If spiritual healing is false, how come stress is related to many illnesses?

I think Dawkins is a smart guy, but he is so devoted to science that he fails to identify those areas of science that aren’t set in stone. For instance, there have been many, many studies on the mind’s ability to control things in the body. Placebo effects are one example, controlling allergic responses is another. But science doesn’t fully understand how that happens. Stress’ impact on a person’s health is another example. Science recognizes the statistical impact…high stress people frequently have a litany of health issues….but they don’t fully understand why mental or emotional stress impact a person’s physical health. Spiritual healing is nothing more than a way to try triggering these mental conditions that might help your body heal itself. It isn’t scientific and it is a shot in the dark, but that is what it is trying to do.
Now rain triggering chronic pains may have a physical aspect that is at play. Rain happens when barometric pressure drops. You are now changing a physical parameter on the body. Same with certain “healing waters”. You are either soaking in a liquid that is at a different temperature or consuming a liquid that has certain chemical properties that may be beneficial for some physiological issues.

Because spirituality is by definition supernatural, stress is psychosomatic.

@seawulf575 What I don’t understand is why these ‘healers’ use quantum physics jargon to back up their healing powers along with other things like stones, needles, and stories of angels etc. Why can’t they be honest and say to their clients that this is merely placebo, that the client ‘heals’ himself. Isn’t this just very cheap, dishonest half-psychotheraphy in a nutshell?

There is much that we do not know about how the brain works, but we know some things about stress. We know the types of things that can cause stress and we can measure things like blood pressure, which are indicators of stress.

As to why some people feel pain before a rainstorm, I would think it is related to atmospheric conditions and not the wetness of the rain.

Stress is a real thing. Spiritual is not.

@dopeguru “Why can’t they be honest and say to their clients that this is merely placebo”

And ruin their own scam? Why would they do a thing like that?

@dopeguru If someone started telling you their chant can arrange your chi to allow the universe to heal you but then tells you it is really just you healing you, you would think they are nuts. But this also goes back to the flip-side of Dawkins’ post…why people don’t trust science. We have doctors and all sorts of healthcare professionals that push standard treatments for a number of things. And they all make big bucks doing so. But in many cases, it is treatment that will make them the most money. But because they are a doctor we don’t question them. Big Pharma loves to treat symptoms but not cure diseases because they make more treating symptoms. Why can’t they just be more honest with people and tell them they are treating symptoms because they make a bunch of money on it?

If people only used the medicine that was actually fully and completely scientifically understood and proven, they’d exclude most of modern Western medicine.

Only confused people reject known beneficial practices on the basis that “science” (let alone the patient themselves) completely understands and/or proves them.

Not only do we not understand our own conventional medicine, but few scientists ever seriously make any attempt to engage spiritual healing scientifically. And proving things are false is generally even harder than proving something is true. Skeptics that just hear of anything spiritual and immediately yell “hoax” are being extremely unscientific.

And a healer who has and shares ideas that don’t make sense (or are disprovable) in literal scientific terms, isn’t necessarily doing things that aren’t helpful. The explanation doesn’t have any effect – it’s just comforting to minds that want to feel like they have a logical explanation. And that comfort (or upset if it’s missing) surely also do have effects all by themselves.

And, of course, conventional Western medicine is FULL of comments about how stress effects health, and its charting of the nervous system clearly shows that all of the body’s systems are controlled by the nervous system, which ties straight into the brain – the communication network and the brain are made of a connected network of neurons. The placebo effect and several other documented mind/body causations demonstrate that even ideas can have direct effects on disease and many other aspects of ourselves we traditionally think of as fixed or physical.

Spiritual healing then clearly can and does have physical effects. But what thoughts/emotions/etc have what effects is not a mechanical “do this, get that” clear thing.

Basically, “skeptics” just really don’t like spiritual thinking. Perhaps because their over-analytical habits of being have suppressed that aspect of themselves, and they have conditioned responses that tend to keep them from confronting that.