Final Thoughts

I cannot end this book without expressing a few strictly personal thoughts on the subject of faith-healing and religion in general. Though the reader may feel that I have already expressed too much of my philosophy, I should like here to make a straightforward statement. I am frequently approached following lectures and asked loudly if I am a Christian and/or whether I believe in God—the assumption being that I understand what the questioner means by both terms. My answer has always been that I have found no compelling reason to adopt such beliefs. Infuriated by such a response, those who cannot handle further discussion usually turn away and leave ringing in the air a declaration that there is just no point in trying to reason with me and that I will be “prayed for.” I have no need of this patronization, nor of such a condescending attitude, and I resent it. I consider such an action to be a feeble defense for a baseless superstition and a retreat from reality. If I were to offer up a prayer of my own, I would ask a deity to grant my species the ability to adopt a dignified, responsible, and caring exuberance toward living, rather than a quavering, dependent vigil awaiting death. To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage. I believe that we have evolved to the point where we no longer need gurus to supply us with magical formulas for our lives. We must learn to ignore silly notions invented by opportunists who see us as sheep willing to be sheared-or worse. There is ample evidence in history that we can be led to commit atrocities in the name of God or Satan, or to lay down our lives for some obscure dogma that we have never troubled to question. We cannot surrender to those idiocies and survive as a species. Albert Einstein saw quite clearly the error of ignoring reality:Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

I will dare to expand Einstein’s statement to include quite ordinary folks along with the painters, poets, philosophers, and scientists who he says require their specially invented universes in order to function emotionally. Often, the need is thrust upon these people by their social background. They grow up nurtured by families who take heaven and hell, demons and angels, and life after death as absolute, unquestioned certainties. The cruel joke is that they can never discover whether there is any truth in these notions, though they never even trouble—or dare—to ask such a question. Speaking of the origins of religious concepts, Einstein said:With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions—fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend.

Have we come much further from this primitive state? I think many of us have not. Fear still seems to be the impetus for attendance at evangelical meetings. The message given at these crusades is that God must be constantly invoked, praised, thanked, feared, and propitiated by sacrifice—usually financial. “Getting right with God” is the prime intent, and it costs. We have been to the moon. Because of our very nature, we will be going to the stars. We cannot get there encumbered with superstitions and a limited vision of our potential. We must put childish things behind us, and belief in faith-healing is one of those things, one of the many incredible myths that most believers are required to accept. It is a view of this world embraced by those impatient for the next one. Richard Yao, the head of Fundamentalists Anonymous, makes an important point, applicable to faith-healers as well as to the fundamentalists he questions:Perhaps the unpardonable sin of fundamentalism is its effort to make people suspicious and afraid of their own minds, their own logic and thinking process. Any thought that contradicts the fundamentalist dogmas is labeled “Satanic” or “demonic.” If we cannot depend on our minds to process reality and make choices and decisions in life, then we are more likely to depend on fundamentalist preachers like Falwell or Swaggart. How can a democracy survive if all of us renounce reason, thinking and logic?

Yao’s comments apply very well to those people discussed in this book. Fond as they are of quoting scripture, faith-healers should appreciate a certain appropriate selection from the Good Book in which they seem to have been anticipated. They appear to be pious and innocent, but have perpetrated a vicious, callous, and highly profitable scam on their flocks, bringing grief, economic loss, and severe health risks to their victims. I ask them to turn to Matthew 7:15, where it is written:Beware of false prophets, men who come to you dressed up as sheep while underneath they are savage wolves. You will recognize them by the fruits they bear.