Healing at church

[robhu]

Hi everyone,

My name is Rob, I'm from the UK, and I'm quite new here. I know I should
post something in the introductions thread but I wanted to get this up as soon as possible so you could all comment on it.

I have for various reasons recently been going to a church here in the UK (City Church Cambridge), and at a recent service some people were prayed for in the hope that they would be healed of whatever it was that ailed them.

Of the people who claimed to be healed, one person in particular caught my eye. His story is that a week or so ago he was in a sporting accident that had caused a fracture, as such he has had his leg in a cast since then, and has been using crutches. On the morning he said he took his leg out of the cast and it was very painful, in fact he said it took him 20 minutes to get dressed.

He came to church on crutches, but after being prayed for said that he no longer needed them. I chatted to him afterwards and as far as I could tell he was not in pain and it was the case that he was no longer using crutches.

What approach would you take when presented with a claim like this? As someone seeking the truth I would not dismiss the claim out of hand, but equally I would want to rigorously investigate what has happened.

There are obvious limitations here. I am not a doctor, so I don't know how common this kind of thing is without prayer involved. Nor do I know that he was 'physically' healed in any way. All I know is that he was in pain before and now he isn't. The little information I have gleaned about such accidents suggests that this is not what normally happens, normally it would take much longer for his leg to heal.

He had an appointment to see the doctor to check up on how his leg is healing, so I asked him to let me know next time I saw him what the doctor said, and whether the doctor found it as amazing as he did.

So - what questions would you ask, how would you approach this?


Please note that general information about how prayer in the past has not worked is not all that helpful to me, they could claim (quite rightly) that prayer has not worked in those tests for a variety of reasons that are unrelated to this incident - I would like to come up with a set of reasonable questions / tests that I could use for this actual instance.

[Skeptical Greg]

There is really no way to investigate this after the fact..

If physical healing took place, it would have to be documented
before and after the claim with CAT scans, Xrays etc..

If he is just claiming the pain went away, it is a matter of taking
his word for it .. Pain is often affected by psychological factors..

If people believe there is real healing going on there, ask the healer
what he/she would think about accompanying you to a local
children’s hospital .. The burn ward would be a good place to start..

[Amapola]

I'd say you need to get more explicit information from the injured person first. "A week or so ago" is pretty vague. What sort of fracture? Was it the type where the bone was displaced, and had to be re-set, or was it something on the order of a hairline crack? What did the doctor say about healing time?

There are some injuries that would heal faster than others. Knowing exactly what the injury was and when it took place is pretty important. After all, some injuries are going to heal *A LOT* faster than others. At this point, for all you know the physician told him to wear the cast for only one week anyway! I think you would need to talk to the doctor too and see what that person had to say.

I think it is pretty common for people to get tired of casts and take them off early. I have known a number of people who did so, including my own sister when she was younger. The fact that these people do not immediately become crippled or something is not proof that they were magically healed ahead of time. (No one I knew prayed about it, they simply got annoyed with the cast and took it off.) In some cases enough healing and mending has taken place that they can get away with such foolish behaviour without the consequences being too serious.

[Garrette]

Medical records before and after, along with physician's comments.

[ohp]

Ultimately what we need is a control group, someone, or preferably some people with the same injury that don't know they're being prayed for, to compare with those that have.

Volunteers please...

[Walk The Line]

Ask them if they can heal amputees.

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

As a participant in a violent sport :catfight: I am fairly used to getting minor but painful injuries.

It is not uncommon to be in quite severe pain for 3 or 4 days after a game, and then to wake up the following day and feel nothing.

Also, I know in the UK that with some injuries such as sprained ankles, if you go to A&E you may end up in a plaster. If you don't go, you will still heal anyway. (Any doctors reading could confirm that - it is certainly my experience in several cases with people I know)

[fls]

What approach would you take when presented with a claim like this? As someone seeking the truth I would not dismiss the claim out of hand, but equally I would want to rigorously investigate what has happened.

He had an appointment to see the doctor to check up on how his leg is healing, so I asked him to let me know next time I saw him what the doctor said, and whether the doctor found it as amazing as he did.

