March 8, 2018 • 53 mins
Since a 1906 revival in Los Angeles, people around the world say they’ve been cured by the Holy Spirit after preachers with the Gift of Healing laid their hands on them. Skeptics scoff, but science’s explanations are kind of vague. So what’s going on here?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. We're about to
lay our hands all over you. Who knows what will happen?
(00:26):
Maybe nothing, who knows? Yeah? That was gross? How so
lay your hands on me? That a bon Jovie song? Uh? No?
Hold on? Who was that? Was that? Bon job? Oh?
(00:46):
Thompson Twins? Maybe Jerry, did you hear she just said
duff Leppard. No, I don't think that's pour some sugar
on me, good cob. What it's wrong with you to
pour some hands on me? No? Lay your hands on me?
On me is like, Uh, I think it's a Tompson
Twins song or something like that. Well, that's not the
one I'm thinking of. I don't know what you're thinking of.
(01:06):
I'm thinking of the bon Jovi song. I'll be the
bon Jovi song is dirtier than this song. Uh. Then
Thompson Twins, Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Yeah, Thompson
Twins were real clean cut, not bon Jovi. Ended up
weirdly seeing bon Jovi in concert. Uh two times. I'll
bet that was rid. I'll bet you're like, what am
(01:27):
I doing here? Well? One time they opened up for
thirty eight Special? How did I get here? Wait? Wait, wait, wait,
wait a second, I'm sorry you walk right that's that way? Yeah?
Does that mean you intended to be at the thirty
eight Special concerts? Oh yeah, dude. Yeah. It was like
twelve all right, way into the southern rock scene back then,
(01:51):
and still am to some degree. I still like me
them some thirty eight Special. Uh. And then bon Jovi
opened up. It was before they were uh, you know,
before they were bond VI, like they were opening up
for bands. Well, sure, yeah. And then I saw them again.
I won't name names, but I saw them again in
high school at the peak of their fame, when a
(02:11):
person at my high school had bought two tickets and
could not get any of the girls at school to
go with him. Weird, during the height of bon Jovi's fame. Yeah,
and so this guy must have been a real dog.
I felt bad for this person, and so I went
and saw bon Jovi with this person. And that's just
(02:31):
the kind of guy I was back then. These days,
I would have said buzz off. Are you still friends
with this guy? Okay? Does he listen to the podcast? Uh? Maybe? Well,
let's just edit out me calling him a dog. Then
I'm sure he grew into a fine specimen. Okay. Well,
as you know, I can play all of bon Jovi's
(02:52):
Slippery when Wet on the Quaker oat Boxes in my
air band. Oh that's right, yep. Although I never saw
him in concert, well, I gotta say that that second Uh, like,
I never would have paid to go see them, But
it wasn't bad. Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be.
(03:12):
I mean, they're they're they're pros. They know what they're doing.
You know. So the first concert not so great. I
mean for an opening band. You know, I got Runaway.
That was kind of the only notable song they had
at the time. Um, that Tom Petty's song. No, No No, No,
She's a little Runaway. I didn't know it was. I
thought that was Thompson Twins. This has been a great
(03:36):
open Yeah, especially for people who are interested in faith healing.
You're like, who are these guys. Let's get to it,
shall we? Yes? Okay, so we're talking today about faith healing.
We've actually talked about some of this before, I would
refer everybody to our two thousand eight twenty minute long
how Prayer Healing episode works? Remember of that. Nope, that
(04:02):
that whole that cardiology study about intercessory prayer didn't ring
a bell with you at all. A little bit that
was that's where it found. It's it's purchased originally. So
this is much much bigger, broader picture that we're looking at. Right,
But when you talk about faith healing, there are basically
two types that people kind of lump into two different categories.
(04:29):
One is prayer. Right, There's this idea and it's it's
a pretty widely held idea among people all around the
world of different religions, of different cultures that by praying
to God, you're kind of beaming some well wishes to
God in the hopes that He acts as a bit
of a satellite and beams them down onto the person
(04:52):
you're you're praying for, whether it be like that they
they the ants that have taken up residents in their
cast go away, or um, that they get over their cancer,
or that they have a better day than you know
they're having, um, whatever it is. If you step back
and look at it, what you're talking about is completely
(05:15):
senseless as far as science is concerned. And it's a
form of faith healing. It's it's saying I believe that
by praying, I can affect something about this this person's
physical or mental state, and that's one form of faith healing. Yeah,
and for me, I'm not a religious guy anymore as
people know. But uh, if someone says to me for
(05:38):
any reason that they're going to pray for me, depending
on who it is in the mood I'm in, it
can vary from me just sort of quality, Like I
would never confront someone over that or say don't do that.
I don't believe in that. You don't bear your teeth
and hiss at him. But it might in my own
brain either be like whatever all the way to you
(06:01):
know what, I'll take that, thank you. Well, depending on
what kind of um procedure you're going in for, somebody
says that you may want to be like whoa, whoa,
Just hold off on that one. Okay, what do you mean?
So there was a study, Yeah, there was a study
on intercessory prayer and it was a pretty good study
(06:24):
using the scientific method that cut people up into three
different categories. It was and I think two patients all
receiving the exact same procedure coronary bypass surgery at six
different hospitals, and three groups of people, um who I
think like represented Catholics, uh nondenominational Christians, and I think
(06:47):
Carmelite nuns were all approached and asked to pray for
these people. These carmelized nuns, carmel lite nuns, they're not
nearly as delicious they're they're regular nuns. So the the
three groups prayed for these people, and they said they
prayed for them based on their first name and last initial,
so please help John C. To feel better. And then
(07:09):
they specifically, all of them prayed specifically for a successful
surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Those
are the two the two requirements that they used their
first name, last initial, and then they include that however
else they wanted to pray is just totally fine. And
they studied these groups that were actually prayed for and
(07:31):
they divided them up into three groups. Right, there was
a group that did not receive any prayer. There was
a group that did receive prayer, but we're told they
may or may not be receiving prayer. Then there was
a third group that was that received prayer and were
told that they were receiving prayer. And then when they
went back and looked at these two patients, they found
(07:54):
that the group that received prayer and knew they were
receiving prayer fared worse than both to the other groups,
and that actually the group that didn't receive any prayer
at all fair the best of the three. So if
you're going and getting a cardiac bypass surgery, you may
want to say, just just don't pray for me this
time around. Okay. Yeah, And was this a Grabster article? Yeah? Um,
(08:19):
he points out in what we may get touch on
this a bit more later, but he points out that
it's just it's really tough to scientifically study intercessory prayer.
And I don't remember if we covered that ten years
ago or not. Um, but it's just, you know, sample
sizes are tough. Um. The measuring of the health outcome
(08:40):
like is hard because did they live for a week,
did they live for the rest of their you know,
what would have been a long long life. Uh. He
mentions the sharpshooter effect, which is there are so many
potential outcomes that anyone can group something together and say
what we learned this, and then you know who's doing
(09:01):
the praying, How hard are they praying, how long are
they praying, what God are they praying to. It's just
it's tough to study something like that. And if if
prayer actually does have an impact, if there's a group
that's a control group that's not being prayed for, how
do you control for like the friends and family who
are actually praying for them and interfering in the study.
(09:22):
So there's you know, people have taken this quite seriously.
