Chapter Twelve: Divine Intervention

The last but perhaps most dramatic supernatural pillar of the major religions is divine intervention. We can see in the most ancient archeological records the belief that gods, spirits or mystical beings could help or hurt the lives of human beings. The fact that nature was ruled by forces outside of human control was obvious to our ancestors. Many cultures the world over developed the belief that each force, such as the rain or fertility, had a separate controlling spirit. Places, such as mountains and forests were also seen as having a controlling spirit. Since favor from another human could be sought by the giving of a gift or by showing proper obedience, it was assumed that favor could be sought in the same way from these spiritual forces. Early sacrifices and prayers were an attempt to get the nature spirits to assist the believers in survival in a harsh and dangerous world.

The development of more complex polytheistic and monotheistic theologies has not fundamentally altered this activity. Throughout the world daily prayers are said to ask God to intercede on our behalf. If what we have asked for comes true, believers of all religions hold this up as an occurrence of divine intervention. They believe that God has supernaturally intervened in the world to alter a physical condition for divine reasons.

Divine beings are often said to be a part of this interaction with God. Angels, lesser deities and various supernatural beings act as intercessors with humans and the Divine.

Faith healing, object transformation and prophecy are some of the most demonstrable forms of divine intervention performed. In faith healing God is believed to directly cure someone of an illness that they would not have otherwise recovered from. Object transformation means changing one object into another, and sometimes simply creating an object out of nothing. Prophecy is the ability to see into the future by divine inspiration.

Some form of faith healing has been around since recorded history. As we will see, the reason for this is that faith healing, regardless of religious affiliation, really does work under certain conditions. Specifically how it works at a universal level needs to be understood before we examine specific claims made in the name of God.

One of the major determinations of the physical health of a person is their emotional health. A person's emotional outlook on life has a clear effect on their physical wellbeing. This is because our emotional state has a powerful influence on several physical aspects of the body. The immune system can be enhanced or depressed by a person's mood. Therefore depression or despair can make a person more susceptible to a variety of physical illnesses. Individuals who believe they will recover from an illness are more likely to recover and recover more quickly than someone without faith in their future wellbeing.

World medical organizations such as the American Medical Association believe that a substantial number of hospitalized patients suffer from psychosomatic illness. That is, the symptoms of their illnesses are cause by the mind's belief, not by an outside physical agent. Fearing or desiring to be ill can literally give a person the symptoms of illness.

The mind can also greatly increase or decrease the intensity of symptoms of illness, especially pain. Pain can be a very subjective experience. Attention, distraction, expectation and conditioning all play a part in how much pain an individual feels at anyone time.

The combination of these medical oddities of the human body can create the placebo effect. When a doctor gives a patient a pill and says that pill will lesson their symptoms, many patients will report relief even if the pill doesn't contain medicine. This demonstrates the mind's ability to unconsciously influence the body. An important thing to remember is that the patient's are unaware that they are causing the apparent change in their physical wellbeing. Or to be more specific, they are unaware that their own belief that they will be getting better actually makes them feel better.

Another fact that needs to be understood is that illnesses are highly variable and will sometimes naturally go into remission. (Scientific American, April 2000, p73) Statistically most people will overcome most of the illnesses they encounter during their lives. For example, many cases of cancer in the United States will not kill the patient. This is sometimes true regardless of what medical procedure is or isn't performed.

But there are limits to what emotional health and the placebo effect can do. And, with a few exceptions, we find that most claims of faith healing are limited to these naturally curable illnesses. But the more dramatic miracles are what fuel the imagination and believers around the world.

But first we should examine the relationship between science and religion in the context of divine intervention. As science began its steady advances in our understanding of how the world functions during the last few hundred years, the belief of divine intervention has become a less satisfying answer to how the world works to many people. It is quite easy, and some might argue even necessary, to take the idea of God out of our observations of how the natural world functions. One of the usual biases of any scientific investigation is to search for the natural cause of an observation. Most scientists, not surprisingly, see no need to argue that God causes natural and predictable occurrences like an eclipse. In fact, it is quite easy to argue that some historical views of God have actually interfered with the discovery of the natural basis of the world we live in.