So - what questions would you ask, how would you approach this?

Please note that general information about how prayer in the past has not worked is not all that helpful to me, they could claim (quite rightly) that prayer has not worked in those tests for a variety of reasons that are unrelated to this incident - I would like to come up with a set of reasonable questions / tests that I could use for this actual instance.

I'm not sure that this situation is amenable to rigorous investigation, as you need to ask probing questions and obtain objective evidence in order to evaluate what happened. And it is likely you would irritate your subject long before you had enough information to really figure out what happened....unless you are thinking that you can induce some skepticism in the subject by getting them to think critically about their answers. Subjective symptoms (especially under these kinds of circumstances) do not give any reliable indication of the presence or absence of underlying pathology.

A visit to a doctor's office is a situation where he would likely tolerate probing questions and tests such as x-rays. So I would handle it pretty much the way that you did. I would say, "if you really think you have been healed by prayer - that you weren't already getting better and you still don't have any pain after the excitement of this healing session wears off - then you really should go back to your doctor and allow her/him to document this amazing event. Because people claim miracle cures, but physicians haven't been able to document that anything unexpected has happened. And maybe this is because they haven't been given the right opportunity. Please consider giving your doctor this chance." Then the next time I saw them, I'd ask, "how're you doing?" in order to give them an opening to provide follow-up. If they didn't say anything, I probably wouldn't press them.

Without investigation, there is no particular reason that you need to accept the claim, so I wouldn't worry about accumulating evidence before dismissing the claim on something informal like this. In every case where a patient of mine has claimed something that appears to be impossible and I've had the opportunity to get the details (which is most of the time - the great thing about being a doctor is that it's considered okay to get invasive with your questions), it's turned out not to be particularly unusual after all.

If you don't care about making friends and influencing people, then start asking for specifics - what was the exact diagnosis, why did you take the cast off, how long did your doctor tell you it would take to heal and what was the range, did you have any objective findings - something that you can show me rather than just telling me about, other than pain how did you know your foot wasn't already healed, other than lack of pain how do you know you are now better? Keep asking until he slugs you in the face and then come here and ask us what we think of the answers. :)

Linda

[thaiboxerken]

What you can do is sucker punch him right on the collar bone, to break it. Get x-rays of the break. Then go see if the church can heal it.

[Skeptical Greg]

What you can do is sucker punch him right on the collar bone, to break it. Get x-rays of the break. Then go see if the church can heal it.

:D

[Walk The Line]

What you can do is sucker punch him right on the collar bone, to break it. Get x-rays of the break. Then go see if the church can heal it.

No, break his arm. For collar bone breaks, you don't get a cast and you have to sleep with your torso upright. At least with a broken arm you get a neat cast that cute girls can sign.

[baron]

Of the people who claimed to be healed, one person in particular caught my eye. His story is that a week or so ago he was in a sporting accident that had caused a fracture, as such he has had his leg in a cast since then, and has been using crutches. On the morning he said he took his leg out of the cast and it was very painful, in fact he said it took him 20 minutes to get dressed.

He came to church on crutches, but after being prayed for said that he no longer needed them. I chatted to him afterwards and as far as I could tell he was not in pain and it was the case that he was no longer using crutches.

What approach would you take when presented with a claim like this?

First I would assess whether or not there was a claim. In this instance, the answer is yes.

The claim is that in the morning his leg hurt, and later it did not.

Then you need to ask, could such a thing have come about naturally. The answer is again yes. Millions of people have pain that is either intermittant, or suddenly goes away.

Therefore there is no point in looking for other explanations. His leg was painful, then it wasn't.

[RenaissanceBiker]

Cut off his pinky toe.

[jimbob]

Ultimately what we need is a control group, someone, or preferably some people with the same injury that don't know they're being prayed for, to compare with those that have.

Volunteers please...


Something like that has been done in the UK.
I can't reecall all the details, but here goes:

Some group in a hospital randomly assigned some patients' names to a church prayr group and compared the results with the control group that hadn't been prayed for.

As this hasn't made headlines, you can assume that prayr was innefective.

