Long term miracle cures test

Here's an interesting thought:

What if spontaneous remission isn't rare, but rather it's very common?

Everyone gets a fever now and then that goes away on its own, with no medication or treatment used. We can assume the immune system met an invader, reacted, and defeated it.

So what if some cells become cancerous from time to time, but the immune system deals with them and you never even notice it?

Except in some cases, for some reason, either the bad cells proliferate too quickly, or the immune system is depressed, or otherwise unable to beat back the cancerous cells?

This would be incredibly hard to prove. you'd need to biopsy people, or animals, in random places at random but frequent intervals, then look for cancerous cells.

I don't believe it, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

There is some anecdotal evidence in cancer cases to the effect that remission happens after a mild bacterial infection. One hypothesis is that the infection "wakes up" the immune system, which then deals with the cancer cells. This strikes me as simplistic, but plausible. The question then being, why the immunes system does not attack the cancer cells, or not as aggressively, to begin with?

Quote: FrGamble

There are actually. I have heard there are doctors there that are specifically tasked with examining miracles that happen there and determining if there are any other causes that could be attributed besides the supernatural.

That's who I want for my doctor, one
who believes people can be healed
by the supernatural. That's the doctor
to run away from as fast as you can.

You 'heard' that? That's on the same
level that you heard Jesus rose from
the dead. It's just that somebody
else heard it first and wrote it down
so it looked more official. Not any
more true, of course, just more
official.

Quote: rxwine

Quote: Ayecarumba

How about this one, a case of cancer that was miraculously cured. Findings were published in a medical journal.

Seems to still be some problems with this.

Consider that you are giving more weight to the opinion of someone who did not directly examine the patient than the doctor who treated her.

Is that faith?

Quote: Ayecarumba

Consider that you are giving more weight to the opinion of someone who did not directly examine the patient than the doctor who treated her.

Is that faith?

See below (particularly bolded part)

Quote:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" was a phrase made popular by Carl Sagan. However, Laplace writes: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."[1] Also, David Hume wrote in 1748: "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence", and "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."[2] and Marcello Truzzi says: "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof."[3]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence

In my admittedly non-expert opinion the second doctor offered some "outs" as they say in poker that weren't considered by the original doctor which were in that paragraph I quoted.

Quote: Ayecarumba

Consider that you are giving more weight to the opinion of someone who did not directly examine the patient than the doctor who treated her.

Claims of miraculous cures suffer from the Carte Blanche problem. That is, when something not easily or readily explainable happens, it gets certified as a miracle.

We know a great deal about the workings of the human body, and about diseases, and about how to treat them. We also don't know a great deal about all these things. For instance, do you know there are documented cases in humans of severed fingertips growing back? It's incredibly rare, no one know why or how it happens. What role does symbiotic bacteria play in disease? We're just beginning to find out.

So once again "don't know" means "don't know." it doesn't mean a specific deity is responsible.

Now, if you could get proof that a deity did it, that would be different. But how do you even go about it?

In regards to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" I have a few quick thoughts.

First of all, what is so extraordinary about the existence of a God? It is fairly obvious that something like a first cause or an unmoved mover is needed for our universe to exist. It would truly be extraordinary and we would need extraordinary evidence if we were to believe something truly strange and outlandish as an eternal material contingent universe. However, in regards to a creator this is not extraordinary. Everything we interact with and know has been created or formed and is contingent on something else. This is the most ordinary of things and the evidence is extraordinary.

Secondly, we should look practically at this statement to see if it is livable outside of the scientific experimental realm. What evidence do we have that our coffee in the morning is not poisoned? This would be extraordinary and should require extraordinary evidence to ensure that I can safely drink it. The fact is that it would be impossible and unreasonable to apply this maxim to real life and to how we live our life. It is a good rule in the lab but it doesn't apply to life.

Quote: FrGamble

What evidence do we have that our coffee in the morning is not poisoned?

That Evenbob is not your roommate? ;)

Here is the site to the official website of the Office of Medical Observations in Lourdes. It looks like it is indeed true what I had heard. There is a whole team of doctors and experts who will examine any claim of the miraculous at Lourdes with great rigor and scientific expertise. It is a really interesting site. I didn't know that among the thousands of reported cures and miracles there are only 69 that have been declared miraculous by this official office. Of course not ever cure goes through the long process of being reported and examined by the office.

Office of Medical Observations in Lourdes

Quote: FrGamble

First of all, what is so extraordinary about the existence of a God?

Absolutely everything. It flies completely in
the face of everything we know about how
the universe works. A god is supernatural
with supernatural powers. Look at the word,
super-natural. It means outside the realm
of the natural world. There is zero evidence
for anything supernatural, James Randi still
has his million dollars.

For some reason you want the world ruled
by superstition and magic. Why is that.