They studied it seriously, but they've they keep running up
into these conceptual walls as far as the structure of
the study is concerned, and no one's been able to
figure it out. But that coronary bypass study was about
as close as any of them came. But even still,
that one was fraught with methodological methodological problems. So intercessory prayer,
(09:47):
out of all of the types of faith healing, are
probably the most investigated through science and scientific studies pure
viewed journal studies. The other side of faith healing is
the kind that probably comes to mind when somebody brings
up faith healing and that is usually an evangelical preacher
putting his hands on you and casting out the demons
(10:10):
or casting out the disease, or doing something to where
the power of God is coursing through that person and
getting rid of your disease or condition or whatever. That's
the other type of faith healing, and that's the one
that most people think of you. In the last however,
(10:31):
many minutes that was had a great band name, and
I wonder if you can guess what it was, cast
the Demons Out? No, that would be the album title
profitbly Lay evangelical Preacher, No no, no conceptual balls. Oh nice, Okay,
(10:51):
that would be kind of like a Thompson Twins cover band. Uh.
So you said he in the terms of the faith healers,
and you generally see this more as a man that
does this um in my research at least, But there
was a woman UM in the sixties and seventies it
was very popular named Catherine Coleman who UM was a
(11:14):
faith healer. And you know, it looks like she should
have been on the on he haa or something with her.
This just great lacey long dresses that they were in
the sixties and seventies. Uh, and in nineteen sixty seven,
they did a case study and again these are problematic
but because of sample size, but they studied twenty three
people that she supposedly healed, um and they found out
(11:37):
later on that none of them were healed. And in fact,
one woman, they do this this old trick where they're like,
you know, get out of your wheelchair and walk over
to me. Uh. And this woman in a wheelchair had
spinal cancer. She threw off her back brace and ran
across the stage. Uh. And then they followed up with her.
Her spine collapsed the next day and she died four
(12:00):
months later. So these mentioning that because all of these
people are when you go to one of these performances,
everyone thinks that they're healed, and no one here's the
follow up story that's in that auditorium, right, Yeah, And
a lot of the success stories are anecdotal for sure,
(12:20):
with with little or no follow up, and when there
is follow up, it's usually finds that that's not the case.
But so how about this, chuck, Let's go take a
commercial and when'll come back, we'll tell we'll tell everybody
what it would be like to go to a faith
healing sermon and then after that we'll talk about the
skeptical view of the whole thing. Alright, so we promised to,
(13:13):
um tell you what it's like to go to one
of these faith healing Um what do you call them?
I call them performances. But um, it depends on what
type it is. It could be a service, a sermon,
a revival. Um. Yeah, probably a revival is usually a
good way to put it, which is also a sermon
in a service. Uh. One thing you're gonna have in
(13:35):
your pocket is some cash, money or a checkbook, alright.
Imagine they probably take credit cards these days, because there
is generally some kind of money changing hands at one
of these events, whether or not you have paid a
fee to get in or made a quote unquote donation
while you were there to get up on stage and
(13:58):
have your your chance to faint in front of thousands
of people. Right. So usually, UM, we'll take Benny Hin
as an example of what these things can be like.
So Benny Hin is a he's a faith healer. Um,
I'm not sure I believe he's nondenominational. But all of
(14:19):
this stuff traces back. Actually I didn't realize this. I
don't know if you did or not. But all evangelical,
charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity actually finds its source in one
place in nineteen o six called the Azeusus Street Revival.
Have you heard of that? Yeah? And and we should
point out you said charismatic. Um Ed is quick to
(14:41):
point out that charismatic religion doesn't mean boy, that that
person up there preaching shore has a lot of charisma.
It's actually a form of Christianity that is rooted in uh, Pentecostalism. Yes,
that that basically means that they believe that God is
in the building that day and literally can do things
(15:02):
in that room. Yep. So there's a lot so and
this is actually I didn't realize this either until I
started researching this article. There's a pretty big schism actually
in Christianity today between Pentecostalism, which is a form of
charismatic Christianity, and traditional Christianity. And with Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity.
(15:23):
Because you believe that God is in the room, you
also believe that God can operate through you, and there's
certain gifts that are available to you. There's the gift
of knowledge, which is just you just know stuff because
the Holy Spirit or God is telling you this. There's
the gift of tongues called gloss alalia, where you suddenly
start speaking in tongues. We cover that in earnest I
(15:44):
don't think so. Man. If not, we definitely should. We
did snake handling, which definitely fits a great one charismatic.
It definitely does. But the basis of charismatic is that
God is part of your everyday life and can do
things to you, imbue you with divine ours. And one
of those divine gifts is called the gift of healing. Now,
not everybody has it, but potentially anybody could have it
(16:08):
if if you your soul has been baptized anointed to
where you are saved. Plus basically, and that's a big
theme that you find in charismatic religion is that the
more somebody speaks in tongues, the more somebody is able
to heal through faith. The more somebody is wealthy, I
(16:29):
think we need to do a prosperity gospel episode by itself,
but this ties into that as well. The idea of
all behind all those things is that those people who
are the wealthiest who speak in tongues, the most who
can faith heal? Are the are the ones who are
UM who are saved more than other people. That's charismatic religion.
(16:50):
The other side, the traditional origin religion that you're probably
familiar with, is like WHOA, the scriptures, the Bible, that
stuff doesn't talk about any of this, and it does,
it is not in the way that you guys are
interpreting it. So there's a real there's a collision going
on in Christianity today between people who say God is
part of your everyday life and other people say, no,
(17:11):
God is in scripture and that's where you where you
find your answers to God, not in you know, Holy
Laughter or gloss Lalia or anything like that. And so
there's this kind of traditional Christian group in America that
is losing ground very quickly to charismatic Christians who are
(17:31):
UM gaining more and more members, and one of the
ways that they're doing that is through faith healing. Is
that true? Is it growing? Yeah? Apparently one and every
four American Christians is a UM Pentecostal. Now interesting, I
think it's the fastest growing group in America by far.
So none of this is new. This this all started
in the nineteenth century. As far as faith healing goes. Uh,
(17:54):
people like John Alexander Dowie, Um, people like uh ru
uh Hepapa Tippappetta. So I like the second one more tip.
I'll bet Rule likes it more too. Uh. Frank Sandford
not Fred Sandford, Benson Idahosa. These are all faith healers
(18:17):
who have done everything from said I can he'll like
raise people from the dead too. I am actually Jesus Christ.
So it kind of has run the gamut throughout history.
People like Benny hen and um, who's the other guy, Yeah,
Peter pop Off are some of the well not they've
(18:40):
been around for a while too, but they're they're the
the newer version of this nineteenth century um huckster. Yeah.
And so so as I was starting with the Benny
Hint thing, that Benny Hints service or revival is about
twenty four hours long. Man, they maybe actually a little
longer because I think it can. It's usually of six
(19:01):
services each about four and a half hours each. Okay,
so we're talking like twenty seven hours of this revival.
And the whole thing is basically stage. You're created or
carried out in a way that you you're getting more
and more excited, more and more jazzed, and and from
the perspective of the believers who are there, the Holy
(19:22):
Spirit is now coming to this place. And you've got
all this, like all the its appearances going on through
holy laughter where people are just ecstatically laughing and they
feel so great, or they're speaking in tongues and they're
writhing on the floor. The Holy Spirit is present in
the building. Right and after everybody is good and worked
(19:42):
up and the Holy Spirit is present, finally Benny Hin
will come onto the stage and the revival really truly begins.
