Skip to main content

God is good? A rational view on faith healing.

By PKL ~

First of all, I'd like to thank ExChristian for posting Gary’s testimony (http://new.exchristian.net/2010/08/god-is-good.html). This respect for freedom of speech is what differentiates sectarian communities from real free thinkers. And I find it very interesting to have such "booster shots", so that each one of us can remember how it is to think like a Christian, and why he/she left that fully-featured mental package.

the other side v9Image by nimrodcooper via Flickr
Now, I *hope* Gary’s testimony puzzled most of us, and I’d like to add some answer elements on the subject of miraculous healings.

I won't go into the details of my own deconversion - I have tons on articles on the subject, that I’ll post later if I find the time to translate them from French to English. All I need to say now, is that some years ago I could have written, Gary's testimony.

Indeed, I was suddenly relieved from persistent heel inflammations when I was a teenager, during a catholic prayer session in Paray-Le-Monial. Temporary relief only - the disease was actually much more serious than that, and is still slowly destroying me as of today. But anyway, it was like some shocking proof of God's existence and goodness, and this pushed me toward a very committed Christian life for the next 10 years.

I've personally witnessed, and heard about, lots of similar events, that occurred in Paray, in Lourdes, in Parisian ecumenical conventions... I saw paralytic grandmas running with their faith healer around the gathering, cancers suddenly disappearing, witnessed lots of very troubling coincidences (eg. monks always finding fully working household appliances in the streets, exactly at the moment they came out to buy one), and tons of less significant “signs”.

I need to precise that I’m an extremely (too much maybe) rational person, quite impervious to most group emotion and mental suggestions. Maybe that’s why homeopathy, placebos, and hypnosis never worked on me, and why I never felt the “presence of God” like many believers do when praying or praising. So I think I have the right to say that these events I witnessed weren’t mere illusions. They were visible, tangible, facts; and if you dig into the recent archives of miraculous sanctuaries (especially catholic ones, where inquiries are lead rather seriously), you’ll find loads of cases which are both quite proven, and unexplainable by the current state of medicine.
So are these proofs of God’s existence and goodness, like Gary concludes? I don’t think so. Here is the way I’ve come to consider the matter, after weighing it for a time.

First of all, all the miracles in the world would be unable to contrary this fact: the biblegod is a cruel, insane, narcissistic tyrant. And the 2.0 version (the Christ of protestant evangelists) or the 3.0 one (the sweet Jesus of most optimistic catholic theologians) are more subtle, but not less crazy and heartless characters.
The whole revelation tells the story of how god sends tremendous curses on humans, and then fakes loves by healing a small part of them (remember? The bronze snake in the desert? The cross put up to save a minority from eternal torture?). The same ways torturers often cure their victims, so that they last longer in pain, and can develop a stronger Stockholm Syndrome.

If an almighty entity exists in this world, it undoubtedly represents the highest level of perversion one could imagine. Luckily, the bible is so silly and self-contradictory that only ignorant barbarians may have invented it (by the way, for those who still are not convinced that this world is incompatible with a benevolent creator, just check this link: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/five.html)


Second, there is no reason at all to make a big deal about “miracles” or “magic”. Why should consider as fictional, as lies, all what we don’t surround? The first humans on earth considered everything as divine or magic: fire, storm, sun, stars… Now we have learned how to master these natural phenomena. But why, then, should we consider that we’ve finished exploring the world we’re in? On the contrary, lots of hints tell us that we’re only at the stone age of science, especially in medicine and knowledge of human brains.

There are tons of people on earth, who have abilities we don’t understand. Mediums that can see through someone else’s eyes; or who can find a little object hidden in a whole city; atheist healers that can cure fireburns simply by putting hands on them; faith healers that do amazing jobs, certainly more because of their own powers than because of the intervention of a divine megalomaniac.
There are also tons of events we can’t explain. When one suddenly feels that a fellow is dying at he opposite side of the planet. When countless people live similar Near Death Experiences, and even witness real events during their coma (CF Moody’s books on the subject). When persons with multiple personality disorders have, or have not (depending on their current personality) a blood cancer. When someone loses his hair, simply because we gave him a fake treatment against cancer (nocebo effect). When praying about someone really seems, in rare cases, to influence his fate.

For sure, some of these people above are fakers, and some of these events are illusions or coincidences. But still, enough of them remain for us to guess it: we still have much, much left to discover in this world.

Lots of tracks exist, to answer these mysteries without a need from awkward and inhuman dogmas. Unknown behaviours of our immune system. Under-developped abilities from our brains. Forces and energies we’ve not yet measured and learned to control. Maybe, even, spiritual (or extra-terrestrial?) entities with which we still have to establish bridges.

Let’s not forget that this whole world is full of arbitrary rules. Why does matter attract matter? Why have fundamental constants these values and not others? Why sentient beings instead of purely mechanical system? Why does light behave sometimes like a particle, sometimes like a wave?

Science explains how it works, but never justifies these “why”, so let’s not consider that what we call “miraculous” now is not possible; it may perfectly be; Nature doesn’t have to justify any of its designs.
Today’s “gifted” people and “paranormal” events are what future generations will surely consider as perfectly obvious, natural phenomena. And they’ll laugh at us ignorant barbarians, who were living in a dark age where the real powers of brain over matter, and the real possibilities of this reality, were totally unmastered, and generating superstitions instead of scientific studies.

Because of all of this, I consider that “strong atheism” is one of the most stubborn religions on earth. Asserting that there is nothing except the materials and forces which we already study, that there is nothing such as conscience and soul, that there is nothing after death, that all what we call “miracles” are lies or illusions, is actually one of the most dogmatic way of thinking we could find. It doesn’t rely on much evidence, and even contradicts millions of little hints humanity encounters every day.

Dogmatism is not compatible with free thinking. So instead of pretentiously denying the existence of what we can’t explain, let’s say as the great R.G. Ingersoll. : “We don’t know”. Let’s admit our ignorance, listen to testimonies and facts, weigh them up, correlate them, study them.

We shall not immediately dismiss unusual phenomena, reject them as conspiracies, or classify them as consequences of psychotic troubles. If they’re so, we’ll eventually find it out; but by the way of reason, not of fanatic denial. Free thinkers needn’t fear Truth. At the contrary, they must be the ones with a wide open mind, able to reject cruel dogmas and lies, but also to peacefully approach events that shake the unfounded certainties it’s accustomed to.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two