Help: jumped on for seeking scientific proof of spiritual healing

[emilynghiem]

Oh well, I made a couple of connections on there before I got banned by the Mod who thought I was a sock for someone else.
I use my real name and still get accused of that.

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Emily, even if you accept that being homosexual is a sickness, I don't think there's any evidence that "healing," spiritual or otherwise, can cure it. When "Are you still gay?" is the only criterion for determining whether someone is really gay, then it's not very meaningful.

I don't know much about the research, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen, in my lifetime, assertions that faith can contribute to healing of other types, and then more recently that in fact it does not, and then in the past few years that expectations of healing in response to prayer actually cause stress to patients with no beneficial effects at all. But if you really want to talk about scientific proof, there HAVE already been studies. Why don't you google them, and link a few results?

No, it's not a sickness.
It's like if someone is naturally transgendered but feels social pressure to "act like something they're not." And then they have to go through forgiveness healing and acceptance to come out as their true selves.

With some people they are naturally heterosexual, but have layers
of conditions or sometimes abuse that makes them cover up their true selves like a mask. So similar to how people "come out gay or transgender" when they feel safe to be themselves and quit hiding, there are some people who "come out heterosexual" when they finally come out. That's the best way I can explain it.

here's a whole website for people who go through that:
{snip}

[psychoslice]

Who cares about scientific proof, if it works it works, if not then it doesn't work, and that can be for you or anyone else, if we didn't think outside of science then nothing would ever be found out that science have proved.

[emilynghiem]

Who has ever based existence of God on whether human limbs can grow back? I have never heard of this.

The point is that if spiritual healing works, why doesn't it work on limbs?

Obviously, the answer is because there is no cellular process available in humans to do so.

And clearly, the inference is that your alleged "spiritual healing" relies upon physical processes, and is therefore an unnecessary explanation.

As for "spiritual healing" regarding addiction, what is needed to beat addiction is willpower and the desire to change. Gods need not apply. AA has a miserable success rate. Regarding other physical ailments, faith-healing kills children.

You ask for studies to document the efficacy of faith-healing, when you should be providing evidence that it has any whatsoever. You should not be criticizing people who look at information like what I've linked to here and reckon that "spiritual healing" is bullshit, because quitefrankly, that's exactly what it looks like.

Hi Parkers Tan

1. My friend Ray Hill (an atheist) got the AA program to work by adding Buddhism to it. It worked so well their prison outreach network grew from 200 members to 2000.

Christians will also complain that AA doesn't quite teach that same connection with forgiveness and grace through Christ.

The woman I met at my Mom's Buddhist sangha who went through Buddhist past life karma therapy to get rid of a phobia also had a therapist who ADDED Christian prayer to it.

the common factor is full forgiveness.
So if people cannot fully forgive on their own, added help is needed.
This is a common criticism by Christians of why other ways aren't good enough.

2. faith healing such as "claiming healing" "word of faith" and others that rely on dependence on external rituals also fail to heal,
(especially if they deny medicine which is against healing and is dangerous) because they don't effect any changes internally with forgiveness and healing

I just posted the difference between the two methods on that other site,
but got banned anyway. So I will try to see if I saved copies of what I went through the trouble to type.

thanks for being open to discussing what is the difference
on this site. That other site already assumed I was lying and trolling
and expected me to cite sources but were allowed to post whatever and not have to back that up. So I couldn't type fast enough to answer to bogus things THEY were allowed to post,
and they banned me. So there was really no way to win when they stacked the process to make sure I got banned. What can you do?

The only sites I've ever been banned on was always because of ONE person who wants to have control.
And that matters more than anyone else, just for that one person to show they are in charge.

I'm telling you, for a website for Atheists who don't believe in God, they obviously believed in perfection with no room for human error.

And one guy wanted to demand that I cite the Bible to show I know what it says, when I said I believe in FREE exercise of religion and to OFFER CHOICES of interpretation not FORCING it.
so that was weird. To be forced to recite the Bible on an Atheist website when my whole point was that isn't even necessary?
And another guy condemning me to purgatory -- when isn't the point of saying Christianity was wrong is to AVOID this very thing?

Mindboggling. I guess I should write a blog about my experiences, it's so ironic it would be comic if it didn't feel so tragic.
==========================================================
I found a couple of women on that site were cool and two of the guys who were more laid back.
But once the guys thought I was stepping on toes of the alpha males in the pack, then I was already slated for demolition.
It had less to do with the material and more to do with disrespect for the pecking order pack mentality. just politics as usual.

If you piss the guys off who are in charge, it better be the nicer members and not anyone with moderation power. Too bad, so sad!

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Who cares about scientific proof, if it works it works, if not then it doesn't work, and that can be for you or anyone else, if we didn't think outside of science then nothing would ever be found out that science have proved.

Hi psychoslice
but cancer treatments can't be applied until they are proven to work.

So there are people running around with demonic voices, killing people including their own children, when this could have been cured if people knew that treatment is free and available.

How do you propose to promote it without proving it medically?
If people don't believe it can be cured, that's why people are running around sick and not getting help. half the problem is people think there is no cure.