Then then that's when the healing starts. Yeah, but here's
the thing. Like growing up in church, like the Holy
Spirit was in the room every Sunday, but it's just
a different thing with these more um. I guess any
(20:03):
kind of preaching as some kind of a performance um
or sermon is. But like in the nineteen twenties is when,
especially with Amy Simple McPherson, is when these really highly produced,
dramatic stage shows started to kind of take place. I
was I was reading about her. It blows my mind
that she does not have multiple movies made about her. Yeah,
(20:26):
she was extraordinarily interesting and she was based in l
A too. That means we're really surprised there should be. Uh,
I'm trying to think of I would cast who should
I his career? Should I make Jennifer Lawrence would probably
do a pretty good Amy simple McPherson. You think, yeah,
I think so. I think she could carry that. All right, Well,
stay tuned. We'll see if you have the casting powers
(20:48):
as well. What if it turns out to be Hugh
Jackman very brave performance? Um so she Yeah, she really
got things going in the nineteen twenties and she used
everything from props like ships and and trojan horses to motorcycles. Um, Benny, hen,
I mean did you watch did you go into too?
(21:10):
A YouTube rabbit hole? With these things like he will
he's one of the most um physically uh say, charismatic,
but I don't want to confuse it, but in the
true sense of the word charismatic, physically aggressive and charismatic.
And that he's he's running all over the place, He's
using his coat, his jacket. Two, he will wave it
(21:31):
over the crowd and the first twenty rows of people
will fall back into their seats as if blown by
back by the spirit. Um. He will you know, put
his hands on on a guy who will jump up
and kick his feet out and land on his back.
He'll get up and he'll do it again. He'll get
up and he'll do it again. And they have what's
called catchers on stage, these uh, these kind of big
(21:54):
men usually who who catch these people and put them
on the stage, help him back up again, and they're
all a part of the if you've ever seen well,
you never saw Fletch one, right, No? I didn't. Was
there a preacher in Flesh one? No? And Fletch two.
I'm waiting for you like, oh, no, I saw the sequel.
I don't know. I didn't fledged two. That's what the
(22:14):
story was, was what's his face? Arlie Army from Full
Metal Jacket played a faith healer um who was using
I mean, we can go ahead and say it here.
A lot of these people use tricks like earpieces and
there's someone off stage reading them cards that people fill
in and say, Hi, I'm so and so and I
(22:35):
have this ailment. And then they will put in the
earpiece and they will say I'm thinking of someone. Uh,
perhaps their name is James or Jim or Jamie and
they have something wrong with their foot and then all
of a sudden, the guy who filled out that card says, oh,
you're talking about me. Get him on stage, lay the hands,
and by all accounts, these people are so caught up
(22:58):
in this religious hysteri area of the moment and the
drama that sometimes they do faint, right, So this is
that's I'm glad you brought that up, because I think
it's really important to get across. Like, the people who
attend these revivals are true believers and they are caught
up in What they would say is they would describe
all this to the Holy Spirit flowing through them being
(23:20):
at this revival, being you know, the part of the
energy in the air. What skeptics would say is, well,
actually this is all just part of a you know, masssteria,
mass delusion regardless, it's basically two sides of the same coin.
Whether it's divine or whether it's internal. These people are
experiencing fainting. They are they are falling backwards, and to them,
(23:41):
they feel like they're just being lifted right off of
their feet. They are like experiencing this holy laughter or whatever.
They're not they're not faking in in the sense that
you and I would be like, Oh, these these people
are faking. They're participating in something that is happening, that's
connecting them to everybody around them and the people on
(24:02):
stage at the very least in the ones that are
the most legitimate. Well yeah, they're they're either that or
they sometimes they are actual plants. Okay, So so here's
so there's let me give you three examples. Benny Hin,
Peter pop Off in Hobart Freeman. They represent three different
versions of faith healers. Benny Hin, his thing is is,
(24:23):
like you're saying, he runs around on stage and waves
his coat. His thing is he is healing like a
specific disease. At that moment, he'll be like, I can
feel the cancer being healed in this room. And then
after that he'll be like, who's felt that? Whose cancer was?
Just He'll come on up here and somebody will run
up and be like, you just here my cancer. Thanks
(24:44):
a lot, right. He apparently does not use He was
tracked by a documentary filmmaker and investigated pretty thoroughly back
in two thousand. He apparently does not use plants. Um
he apparently did. I don't really know enough about the
guy to know how true his faith is, but it's
(25:04):
it says a lot that he wasn't caught using plants
or any kind of technical assistance whatsoever. People have planted
people there though, that are healthy, like sting operations at
Benny Hin shows. Yeah. Yeah, so that they would plant
it like a whatever, some new show would plant someone
in the audience, have them go up on stage and
said they were healed, and he would tout them as
(25:26):
being healed. And then when he's interviewed and said, hey,
this person was a plant. They weren't even sick, and
he said that she was sick and you healed. And
his response was literally like, well, you know, I'm I'm
just a man like you, and I'm trying to do better,
and I'm always trying to do better. So that's not
an answer. So that's actually a pretty pretty common um investigation.
What they're doing is that's remember how we said like
(25:48):
that the God or the Holy Spirit gives you divine gifts,
and one of those gifts is the gift of knowledge. Well,
what they were doing was challenging the idea that God
was giving them information based on the idea, right, God
wouldn't have given you this bad information That was a lie,
so therefore you don't have this pipeline to God. I
could see Bennie Hin just being like, hey, as happens, right,
(26:12):
He's he's famous for the saying that, uh, the second
category is exposed legitimate, straight up fraud, and that the
poster child of that is Peter pop Off. He was
he was exposed, exposed at the kind of the height
(26:34):
of his earlier career. Yet he still makes a ton
of money today selling holy water water. He don't he
doesn't sell it. If you send a donation and as
a thank you gifts, he'll send you your holy spring water.
Get it right, So, and then people who have gotten
this holy spring water come on and say, right after that,
(26:56):
I got a check from the I R S that
I wasn't expecting and now my house is paid off.
Thank you Peter pop Off. Right, that's what he's doing now.
So he went bankrupt getting caught red handed. The amazing
Randy James Randy exposed Peter pop Off on Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show in front of millions of people. Totally ended
the guy's career right there. He went bankrupt very quickly afterwards,
(27:19):
like he was. They were the ones using the earpiece. Right. Yeah,
So Peter pop Off was getting like you said, basically
the premise of Fletch Too. His wife was going through
prayer cards, saying people's names, saying the details they'd written
down about what diseases they wanted cured and what their
prayers were. And Peter Popoff was being fed this information
(27:39):
through an earpiece. Well, he was pretending that he was
getting this information from God the gift of knowledge and
wowing people seven days a week, six days a week
at his revivals and making a lot of money. James
Randy went to one of his revivals Number one, inserted
a plant in there a couple of times, a few
(27:59):
different plants, so disputed his gift of knowledge. But then
also made a recording of the radio transmission of his
wife and then plays it on the Carson Show. So
ends this guy's career. Um, this is in. By two
thousand five, he was back to making like twenty four
million dollars a year through divine debt relief. How did
(28:22):
people not pick up on that in the audience, I
don't know. I think it's probably all I know how
they pick up on it, And that's part of what
makes this so sad is they are so desperate for health,
good health that they will believe anything. They don't think,
oh my god, this guy just called my name out
(28:44):
of thin air, uh and said all these details that
a weight that I wrote down on an index card
on the way in and handed to somebody Like, they
don't make that connection. So I think that's a pretty
good point. They're either desperate to be he old or
this is like their genuine belief that some guy has
come in and been like, oh, this is what you believe, Well,
(29:06):
let me figure out how to work that into my
into my scam. Either way, it's it's I mean, don't
you you shouldn't. Shouldn't. I'm not saying you are. I'm
talking to you people out on podcast Lane her like
what suckers, what chumps? That's that's not for you to judge.
