This being my first blog post I wanted to start this off with a bang, so I’m going to be talking about faith healing one of the biggest forms of alternative medicine out there and the furthest away from actual scientific medicine as you can get. There are many different religions that practice some form of faith healing but I will be specifically focusing on Christian faith healing, here in the UK 59% of the population is Christian and it’s what I have the most experience with. So without further ado, let there be light.
For the lucky ones asking what’s faith healing? It’s the belief that prayer or gestures can invoke divine intervention and heal the sick. Some faith healers even claim to be able to be able to rid people of cancers and make the crippled walk again. Impressive claims but is there any evidence to back up these claims? Nope, shit all. I noticed a pattern while researching for this blog, most alternative medicine has bold claims and absolutely no evidence, apart from anecdotes from facebook moms who did their research and pseudoscience bullshit.
I went on a tangent there, get used to that it will happen a lot, anyway let's get back to kiddie fiddlers and their cancer curing imaginary friend.
Faith healing can come in many different ways, from prays to exorcisms. I have nothing against praying for health or for someone to get better, it can reassure people and in some cases, it helps people deal with pain and illness but that's where I draw the line. When pastors claim to cure the ill and people are claiming that the healing power of our Lord and saviour cured them and their drastic recovery had nothing to do with the 3 weeks of antibiotics they dropped 5 days early. These rumours and false “proof” gives some people false hopes, people who really need professional help are avoiding hospitals because their priests promise that faith can heal their terminal illness.
Worst yet are the people claiming that they can heal others, they are either utter scumbags who exploit the desperate and ill for a profit or delusional retards who believe that they can heal the sick by slapping their hands on people’s foreheads and saying some magic word. These people piss me off in ways I cannot express in words and part of me wants to be mad at the people who enable them and seek their “healing” but part of me can’t help but feel like a complete arsehole being mad at the sick and desperate people.
There’s at least one good thing that came from this mess, it’s this video from the BCC “Can A Faith Healer Make Me Walk Again? - https://youtu.be/l-M30YaHnm8. If you ever feel utterly useless or embarrassed just skip to the bit where a cocky faith healer who has promised to work miracles fails to heal a crippled woman’s legs on camera.