But even today, there are still millions of people passionately dedicated to the creationist myths found in the Bible, Koran, or Rig Vega, despite the global scientific community's long acceptance of evolution and astronomy. In defense of these great religious works, I would point out that there are also millions of advocates of pseudo-scientific beliefs such as ancient alien astronauts, Atlantis, astrology, ESP and dozens of other paranormal claims also thoroughly discredited by science. Religious faith and blind faith are two very separate things. We should be careful to distinguish between fundamentalism and the more moderate beliefs of most religious people.

But when we argue that God should be taken out of a scientific investigation of the world, what are we really saying? For many in the religious community, this sounds like an attack on their deepest beliefs, beliefs that also include the very culture and family that is central to their personal identity. One of the reasons true conversions from one religion to another is so rare is that apostatizing the religion you grew up in becomes a partial denouncement of your very heritage, an intentional rejection of your family, relatives and oldest friendships. It establishes a mind frame of "I'm right and they are all wrong" leaving some new believers with the choice of either converting their family and friends or breaking off ties with them. A perceived attack on their religion is a perceived attack on the very things they see as most dear.

And many prominent scientists throughout history have displayed open hostility toward the religious believers who they see as standing in the way of progress. This leads many to view the subject as God versus Science, as if the two are somehow in conflict. The fact that the findings of science (which after all only means beliefs based on verifiable evidence) have contradicted some of the fundamentalist positions of the world's major religions is impossible to dispute in the scientific arena. The errors that our ancient ancestors made in describing the world as they knew it is obvious to anyone who cares to carefully read these sacred scriptures and the findings of modern science.

But to say that science and God are fundamentally opposed to each other is I think a misunderstanding of both science and God. Science, after all, is a process of discovering the true facts of the physical world. Its beliefs are never set in stone, always open for the possibility of being altered or improved if better evidence comes to light. If overwhelming evidence is verified that reverses a previous stand of the scientific community, the new belief will prevail. The scientific method is a process that all human beings should be justifiably proud of, a product of generations of thought and effort. It is an attempt to know the world as it really is, not as our ancestors might have hoped, feared or simply guessed it to be.

To be more specific then, when we hear the argument that science is opposed to God we are usually hearing a more subtle argument. When scientists try to take God out of their equations, they are really talking about divine intervention, not God. It is this fundamental linkage between a God that exists and a God that intervenes that is at the heart of the conflict. Fundamentalist very rightly see science (again, beliefs based on verifiable evidence) as a dire threat to some of their ancient beliefs about God. Who can blame them? But the fundamentalist position, that every doctrine of the sacred writings of their religion is the inerrant Word of God, is not the majority religious view. Most religious people the world over hold to a more moderate position, that the sacred writings of their religion is the Word of God as interpreted by error prone humans, who sometimes added their own subjective cultural beliefs to the works.

Evidence that this is so can be seen in the religious societies throughout the world. Most Christian countries allow woman to have authority over men, ask theological questions in church, and don't require them to wear a hair covering. This is in direct violation of the Gospel teachings of Paul. Since these teachings are disobeyed, obviously most Christians accept some degree of human error in their religious documents. The Catholic Church today accepts that the earth is billions of years old and even allows a qualified belief in evolution. In India today the government is trying to moderate the tragic practice of the caste system through democratic legislation. Obviously this is in direct opposition to the teachings of Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu, as stated in the Bhagavad-Gita.

On the more specific subject of divine intervention there is often opposition between the traditional beliefs in God and science. The reasons are obvious. First of all, no religion has been able to demonstrate divine intervention under a controlled scientific experiment. This does not disprove the possibility of divine intervention. It does, however, cast doubt on the claim (how big one sees this doubt tends to be very subjective) that God actively intervenes in the world. Further, numerous claims made in the past credited to divine intervention have now, even to the religious communities, been seen to have been mistaken. It is this historic pattern of claims of divine intervention being later proven wrong that leaves many believers the world over to feel that science is attacking their religion, even when those same people might agree that certain specific religious claims have been wrong.

