Essay --

Faith healing is an unbelievable phenomenon where diseases and medical conditions are cured solely through spiritual means. First demonstrated by Jesus Christ, many modern day faith healers claim they can heal any disease and offer their services as an alternative to modern-day medical treatment. There have been many displays of this faith healing over the years, but it’s a controversial topic that has many people for and against. There are many self professed faith healers in the world today. Some of them are famous and ridiculously rich, some are the opposite, but they all claim to have some sort of supernatural power capable of healing through faith alone. It’s the exact opposite of medical treatment and is hard to prove, but cases of cures are being reported often. For example, the Healing Rooms Ministry of Bethel Church in Redding, California have pages of testimonials of people claiming to be healed of things such as broken bones and cancer. But how is it possible to know whether these stories have been fabricated or not? How is it possible to know to what extent the faith healing actually had an effect on the cure. It isn’t possible. What often happens in these faith healing situations is what is called the placebo effect. People go into it expecting to be cured, and may end up no longer feeling the effects of their disease after being â€Å"healed†. The problem with this is the fallacial reasoning, whereby the participant affirms the consequent and also gets caught up in a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The participant uses the faith healing method, and then if they get better they will assume that it was because of the faith healing and not any natural process or other medical treatment they may have received. There are many log... .... Putting the beliefs behind it aside, though, many groups and organisations have offered cash incentives for cured victims of particular faith healers to publicly come forward, but no-one ever has. Furthermore, previously mentioned James Randi has had a cash prize of one million dollars for anyone who can prove that they have supernatural powers to him. He has been offering this award for many years, but has not needed to pay up even once to date. Faith healing is something that many people have experienced, through themselves or a loved one, and some will speak only good of it, but many will argue the opposite. Despite the relatively large number of positive testimonials, faith healers have a bad track record, and as much as it would be nice for it to be at least somewhat reasonable, there is no solid or scientific evidence whatsoever to suggest that is the case.