Professor Edzard Ernst (?) has done similar studies: One with Reikki "healers".

The initial study that they performed where there was no difference in effect from the reikki was put down (by the woos) as because the actors were unconciously channeling their energies or some such guff...

So it was repeated with a two way mirror and still no effect.

In fact I seem to recall some studies where the actors performed statistically significantly better than the supposed healers. Being professional actors, they did better placebo.

Ho hum

Just out of interest, Rob, does the church go in for "slaying with the spirit"?

Jim

[Edwin]

"Accidentally" knock into his leg to make sure it really healed. :-p

[jon]

The first thing that comes to mind is that this seems pretty irresponsible of the church. If someone I cared about told me they'd taken the plaster cast off the fracture after a week, and were then trying walking around without crutches, I'd try to stop them. Did the preacher at the church try to stop them from this foolish behaviour, or encourage the guy?

I'm not sure this is even a claim you ethically *could* test - I'd be worried about encouraging the guy with the fractured leg to 'prove' he wasn't in pain, and therefore hurt himself further.

On the other hand, if the preacher at the church is claiming to heal this type of injury through prayer, there's an easy solution - he has a couple of his limbs broken, he refrains from medical treatment, and you can see how well it heals. After all, if it's good enough for his parishioners :D

[robhu]

Something like that has been done in the UK.
Just out of interest, Rob, does the church go in for "slaying with the spirit"?

I would say so, they're a charismatic NFI church. That particular thing is not something they would encourage specifically but I suspect it's the kind of thing that would happen to some people.

[robhu]

The first thing that comes to mind is that this seems pretty irresponsible of the church. If someone I cared about told me they'd taken the plaster cast off the fracture after a week, and were then trying walking around without crutches, I'd try to stop them. Did the preacher at the church try to stop them from this foolish behaviour, or encourage the guy?

I'm not sure this is even a claim you ethically *could* test - I'd be worried about encouraging the guy with the fractured leg to 'prove' he wasn't in pain, and therefore hurt himself further.

On the other hand, if the preacher at the church is claiming to heal this type of injury through prayer, there's an easy solution - he has a couple of his limbs broken, he refrains from medical treatment, and you can see how well it heals. After all, if it's good enough for his parishioners :D

It may have been a 'brace' rather than a cast actually after checking with some people. The guy in question has been emailed and will hopefully reply to confirm the details.

There wasn't some big upfront preacher doing stuff. The preacher at the end suggested that people pray for one another - so it was the ordinary church members praying in twos, threes, and fours. This guy also voluntarily of his own accord took off the brace/cast.

[Questioninggeller]

...
What approach would you take when presented with a claim like this? As someone seeking the truth I would not dismiss the claim out of hand, but equally I would want to rigorously investigate what has happened.
...
So - what questions would you ask, how would you approach this?

Please note that general information about how prayer in the past has not worked is not all that helpful to me, they could claim (quite rightly) that prayer has not worked in those tests for a variety of reasons that are unrelated to this incident - I would like to come up with a set of reasonable questions / tests that I could use for this actual instance.

I'd start with The Faith Healers by James Randi at http://randi.org/shopping/index.html It lets you think about faith and healing pertaining to the power of belief.

Also worth noting from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681/

Power of prayer flunks an unusual test
Large study had Christians pray for heart-surgery patients

March 30, 2006

NEW YORK - In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Researchers emphasized that their work can't address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them.

[thaiboxerken]

put him in an armbar, break the limb, then yell : HEAL THIS, BIATCH!!

[ShowerComic]

I had a Fracture, and at the same time level 3 Sprain of my ankle, myself a while back. The key to a fractures is immobilization which is what a walking boot, or sometimes a plaster cast is for. While it was nice to know the friends of mine who go to Church were thinking of me, I don't see that Prayer as such had any real effect :) Ah Unitarians are so symbolic sometimes.

Seriously the main thing is time. -- Exactly how long was the break immobilized, how long did it take to heal At minimum those are the questions to ask, as well as proof via X-Rays.