One troubling fact when examining claims of divine intervention is how all religions tend to claim God's miracles for themselves. It is common, for example, to hear Christian advocates on American television, such as Pat Robertson, make claims that God intervenes in the lives of Christians. He also has said that when Hindus ask for help from the deities of their pantheon their prayers go unanswered. This certainly expresses the traditional view of most religions. But if God does intervene in the world as the traditional faiths claim, which religion is he favoring? How can we prove such things to be true or not?

One thing we can do is examine specific claims made today to see how much credibility they have. And when we apply the skeptical criteria of the scientific method we find great difficulty in proclaiming divine intervention favoring one religion over another. In fact the more dramatic and spectacular the miracle claim is, the more dubious the reality tends to be when skeptical minded investigators examine the case.

A typical example can be seen in the phenomenon of faith healing. Skeptics, such as the professional magician and pseudo-science investigator James Randi, have examined the most famous faith healers of our time and failed to come up with any compelling examples of a real miracle. While some might argue that this is to be expected, that Randi's atheistic philosophy is preventing him from seeing the truth, we must not be too hasty to dismiss such people out of hand. I for one would argue that, since we know for certain that many people do lie and deceive in the name of God, we should be thankful that people like Mr. Randi have the interest to investigate subjects that the media tends to shy away from. Who, after all, would want to be knowingly mislead by someone who turned out to be a charlatan?

Some examples Randi makes in his book The Faith Healers should be revealing to even the most avid believer. One of the most common is the apparent healing of the blind. An important point that is never established in faith healing services is to what extent the subject was actually blind before the claimed miracle. According to Randi: "The Center for the Partially Sighted, in Santa Monica, California, says that 94 percent of "visually impaired" persons and 75 percent of those termed "legally blind" have usable though limited vision." (The Faith Healers p 104) Its important to note that no one who does not have eyes is being healed in these services. That, if documented, would be a true miracle and might turn someone even as diehard as Randi into a believer. The explanation for what actually happens when someone who is said to be blind seems to suddenly be able to see is much more prosaic:

"Certainly most of these can see the number of fingers held up before them, and many can see well enough to read, though with great difficulty. Thus, when a faith-healer holds up a number of fingers in front of a person "healed" of blindness, it is usually not difficult for the person to say how many fingers are being displayed." (The Faith Healers p 104)

Randi points out another important aspect of this performance, one that is probably just as crucial to making the miracle seem to occur. "The audience is encouraged to believe that the "blind" individual was not previously able to perform this simple determination." (The Faith Healers p 104) For those in the audience of a faith healing service, it is doubtful that anyone would dare ask if the person could see just as well before or not, and demand a test be done before and after the service. This is simply not part of the psychology of the situation. People go to faith healers to have their faith reaffirmed, and perhaps to be cured of an illness or emotional problem. They are not looking to discover the "verifiable" truth of the claim.

Randi gives a specific example of the case of Morris Kidd. In the faith healing publication Dawn of a New Day a caption read: "This Milwaukee man was blind all his life. After Rev. Grant prayed, he saw for the first time." (The Faith Healers p 112) Angered by the misleading statement, Morris's wife Pearl told reporters that her husband had never been blind all his life, that his sight had only deteriorated in the last few years. She gives this account of the actually event:

"Mr. Kidd had been carrying a white stick when he attended Grant's service. Suffering from an incurable, degenerative eye disease, he could see, but poorly. Grant had declared him healed and had thrown his stick up on the stage in a dramatic gesture. At the close of the meeting, Kidd had to ask for his stick to be returned to him so that he could find his way out of the audience." (The Faith Healers p 113)

Another unfortunate deception that some faith healers make is the wheelchair trick. In its simplest form an audience member is brought up on stage in a wheelchair. After a dramatic encounter with the faith healer, the subject is, after much encouragement, able to stand up and walk. In some cases the subject might actually run around the stage, vividly demonstrating their ability to use their legs. Randi, always the acute observer, made this discovery in his investigations:

"When I looked into this trick, I was immediately struck by two facts: First, disabled persons who spend much of their lives in a wheelchair naturally equip it for their specific needs, and Grant never summoned from a wheelchair any person who had personalized the device. Second, almost all of those who rose up "healed" did so from one color, model, and make of wheelchair..." (The Faith Healers p 106)