These these people are are in some cases being very
much preyed upon. Oh yeah, not in all cases, though
(29:30):
there are so so far, We've got Benny Hin, We've
got Peter pop Off. I know it took me forever
to be like that's not a that's not a typographical error.
But I can't tell you how many times I tuned
in to watch Benny Hill. I was like, man, when
am I going to learn? They're both? And then the
third type is um exemplified by a guy named Hobart Freeman.
(29:54):
You would call these people utterly and complete true believers, right,
they are the ones who die because they're walking the walk.
Actually not Hobart Freeman. He died in part of complications
from gang green and his leg that he wouldn't go
get medical treatment from. So he was actually preaching sitting
down and not walking at all. But he died. He
(30:15):
he prayed over his sicknesses, his pneumonia, his gang green,
and his leg. And he had something called faith assembly
I believe in Indiana, and he was preaching that medical
not just you know, come and get your your your
faith healing. But medical interventions are not. It's not it's
a sign of that's that's evil. That's basically a sign
(30:37):
of a lack of faith in God. Yeah. I mean
he was to the point where he was like, don't
even clean my wound, like that's medical treatment, and I
refuse that, yea, And so he died. I'm not quite
sure how old he was the problem is this is
like he's an adult, he can make his own decisions,
especially in the United States, where religious freedom is vehemently protected.
(31:00):
It yea. The problem with him and his Faith Assembly
was that he took like ninety people with him while
he was doing this, including babies who were neglected um
any kind of medical care, children who were um who
died of easily treatable diseases, women who died in childbirth. UM.
(31:21):
Ninety people they decided died and I think between five
and ten years at Faith Assembly who probably otherwise would
have lived had they sought medical treatment as well as
as faith healing. Yeah. And this this is where it
can overlap with Christian science. Um, they don't believe that
(31:41):
medical science is uh. They issue medical science and medical
um assistance right. UM. I guess depending on there may
be a range. I don't know if I'm not. I
don't know any Christian scientists, so I don't know if
some of them are if they're a hardline there's and
other people that are like, no, well we will take
(32:02):
a little medicine for this and that. But ostensibly Christian
scientists don't believe in medical intervention. UH. So there is
some overlap there, but it's uh what they will say
if someone dies, even a child. Is it's either God's
will or in the case of faith healing, if it
doesn't work, they will say that they didn't truly believe
(32:22):
they would have truly They put the vain the blame
back on the sick person and say, if you didn't, uh,
if you didn't get healed by my hand, then that
means you didn't truly believe in that you aren't devout,
which is it's that's one thing if like you're a
true believer faith healer, but if you're a con man,
and that's how you're getting out of it is saying
(32:44):
you don't have enough faith. What a crippling thing to
do to some a person of faith. You know how
despicable is that? Well? I think it was, um Benny
hens Uh was it Benny Hinder pop Off, one of
them's nephew. I read an article by him, and he's
still very much a devout Christian, but he saw the light.
(33:04):
He was a catcher for a while and to catch
the people on stage and he was like, it wasn't
until I met my wife, uh, and she couldn't speak
in tongues and everyone was like, you gotta you can't
marry her. She started opening his eyes too. I guess
the um the other competing Christianity, which says, you don't
speak in tongues, you don't um faith heal and he
(33:27):
has put all that behind him and said that, I
mean he feels guilt now for this lavish lifestyle. I mean,
that's the other part of this prosperity thing is they
believe that God has is blessing them with all these
riches and these Italian villas and the fleet of Mercedes
in the driveway and the helicopter, and that it's all
God's will. But he had a big, big problem with
(33:49):
the fact that they would then in turn blame the
people who didn't get healed because they weren't devout. It's
really sad. Yeah, it is sad. So there's a few
there's a few really bad nag get of outcomes from this.
One is you might die because you aren't going to
seek medical treatment. And even if you're going to a
faith healer and you're not say like a Christian science adherent,
(34:11):
but you you are a true believer in faith healing.
If you go to a faith healer and they're like,
we I just cured your cancer, you might be like, well,
I'm not gonna go spend any more money on co
pays for any follow up stuff. I'll just go home.
I don't like going to the hospital. I hate chemotherapy.
And then if that treatment was keeping you alive or
(34:31):
prolonging your life, um, you might die from because you
believe that the faith healer has healed you. Another one
is that like you're you're losing money. If this stuff
really actually doesn't work, then you're just throwing your money away,
or put a different way, it's being conned out of you.
(34:52):
That's another negative outcome of it. Um. And then yes,
the injuries like Catherine Coleman and the woman with the
spinal cancer whose spine color lapsed. Should we take a break?
I think so? Man, all right, we're gonna take a
break and come back and talk a little bit about
psychic surgery and a bit more on Christian science right
after this. Alright, So psychic surgery is something that we
(35:43):
have not mentioned yet. Uh. This is uh. I guess
it's a kind of faith healing. But um, if you
ever saw or if you know anything about Andy Kaufman,
or saw the movie Man on the Moon with Jim
Carey as Andy Kaufman. You remember the scene where or
if you grew up in the seven and eighties, you
remember seeing this stuff on like sixty Minutes or PBS.
(36:04):
It seems like it was a big thing. Then. Uh,
these psychic surgeons will um use their hands. Um. Most
of the time it's on your like your your belly,
and you'll lay you down with your shirt off, and
it looks like they are reaching into your body with
their hands and pulling out organs or tumors or something, right,
(36:28):
pulling out some sort of fleshy, meaty product. Right. So
what's really going on with psychic surgeons is it is
a complete fraud. They are masters of slight of hand
and they are covering up um. If you've seen the video,
they're always covering up what they're doing with the other hand.
(36:49):
And they have blood packets in their hand, and they
have like chicken gizzards or something tucked away that you
don't see. And it's just a big slight of hand
magic show. And in the Man in the Moon movie,
it was very sad because Andy Kaufman was kind of
at his wits end. I was trying to heal him,
you know, get healed of cancer medically, and he took
a chance traveled to where Philippines was at the Philippines,
(37:14):
and Um, I saw the guy palming the chicken gizzards
knew it was a fake. This is a very sad
moment in his life and in that movie. So I wondered.
I remembered that being the case in that movie too.
But I had read like an account of his experience there,
and from what I could gather, he he left for
(37:35):
the Philippines feeling like the psychic surgery had worked. That
the movie contrived or inserted that part. Yeah, because he
spent I think six weeks over there getting almost daily
psychic surgery, and he apparently improved. He started to gain
some weight as spirits improved, so much so that he
left the Philippines expecting to heal. But when he went
(37:57):
back to the United States, he died pretty quickly after that.
It was pretty sad in the movie at least. Yeah,
it really was, because he starts laughing at like the
whole cosmic joke of the whole thing. Yeah, so, I mean,
what can happen if some of these people maybe he
did feel better. Uh, sometimes people do kick cancer. Um,
and they will say it's because of the either intercessory prayer,
(38:19):
the faith healing or both. Um. What skeptics will say
is no, sometimes people heal from cancer. You know I do.
