Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Obsessed with Reality
'miraculous' information coming to the itinerant healer - not by
spiritual inspiration from God, but at the radio frequency of 39.17
megahertz, transmitted by his wife backstage.*
He discovers that those who rise from their wheelchairs and are
declared healed had never before been confined to wheelchairs -
they were invited by an usher to sit in them. He challenges the
faith-healers to provide serious medical evidence for the validity
of their claims. He invites local and federal government agencies
to enforce the laws against fraud and medical malpractice. He
chastises the news media for their studied avoidance of the issue.
He exposes the profound contempt of these faith-healers for their
patients and parishioners. Many are conscious charlatans, using
Christian evangelical or New Age language and symbols to prey
on human frailty. Perhaps there are some with motives that are
not venal.
Or am I being too harsh? How is the occasional charlatan in
faith-healing different from the occasional fraud in science? Is it
fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad
apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to
me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever
mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered.
But whether there are any 'miraculous' cures from faith-healing,
beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue.
Secondly, the expose of fraud and error in science is made almost
exclusively by science. The discipline polices itself, meaning that
scientists are aware of the potential for charlatanry and mistakes.
But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost
never done by other faith-healers. Indeed, it is striking how
reluctant the churches and synagogues are in condemning demonstrable
deception in their midst.
When conventional medicine fails, when we must confront pain
and death, of course we are open to other prospects for hope.
* Whose minions had interviewed the gullible patients only an hour or two
earlier. How, except through God, could the preacher know their symptoms
and street addresses? This scam by the Christian fundamentalist faith-healer
Peter Popoff, and exposed by Randi, was thinly fictionalized in the 1993 film
Leap of Faith.
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