Subduction Zone
Regular Member
I do not know, I will let you know when I read his argument in the book. If I find any degree of credibility to his claim you will be the first to know. Because this is an argument from a skeptic for skeptics.
I doubt if the author is actually a skeptic. Sort of like the man that claimed he was an atheist or skeptic until he tried to prove that Jesus did not exist. When he failed he supposedly became a Christian. Of course no skeptic that could think logically would undertake such a task. A failure to prove that Jesus did not exist would not prove anything. Instead if one tries to find evidence that Jesus did exist one may have true reasons to doubt the New Testament.
There are people that believe that everything is a miracle and there are people that believe nothing is a miracles. Often it is the people in their ivory towers that have very little experience in the real world that do not believe in miracles. Those of us that actually have to function in the real world knows that miracles are very much a real part of life. That is why people come to us for help because they know that we know how to get things done.
I am sorry, but this statement only shows your lack of understanding of science and scientists, and people in general. The reason that educated people doubt the existence of miracles is because there is almost always a logical explanation to matters. The less one knows the more likely that an event will seem miraculous to one.
IF a very sick person is comforted then what difference does it make how rational it is. My dad was very big on the power of suggestion. It did not matter to him if God exists or not. What matters is that the patient was comforted. Even he use to claim the power of suggestion was so strong that he could do surgery without any anesthesia. Only it took to long so he just gave them a shot so he could get on with what he was doing. Fast and quick and easy. But he still know the old fashion way of doing medicine before all the modern drugs came out.
A doctors main concern is the comfort of his patients. If a false belief makes them feel better then I can see why he would not object to it. But I would bet that he was not in favor of false beliefs that led to harm. For example the parents of children in some rather extreme forms of Christianity believe that they can "pray the disease away". They reject modern medicine for their children. At times courts step in and sometimes the courts are too late.As long as a belief does no harm I do not see to much wrong with it either.
He could hypnotise a whole audience and he often did. He hypnotised my whole school once. I went around and talked to as many people as I could to ask them if they were hypnotised or not and they ALL said they were. That was how he built his practice up so big back then. Everyone in the whole town, the whole community knew our family back then.
Perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't. Just because someone says that he was hypnotized is not enough evidence to believe that he was. I have my doubts that there were not some level headed people in the audience that did not fall for his attempts. This sort of claim needs a lot more evidence than you have presented to be believable.
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