One such man that Randi interviewed was told to "Get up out of that wheelchair and walk!" by a faith healer. When questioned later the man admitted that he had actually been cured of cancer and had been able to walk just fine before the service. Why then was in a wheelchair? According to Randi: "Because, he said, his pastor had told him to sit in it when he arrived at the auditorium. The chair was supplied by an usher. He'd never been in a wheelchair before in his life." (The Faith Healers p 106)

Randi and his cohorts went undercover at a Fort Lauderdale faith healing service and discovered that a truck delivered 30 of the generic chairs before the event. To quote Randi:

"Later, when my team and I attended the show, we saw early arrivals walking in, some using canes. A few were taken to those same wheelchairs and wheeled up front by Grant's assistants. Asked why they did not think it strange that they were asked to rise and walk when they were already able to do so, they either replied that they thought Grant had misunderstood their malady and they had not wanted to embarrass him, or they refused to discuss it and turned away from us." (The Faith Healers p 107)

In an interview from CBS-TV news program "57th Street" about the same faith healer a woman was questioned about that same subject:

From the following examples it should be clear that careful precautions must made before we can declare any faith healing to be genuine. We must have well documented information on the subject's medical condition before a faith healing event, and the same level of examination after that event. We must also, although many will disagree, have no alternate natural explanation for the recovery. While this level of evidence might well fail to catch a genuine faith healing, it is necessary to eliminate false claims from being accepted. I would go one step further and insist that faith healers never recommend that a person with a medical condition stop taking whatever treatment their doctor prescribes. Responsible faith healers, such as Pat Robertson, tend to thankfully follow this motto.

A related type of evidence for faith healing is the number of discarded crutches sometimes found at the shrines of various faiths. Without investigation one might be led to believe that this means all those people, or at least some of them, received a miracle and were healed of a crippling condition. But we should be cautious in such a hasty analysis. George Bernard Shaw made this insightful comment about all the crutches found at the famous Catholic shrine at Lourdes: "All those canes, braces and crutches and not a single glass eye, wooden leg, or toupee." (The Faith Healers p 270)

Randi gives this personal account of a shrine he visited in New Mexico:

"There I found supportive devices hung about the walls, and in the souvenir ship I was able to buy various photos of these adornments. But no two photos were the same. That is, the display of crutches and braces changed from time to time. The reason for this was well known to an orthopedic surgeon there. He knows the Santuario because he visits there about every six months. Why? To reclaim the orthopedic devices left there by his own patients, often poor people who cannot afford to replace the expensive mechanisms that they discarded." (The Faith Healers p 270-271)

A less dramatic form of faith healing is said to be within the power of each individual to initiate. Millions of believers claim that they have been healed or helped by God without the assistance of any human intermediary. To initiate this divine intervention they only had to pray and believe in miracles. One way to discover if this type of action works is to compare the health of those who pray and those who don't. And there are studies that demonstrate that people who pray or meditate do in fact live healthier lives.

According to Patrick Glynn studies at Harvard Medical School and the Mind/Body Institute revealed the beneficial effect of meditation on long-term health. Researchers discovered that 80 percent of those who participated in the meditation study chose a religious theme for their meditation. 20 percent also reported a greater sense of spiritual wellbeing because of their repeated meditation or prayer sessions. (God the Evidence p 85) One of the studies doctors, Dr. Herbert Benson, had this to say about the significance of religious belief to the outcome of the meditations:

"... It became clear that a person's religious convictions or life philosophy enhanced the average effects of the relaxation response in three ways: (1) People who chose an appropriate focus, that which draws upon their deepest philosophic or religious convictions, were more apt to adhere to the elicitation routine, looking forward to it and enjoying it; (2) Affirmative beliefs of any kind brought forth remembered wellness, reviving top-down nerve-cell-firing patterns in the brain that were associated with wellness; (3) When present, faith in an eternal or life-transcending force seemed to make the fullest use of remembered wellness because it is a supremely soothing belief, disconnecting unhealthy logic and worries."(God the Evidence p 86)