Here's the thing that chuck. This is where science has
kind of fallen down and allowed faith heeling to continue
on basically unabated. They they don't have in science doesn't
(38:45):
understand why some cancer spontaneously remits. They just don't. They
They know that some types of cancer are more likely
to undergo spontaneous remission. They also suspect that people may
actually developed cancer and their body might overcome it and
they will go their whole lives without realizing that they
(39:06):
ever had cancer at some point, but they don't understand
the mechanisms behind it. Where I feel like science has
fallen down is this misunderstood. Frankly, faith based explanation has
been has been used to replace another faith based explanation,
which is that the Holy Spirit healed these people. They're saying, no,
(39:28):
it's spontaneous remission. Well what is that? Well, we don't
really know, but it's not the Holy Spirit. And I
feel like that's that's just that that doesn't fly at all.
And for people who believe in in faith healing when
they hear spontaneous remission and they ask, well, you know,
how does that work? And science as we don't know,
but just trust us. That's what it is. That's not
(39:49):
going to change anybody's view if you're a true believer
in this kind of thing. Yeah. And it also points
out that some of this could be due to the
placebo effect, which can remember which show, but we've talked
about that before. For sure, we did a placebo effect show.
It was probably that one. Uh. And that's of course
when fake treatments, uh, it seem like they have actual
(40:11):
positive effects for the patient. Um. So some of that
could be this. Some of it could be they have
comfort therefore reduced anxiety, and it has been shown when
you have reduced anxiety and stress, then that can um,
that can help your your case medically. Um. Which is
also actually I think why that first study you talked about,
(40:34):
UM with the bad outcome didn't wasn't one of the
explanations possibly that people it increased their anxiety. Yeah, like
they gave them performance anxiety, Like they didn't want to
let the people who were praying for them down right,
or let God down. So they actually became anxious, which
in turn created negative outcomes or complications from the surgery,
(40:55):
Which is just someone surmising what that could mean, that
outcome could mean. Right again again. So like if if,
if science is taking it upon itself to two challenge
faith healing, I don't think it's doing a very good
job right now because the polace Evo effect that's not
explained very well either. Um, the idea that anxiety can
(41:17):
can lead to negative outcomes. These are things that it's like, yes, science,
you're on the right track. Keep going. Don't just stop there.
I hope not. I don't think so. But you do
get the impression that if you ask a scientist about
faith healing, they just throw out, well that that holy
spirit thing, that's just mass illusion. There's spontaneous remission of cancer,
(41:37):
so just leave it at that and you get a
little pat on the head. I just don't think that works.
So who knows, Maybe twenty years down the road, when
we understand spontaneous remission, we can say no, you were
not healed. This is what your body did. I think
in that case, then the people say, well, yeah, God
made my body do that through the faith healer. I
don't think it's ever going to end well. Yeah, and
(41:59):
there's also the ace that um, the Peter pop Offs
of the world selling are sorry, not selling taking donations
for Holy spring water. Um. At one point I think
he was a an actual company. And then of course
the government starts poking around the books and fraud claims,
and then he re registers as a as a religious
(42:20):
group and their religious protections in this country and exemptions
from the i r S such that they can get
away with some of the stuff. They don't have to
show their books. It's tricky. Speaking of laws as well
to um the the there are laws on the books
that protect religious groups and I think like nine states
(42:41):
from criminal negligent manslaughter, homicide charges for withholding um, withholding
medical care from children. Yeah. It's weirdly. Just came up
today actually in real time as we record today in
the news. Did you see that in Idaho? I didn't.
(43:02):
The article is called an Idaho and Idaho medical care
exemptions for faith healing come under fire. Uh. And this
was breaking news like three hours ago. Uh. There's a
cemetery in Boise called Peaceful Valley Cemetery, six hundred grave
sites and nearly a third of them are children. And
while it's impossible to tell how many UM died because
(43:24):
of UM negligent parents, uh, they think that a great
many of them did. They've tried together corner reports, autopsy reports,
UM advocates have tried to do this, uh, but basically, UH,
they estimate that a hundred and eighty three Idaho children
have died since the nineteen seventies because of parents withholding
(43:47):
medical treatment. And I think they lead the nation in UM, yes,
as more children die of faith based medical neglect in
Idaho than any other state. And so they had a
rally I think today where they had UM hundred and
eighty three child's eyes caskets delivered I think to the
(44:08):
capital steps and Boise, and they're calling on reform and saying,
you know, you can't do this anymore. Like I know
that parents like these children's can't advocate children's. These children
can't advocate for themselves, so it's up to the parents
to make sure that they get medical treatment if they
(44:29):
need it. And and again though these parents will literally
watch their kid die and say it was God's will right,
And I mean like this, this country was founded on
religious liberty, so there's just such a sticky situation where
it's like, like, we have the technology to save your
child and you're not letting us do it. And in Idaho,
(44:50):
like you said, is the state that leads that. Other
states don't have anything like that any and haven't for
a long time. Some have loopholes that allow that, but
say like, if if this happens to multiple children of yours,
like your you've let more than one kid die as
God's will, We're gonna actually come after you. And then
(45:11):
other states, I think, like Florida and I can't remember
the other state basically say yes, we're you're you're we're
not going to criminally charge parents who withhold medical care,
but the court can still come in and be like, uh, sorry,
t Ys, your kid is getting this life saving medical
care whether you like it or not. Well, apparently everything
changed in nineteen seventy four. That was um the Federal
(45:33):
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and at the time,
the Department of HHS interpreted that to say that states
must implement faith healing exclusions, and so in order to
get uh federal funding, a lot of the states passed
these faith healing exemptions so they could get funding, and
later on the Department said, you know what we were
(45:54):
send that interpretation. That's not what we meant. But it
was too late at that point. Yeah, And and I
think it was two thousand three was when they finally
rescinded it. But and so all of these these exemptions
are relics from two thousand three at the latest, I
think of the nineties, a lot of them were removed
to So I have a feeling that's not gonna be
(46:14):
around for much longer. They'll probably be like one state
that's like the holdout state, and I'll be surprised if
it's not Idaho. But I don't think there's gonna be
too many states with it around ten years from now
or five years from now. I watched a lot of
YouTube today, by the way, Yeah, yeah, I used to
We used to watch. We used to watch in college.
(46:35):
We would go to my friend Clay's house and he
had VHS tapes of faith Healers and uh Peter pop
Off for sure. And then although he wouldn't have Faith Healer,
did you ever watch uh Robert Tilton? No, the name
sounds familiar. You've probably seen the fart compilation. He was
a televangelist in the eighties. He's still around, I think,
(46:57):
but I think he might have been one of us
went broken then cut rich again. But he was a
televangelis in the eighties that had this great, great show,
um something power. I can't remember what it was called.
But no, we're talking about I know exactly what you mean.
(47:18):
You'd probably recognize this guy. But Clay had a bunch
of these dubbed and we would we would sit around
late at night and watch Bob Tilton speaking tongues and
stuff on his show. And he was I watched his
bunch today. It took a stroll dumb memory lane. Yeah,
it's really funny to watch Bob Tilton, I will say, so,
what do you mean the fart accomplishing as he fared
a lot as well. No, years later someone did a
He would make all these funny faces and herkey dierky movements,
(47:41):
and of course someone later on dubbed in farts every
time he closed his eyes real tight or made a
funny move, And it's that's funny to watch. But it's
also funny just to watch Bob Tilton because he is
like it's entertainment. It was hysterical but you know, people
would write him big X and go broke and not
(48:01):
be able to pay their mortgages because they're sending him
money because they His whole deal was the prosperity thing,
like you you will get rich if you if you
send your money, it will come back tenfold. That kind
of deal. Yeah, we definitely have to do an episode
just on that. Back in the day, real quick, did
you um, did you ever watch Cartoon Network when Adult
(48:22):
Swim was just like an hour long block at night? Yeah? Sometimes,
so there was like Space Ghost Coast to Coast was
like I think their first show. Yeah, our friend Dave
Wallis was one of the creators right before Space Goest
Coast to Coast. They kind of dipped their toe in
it where they would run old Space Ghost um cartoons
(48:43):
just normal, but they would dub in like inappropriate laugh tracks,
and it made it like one of the most bizarrely
funny things you've ever seen. Like somebody would just deliver
a line that was maybe mildly like like n S
Space Ghost costoon fun, but then like the crowd in
this the studio audience would just start laughing. It was.
