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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
prayer works, why can't God cure cancer or grow back a severed
limb? Why so much avoidable suffering that God could so readily
prevent? Why does God have to be prayed to at all? Doesn't He
already know what cures need to be performed? Dossey also
begins with a quote from Stanley Krippner, MD (described as
'one of the most authoritative investigators of the variety of
unorthodox healing methods used around the world'):
[T]he research data on distant, prayer-based healing are
promising, but too sparse to allow any firm conclusion to be
drawn.
This after many trillions of prayers over the millennia.
As Cabeza de Vaca's experience suggests, the mind can cause
certain diseases, even fatal diseases. When blindfolded patients
are deceived into believing they're being touched by a leaf such as
poison ivy or poison oak, they produce an ugly red contact
dermatitis. What faith-healing characteristically may help are
mind-mediated or placebo diseases: some back and knee pains,
headaches, stuttering, ulcers, stress, hay fever, asthma, hysterical
paralysis and blindness, and false pregnancy (with cessation of
menstrual periods and abdominal swelling). These are all diseases
in which the state of mind may play a key role. In the late
medieval cures associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary,
most were of sudden, short-lived, whole-body or partial paralyses
that are plausibly psychogenic. It was widely held, moreover, that
only devout believers could be so cured. It's no surprise that
appeals to a state of mind called faith can relieve symptoms
caused, at least in part, by another, perhaps not very different
state of mind.
But there's something more: the Harvest Moon Festival is an
important holiday in traditional Chinese communities in America.
In the week preceding the festival, the death rate in the community
is found to fall by 35 per cent. In the following week the death
rate jumps by 35 per cent. Control groups of non-Chinese show no
such effect. You might think that suicides are responsible, but
only deaths from natural causes are counted. You might think that
stress or overeating might account for it, but this could hardly
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