[bennyboy]

With some people they are naturally heterosexual, but have layers
of conditions or sometimes abuse that makes them cover up their true selves like a mask. So similar to how people "come out gay or transgender" when they feel safe to be themselves and quit hiding, there are some people who "come out heterosexual" when they finally come out. That's the best way I can explain it.

If they are "coming out heterosexual," then why does there need to be any spiritual healing involved? It sounds to me like they are responding to the social pressures of whoever has initiated the "healing," much the same way a Christian comes out as Muslim with a knife to his throat.

I think the only way a person can come out is if they're trying to live a life, and realize they are incompatible with it. If they actively seek "spiritual healing," I'd suspect they already know that their current lifestyle, whatever it is, is obsolete, and they need a moment of ritual to mark the official beginning of their new life. But that has nothing to do with a healer, or the healer's actions.

[psychoslice]

psychoslice Wrote:
Who cares about scientific proof, if it works it works, if not then it doesn't work, and that can be for you or anyone else, if we didn't think outside of science then nothing would ever be found out that science have proved.

Hi psychoslice
but cancer treatments can't be applied until they are proven to work.

So there are people running around with demonic voices, killing people including their own children, when this could have been cured if people knew that treatment is free and available.

How do you propose to promote it without proving it medically?
If people don't believe it can be cured, that's why people are running around sick and not getting help. half the problem is people think there is no cure.

But why wait until something is proven right, of course there is good and bad in this, but there is also good and bad in medical treatment, after all how many people die because of medical treatment ?.

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psychoslice Wrote:
Who cares about scientific proof, if it works it works, if not then it doesn't work, and that can be for you or anyone else, if we didn't think outside of science then nothing would ever be found out that science have proved.

emilynghiem Hi psychoslice
but cancer treatments can't be applied until they are proven to work.

So there are people running around with demonic voices, killing people including their own children, when this could have been cured if people knew that treatment is free and available.

How do you propose to promote it without proving it medically?
If people don't believe it can be cured, that's why people are running around sick and not getting help. half the problem is people think there is no cure.

But why wait until something is proven right, of course there is good and bad in this, but there is also good and bad in medical treatment, after all how many people die because of medical treatment ?.

[Cato]

Signed on to a similar site that is not like this one,...

Am I missing something? Seriously, what does this mean?

[robvalue]

There's nothing spiritual going on in any of this. At best, it's some sort of counselling, dressed up in meaningless language. And I'm highly concerned about the assessments about sexuality. Regular counselling gives plenty adequate help for anyone struggling with it. To insist it is a spiritual matter is to just invent unsupported assumptions.

There are no demons or anything like that. Again, at best, this is a metaphor. But telling people they have demons inside them is a harmful thing to do in itself. I don't understand why all the dishonesty is needed in these "treatments", as you already said they are nothing more than placebo (the flowery language parts). We already know placebo works effectively, but the question is, do these treatment work any better than just placebo? Perhaps they even work worse because of the risks involved with filling people's heads with unsupported ideas about demons and so forth.

[bennyboy]

But why wait until something is proven right, of course there is good and bad in this, but there is also good and bad in medical treatment, after all how many people die because of medical treatment ?.

Using cures which are not proven to be cures is dangerous for two reasons:
1) The "cures" may have harmful side effects, including (possibly) an acceleration of the onset of the disease.
2) Time and money wasted on "cures" could be better spent in research (if not terminal) or in just living a full life (if terminal)
3) If people are stupid enough to believe anecdotes about "cures," then they may see the "cures" as a substitute to chemotherapy, psychotropic drugs, or other actual cures, causing themselves injury or reducing their lifespan. That a non-zero number of people have died of curable diseases while holding magic crystals or Bibles in their hands is a good example of this.

As for death by medicine-- this is innumeracy rearing its ugly head. Yes, many people die in hospitals or under care. Usually, it's because they have an incurable disease. Sometimes, it's because their doctor made a mistake, and mistakes in the medical field can result in death pretty quickly. But overall, there's no comparison between actual medicine and "spiritual healing" or "alternative medicine" or "traditional medicine." With all its ills and pains, Western medicine is about a million times better than anything else.

Think of Poker. If you start with a pair of Aces, you can still lose. In a high stakes game, you might lose everything. But you'd be a fool to throw away those Aces for a pair of sevens. And that's what people who give up on Western medicine are doing. NO system guarantees a win-- but the smart money's on the Aces, even though we've all heard heart-breaking stories of bad beats.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I guess I should write a blog about my experiences, it's so ironic it would be comic if it didn't feel so tragic.

It's a forum, not the Rape of Nanking. You'll live, cupcake.

And nothing in your reply mentioned the point about limb regeneration. I'm left to assume you didn't really wish to discuss that.

[bennyboy]

I find it annoying that Emily is sticking to her ongoing complaint about another site's refusal to look at scientific evidence for "spiritual healing," but not so much willingness to provide, or discuss, evidence in this thread. I'm no expert, but I know that very many scientists, in fact, have studied such things, and that while a few have showed statistically significant results, these usually vanished when more careful controls were put in place.