Healing by Faith and Prayer

Recently a Christian friend said, when I expressed skepticism about the healing power of prayer, "I have directly experienced two instances where somebody was healed through prayer, so I know it happens."

He gave me the details. One was a girl who was unable to walk. One session of prayer at church, and she walked normally. The other was a young man with a terrible eye injury. My friend (a minister) prayed over him during church services, and the next day his eye was normal.

All stories I have heard of healing through faith suffer from the logical fallacy called "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"), that is, the fallacy of assuming that because event A was followed by event B, A was the cause (or even the only possible cause) of B. Believers in faith healing assume (illogically) that because prayer was followed by healing, the prayer was the cause (through God, of course) of the recovery. This belief is encouraged when there appears to be no natural explanation for the recovery.

This is also an example of another logical fallacy, called "the false dilemma," which asserts that one must choose between only two explanations for something, when other possible explanations exist. When a remarkable recovery cannot be easily explained by doctors, this fallacy then asserts that one must accept the only other offered explanation (prayer) as the correct explanation. This ignores the possibility (and likelihood) that the recovery is simply unexplainable. It also ignores the fact that many people, including atheists, experience remarkable and unusual recoveries without prayer at all - recoveries which are equally puzzling to doctors. Remember that even placebos sometimes have a healing effect.

A woman in my family who has been atheist for many years was diagnosed in her early 20s with chronic kidney disease, with only 3% of one kidney functioning, and 10% of the other. She was given only a few years to live. She is now in her late 60s, in generally good health, her remaining kidneys functioning satisfactorily. The doctors have no explanation for it. Notice that if the family had been believers in the power of prayer, we would have been on our knees daily right after the diagnosis, begging God for her survival. And today we would be crediting prayer (and the God who caused her disease in the first place) with her good health.

Notice that healings that are attributed to prayer are always the kind of health problem that sometimes, and perhaps only rarely, improve with no treatment. Prayer never seems to work in the case of amputated limbs, or actual death. And it is odd that even devout Christians seek professional medical treatment, even though they are promised by their god that they can cure the sick by faith (presumably by faith alone). Mark 16:18, James 5:15.