(49:05):
It was great stuff. Well, I just love that I'm
like almost forty seven years old, and I have put
myself out there in public as a learned, researched man,
and there's nothing funnier to me than uh, Bob Tilton
part compilation. Nice. Hey, what's funny? It is funny? That's right. Well,
if you want to know more about faith heeling, Um,
(49:26):
I don't know, like, go on to YouTube, maybe goes
check one out yourself. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? Uh?
And since I said who knows what will happen, it's
time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this using us
in the classroom. We've got a few of these lately,
which always makes us happy. Hey, guys, big fan recently
saw you in San Francisco. It's sketch Fest and it
(49:47):
was even better than what I've been hoping for. Uh.
And by the way, I want to point out to people,
when you come see us live, it is better than this. Yeah,
you get a free dumb dumb sucker just for coming. Well,
they're funnier, they're more fun, they're funnier shows. Uh. You
get to hear say dirty words here and there. Um,
we drink a hundred percent more than we do in
(50:07):
the studio. That's true. Anyway, he went to to San Francisco.
Reason I'm writing is that I'm an eighth grade English teacher.
My class has been reading about Harriet Tubman for the
past few weeks. This morning, I woke up and saw
that you release an episode about her. I knew what
it was meant to be. It's part of my lesson plan.
It was a bit nervous with my morning class because
I hadn't listened to the episode yet, wondering if you
(50:28):
might go off on some weird tangent that my students
would be confused by. But you did an incredible job.
I feel like that one was pretty tangent free. It
really was we we Yeah, we stuck to the story.
We were both a little awe struck. That's right. Despite
all the distractions inherent and being a teenager, my students
were absorbed and entertained by your explanation of this amazing
person's life and our contributions to America. Today was many
(50:53):
of my students first time listening to a podcast, and
I'm so happy I was able to introduce them to
Josh and Chuckla And that is President Rob Carter so,
Mr Rob Carter's Class, I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I
hope you started listening to our show regularly. You guys
and gals are the best. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mr
Carter and Mr Carter's Class. Did you call him President
(51:15):
Rob Carter? No, I'm almost positive you said that was
President Rob Carter. Really. Yeah, you just elected that gout
of high office, so that would be a weird thing
to say. You're welcome, President Carter. I just got a
a gift of an edible arrangement from Hugh Jackman. Yeah,
so maybe he'll get this guy like your president. He
(51:36):
can't wait for that. Amy simple McPherson role. I looked
at her picture. I know you saw me over here.
She I would go with Amy Adams. She do good. Sure.
I think just about any actress working today, any of
the big names, would do a pretty good job with it.
There's some some pretty good actresses working today. Well, you
know what, your your future is not in casting. You
(51:59):
don't think so who shouldn't be, Josh, You do not
think any of the anyone it should be pretty good, right,
just you know, throw a dart. They're all talented. They
are all talented. Who was the one in um La
La Land. Oh wow, I want to say Emma Blunt,
but that's not Emma Blunt. Emma Stone, Emma Stone. Emily
(52:19):
Blunt was in Cicaro, right, Yes, and then Amy Adams
was in a Arrival. Yes, Yes, she'd probably be pretty
good at it too, But I still go with Jennifer Lawrence.
Sounds like my dad. I feel like your dad right now? Hey, Well,
at any rate, listen this episode? Shall we Yes? If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
(52:40):
tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or
Josh onm Clark. You can hang out with us on
Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or slash
stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(53:02):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
M hmmm
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. We're about to
lay our hands all over you. Who knows what will happen?
(00:26):
Maybe nothing, who knows? Yeah? That was gross? How so
lay your hands on me? That a bon Jovie song? Uh? No?
Hold on? Who was that? Was that? Bon job? Oh?
(00:46):
Thompson Twins? Maybe Jerry, did you hear she just said
duff Leppard. No, I don't think that's pour some sugar
on me, good cob. What it's wrong with you to
pour some hands on me? No? Lay your hands on me?
On me is like, Uh, I think it's a Tompson
Twins song or something like that. Well, that's not the
one I'm thinking of. I don't know what you're thinking of.
(01:06):
I'm thinking of the bon Jovi song. I'll be the
bon Jovi song is dirtier than this song. Uh. Then
Thompson Twins, Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Yeah, Thompson
Twins were real clean cut, not bon Jovi. Ended up
weirdly seeing bon Jovi in concert. Uh two times. I'll
bet that was rid. I'll bet you're like, what am
(01:27):
I doing here? Well? One time they opened up for
thirty eight Special? How did I get here? Wait? Wait, wait, wait,
wait a second, I'm sorry you walk right that's that way? Yeah?
Does that mean you intended to be at the thirty
eight Special concerts? Oh yeah, dude. Yeah. It was like
twelve all right, way into the southern rock scene back then,
(01:51):
and still am to some degree. I still like me
them some thirty eight Special. Uh. And then bon Jovi
opened up. It was before they were uh, you know,
before they were bond VI, like they were opening up
for bands. Well, sure, yeah. And then I saw them again.
I won't name names, but I saw them again in
high school at the peak of their fame, when a
(02:11):
person at my high school had bought two tickets and
could not get any of the girls at school to
go with him. Weird, during the height of bon Jovi's fame. Yeah,
and so this guy must have been a real dog.
I felt bad for this person, and so I went
and saw bon Jovi with this person. And that's just
(02:31):
the kind of guy I was back then. These days,
I would have said buzz off. Are you still friends
with this guy? Okay? Does he listen to the podcast? Uh? Maybe? Well,
let's just edit out me calling him a dog. Then
I'm sure he grew into a fine specimen. Okay. Well,
as you know, I can play all of bon Jovi's
(02:52):
Slippery when Wet on the Quaker oat Boxes in my
air band. Oh that's right, yep. Although I never saw
him in concert, well, I gotta say that that second Uh, like,
I never would have paid to go see them, But
it wasn't bad. Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be.
(03:12):
I mean, they're they're they're pros. They know what they're doing.
You know. So the first concert not so great. I
mean for an opening band. You know, I got Runaway.
That was kind of the only notable song they had
at the time. Um, that Tom Petty's song. No, No No, No,
She's a little Runaway. I didn't know it was. I
thought that was Thompson Twins. This has been a great
(03:36):
open Yeah, especially for people who are interested in faith healing.
You're like, who are these guys. Let's get to it,
shall we? Yes? Okay, so we're talking today about faith healing.
We've actually talked about some of this before, I would
refer everybody to our two thousand eight twenty minute long
how Prayer Healing episode works? Remember of that. Nope, that
(04:02):
that whole that cardiology study about intercessory prayer didn't ring
a bell with you at all. A little bit that
was that's where it found. It's it's purchased originally. So
this is much much bigger, broader picture that we're looking at. Right,
But when you talk about faith healing, there are basically
two types that people kind of lump into two different categories.
