By Darla Carter — 2015
Whether prayers for health or healing actually work is a matter of debate. Study results have been mixed.
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In fact, the reason for the continued and enormous popularity of faith healing is that, to some extent at least, it works.
Over time, society and medicine have progressed, pushing tradition, ritual, superstition, and religion aside in favour of more evidence-based practices. Blood transfusions replaced leeches and daily medicine replaced prayers.
A new Russian study has found that only about 44 percent of Russians actually went to the doctor last year. But what is more interesting than that is when people from the former Soviet Union finally do seek help, they usually avail themselves of alternative medicine.
You don't have to take it on faith anymore. Religion can be good for your health. That is the urgent message of Dr. David B. Larson, a psychiatrist who has improbably dedicated his career to exploring the subject.
Thousands of Americans choose faith healings over medical intervention every day, for themselves and for their children. When does a country that prides itself on freedom of religion declare that public health trumps personal belief?
Faith healing has existed for thousands of years before the principles of modern medicine were established...more effective than the power of Wicca, shamanism, Druidism and prayer.
Some fundamentalists don’t believe in medications or psychological treatments for mental illness. Small groups of faith healers believe that prayer can heal and shun conventional medical support.
According to a NEWSWEEK Poll, 72 percent of Americans say they would welcome a conversation with their physician about faith; the same number say they believe that praying to God can cure someone--even if science says the person doesn't stand a chance.
From a scientific perspective, faith healing is unexplained, incomprehensible, and should not work. Yet it does work. The same is true of drug placebo effects, of course.
Miraculous cures continue to be reported on a regular basis: what are we to make of them?