Healing miracles and God

Healings? What healings?

There are actually hundreds of millions of stories. But are any of them anything more than an urban myth?

To be useful in throwing light on the possible existence of God, we need stories to be plausible as evidence, with as many as possible of the following attributes:

1. The account of the story comes from a reputable source which provides names, time and place, and there is no reason to believe the story is a fraud, or that anyone had anything to gain by inventing it.
2. There must be good independent medical opinion (backed up by documentation) that the disease was present before the prayer and not present afterwards.
3. The disease had little possibility of natural recovery.
4. The recovery must have been complete, or at least very significant, and not what might be expected from any treatment being received.
5. There must have been prayer for healing not long before the healing occurred.

Are these genuine divine healings?

A few accounts of healings appear to meet these tests and have been outlined on this site:

An Australian doctor

An Australian doctor Sean George suffered a heart attack and was treated by two doctors and nurses. They tried the defibrillator, and when his ECG ‘flatlined’ they kept on with CPR. After about an hour and a half treating him with no response, they gave up. But then his wife (also a doctor) arrived and prayed for a miracle – and imediately he began to breathe again, his heart began to beat again, and eventually he fully recovered with (unexpectedly) no brain damage. As a doctor, he kept all the medical documentation, which he has made available.

A massive heart attack

An expert medical team tried for 40 minutes to revive Jeff Markin after he suffered a massive heart attack. After he was officially pronounced dead, the heart surgeon laid hands on him and prayed for healing. The ‘paddles’ were applied one more time and he revived. Both the surgeon and Jeff verified his amazing revival.

Remarkable healing documented in medical journal

A 16 year old boy lived since birth with a serious medical condition that couldn’t be resolved by medical interventions but was immediately healed after prayer. The case was written up in a respected medical journal, and the authors say other explanations (placebo or natural recovery) would be unprecedented.

Thousands of drug addicted gang members

Thousand of drug addicts in Hong Kong, many of them Triad gang members, were healed of their addictions after prayer. In some cases, such as Winson, a Triad gang fighter, the healing was immediate and apparently miraculous. In most other cases, they went through a process of withdrawal without medication, and without pain, which almost never happens without medication, and also seems to be miraculous.

Ten healings

Experienced medical researcher and doctor, Richard Casdorph investigated apparent healings which occurred after people were prayed for. He approached the doctors involved, examined the X-ray and other medical records, and submitted them to experienced professionals. He found that ten cases were cures well beyond what could be expected to have occurred naturally.

Healing meetings in Africa

Professor Candy Gunther Brown travelled to Mozambique to witness healing meetings. She measured the hearing and eyesight of those seeking healing in these areas, immediately before they were prayed for, and immediately after. There was a significant, and in some cases quite amazing, improvement in most of the 24 people.

Lourdes

Over 150 years, 200 million pilgrims have flocked to Lourdes in southern France, seeking healing at what has become a holy place to Roman Catholics. Millions claimed to have received healing, thousands of these cases have been documented, and 68 cases have sufficient medical evidence to allow an international Medical Commission to verify the miracle.

Around the world

New Testament scholar Craig Keener investigated the occurrence of reports of miraculous healings from around the world. He read hundreds of written accounts of miraculous healings, interviewed several hundred eye witnesses, and obtained medical documentation for some of them, and published the results in his book Miracles. What his investigation lacks in detailed medical evidence, it makes up with the sheer number of accounts he was able to study.

Does God heal and speak today?

Two British “doctors” (one a medical specialist, the other with a PhD in social anthropology) investigated documented cases of apparent healings and reported on them in books and even in a paper in the British Medical Journal. Sometimes it appears that God may have communicated his intention to heal through a “word of knowledge”.

World Christian Doctors Network

The World Christian Doctors Network has documented many cases of apparent healing miracles, with supporting evidence.

Explanations

Five responses appear possible:

1. There is insufficient evidence that the stories true.

This is certainly true for many miracle stories, but the above accounts are harder to dispute. There is good documentary evidence for most of them, reviewed by competent medical specialists. It is difficult to maintain that every last one of these stories is untrue.

2. They were spontaneous remissions.

A small number of spontaneous remissions occur with no explanation. It is argued that alleged miraculous healings are simply spontaneous remissions that are remembered, while the many cases where prayer for healing is not successful are forgotten. This argument is difficult to assess because I know of no figures on the occurrence of spontaneous remissions vs the occurrence of miraculous healings after prayer.

However it is worth noting that all medical conditions are different, and spontaneous remissions are not known in some conditions. Dr Casdorph notes in his book that some of the cases he examined could not be satisfactorily explained that way. The painless withdrawal and healing of addiction in Hong Kong can hardly be explained as spontaneous remission!

3. Some other natural explanation.

Perhaps there are natural explanations for these apparent miracles? Perhaps the mind’s powers to overcome sickness and disability, or other factors not as yet recognised, pave the way for cure. But until specific natural explanations are found, it is difficult to see how a reasonable person could opt for this explanation.

4. Which supernatural being?

Some say there are healing stories in many cultures and religions. So perhaps divine healing cannot be the correct explanation, because many different gods are claimed as the source of the miracle. They can’t all be the true explanation, it is said. However, it could well be that God indeed healed, even if we cannot be sure if any particular religion truly describes God.

5. Divine healing.

The people in these stories were prayed for, or received some form of christian minstry. They were subsequently healed. The most obvious explanation, except for those who firmly disbelieve in a God, is that God heard the prayers and acted to heal. Why he didn’t heal others remains a mystery.

The verdict

It seems to me that, while we should rightly judge that many healing stories have insufficient supporting evidence to justify belief (except to those who actually experienced or observed the healing), the accounts quoted above are sufficiently well supported to conclude that something unusual has occurred

Only two explanations appear reasonable – either they were spontaneous remissions which coincidentally occurred after prayer, or they are genuine healing miracles. Which explanation we choose will likely depend on our presuppositions.

• Strong atheists will likely opt for spontaneous remission, but note that sceptics have decided this matter not so much based on the evidence, as they generally claim, but more according to their presuppositions.
• Theists are free to adopt either option in any individual case, but will find it easy to believe that God sometimes heals people.
• Agnostics will likely choose to wait for more evidence – and more is coming to light all the time – but this evidence gives them food for thought.

Bayesian analysis no less

Basing our conclusions on both evidence and presuppositions is a rational process, which is formalised in Bayesian statistics (see note 1, below). But according to Bayesian statistics, this evidence for miracles must increase the probability of God’s existence, even for a sceptic, even if only by a small amount.

I have done a probability estimation for healing miracles (see Miracles and probability: the adventures of a maths nerd which suggests that there are more than enough credible healing miracle reports to show that the probability that God is the cause is quite high.