In a remote part of Brazil, a man known as 'John of God' is apparently changing people's lives in astonishing ways.

I found out about this movement on SBS as part of Shaun Micallef's Stairway To Heaven documentary this week.

Oprah Winfrey has also personally visited John of God. You can read her story at: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprahs-Experience-with-John-of-God-Oprah-on-Lifes-Journey

So can things here like supernatural miracles, crystals, energy and spiritual therapy cure illness and heal elements of your life? Is freedom of choice part of the spectrum? Or is this system simply taking advantage of others?

"When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything."

G K Chesterton (sort of).

Hi there NATHANJ...

I guess in times of immense crisis or prolonged (terminal)illnesses, many people reach out for help, either from their religious beliefs, Christianity, in fact anything at all, and if it gives them a measure of peace, why not ?

The Republic of the Philippines have many of these so called psychic surgeons, who perform all manner of miracles in their shabby little huts, in mountainous Baguio City. People come from all over the world to 'consult' these charlatan surgeons, all of whom seem to have a similar modi operandi to this bloke, in Brazil ?

Please forgive me, I don't mean to be impertinent, but personally I think it's all just bunkum, a fraud. Many of whom are simply hoaxers, deceivers and swindlers, tend only to prey upon and wilfully torture those poor souls who place all their hopes in something. Anything that may either dramatically ease their pain, or cure them altogether.

Practitioners (perpetrators) of these sorts of crimes, should be immediately rounded up, and punished severely for the hurt they inflict upon others.

There's two factors here.
1. The placebo effect. People will feel better (maybe actually get better, for some conditions) if they believe the person or the treatment is helping them.
2. Successes are better remembered than failures. With these kinds of treatments, individuals can say to themselves (or be told), oh I didn't have enough faith/put enough effort in/have my head in the right place.
And that's without outright fraud and fakery.

Dear Cossomby,

One more to the list:

3) Time heals, doctors kill: by having faith in the alternatives, people escape the conventional and eventually time does its thing uninterruptedly.

NathanJ,

No, I will not be taking up any form of Spiritism until some reliable evidence surfaces for any of it.

<<So can things here like supernatural miracles, crystals, energy and spiritual therapy cure illness and heal elements of your life?>>

Through a placebo effect, yes. As Cossomby also notes, confirmation bias is a factor which exaggerates the success rates of spiritual healing.

<<… is this system simply taking advantage of others?>>

The itself system is, but I think most people pedalling such nonsense genuinely believe in it. One less-sinister exception to this would be the members of the clergy who stop believing but see no way out because it’s their employment and it’s all they have ever known.

--

mhaze,

G K Chesterton was an idiot, not an authority on what theists-turned-atheist will believe. There is no evidence for Chesterton’s claim at all. In fact, on the contrary, the evidence suggests that people who are indoctrinated into a religion from an early age are less able to distinguish fantasy from reality (http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-28537149). No surprises there. I was living proof of that.

A quote’s catchiness is not indicative of the truth of its claim.