[Flo]

It may have been a 'brace' rather than a cast actually after checking with some people. The guy in question has been emailed and will hopefully reply to confirm the details.

Typical. All such stories start with something on the line of "I got 3 members almost severed/3rd degree burns on 70% of my body/a displaced fracture and should have spent month in intensive care but got miraculously healed", then injuries get progressively downgraded with each probing question and requests of evidence ("actually it was a cut on my fingers/I spilled some hot tea on my lap/bumped my toe on the bedpost and the healing seance came 2 weeks later") ... :D

[thaiboxerken]

He probably just had a slight headache.

[c4ts]

Sure there are plenty of crutches and walkers and pill bottles cast aside, but you ever see any discarded glass eyes or prosthetic limbs after a faith healing session?

[JQH]

John Sladek's "The New Apocrypha" has a chapter on faith-healing. He refers toDr Louis Rose who investigated cases of faith healing.

Of a Harry Edwards session in 1951, he wrote:

"Later, as I was leaving the hall, I saw a woman walking with the aid of two sticks on which she leaned heavily....I suddenly realisedthat this was the same woman who, an hour or so earlier, had walked dwn the steps from the platform to the auditorium without the aid of her sticks, glowing with joy at her 'cure' and taking her first unaided steps for several years."

In other words, an element of trickery cannot be ruled out in faith-healing cases. In the case which started this thread, I wonder if the patient is now back in his brace?

[Deetee]

His story is that a week or so ago he was in a sporting accident that had caused a fracture, as such he has had his leg in a cast since then, and has been using crutches. On the morning he said he took his leg out of the cast and it was very painful, in fact he said it took him 20 minutes to get dressed.

He came to church on crutches, but after being prayed for said that he no longer needed them. I chatted to him afterwards and as far as I could tell he was not in pain and it was the case that he was no longer using crutches.


So...
He took off the cast before coming to church.
1. A full plaster type cast cannot be removed by a patient - only by someone with appropriate equipment. So it was only a partial cast (a "back slab") or some type of brace.
2. Was he meant to take it off at this point? If he did it himself well in advance of when he should have removed it he was being stupid. (or was he also psychic - he just "knew" that when he got to church people would start praying to heal him? ). Alternatively, his docs may have said he said he could remove it - if so they presumably thought he didn't need it by then and could do without.

After being prayed for in church, he decided he could manage without the crutches as he was no longer felt in pain.

When a cast or brace is first taken off, there will be discomfort as one gets used to the altered biomechanics of the situation and adapting to any new stresses on bits that didn't have to take as much strain or weight strain as when the cast was in situ.
People quickly adapt to these changes, and any discomfort is likely to be temporary.

[jon]

It may have been a 'brace' rather than a cast actually after checking with some people. The guy in question has been emailed and will hopefully reply to confirm the details.

There wasn't some big upfront preacher doing stuff. The preacher at the end suggested that people pray for one another - so it was the ordinary church members praying in twos, threes, and fours. This guy also voluntarily of his own accord took off the brace/cast.

I can see where you're coming from here - I know people are quite entitled to do silly/risky things if they want to. Maybe I'm working from a different starting point, though - I've always interpreted praying for someone who's ill as, at least in part, a way of showing that you care about them. If someone I cared about took off a plaster cast early, my first response would be to ask why the hell they did that :D

[Boo]

My intial impression is not so much that this gent was healed but he no longer was experiencing pain at that time. This is a big difference. I would be interested in how he felt the next morning when he got up.

The simplest expalnation I can come up with is that this person, upon being prayed for and given a very public outpouring of emotional support had his endorphins kick in and all of a sudden he is feeling no pain. It's a MIRACLE, he is HEALED! More like he felt good emotionally and that translated to chemicals in the brain making him feel good (temporarily) physically.



Boo

[chillzero]

The simplest expalnation I can come up with is that this person, upon being prayed for and given a very public outpouring of emotional support had his endorphins kick in and all of a sudden he is feeling no pain. It's a MIRACLE, he is HEALED! More like he felt good emotionally and that translated to chemicals in the brain making him feel good (temporarily) physically.



Boo

I agree.