The Medical Medium and the dangers of believing in magic

Yeah, seems like a false dilemma. This recalls the atheist argument of why religious people go to doctors practicing science-based medicine instead of just praying to God...

I do because I lack faith.  If all christians were honest, they would say the same thing.

[Ninshub]

You think the Word of God made flesh requires occult abilities in order to do miracles?

I'm not sure what you mean by "occult" abilities. Can you explain that to me?

If you had a possibly serious illness, would you go to a "medical medium" or to a qualified medical practitioner?  Or to put it another way, how certain are you really, when it comes to the crunch, in the existence of psi?

Frankly, it depends on the nature of the illness.

Not all doctors know how to deal with all physical ailments, and not all medical mediums know how to deal with all spiritual ailments.

Different individuals and professions simply have different skillsets.

That's my simple perspective on it.

You think the Word of God made flesh requires occult abilities in order to do miracles?  No, he didn't do magic, he was the Son of God.  Cancelled in this respect simply means not supported, so yes he should be cancelled because people are dying because of his "spiritual" diagnoses.

How are miracles any different from occult abilities or magic? Enough people have certainly interpreted magic or occult abilities as miracles.

It's all about perspective, I believe.

[Ninshub]

You think the Word of God made flesh requires occult abilities in order to do miracles?  No, he didn't do magic, he was the Son of God.  Cancelled in this respect simply means not supported, so yes he should be cancelled because people are dying because of his "spiritual" diagnoses.

We differ on so many aspects here that I don't think it's worthwhile to argue too much here. But for myself, everything is God (God is not a completely and radically separate being who made himself "flesh" into one being; rather we, as parts of God/Source, are all doing that), all of us souls have potential abilities to do what you call "miracles", and death is just a transformation, and planned by beings before they decided themselves to "become flesh", and not the drama you're making it out to be. I have a hard time making out how you seem to combine Christianity with a lot of materialist worldview inclinations. You're probably not alone in that way among people of traditional religious belief, but to me it's just a mess of human belief-constructed, unsupported contradictions.

You probably would think the same of me however.

I do because I lack faith.  If all christians were honest, they would say the same thing.

It seems if there is a God this entity provided humans with intellectual capacity.

If there was no place for medicine as an academic discipline the world would be very different in how it works, and presumably God is the One who made the world the way it is?

Frankly, it depends on the nature of the illness.

Not all doctors know how to deal with all physical ailments, and not all medical mediums know how to deal with all spiritual ailments.

Different individuals and professions simply have different skillsets.

That's my simple perspective on it.

Yeah what we need [are] better attempts to regulate both alternative medicine and traditional academic medicine. This is why I say proponents have to take on some of the duties of skeptics but in a more honest way.

I think it's great people learn about the tricks fake mediums/healers/etc use, when I was trying to verify mediums for my personal knowledge I definitely thought about such things. (Sadly I only managed to visit one before COVID hit.)

I'm wary of a lot of healers personally, and I am doubtful that such techniques are easily learnt. It's a practice ripe for charlatans...but OTOH I don't think there's any a priori barrier to the possibility [of Psi/magic healing] so some testimonies are worth taking seriously...like this one ->

The Mist Wolf

....It goes on monotonously. Everything else is silent. Suddenly, I notice that there is a white mist-like form taking shape around and in front of Rolling Thunder’s body. Sometimes I can see it, sometimes not. But it becomes stronger, steadier, until it is continuously present. It is almost dark now, but the fire gives enough light to see. Then it takes form, slowly at first, but as if gathering energy into itself it takes form. I can clearly see that the smoke-like figure is a wolf. Rolling Thunder moves as rhythmically as a clock. Sweep. Sweep. Flick. Sweep. Sweep. Flick.

After about 30 minutes the form begins to fade, first losing shape, then becoming increasingly insubstantial. Finally, it is nothing more than a chimera, there and not there. Then it is gone. Rolling Thunder straightens up, and stops. He makes a kind of gesture, and somehow we are released and come forward. The boy is very peaceful. His mother also has come forward, and she leans over him, kissing his forehead. The wound is completely healed. It looks like your skin does when a scab falls off leaving smooth unlined pink skin, shiny in its newness. I am astonished. Clearly so is everyone else. 

I go over to Hugh Lynn, who is in animated conversation with a British scientist, Douglas Dean, who has come down from New Jersey to see this. Hugh Lynn asks me, “What did you see?” “Yes, what...?” Dean says. I tell them, and when I say the mist took form, they exchange a look, and Hugh Lynn asks, “What shape?” When I tell them I saw a wolf, another look passes between them, and they tell me that have seen the same thing.

You don't half talk a lot of uncritical BS!  This thread is not to discredit anything but to get you to question your own certainty.  Try to remember I am mostly agnostic about these things with a small bias in favour of psi because of personal experience.  Even if the thread was to discredit psi, isn't that normal in the skeptic v. proponents forum?

I made it clear that I don't completely trust orthodox medicine and its accompanying pharma (which is often unsuccessful and has elements of corruption), and that I also don't trust psychic healing methods (which in my observation are usually unsuccessful, with probably a much worse healing record). But I explain that I would at least try qigong (EQ) if orthodox medicine failed, because qigong external healing has been extensively validated through well documented research. 

Then, (talk about BS!), you rant and create an imaginary straw man out of my statements, unable to accept my nuanced view of the matter. I don't think that, in general, psychic healing methods work acceptably well or as well as conventional medicine (despite orthodox medicine's many flaws), with it seems a few exceptions like EQ which has been researched extensively.

However, that doesn't change the fact that esp, psi and many other paranormal phenomena have indeed been well researched and validated as real, even if the capability of reliably healing disease and injury, and becoming a substitute for orthodox medicine, apparently aren't within their basic nature. Powerful abilities  of psychokinesis would have to be extensively involved in successful psychic healing, and such powers are exceedingly rare, even though there have been extensive research programs which validated low-level psychokinetic effects such as affecting truly random processes such as atomic disintegration events, or simulated such random events. It seems to me the basic nature of psi isn't designed to be used this way.

If you had a possibly serious illness, would you go to a "medical medium" or to a qualified medical practitioner?  Or to put it another way, how certain are you really, when it comes to the crunch, in the existence of psi?

That would depend on what you think psi is capable of, wouldn't it? Like you, I'm agnostic, but the more credible accounts of psychic abilities I've read don't point to major macro effects that could substitute for, say, cancer-related surgery.

That would depend on what you think psi is capable of, wouldn't it? Like you, I'm agnostic, but the more credible accounts of psychic abilities I've read don't point to major macro effects that could substitute for, say, cancer-related surgery.

If you look at discussions about alternative medicine - say various herbal remedies - you will usually find a statement to the effect that there is no good scientific evidence that these things work. I used to take these statements as damning until discovered that the reason is that randomly controlled medical trials are so expensive to perform that society usually lets Big Pharma decide which trials to do, and then stump up the money! Needless to say, they only want to test their own drug treatments!

This means that you can find a variety of useful herbal remedies on the internet, but almost all of them have to say they aren't scientifically tested!

I'd say it is pretty close to a law of nature, that anything that pulls in billions of dollars is going to be seriously corrupt.

David