Fear of Clowns

Faith-healing is used by various religions as allegedly objective proof of the validity of their god-belief:

• We prayed over this child and sprinkled Holy Water blessed by the Priest and the Holy Spirit healed her. The proof of the Holy Spirit is in the Holy Water and the healing, or
• The medicine man chanted over her and burned sage which balanced the girl's spirit with the spirits in the natural world. The proof of the Spirit World is is the smoke of the sage, the prayer drum and the healing.

Neither of the example rituals and observations are rational proof of the existence of an external deity or spirit world, they are simply observations of a ritual followed by observations of a recovery of health (related post: Miracles and Dr. Issam Nemeh). That they are irrational, or perhaps more accurately non-rational superstitions may be illustrated by the following thought experiment,

A Christian mother and a Native American father have a gravely sick child. The mother brings in her priest who offers prayers and performs a ritual over the child with holy water. The father brings in a medicine man who beats a prayer drum and burns sage over the child. Soon after, the child recovers her health.

The mother attributes the healing to the grace of the holy spirit through the holy water and prayers and the father attributes the same healing to the restoration of balance between the girl's spirit and the natural spirit world through the burning of sage and beating of a prayer drum.

Each asserted mechanism for the healing negates the other. I posed this scenario to a friend in a response to her assertion that we have to allow whatever a culture believes to be true to be true for that culture.

To me and my philosophy background, the thought experiment shows that neither cultural/religious belief can possibly be objectively valid; to my friend and and her anthropology background, it shows that they were both valid. I really do not see how both can possibly be true, and I don't see this as my preference for looking at human phenomena through the lens of logic as opposed to my friend's preference for looking at phenomena through the prism of a variety of cultures. When pressed on the matter of which one was true, my friend further asserted that it depends on what culture one defines the child as belonging to, an assertion I view as begging the question. Even a multifaceted prism is subject to the rules of logic.

Comments are enabled for this post, please share any thoughts. Can seemingly miraculous recoveries of health be used to argue either an objective or relative validity of a particular religious world view? Do contradictory claims about a healing negate both claims or not?

// posted by Erik @ 3/29/2005 11:17:00 PM
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