While Benson came to the conclusion that this effect of belief on human health was a product of evolution, Glynn's take view is a bit more endorsing of religion. He ask the question:

"Why in principle should the human brain be structured in such a way that spiritual technique, a form of prayer, would bring not just peace of mind, but also measurable health benefits, sometimes seeming to verge on the miraculous, and why would this spiritual technique work best when combined with sincere faith?" (God the Evidence p 87)

Glynn's belief is that the beneficial response to prayer was specifically created by God and has nothing to do with a natural process like evolution. Disagreeing with the arguments of people like Freud who claim that God is an illusionary concept concocted by people to deny death, he goes so far as to say:

... are we really prepared to argue that mere evolution-blind, chance mechanisms-brought about the creation of an illusionary God to whom human beings could pray and receive, as a result of this prayerful exercise, remission in disease symptoms (such as infertility) that could not be relieved by other available medical means?" (God the Evidence p 89)

But it needs to be noted that the medical cures verging on the miraculous that Glynn believes prayer has cured seems to be limited in this study to the effects of stress reduction. As simple as that may sound, anything that significantly reducing stress would have as profound effect as those in Benson's meditation study. While its not obvious to me why Glynn doesn't think that evolution by natural selection could not create beings who can, by conscious effort, relax and relieve stress, his comments do bring up an important idea. One thing the Benson study revealed was that 20 percent of the participants who reduced stress levels chose a non-religious thought for their meditations, such as "calm" and "relax." (God the Evidence p 85) The fact is that they too experienced the beneficial effects of reduced stress, even if not to as great an extent of those who combined religious commitment to their daily meditations.

Other studies further support this conclusion. A 1976 experiment by the University of Michigan compared the effect of transcendental meditation {TM} versus simply resting. According to the well known skeptic Martin Gardner: "The TM group meditated for a half-hour while the control group merely closed their eyes and relaxed. Blood samples were taken and measurements made of chemicals indicating stress. The researchers concluded that TM meditation failed to induce a metabolic state distinguishable from one achieved by just sitting quietly and possibly dozing." (SI May/June 1995 p54) This brings us to a conclusion that, like it or not, rest can mimic many of the stress reducing benefits of meditation and prayer.

One thing that prayer has not been able to do it achieve acceptance in the medical community as a verified form of healing. A notable challenge to this was an experiment done by cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980s. In the study coronary patients were divided into two groups. One group was prayed for by Catholic and Protestants in an attempt to influence their recovery. The group that was prayed for showed some improvements over the group that wasn't.

But as Glynn readily admits, the controls on the study did not pass muster with the skeptics. (God the Evidence p 91) For one, the controllers of the study were not actually blinded to who was in each group from the start to finish of the experiment, allowing the possibility of personal bias to influence both who went in each group and who was evaluated to be better after the study. According to an analysis by Irwin and Jack Tessman, Byrd himself decided, based on computer information, who was to be considered better after the prayers were done. "Byrd's Table 3, which might best have been constructed by a panel of "blinded" doctors, was constructed by Byrd alone... Thus, Byrd was no longer blinded when he determined the answer to the key question of which did better, the intercessory prayer group or the control group." (SI March/April 2000 p32)

Tessman and Tessman also point out that the coordinator of the study, Janet Greene, was also unblinded. "Janet entered names of all the volunteer patients into a computer that randomly divided them into groups... half of the patients -- only Janet knew who they were -- were prayed for daily by our intercessors... She kept detailed records of all patients in both groups." Thus the very coordinator of the study was completely unblinded. Once patients were assigned to one of the two groups, Greene should have had no further contact with the hospital." (SI March/April p32) So while there is some evidence that praying for one group but not another does influence patient recovery rates, there were procedural flaws in this studies that discount it from being considered valid to the medical community.

