Like I said before, nobody has to believe that any of this ever even took place…I just wrote about an incident that happened over a year ago trying to give as many details as possible to the best of my knowledge. One of my main reasons for sharing this is that if you do believe the incident took place which it did then I would think that most people would agree with me that something miraculous happened.
Most people did not agree but that is ok although I could have spiced it up and said that a bright light came out of nowhere and healed the kid but I didn’t.
As far as believing the incident took place or not that is up to you because I have absolutely no way of verifying this over the message board all I have is my memory.
Strange you would say that, faith and doubt (questioning) oppose each other.
The more you question the less faith you have.
Now is faith without logic? No. Faith is established through experience, the more experience the more faith.
Love
I am always amazed at all the assumptions, guesses, and conjectures a skeptic can turn into reality. Then state they have proved the story false. Absolutely amazed.
Love
I have no reason to think you made up the story, but I don’t see anything miraculous about it either. A kid hits his head on a table, he gets a bump, someone else applies pressure, and the bump goes down. That happens every day.
The catholic church has no issue with people believing that such or such healing was “miraculous”. They just very rarely oficially aknowledge a miracle, except when extremely well documented medically and following strict conditions (for instance, a healed cancer has essentially no chance of being aknowledged as a genuine miracle, because people recover from cancer all the time).
Someone mentionned Lourdes, and the church actually recognized only a very low number of miracles there. But I’ve been to this place, and in the local paper, essentially every day, there were reports of “miracles”.
These “miracles” become quite simple when you examine the mechanics of the situation and seek the most likely of possible explanations. The sceptical line mentioned by someone above (“what, no peg legs”) is particularly appropriate here: what is a wall lined with crutches supposed to mean? That the lame who came to brother Andre were healed, of course, but that is simply an assumption we make to form a pattern from the “evidence” we are given. According to the evidence on the wall, we can safely conclude that the only ones to be granted “healing” were the slightly afflicted. No one missing a leg seems to have discarded their prostheses and walked out on a new limb.
Religious fervor can explain much in these cases. I think the most reasonable conclusion is that some of the supplicants who went to brother Andre were healed by the power of their own suggestion. Proximity to a holy figure, the correct setting, the right words of encouragement, and of course the right frame of mind (expectation, hope, belief, etc.) are more than enough to explain these miraculous healings in those instances where supplicants actually had a real organic disability to begin with – (psychosomatic disabilities are another matter).
For example, a supplicant seeking miraculous healing would obviously be in a high state of excitement, and would defer to the authority or stature of the healer in question (or relic, or shrine, or whatever). Perhaps he even becomes ecstatic. Whatever the case, he’s probably got pain-dulling endorphins. enkephalins, and a whole other bunch of chemicals flooding his system as his state of excitement mounts, as well as a nascent case of placebo effect engendered by his faith and desire to be healed. When he discovers he doesn’t seem to feel pain at that very moment, or that he can walk without feeling as much pain as usual, his ensuing joy at having his problem solved further reinforces the power of his own suggestion.
The item of interest here is psychology and the body’s natural pain-killers, not miracles of any sort. The supplicant can walk without a crutch because his feedback mechanisms are not functioning normally; when he puts weight on his lame foot, he doesn’t feel the pain he’s always felt before, and therefore assumes that no pain = no disability.
If the supplicant had a very minor problem (or a psychosomatic problem), it’s possible he will adapt to live with it and consider himself cured. If the problem is not very minor, our gullible friend will probably find that, having discarded his crutch in the church and walked home, the next day will bring a whole bunch of pain and the need for a new crutch.
Faith healing works on this principle of auto-suggestion to temporarily relieve patients’ symptoms. The scenario sketched above is only one of many; self-deception, regressive fallacy, wishful thinking, operant conditioning, communal thinking, etc., may all play roles in such matters.
Here’s why ignorance is deadly and ought to be stamped out without mercy:
My emphasis – there are many other such cases. James Randi has an excellent book on Faith Healing that exposes some of the worst offences in this field; it is titled, appropriately enough, The Faith Healers and is highly recommended. Just a couple of notes on your last paragraph:
Crutches and wheelchairs are not evidence of anything. For all we know they were collected by Brother Andre’s helpers on a regular basis, in addition to being left there by supplicants who were “temporarily” healed.