(04:29):
One is prayer. Right, There's this idea and it's it's
a pretty widely held idea among people all around the
world of different religions, of different cultures that by praying
to God, you're kind of beaming some well wishes to
God in the hopes that He acts as a bit
of a satellite and beams them down onto the person
(04:52):
you're you're praying for, whether it be like that they
they the ants that have taken up residents in their
cast go away, or um, that they get over their cancer,
or that they have a better day than you know
they're having, um, whatever it is. If you step back
and look at it, what you're talking about is completely
(05:15):
senseless as far as science is concerned. And it's a
form of faith healing. It's it's saying I believe that
by praying, I can affect something about this this person's
physical or mental state, and that's one form of faith healing. Yeah,
and for me, I'm not a religious guy anymore as
people know. But uh, if someone says to me for
(05:38):
any reason that they're going to pray for me, depending
on who it is in the mood I'm in, it
can vary from me just sort of quality, Like I
would never confront someone over that or say don't do that.
I don't believe in that. You don't bear your teeth
and hiss at him. But it might in my own
brain either be like whatever all the way to you
(06:01):
know what, I'll take that, thank you. Well, depending on
what kind of um procedure you're going in for, somebody
says that you may want to be like whoa, whoa,
Just hold off on that one. Okay, what do you mean?
So there was a study, Yeah, there was a study
on intercessory prayer and it was a pretty good study
(06:24):
using the scientific method that cut people up into three
different categories. It was and I think two patients all
receiving the exact same procedure coronary bypass surgery at six
different hospitals, and three groups of people, um who I
think like represented Catholics, uh nondenominational Christians, and I think
(06:47):
Carmelite nuns were all approached and asked to pray for
these people. These carmelized nuns, carmel lite nuns, they're not
nearly as delicious they're they're regular nuns. So the the
three groups prayed for these people, and they said they
prayed for them based on their first name and last initial,
so please help John C. To feel better. And then
(07:09):
they specifically, all of them prayed specifically for a successful
surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Those
are the two the two requirements that they used their
first name, last initial, and then they include that however
else they wanted to pray is just totally fine. And
they studied these groups that were actually prayed for and
(07:31):
they divided them up into three groups. Right, there was
a group that did not receive any prayer. There was
a group that did receive prayer, but we're told they
may or may not be receiving prayer. Then there was
a third group that was that received prayer and were
told that they were receiving prayer. And then when they
went back and looked at these two patients, they found
(07:54):
that the group that received prayer and knew they were
receiving prayer fared worse than both to the other groups,
and that actually the group that didn't receive any prayer
at all fair the best of the three. So if
you're going and getting a cardiac bypass surgery, you may
want to say, just just don't pray for me this
time around. Okay. Yeah, And was this a Grabster article? Yeah? Um,
(08:19):
he points out in what we may get touch on
this a bit more later, but he points out that
it's just it's really tough to scientifically study intercessory prayer.
And I don't remember if we covered that ten years
ago or not. Um, but it's just, you know, sample
sizes are tough. Um. The measuring of the health outcome
(08:40):
like is hard because did they live for a week,
did they live for the rest of their you know,
what would have been a long long life. Uh. He
mentions the sharpshooter effect, which is there are so many
potential outcomes that anyone can group something together and say
what we learned this, and then you know who's doing
(09:01):
the praying, How hard are they praying, how long are
they praying, what God are they praying to. It's just
it's tough to study something like that. And if if
prayer actually does have an impact, if there's a group
that's a control group that's not being prayed for, how
do you control for like the friends and family who
are actually praying for them and interfering in the study.
(09:22):
So there's you know, people have taken this quite seriously.
They studied it seriously, but they've they keep running up
into these conceptual walls as far as the structure of
the study is concerned, and no one's been able to
figure it out. But that coronary bypass study was about
as close as any of them came. But even still,
that one was fraught with methodological methodological problems. So intercessory prayer,
(09:47):
out of all of the types of faith healing, are
probably the most investigated through science and scientific studies pure
viewed journal studies. The other side of faith healing is
the kind that probably comes to mind when somebody brings
up faith healing and that is usually an evangelical preacher
putting his hands on you and casting out the demons
(10:10):
or casting out the disease, or doing something to where
the power of God is coursing through that person and
getting rid of your disease or condition or whatever. That's
the other type of faith healing, and that's the one
that most people think of you. In the last however,
(10:31):
many minutes that was had a great band name, and
I wonder if you can guess what it was, cast
the Demons Out? No, that would be the album title
profitbly Lay evangelical Preacher, No no, no conceptual balls. Oh nice, Okay,
(10:51):
that would be kind of like a Thompson Twins cover band. Uh.
So you said he in the terms of the faith healers,
and you generally see this more as a man that
does this um in my research at least, But there
was a woman UM in the sixties and seventies it
was very popular named Catherine Coleman who UM was a
(11:14):
faith healer. And you know, it looks like she should
have been on the on he haa or something with her.
This just great lacey long dresses that they were in
the sixties and seventies. Uh, and in nineteen sixty seven,
they did a case study and again these are problematic
but because of sample size, but they studied twenty three
people that she supposedly healed, um and they found out
(11:37):
later on that none of them were healed. And in fact,
one woman, they do this this old trick where they're like,
you know, get out of your wheelchair and walk over
to me. Uh. And this woman in a wheelchair had
spinal cancer. She threw off her back brace and ran
across the stage. Uh. And then they followed up with her.
Her spine collapsed the next day and she died four
(12:00):
months later. So these mentioning that because all of these
people are when you go to one of these performances,
everyone thinks that they're healed, and no one here's the
follow up story that's in that auditorium, right, Yeah, And
a lot of the success stories are anecdotal for sure,
(12:20):
with with little or no follow up, and when there
is follow up, it's usually finds that that's not the case.
But so how about this, chuck, Let's go take a
commercial and when'll come back, we'll tell we'll tell everybody
what it would be like to go to a faith
healing sermon and then after that we'll talk about the
skeptical view of the whole thing. Alright, so we promised to,
(13:13):
um tell you what it's like to go to one
of these faith healing Um what do you call them?
I call them performances. But um, it depends on what
type it is. It could be a service, a sermon,
a revival. Um. Yeah, probably a revival is usually a
good way to put it, which is also a sermon
in a service. Uh. One thing you're gonna have in
(13:35):
your pocket is some cash, money or a checkbook, alright.
Imagine they probably take credit cards these days, because there
is generally some kind of money changing hands at one
of these events, whether or not you have paid a
fee to get in or made a quote unquote donation
while you were there to get up on stage and
(13:58):
have your your chance to faint in front of thousands
of people. Right. So usually, UM, we'll take Benny Hin
as an example of what these things can be like.
So Benny Hin is a he's a faith healer. Um,
I'm not sure I believe he's nondenominational. But all of
(14:19):
this stuff traces back. Actually I didn't realize this. I
don't know if you did or not. But all evangelical,
charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity actually finds its source in one
place in nineteen o six called the Azeusus Street Revival.
Have you heard of that? Yeah? And and we should
point out you said charismatic. Um Ed is quick to
(14:41):
point out that charismatic religion doesn't mean boy, that that
person up there preaching shore has a lot of charisma.
