Faith healing

[Unhealthy2]

I'm not liable to trust Brown either. "Derren Brown investigates" my hole. Him being a skeptic it's probably Derren Brown doubts and declares that truth doesn't exist but acts as if it does and that everyone who isn't a skeptic is an idiot then trolls the daylights out of every religion on the internet.

I think you just confused philosophical skepticism and scientific skepticism. They are not the same. Learn to tell the difference.

[Wikkiwallana]

Meditation, breathing exercises, and herbal remedies can be beneficial to a person suffering from some minor ailments. But "energy work" is bullshit. The best it will ever do is provide a placebo effect for someone who doesn't realize it's bullshit.

Some scientific support for energy healing citing multiple studies
http://www.transitiontoparenthood.com/j ... upport.htm

Literature annotation on Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis by James L. Oschman
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?ac ... nnid=12460

Scientific Research Documenting the Effects
of Intention and Energy Healing on DNA,
Cancer Cells, and Mental and Emotional States
http://www.awakeningthroughlove.net/Las ... ntions.pdf

A list of 70 Hospitals and Clinics that use Reiki in standard care
http://www.centerforreikiresearch.org/HospitalList.aspx

Rheumatology Nursing book citing use of Reiki
http://books.google.com/books?id=uBBeKK ... ki&f=false

I'd say not complete bullshit...

I would:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki#Research.2C_critical_evaluation.2C_and_controversy
http://www.ncahf.org/articles/o-r/reiki.html
http://quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=Reiki

[Sociobiology]

I still love the misnomer of faith "healing" otherwise called tricking people with snake oil.

[Ryadn]

Is anybody else currently watching Derren Brown's Miracles for Sale? For those not watching Derren is exposing faith healing as a scam by training a volunteer up to act as a faith healer and perform in Texas. Fascinating stuff, though I find it hard to credit that people actually belive in the stuff and allow themselves to be ripped off by con artists like Paul Popoff. Somehow America seems to have an endless appetite for this kind of thing - spiritualism and seances, UFO abduction, recovered memories, conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, it's very real, and it isn't just rural hicks and religious nuts that fall for stuff like this. My best friend's mother--a very intelligent woman, liberal and educated--got into chiropractic and begin studying it in it's most legitimate form, as an aid to lower back pain. It started a slow slide into the land of crystal healing and heart prayer and homeopathy. It's not a coincidence that after going into chiropractic, but before she got into the really wacky stuff, she developed breast cancer. Desperate people are willing to believe in a lot of stuff that healthy people are not.

[Geniasis]

I don't disagree. I was merely pointing out that Risottia was talking about two things, treatments proven ineffective and ones where scrutiny has been refused, not a single class of treatments said to be ineffective because scrutiny was refused.

And certainly, Western medicine is not 100% effective 100% of the time. No one here has said so. Unfortunately, people in the alternative treatment community use that fact as an excuse to throw all of it overboard, and worse, some use it a reason to sell snake-oil. Your earlier point about using meditation and breathing exercises for pain management in chronic illnesses was good. Herbal remedies I'm hesitant about but not entirely opposed to. I wanted to ask you what you mean by "energy work."

I'm not opposed to herbal remedies per se, supposedly about 40% of modern pharmaceuticals are based in various plants and herbs. Furthermore, for things like sore throats, things like ginger and honey and such can actually have a soothing effect. But once you cross the line into homeopathy, then you're not doing yourself any favors.

[Coccygia]

Faith healers ought to be treated like any other quack, and for the same reasons. Ideally they would taken out and shot.

I agee with the above! They must be shot! All hail Lenin!
Edit: No, they should be shunned for their practices, however this will not probably happen.

They should be worse than shunned - arrested and sent to prison. Of course, this won't happen either. Freedom of re-freakin'-ligion. And I don't think (nor do I think you really think, I think) that despising these evil bastards makes me a Communist or Leninist. I am a democratic socialist like George Orwell and you know how he felt about Communism.