Attempts to replicate the Byrd study have run into similar criticism from skeptics. W.S. Harris conducted an experiment with 990 coronary patients involving thirty-four specific medical conditions. (SI March/April p32-33) Different evaluations of the study have produced mixed results. Using the same evaluation technique used in the Byrd study revealed no significant difference. There was also no significant increase in the speed of recover between the two groups. However, the study did reveal an eleven percent advantage to the prayer group when using a "weighed" scoring method. This of course failed to convince skeptics that the study is evidence for supernatural intervention. (SI March/April p33)

A more curious feature of the Harris study was that twenty-three patients got better the same day they were assigned to a group but before the prayers had actually begun. Oddly enough eighteen of these twenty-three were to have been in the prayer group and only five in the non-prayer group. Nicholas Humphrey made this observation of the disproportion healing of these individuals before any of them were actually prayed for:

"So it seems that either the study has come up with a strong evidence of prayer producing backward causation of recovery, or else that there was something wrong somewhere with the way the study was conducted (e.g., that, despite the claim of randomization, less sick patients were in fact being assigned to the prayer group). Readers should take their pick of these two interesting alternatives." (SI May/June 2000)

So again there are studies that show some degree of evidence that prayer does lead to a greater chance of healing. But these studies contain procedural or statistical flaws that prevent them from achieving acceptance in the scientific community. This perhaps should not come as any great surprise. If in fact faith healing was provable to any large degree there would no doubt be an enormous mountain of evidence by now that would be able to pass even the most stringent scientific standards. That overwhelming evidence, as we have seen, simply isn't there.

Skeptical organizations have actually offered large sums of money and immense notoriety to anyone who can demonstrate, under strictly controlled conditions, any form of supernatural ability. This also includes such non-religious claims as psychic ability or dowsing. As yet, despite many attempts, no one has collected a single prize. While this does not disprove that such abilities exist, it does caste a degree of doubt on such claims. This inability of any of the world's religions to be able to actually demonstrate divine intervention under controlled setting is I think the great stumbling block to the scientific community's acceptance of such things. If any religion could actually predict, and repeatedly demonstrate any form of divine intervention I think it would be eventually accepted by the world's scientific journals. Until that happens, I think a skeptical naturalistic assumption will be the automatic response of most scientifically minded people to claims of the supernatural. While this is no doubt well and good in terms of scientific accuracy, it does create the possible problem of genuine miracles going unnoticed or at least unacknowledged by scientists.

Another form of divine intervention that is initiated by an individual is the magical creation of matter. This typically takes the form of things such as food, water, gems and religious icons. One way to cause this miracle is said to be the chanting of a magical incantation or mantra. Consider this Hindu claim by Subramuniyaswami:

"If we knew the carbon mantra and could say it properly, we would cause the particular time-space-energy force field to occur, and some carbon would precipitate. Certain occult practitioners can actually do this with their minds and cause objects to appear." (Loving Ganesha p 164)

All of the major religions we will examine in this book are filled with examples of such miracles in their pages. The vast majority of religious people throughout the world believe that God does intervene in the lives of human beings for divine purposes. Many people feel that God has directly intervened in their own lives. So we must acknowledge that some degree of anecdotal evidence does exist in abundance that leans some support to the claims of divine intervention. However, the level of verifiable evidence is simply not high enough to convince the scientific community that there is no naturalistic explanation for these claims.

Some theological theories come readily to mind to explain the inability of any religion to demonstrate supernatural power. Perhaps God refuses to demonstrate supernatural intervention when it is demanded. This could be true whether the asker is a believer or a disbeliever. Perhaps divine intervention occurs, but is so infrequent or subtle that it is simply not distinguishable from the normal, entirely natural occurrences in the lives of the six billion humans on the planet. In any case, if we go solely by the evidence, divine intervention must be taken as a matter of faith. Whether we believe or not is no doubt heavily dependent on what we were taught as children and on what personal experiences with God we have or haven't had. We cannot reasonably demand faith in divine intervention by others, nor can we categorically declare that such things are impossible. As in many things in life, it is ultimately up to the individual to decide for themselves.

We can't of course rule out the possibility of faith healing anymore than we can rule out the existence of ghosts. Both of these widely held views can lay claim to massive levels of anecdotal evidence, but lack the physical evidence and repeatability to satisfy the rigorous demands of the skeptical scientific community. We must conclude, to some degree at least, that these various claims to divine intervention are very much a matter of faith to accept.

Chapter Thirteen: The Revelations