Faith Healing is Effective

This is an odd route to take for a debate on the merits of faith healing, but here goes. Re: Cancer Remission, correlation v. causationGiven that cancer can spontaneously go into remission, what is the significance of faith healing? It is odd that my opponent would draw out an issue with correlation and causation when he would bring this forward in support of your position. If I happen to turn on a light and a ball to spontaneously moves accelerates past me, I cannot draw a causal relationship between the light and the ball accelerating.Re: Definition of Faith Healing The definition that I provided initially was pulled off of a Google definition search. [1] My opponent then offers up a definition and simply asserts that since it doesn’t “[exclude] any other medical conventions” it should be expanded upon. It doesn’t exclude ducks either, but I cannot add them in to please my own needs.Re: My opponent’s burden“My opponent essentially expects me to win that if someone is bleeding to death, that person can be cured through prayer rather than through a blood transfusion and clipping the artery at the bleed site.”“My opponent essentially wants me to have to defend that prayer could prevent someone from bleeding to death.”This is not at all correct. The pro position has to show that faith healing is effective in healing through faith. Since my opponent has chosen to point to positive thinking within recovery after medical treatments have been applied, one can assume that he accepts that faith healing cannot do anything beyond that. Unfortunately the definition of faith healing does not include “by means of increasing positive thinking so they should still go to a doctor and get the correct medical treatment as well,” but I guess that can be added in to my opponents definition as well. Re: Alternative MedicineSince alt med has not been shown to be efficacious it only clouds the issue. When alt med is actually studied, as study sizes grow, and are better controlled they are shown to be ineffective. [2][3][4] Re: Meta StudiesI am afraid that my opponents understanding of meta studies and their relevance is incorrect. Since my opponent is unable to refer me to the actual study and the two links he has provided are saying about the same thing, one thing is clear – the study information that my opponent has makes no reference to faith healing or even prayer. The only thing we can draw out is that thinking positively has positive effects, but that is far from the topic. We can say little else about the studies, so the tie to faith/prayer is tenuous at best. Meta studies have a purpose, but the purpose is not to be able to pick a sample of studies and draw out a conclusion when the waters around those studies are murky. My discussion on the relevance of a meta study is still quite applicable.Re: Intercessory Prayer ExampleThis example was put forward as an example of the problem of meta studies and how difficult they are, not to disprove anything about personal prayer or faith healing. Within the response my opponent did not read the study very well and attributed things incorrectly, the details are still in my previous post so I won’t go into the corrections. My opponent does need to, however, re read the methods section of the study though.“METHODS: Patients at 6 US hospitals were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer also after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive prayer. Intercessory prayer was provided for 14 days, starting the night before CABG. The primary outcome was presence of any complication within 30 days of CABG. Secondary outcomes were any major event and mortality.” [5]Re: Examples of faith healingMy opponent opens by saying that I offered up two examples of faith healing, but there was a word left out of that statement – claims. The examples I put forth were claims of faith healing, and as such far from accepted. Re: Criteria for Faith HealingAlthough I am quoted, this is misattributed to me, they are in fact from a quote that I provided that I happen to agree with. Stephen Barrett’s argument can be simplified into - If faith healing works, it should be shown to work on something that does not cure itself, have no medical treatment applied and have documentation of the process. My opponent has qualms with the first requirement, but I am not sure why. If faith healing were applied to something like sneezing, athlete’s foot or a common cold which goes away after a week, which it usually does anyway what purpose did faith healing serve? The goal is the show that it is efficacious in healing and if it is unable to be applied to anything incurable (MS, Scoliosis, AIDS/HIV, Graves Disease) or even diseases that are “curable” (Strep, Meningitis, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Many Cancers), what good could it be? The entire purpose of the first requirement is to make sure that the faith healing is the cause and not a spontaneous event that happens regardless of the circumstances. ConclusionMy opponent has brought a number of elements into this discussion which have not been tied to faith healing. Unfortunately he has not argued in favor of faith’s ability to heal anything, only that it can be useful to have positive thinking when in recovery after a medical treatment has been applied. On the contrary, I have pointed to the claims of faith healers, how they have been debunked, and even to a definitive study on the effects of intercessory prayer being negligible at best. 1. http://lmgtfy.com...2. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org... 3. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...4. http://www.doctoroz.com...5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...