Healing through Priesthood blessing

[_rallychild]

I have heard many stories about people that have been extremely sick, even on their death beds, and after they receive a priesthood blessing, they are miraculously healed. That's one of the reasons why a friend of mine stays in the church, because he can't deny the miracle of being healed right after the priesthood blessing was administered to him. Do priesthood blessing work? Or is it just coincidence? Little things like this always make me think about the church

[_DarkHelmet]

Yes, Mormons believe in faith healing, like many other religions. I have not seen any scientific evidence that shows Mormon faith healing is any more effective than other faith healing. They all have their testimonials.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

in my opinion it is BS.

Priesthood blessings are nothing more than confirmation of a bias.

Statistically, nearly all people recover from common illnesses on their own.

Little Joey gets a nasty cold that is so bad it sounds like half a lung is being hacked up everytime he coughs. Mommy runs him to the doc, doc says Meh, give him something for the pain, something to dry up his sinuses, and give him lots of fluids. LET IT RUN THE COURSE he tell mommy.

Normal Mommy comes home and follows common sense and docs suggestions. A week or so later he is fine. DONE, no blessings and no confirmation of a bias the priesthood power actually works.

Mormon mommy comes home from doc and has TBM hubby give Joey a long drawn out pretend power priesthood blessing with oil accompanied by TBM father, brother, home teacher, and any other willing TBM male.

A week or so later Joey is back to his normal self.

Joey's priesthood blessing is now an official confirmation of a bias. It becomes family folklore, with each telling of the priesthood blessing his original cold becomes full blown pneumonia.

Mommy runs to RS and testimoany meeting and exclaims "Oh MY damned JESUS CHRIST!! ITS A damned MIRACLE!!! OH MY GOD!!! THE Mormon PRIESTHOOD IS SO damned POWERFUL!!"

Seriously, anyone who believes that ANY kind of blessing/healing brings about healing is delusional.

[_Tchild]

I have heard many stories about people that have been extremely sick, even on their death beds, and after they receive a priesthood blessing, they are miraculously healed. That's one of the reasons why a friend of mine stays in the church, because he can't deny the miracle of being healed right after the priesthood blessing was administered to him. Do priesthood blessing work? Or is it just coincidence? Little things like this always make me think about the church

The priesthood blessing has never (to my knowledge) been put to a double blind test. If so, it would show no statistical difference to having a blessing, then recovering or not, or not having a blessing, in my opinion.

It may be that one's belief or internal state may in some, as of yet inexplicable way, contribute to their own healing (mind over matter), but the priesthood would be nothing more than a placebo wrapped in religious authoritarianism to assist the person to achieve a belief state that is innately within.

The priesthood and its claimed powers and authority is a great religious device for LDS leaders to find and retain members.

[_Buffalo]

In faith healing you count the hits and ignore the misses, just as with astrology and fortune telling. If an LDS is sick, he will go to the doctor and also get a priesthood blessing. If he gets well, it was because of the blessing (not the medical treatment). If he doesn't get well, it just wasn't God's will. Either that or he didn't have enough faith - even though apparently very little faith is needed, according to Christ.

Also, we're not to talk about any really convincing healings - they're "too sacred to talk about." That's a great way to get the membership to believe that everyone else is having amazing miracles happening to them left and right, but they're just not discussing them because they're too sacred.

In reality, there is no such thing as magic. Putting magic oil on your head and saying some magic words can't heal anybody. It doesn't matter what religion you belong to.

[_Fence Sitter]

I do not think you can dismiss the placebo effect in blessings of this nature. I believe a Priesthood blessing would be a waste of time for me to get because I do not have faith in them, but I cannot dismiss the effects it can have on people who believe they are going to get better as a result of this blessing.

[_lakeshow]

This puts it into persepctive.....


The oddest thing for me is how the LDS belief in healing works.

Meaning, LDS believe there are three types of sick people:

1. People whom God isn’t going to heal. No matter how much praying or blessing you do, it’s their time, and God will take them or allow them to finish their lives with some sort of disease or discomfort.

2. People who are going to get better. Whether or not they get a prayer or a blessing, they’re going to get better. God doesn’t need any encouragement to save them.

3. People whom God might heal. These are our biggest concern. Apparently, there are people who have some illness, malady, or discomfort (even life-threatening ones), and God will intervene only if certain people do certain things. It might be prayer (maybe, a whole bunch of people have to pray, or just a few), it might take fasting (again, a whole bunch or maybe just a few), it might take priesthood power (maybe a lot of faith and worthiness is needed on the part of the blessor and/or blessee, or maybe not so much), or it might take being on the prayer roll in a Temple.

But frustratingly, we just don’t know. For any given sick person, we have absolutely no idea which category they are in until they get better, stay the same, or die. For those in the third category, we don’t know which particular combination of actions God is waiting for. Have enough people prayed? Do they need another blessing, or is it a name on the Temple Rolls that is needed? God won’t tell us, so we just have to hope we hit the right combination to get him to act, hoping the person is in category 3 to begin with.

