4.10: Does religious healing work?
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This article is from the Scientific Skepticism FAQ, by Paul Johnson Paul@treetop.demon.co.uk with numerous contributions by others.
4.10: Does religious healing work?
Miraculous healing is often put forward as a proof of the existence
and approval of God. The Catholic and Christian Scientist churches in
particular often claim that believers have been healed, but none of
these healings have stood up to careful scrutiny. However it should
be noted that the Catholic church does investigate alleged miracles.
One famous "healing" which has been carefully investigated is the case
of Mrs. Jean Neil. Many people have seen the video of her getting out
of a wheel-chair and running around the stadium at meeting led by the
German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke. This was investigated by Dr. Peter
May, a GP and member of the General Synod of the Church of England.
His findings were reported in the Skeptic (organ of the UK Skeptics).
Here is a summary of the report. [Any errors are mine. PAJ].
May found that Mrs. Neil was helpful and enthusiastic when he
contacted her, and there is little doubt that her quality of life has
improved greatly since the "healing". However May was unable to find
any physical changes. His report lists each of the illnesses claimed
by Mrs. Neil, and he found that they were either not recorded by
doctors previous to the healing or that no physical change had taken
place. It seems that the only change in Mrs. Neil was in her mental
state. Before the healing she was depressed and introverted.
Afterwards she became happy and outgoing.
A more sinister aspect of the story is the presentation of the Neil
case in a video promoted by CfaN Productions. This represented Mrs.
Neil before the healing as a "hopeless case", implied that she had a
single serious illness rather than a series of less major ones, and
included the false statement that she had been confined to a
wheelchair for 25 years (in fact Mrs. Neil had used a wheelchair for
about 15 months and could still walk, although with great difficulty).
A report on her spine was carefully edited to include statements about
her new pain-free movement but to exclude the statement that there was
no evidence of physical changes.
For the full report, see "The Skeptic" p9, vol. 5, no. 5, Sept. 91. Back
issues are available from "The Skeptic (Dept. B), P.O. Box 475,
Manchester, M60 2TH, U.K. Price UKL 2.10 for UK, UKL 2.70 elsewhere.
The video is entitled "Something to Shout About --- The Documentation
of a Miracle". Presumably "CfaN Productions" is part of Bonke's
organisation "Christ for all Nations" [does anyone have an address?]
Of course, this does not disprove the existence of miraculous healing.
Even Mrs. Neil's improvement could have been due to divine
intervention rather than a sub-conscious decision to get better (as
most skeptics would conclude, although the May report carefully
refrains from doing so). I include this summary here because the Neil
case is often cited by evangelical Christians as an undeniable
miracle. In fact the case demonstrates that even such dramatic events
as a cripple getting up and running may not be so very inexplicable.
For more general coverage of this topic, see James Randi's book "The
Faith Healers". Free Inquiry magazine has also run exposes on
fraudulent faith healers like Peter Popoff and W.V. Grant.
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