard from other believers.

So if quality of personal experience means something to you, you will regret passing on LSD.

Tom Sawyer

Jerry Love,

I would be interested in hearing more detail in that. The whole idea of placebo cures - basically things being cured because someone wants them to be cured - has always interested me. Whether it's qi or something else, it's an interesting phenomenon.

However, like Mortal Wombat said, is this published in any medical journals or is there independant evidence of it verified by non-practitioners? If you can cure diseases through breathing, have you talked to James Randi and become a millionaire?

Liquidrage

You must understand that I have got to know these people well and know that they would not lie about these things.

This is your problem right there.
You don't know he/she wouldn't lie to you about this.

I have a good friend Craig. He would never lie to me. I would trust him for my life without a second though. But, like many people, he sometimes passes on stories he's heard and gives himself a role in them, even though he is just passing along the story.

And example is this house he knew of that supposedly was haunted. Long story short, his description of the house later turned out to be an urban legend.

What you need to do is ask, "who what where and when". Lets face it, if someone really did experience miraculous healing of some kind it would be very easy to find out the specifics and for you to follow through and validate the information as you hear it.
And then your job is to pass it on.

Let me state this here and now. If someone could actually show evidence that any kind of miracle occurred (or ghosts or aliens or whatnot), it would be on front page CNN, Daily News et all for a long long time.

Next, I have to point out your lack in critical thinking here.
Even if such events did happen, what they point to is some process that allows it to happen. One doesn't need to be a god or supreme being to make these things occur. Aliens maybe? Ghosts? I know, elves. Or maybe gnomes?
Don't take my last account as silly. It isn't. But making a leap from a miracle to a supreme being is. There is a LOT of room in between something capable of doing the acts you describe and something worthy of the title God.

Jerry Love

OK. I have no desire to hijack a hread, but I will answer what I can.

Regarding the use of placebo cures, that is what I was attributing most Qi effects to (psycosmatics) until I started experimenting on my own.

The whole "eastern medicine" thing is built around those lines. So yes, there is a good deal published.

Emperically verified... that's a little tougher now isn't it? The first problem for me is that what I am capable of doing is too limited to really "show up". I can "feel" many ttypes of problems, and have had some results offering relief from discomfort. I'm far from the qigong practitioner that should be held up to put serious reasearch into.

The second problem is getting non-practitioners to validate. Perhaps telling you what I did will help illustrate what I mean.

I'm a martial artist. I have been for sometime. Some of the arts I do are "neijia" (Chinese internal arts). I have been working with concepts like Qi and Yi (mind intent) for some time. I had recognized the changes that such concepts offered, but had held firmly to the belief that they were simple abstractions of more complex biological issues (I tell you think this way, and you get that result, but the real reason has to do with firing muscles in a different order when you think this way, rather than "qi").

So, I got dragged to a Qigong healing workshop. What you learn to do in the workshop is to feel energy. Both your own, and that of other people. You also learn some level of manipulation.

I did my best to not try to second-guess and just go through the workshop. OK, so I could feel the things I was supposed to feel. The next question was "am I convincing myself I am feeling them, or are they real".

So, with some unwitting frindes and family members as guenipigs, I created a study. I would have them stand there while I did my thing (feeling out thir qi to find problems). I would get a good idea in my head as to exactly where and what kind of problems (were I doing this for someone else, I sueppose I would then write those impressions down... since I was only experimenting for myself, I just got them clear in my head). I would also usually do some "fixing", and get a clear idea weather I thought I had succeeded and where.

I would then ask "what did you feel like before, what did you experince during, and how do you feel now". I did my best to make sure before, during, and at this point I did notthing to give them an expectation of what to feel, or what I was feeling (scanning was done behind them and I asked they closed their eyes). What I found.

Most people could feel changes in the areas I worked on. Many would feel sensations in general (and usually the same ones). I could generally find most "here has hurt" kind of places.

Most importantly to me, I never once (in about 6 people) found a false problem. I might miss one, but I never foundone that was not there. In no instances did I need to lead them.

Obviously, my saying so on a board really does little to establish anything. I understand that. I don't have a good way to offer evidence to someone else other than to have them do what I have done (starting with learning the material).

I wonder if someone being able to even reliably diagnose a single type of issue (say dehydrated vs non-dehydrated people) would count. I don't think I would call it "supernatural", as I do not believe in the supernatural. But for 1,000,000, it's worth a shot.

Oxymoron

Gamblet, what do *you* think of stories claiming amputated limbs growing back?

Is it within your experience of how you have seen things work in the world, or are you skeptical? Atheism - and in general, skeptical enquiry - means you keep an open mind about such claims and demand hard evidence. I would hesitate to adding something as extreme as that to my set of personal beliefs unless I saw it myself and even then could be sure it wasn't a scam. Hey, if David Copperfield can buzz-saw himself in half and move the pieces around in front of an audience, the leg-growing thing doesn't seem such a tough illusion to stage.

Generally, claims of miracles are rather self-selecting: a 9/11 survivor may Thank G*d they got out, but there's 3000+ folk that clearly weren't so favoured. And it's no help to be holy: popes die despite many millions of Catholics praying for their life.

No atheist would deny the existence of "religious experience", clearly many people have visions or hear voices or witness strange things. What an atheist questions is the interpretation of these experiences. This is usually dictated by the surrounding prevalent culture either by acceptance or rejection of it. Clearly, what your believers believe is at odds with how most of us perceive the world. They may not be lying to you, they may genuinely believe these things happened. That does not mean they did happen.

Psycho Economist

Anecdotal evidence always puts me (and anyone interested in science) ill at ease. It is not reliable. Human memory (generally, but specifically here dealing with transmitting hearsay) is outrageously poor. Secondly, human perception misses details right and left, and distorts what information it does receive (a point geared more towards divine visions than supposed miracles). Thirdly (dealing with miracles), the mind can affect the body to an unbelievable extent; the placebo effect is a relatively mild instance of psychosomatic (unconscious mind-body) interraction.

Then there is the problem of replication. Anecdotes can rarely be replicated. Often, it's because people aren't sure what caused the event in question. A scientist needs to run lots of trials to establish that some input (say prayer) is necessary (no prayer =&gt; no healing) and sufficient (healing =&gt; prayer), to an extent not likely due to chance (statisticall significance). Fortunately (or unfortunately, perhaps), we cannot go around sawing peoples legs off and assigning them to prayer or no-prayer experiemental conditions, to see if prayer causes legs to grow back.

What's more, scientists like to have multiple lines of evidence that converge to support a particular hypothesis. We'd want to demonstrate that prayer is / is not necessary and sufficient for a whole slew of things. Then, assuming that worked, establish what types of prayer (e.g. to what god) worked better than others... every question answered raises more questions.

The instances you cite would, if substantiated, be extraordinary... and to me that means worthy of exhaustive study, but not belief (at first, anyway). And that is what seperates you from me.

Remember that atheism isn't the same thing as metaphysical naturalism (the belief that there are no supernatural causes to anything). Science assumes metaphysical naturalism by default (to do otherwise would render scientific pursuit of knowledge futile).

That said, a scientist (working in scientist mode anyway, plenty of scientists are religious when not on company time) wouldn't accept the assertion that there's no other (i.e. non-natural) explanation, and instead would first confirm the facts of the situation as described, then systematically rule out natural potential causes, and report the findings in a manner open to criticism.

Assuming such a systematic investigation was conducted, a metaphysical naturalist would (go beyond a believing scientist and) insist there must be some other natural mechanism that we have yet to fully understand because it is so rare.

(whoops... formatting issues)

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>