Last night, I was a guest on a Dallas-based radio talk show called "On the DL." The hosts, Don and Lane, were very friendly and I'm very happy they invited me on the show. The topic was so-called "faith healing," which was of particular interest in light of the radio station's proximity to evangelist Benny Hinn's corporate headquarters. (The phrase 'Benny Hinn's corporate headquarters' tells a story by itself.)
While there's no question that Randi should have been the one on the show, his lecture tour in Europe prevented that outcome. So, armed with my copy of his seminal book, The Faith Healers, I took their call and their questions. I found that I was more prepared than I needed to be.
While the hosts were obviously aware of Benny Hinn, they had apparently not heard of Peter Popoff, the poster boy for greedy televangelists. For those who haven't seen this clip from the Johnny Carson show, it's essential viewing. Randi and his cohorts completely destroyed Popoff, but as we know now, Popoff is back and making money again, albeit with slightly different and less impressive tricks.
During the interview, I explained the basics of faith healing. A person is called up on stage, "healed," and sent away. This happens in succession as a large audience observes, claps, and cheers. It appears to work. A woman may cast away her pills or a man may remove his leg braces and jump up an down. But when the "healed" are interviewed days later, it's obvious that their healing either was either taken away or temporary. How is this accounted for? Well, it's a problem of faith. Everyone saw the healing work, so if it's missing now, the healed person must not have had enough faith to be worthy of such a gift. Shame on them, and no, the donation is not refundable. The person once hopeful for a miraculous cure is reduced to even lower depths with injured pride and wallet added to their existing burden.
Sometimes cheap parlor tricks are employed, such as the "leg growing" trick, or plants in the audience who leap up from wheel chairs that were provided to them that day by the ministry. Having never needed wheel chairs before, they failed to bring their own.
After explaining this to the hosts, and relaying the crushing story of the boy to whom The Faith Healers is dedicated, a few calls started to come in. And I found I was able to predict them, nearly word for word.
"These people are evil, despicable. And while there are a lot of them out there, I know there are real healers and I've had relatives who've been healed. You don't hear about the real ones though, because they're not doing it for money."
And therein lies the problem. As Randi says, you can't prove reindeer don't fly but tossing one off of a building. You have to toss them all off, and even then it's possible they just decided not to fly. The JREF and other skeptical organizations can expose every faith healer in the world, and people will still point to that relative who was healed by that unnamed preacher. Why? Because to believe otherwise would be to call said relative either a liar or a fool. The truth is... they're probably both.
But that's OK. You see... I'm a fool. I've been fooled by many things, taken in by cons, and I've even lied about these things. I don't mean overt lying... I mean presenting as the truth something that wasn't true, simply because I believed it at the time. This is why Ben Franklin said: "There are no greater liars in the world than quacks — except for their patients." The fooled will make fools of others by spreading the false truth they believe. The faith healers know this, and depend upon it. There's no greater learning opportunity, and I've done my best to learn as well as I could. I'm much harder to fool these days, trust me. And I've added my voice to those like Randi who've learned the truth.
That skeptic's voice—the one that's instantly ready to change it's tune if proper evidence is presented—is drowned out by human nature. There is something in us, at least many of us, that wants to believe even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm concerned that nothing short of evolution will change that. Fortunately, evolution is real, and by some accounts, accelerating.
As a coda to the faith healing segment on the show, another guest came on. She agreed that the likes of Hinn and Popoff were abhorrent, and then went on to explain how reiki is a true form of spiritual healing. If the faith healers ever fall out of favor, there are many others waiting in the wings to take their place.