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Debunking Prayer Healing

Nonpareil

The Terrible Trivium
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Pure_Argent said:
Anyone come across these before? Are there any places that contain a quick and easy-to-access rebuttal?

http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/spirituality-cancer-healing.html#liver_cancer_prayer_healing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88WX7nnyXcU

http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/a-medically-documented-case-of-an-irrational-outcome

http://www.healingtherapies.info/prayer_and_healing.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/12/nyregion/a-devotion-to-healing-through-prayer.html?pagewanted=all

http://artsci.wustl.edu/~jbowen/content/chapters/7.html

I'm looking for a simple, point-by-point explanation of why these are not reliable. I know they're not, but I'm having trouble convincing others.
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If you had to come up with one yourself, what would you come up with?
 
Pure_Argent said:
Anyone come across these before? Are there any places that contain a quick and easy-to-access rebuttal?

http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/spirituality-cancer-healing.html#liver_cancer_prayer_healing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88WX7nnyXcU

http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/a-medically-documented-case-of-an-irrational-outcome

http://www.healingtherapies.info/prayer_and_healing.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/12/nyregion/a-devotion-to-healing-through-prayer.html?pagewanted=all

http://artsci.wustl.edu/~jbowen/content/chapters/7.html

I'm looking for a simple, point-by-point explanation of why these are not reliable. I know they're not, but I'm having trouble convincing others.
Click to expand...

The stories don't contain enough documentation to indicate that anything unusual has happened. It is not uncommon for lesions that appear to be suspicious on x-rays or on other tests to turn out not to be cancerous after all. And it's not unusual for people to 'feel' better regardless of the underlying progression of their disease. And that doesn't even take into consideration that there isn't anything stopping these people from simply making stuff up.

I'm not sure why anyone would expect you to take this seriously in the first place.

Linda
 
fls said:
The stories don't contain enough documentation to indicate that anything unusual has happened. It is not uncommon for lesions that appear to be suspicious on x-rays or on other tests to turn out not to be cancerous after all. And it's not unusual for people to 'feel' better regardless of the underlying progression of their disease. And that doesn't even take into consideration that there isn't anything stopping these people from simply making stuff up.

I'm not sure why anyone would expect you to take this seriously in the first place.

Linda
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I don't know either, but just saying "bare assertion" does nothing. These people are a little whacked.
 
Here you go. Just in case, I said the following a couple of months ago.

"Everyone alive now or yet to be born at any time they're ever sick or otherwise in need of any Gods help. I hereby ask God/Jesus/Allah/Buddha or anybody who's listening up there to be omnisciently aware of just when such help is appropriate and do what he omnipotently can to help out. Amen!"

Any subsequent intercessionary prayer is now entirely redundant, everyone else can now see if they can expend their energies in a directly productive manner.
 
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There is a term called "pure remission" that describes a cancer-diagnosed patients who for one reason or other decline treatment, and who are estimated to die without the treatment in a certain time period depending on the advancement of the disease, yet they malignant tumors recede on their own, and the individuals continue to live far beyond the estimates given by the doctor. So, this type of spontaneous remission does exist even among atheists. A medical miracle should refer to biochemical processes that are rarely observed and if they are, it should be confirmed that all the persons refused treatment to leave it to God.
 
If healing prayer works, how come so many people died in Haiti? The Tsunami? 9/11? Surely some were praying for those people.
 
There's such a huge bias in "prayer healing" anecdotes, since everytime it fails it just gets written off as "the lords greater plan". Anecdotes are useless for drawing conclusions, what would be needed to prove any effectiveness is un-biased statistical analysis, but we already know this.

I do wonder though, if prayer was effective in healing, wouldn't atheists be dying out by a process of "prayer selection"? This consideration is, of course, useless for creationists who can't wrap their heads around the process of selection.
 
Atheism, and many forms of theism are often inherited, but true, not genetically. Plus there's many people that pray for atheists. For that matter, there's so many people praying for everybody, in the sense of "please lord, heal and cure everybody", that if it actually worked, wouldn't we not see a difference between atheists and theists anyway? As usual, apply a bit of logic to it and the whole thing doesn't make much sense.
 
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