“It’s not news, it’s entertainment”. Popular media doesn’t know the first thing about critical thinking, don’t rely on them without a strong dose of scepticism and analysis of the matter (i.e., is there any real evidence available, or just the crutches and hearsay?)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (of invalidating proof). Besides that, consider this: who really did the job of “getting around some major questions” for Andre and his gang? I don’t know the details for Montreal’s case but one sees the same thing all over the world. That’s because what primarily fuels the legend is human credulity – it is visitors having a little moment of self-induced rapture who keep the myth alive, and not necessarily anyone actively trying to torment the lame or the ill (though of course that inevitably happens when there’s money involved).
Alleged miracles and faith healing are pretty easy to explain in a rational and scientific manner, however the explanation is not immediately obvious to most people (who otherwise wouldn’t call it a miracle!). So myths such as Andre or Padre Pio or Lourdes or a host of others are born and endure.
At last! Something lekatt and I can agree upon!
Ok, I see how that example has lots of holes in it. 30s tabloid news is just a little bit different than today’s and I fell for it. I wonder how the religous fevor was able to cover up the “cured” when they went back home. Could everyone have wanted it to be true? or just those that controled the media at the time?
FWIW, I don’t think you’re lying. I have no reason to believe the incident didn’t take place; I just don’t see as how it’s particularly miraculous.
Then you would have been lying.
Well gee, START, I was at that party too, didn’t you see me?
What I remember is a little boy, unharmed, and a table. Under the table was the little boy’s twin, made up to look like he had a terrible head wound. When no one was looking, the twins traded places, and the “wounded” boy started screaming. At that point, all the women crowded around him, praying, so of course you couldn’t see the twins again trading places.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Just because you don’t know an explanation for something, doesn’t mean it can’t be explained.
Stop it! You pooh-poohing dopers are exposing your youth and ignorance and rudeness to wiser men who look down upon your silly smug comments and smile.
Think, wee brains, your own existence is but a miracle.
Therefore, ye whom God has given brains beyond the zebra, it follows that any event involving men, which is pronounced by men, “a miracle”, is, in fact, “a miracle”.
How could it be otherwise?
Or do the rules of semantics differ on the planets of your births?
We’re more concerned about rules of evidence.
Ah yes, Psuedo Cynic, you of the imperial “we”, will always be concerned with your “evidence”.
Milum, your mother’s calling you:
The obvious solution is to get the little boy from the OP and bang him on opposite sides of the head. Have one side the prayer side and the other, the Denorex side. See which half tingles more.
What?
Just our luck, Stpauler, the sweet little boy in the OP if busy.
Would you mind serving as his substitute in your test?
I could stand over you with a rubber mallet while a well-dressed contingent of good-old foot-washing Baptists would pray longly and loudly for me to show mercy and not conk you on the head, while on the other side of the room our control group - a bunch of unruley, unwashed, unspeakable atheists - would shout filthy obscenities and demand that I stop dilly-dalling and lower the damn boom.
You would win, of course, if I conk you on the head. 
Of course, Milum, you realize that would defeat the intended experiment in miracles. It would change the experiment from the miracle being of healing power into a miracle of free will. Would a higher power stop your free will to conk or not from the prayers? That would be the intent of your proposal.
And, FWIW, I’m washed, scrubbed, and rubbed my underarms with a nice stick of Mitchum, unscented too.
Is there such a thing as non-negative trolling? Is what SMART is up to that exact thing, getting a rise out of us?
. . . and with Mitchum, you can skip a day!
It seems to me that from the story that the woman did two things to treat her son.
One of them was prayer.
The other was to apply first aid.
She calmed the boy down, she applied pressure to the wound.
Now if she didn’t touch the boy at all it might be something. But she did apply first aid.
Now if someone breaks a leg and the doctor prays the entire time he sets it a puts a cast on it, would you call it a miracle healing?