Visit this link for a short story on the power of faith, before reading the rest of this blog.
So. . .I am not being sarcastic with the title of this blog. I'm pointing out that the actual healing power of faith is, as the family in the above listed article found out the hard way, actually zero - nil, nada, nothing.
Some of you might suggest that "God won't save you from your foolishness". So: God loves you so much that he'd let his only son die for your sins, but if you do something stupid, you're on your own? You know you don't believe that.So how to explain this apparent discrepancy?Let me be as blunt as I can: If God exists, he doesn't help anyone with anything. There are no exceptions, not you or anyone.
Confirmation Bias:Faith-based healing is an excercise in confirmation bias. Simply put: Confirmation bias is when a person wants or believes something to be true, and so considers only the evidence that supports their conclusion.
Consider the following statement: 'It's a MIRACLE! Man saved is Tsunami! Praise God!' We might look at the sole survivor or a tragedy as some kind of miracle. But think about it a little more. Let's suppose 50,000 people drowned in that Tsunami. 50,000 thousands lives ended horribly.
Are you really prepared to celebrate the compassion and grace of God, because one person survived? That's what confirmation bias allows us to do. We don't see 50,000 bloated corpses, we see the smiling face of a man who believes he was "saved", and we want to be that man. You remember his face, and not the faces of the dead.
Finally, let's discuss confirmation bias in the other direction. Suppose I want to be right about the content of this blog. Could I be ignoring evidence of faith-based healing to support my conclusions? I do not believe so.
Here is why: There are millions of personal tragedies every year. MILLIONS. They happen so often as to be commonplace. In fact, when someone appears to have experienced a MIRACLE.
It is ONLY miraculous in light of the fact that most of the time a tragedy would have occured in their situation.
Shall we try to claim that God picks and chooses from the millions of tragedies each year and averts a few dozen, or a few hundred?
Stop lying to yourself.
Be consistent and reasonable in what you believe.
Some of you might suggest that "God won't save you from your foolishness". So: God loves you so much that he'd let his only son die for your sins, but if you do something stupid, you're on your own? You know you don't believe that.So how to explain this apparent discrepancy?Let me be as blunt as I can: If God exists, he doesn't help anyone with anything. There are no exceptions, not you or anyone.
Confirmation Bias:Faith-based healing is an excercise in confirmation bias. Simply put: Confirmation bias is when a person wants or believes something to be true, and so considers only the evidence that supports their conclusion.
Consider the following statement: 'It's a MIRACLE! Man saved is Tsunami! Praise God!' We might look at the sole survivor or a tragedy as some kind of miracle. But think about it a little more. Let's suppose 50,000 people drowned in that Tsunami. 50,000 thousands lives ended horribly.
Are you really prepared to celebrate the compassion and grace of God, because one person survived? That's what confirmation bias allows us to do. We don't see 50,000 bloated corpses, we see the smiling face of a man who believes he was "saved", and we want to be that man. You remember his face, and not the faces of the dead.
Finally, let's discuss confirmation bias in the other direction. Suppose I want to be right about the content of this blog. Could I be ignoring evidence of faith-based healing to support my conclusions? I do not believe so.
Here is why: There are millions of personal tragedies every year. MILLIONS. They happen so often as to be commonplace. In fact, when someone appears to have experienced a MIRACLE.
It is ONLY miraculous in light of the fact that most of the time a tragedy would have occured in their situation.
Shall we try to claim that God picks and chooses from the millions of tragedies each year and averts a few dozen, or a few hundred?
Stop lying to yourself.
Be consistent and reasonable in what you believe.
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