And even after the fact, we have no way of ever knowing which category the person was in. If someone gets better, we’ll never know if it was our fasting that did it, or if they were in category #2 and God didn’t need us to fast to take action (or no action on God’s part was needed in the first place). If the person doesn’t get better (or dies), we don’t know if they were going to go anyway, or if we just didn’t meet the proper combination of fasting/prayer/Priesthood Blessings needed for God to positively intervene.

Even for faithful but analytically minded LDS, this can be a frustrating situation, because there is no way to know what kind of “data” we’re collecting as we go through life. People in category #2 might be misidentified as being in category #3 if they get better after a fast, prayer or blessing. While people in category #3 might be misidentified as being in #1 if they die, just because we didn’t know there was more we could do that would call down divine power to heal them.

Truly, God does work in mysterious ways.

[_Buffalo]

This puts it into persepctive.....


The oddest thing for me is how the LDS belief in healing works.

Meaning, LDS believe there are three types of sick people:

1. People whom God isn’t going to heal. No matter how much praying or blessing you do, it’s their time, and God will take them or allow them to finish their lives with some sort of disease or discomfort.

2. People who are going to get better. Whether or not they get a prayer or a blessing, they’re going to get better. God doesn’t need any encouragement to save them.

3. People whom God might heal. These are our biggest concern. Apparently, there are people who have some illness, malady, or discomfort (even life-threatening ones), and God will intervene only if certain people do certain things. It might be prayer (maybe, a whole bunch of people have to pray, or just a few), it might take fasting (again, a whole bunch or maybe just a few), it might take priesthood power (maybe a lot of faith and worthiness is needed on the part of the blessor and/or blessee, or maybe not so much), or it might take being on the prayer roll in a Temple.

But frustratingly, we just don’t know. For any given sick person, we have absolutely no idea which category they are in until they get better, stay the same, or die. For those in the third category, we don’t know which particular combination of actions God is waiting for. Have enough people prayed? Do they need another blessing, or is it a name on the Temple Rolls that is needed? God won’t tell us, so we just have to hope we hit the right combination to get him to act, hoping the person is in category 3 to begin with.

And even after the fact, we have no way of ever knowing which category the person was in. If someone gets better, we’ll never know if it was our fasting that did it, or if they were in category #2 and God didn’t need us to fast to take action (or no action on God’s part was needed in the first place). If the person doesn’t get better (or dies), we don’t know if they were going to go anyway, or if we just didn’t meet the proper combination of fasting/prayer/Priesthood Blessings needed for God to positively intervene.

Even for faithful but analytically minded LDS, this can be a frustrating situation, because there is no way to know what kind of “data” we’re collecting as we go through life. People in category #2 might be misidentified as being in category #3 if they get better after a fast, prayer or blessing. While people in category #3 might be misidentified as being in #1 if they die, just because we didn’t know there was more we could do that would call down divine power to heal them.

Truly, God does work in mysterious ways.

VERRRY mysterious! :D

[_EAllusion]

Yes, Mormons believe in faith healing, like many other religions. I have not seen any scientific evidence that shows Mormon faith healing is any more effective than other faith healing. They all have their testimonials.

Doubtless faith healing, including LDS faith healing, is a combination of placebo effect, misinterpreting coincidences, and legitimate benefits of the practices, such as controlled breathing.

This is about as obvious an empirical claim as you're going to get, and yet I've seen some LDS apologists argue even this is something that science can't investigate. They argue that, of course, because we all know science will show nothing more than the above. Even that apologist doesn't really believe in it, if you catch my drift.

That said, there's a common misconception people have about the placebo effect. Not all placebos are the same. The "placebo effect" isn't some consistent effect gotten from any placebo. Expectations play a large role in how placebos affect us. Research has shown that you get a larger beneficial effect from taking a fake red pill than a fake green one, for instance. Intravenous placebos are more potent than pills, almost certainly because we naturally expect shots to be more efficacious than pills. There's a boatload of evidence that acupuncture is just the placebo effect, yet it is more effect than taking a sugar pill much in the same way intravenous saline solutions are.

Where I'm going with this is that I would be shocked if all faith healings were equal in effect. Some rituals probably do work better than others. That doesn't mean I expect Mormon faith healing to be on the top of the heap. I don't. I'd bet on those tent revival touch of God faith healings before that, for instance.

[_Fifth Columnist]

When people talk about all these miracles, I have to keep wondering why God has never healed an amputee? Are all of these people unworthy of being healed? I don't understand it.
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

This reminds me of the story in Sunstone about how James Talmage accidentally blinded his brother with a pitchfork. Later in life, his brother was promised multiple times in blessings from Apostles that his eyesight would be restored, but it never happened. Why?