It's actually a form of Christianity that is rooted in uh, Pentecostalism. Yes,
that that basically means that they believe that God is
in the building that day and literally can do things
(15:02):
in that room. Yep. So there's a lot so and
this is actually I didn't realize this either until I
started researching this article. There's a pretty big schism actually
in Christianity today between Pentecostalism, which is a form of
charismatic Christianity, and traditional Christianity. And with Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity.
(15:23):
Because you believe that God is in the room, you
also believe that God can operate through you, and there's
certain gifts that are available to you. There's the gift
of knowledge, which is just you just know stuff because
the Holy Spirit or God is telling you this. There's
the gift of tongues called gloss alalia, where you suddenly
start speaking in tongues. We cover that in earnest I
(15:44):
don't think so. Man. If not, we definitely should. We
did snake handling, which definitely fits a great one charismatic.
It definitely does. But the basis of charismatic is that
God is part of your everyday life and can do
things to you, imbue you with divine ours. And one
of those divine gifts is called the gift of healing. Now,
not everybody has it, but potentially anybody could have it
(16:08):
if if you your soul has been baptized anointed to
where you are saved. Plus basically, and that's a big
theme that you find in charismatic religion is that the
more somebody speaks in tongues, the more somebody is able
to heal through faith. The more somebody is wealthy, I
(16:29):
think we need to do a prosperity gospel episode by itself,
but this ties into that as well. The idea of
all behind all those things is that those people who
are the wealthiest who speak in tongues, the most who
can faith heal? Are the are the ones who are
UM who are saved more than other people. That's charismatic religion.
(16:50):
The other side, the traditional origin religion that you're probably
familiar with, is like WHOA, the scriptures, the Bible, that
stuff doesn't talk about any of this, and it does,
it is not in the way that you guys are
interpreting it. So there's a real there's a collision going
on in Christianity today between people who say God is
part of your everyday life and other people say, no,
(17:11):
God is in scripture and that's where you where you
find your answers to God, not in you know, Holy
Laughter or gloss Lalia or anything like that. And so
there's this kind of traditional Christian group in America that
is losing ground very quickly to charismatic Christians who are
(17:31):
UM gaining more and more members, and one of the
ways that they're doing that is through faith healing. Is
that true? Is it growing? Yeah? Apparently one and every
four American Christians is a UM Pentecostal. Now interesting, I
think it's the fastest growing group in America by far.
So none of this is new. This this all started
in the nineteenth century. As far as faith healing goes. Uh,
(17:54):
people like John Alexander Dowie, Um, people like uh ru
uh Hepapa Tippappetta. So I like the second one more tip.
I'll bet Rule likes it more too. Uh. Frank Sandford
not Fred Sandford, Benson Idahosa. These are all faith healers
(18:17):
who have done everything from said I can he'll like
raise people from the dead too. I am actually Jesus Christ.
So it kind of has run the gamut throughout history.
People like Benny hen and um, who's the other guy, Yeah,
Peter pop Off are some of the well not they've
(18:40):
been around for a while too, but they're they're the
the newer version of this nineteenth century um huckster. Yeah.
And so so as I was starting with the Benny
Hint thing, that Benny Hints service or revival is about
twenty four hours long. Man, they maybe actually a little
longer because I think it can. It's usually of six
(19:01):
services each about four and a half hours each. Okay,
so we're talking like twenty seven hours of this revival.
And the whole thing is basically stage. You're created or
carried out in a way that you you're getting more
and more excited, more and more jazzed, and and from
the perspective of the believers who are there, the Holy
(19:22):
Spirit is now coming to this place. And you've got
all this, like all the its appearances going on through
holy laughter where people are just ecstatically laughing and they
feel so great, or they're speaking in tongues and they're
writhing on the floor. The Holy Spirit is present in
the building. Right and after everybody is good and worked
(19:42):
up and the Holy Spirit is present, finally Benny Hin
will come onto the stage and the revival really truly begins.
Then then that's when the healing starts. Yeah, but here's
the thing. Like growing up in church, like the Holy
Spirit was in the room every Sunday, but it's just
a different thing with these more um. I guess any
(20:03):
kind of preaching as some kind of a performance um
or sermon is. But like in the nineteen twenties is when,
especially with Amy Simple McPherson, is when these really highly produced,
dramatic stage shows started to kind of take place. I
was I was reading about her. It blows my mind
that she does not have multiple movies made about her. Yeah,
(20:26):
she was extraordinarily interesting and she was based in l
A too. That means we're really surprised there should be. Uh,
I'm trying to think of I would cast who should
I his career? Should I make Jennifer Lawrence would probably
do a pretty good Amy simple McPherson. You think, yeah,
I think so. I think she could carry that. All right, Well,
stay tuned. We'll see if you have the casting powers
(20:48):
as well. What if it turns out to be Hugh
Jackman very brave performance? Um so she Yeah, she really
got things going in the nineteen twenties and she used
everything from props like ships and and trojan horses to motorcycles. Um, Benny, hen,
I mean did you watch did you go into too?
(21:10):
A YouTube rabbit hole? With these things like he will
he's one of the most um physically uh say, charismatic,
but I don't want to confuse it, but in the
true sense of the word charismatic, physically aggressive and charismatic.
And that he's he's running all over the place, He's
using his coat, his jacket. Two, he will wave it
(21:31):
over the crowd and the first twenty rows of people
will fall back into their seats as if blown by
back by the spirit. Um. He will you know, put
his hands on on a guy who will jump up
and kick his feet out and land on his back.
He'll get up and he'll do it again. He'll get
up and he'll do it again. And they have what's
called catchers on stage, these uh, these kind of big
(21:54):
men usually who who catch these people and put them
on the stage, help him back up again, and they're
all a part of the if you've ever seen well,
you never saw Fletch one, right, No? I didn't. Was
there a preacher in Flesh one? No? And Fletch two.
I'm waiting for you like, oh, no, I saw the sequel.
I don't know. I didn't fledged two. That's what the
(22:14):
story was, was what's his face? Arlie Army from Full
Metal Jacket played a faith healer um who was using
I mean, we can go ahead and say it here.
A lot of these people use tricks like earpieces and
there's someone off stage reading them cards that people fill
in and say, Hi, I'm so and so and I
(22:35):
have this ailment. And then they will put in the
earpiece and they will say I'm thinking of someone. Uh,
perhaps their name is James or Jim or Jamie and
they have something wrong with their foot and then all
of a sudden, the guy who filled out that card says, oh,
you're talking about me. Get him on stage, lay the hands,
and by all accounts, these people are so caught up
(22:58):
in this religious hysteri area of the moment and the
drama that sometimes they do faint, right, So this is
that's I'm glad you brought that up, because I think
it's really important to get across. Like, the people who
attend these revivals are true believers and they are caught
up in What they would say is they would describe
all this to the Holy Spirit flowing through them being
(23:20):
at this revival, being you know, the part of the
energy in the air. What skeptics would say is, well,
actually this is all just part of a you know, masssteria,
mass delusion regardless, it's basically two sides of the same coin.
Whether it's divine or whether it's internal. These people are
experiencing fainting. They are they are falling backwards, and to them,
(23:41):
they feel like they're just being lifted right off of
their feet. They are like experiencing this holy laughter or whatever.
They're not they're not faking in in the sense that
you and I would be like, Oh, these these people
are faking. They're participating in something that is happening, that's
connecting them to everybody around them and the people on
(24:02):
stage at the very least in the ones that are
the most legitimate. Well yeah, they're they're either that or
they sometimes they are actual plants. Okay, So so here's
so there's let me give you three examples. Benny Hin,
Peter pop Off in Hobart Freeman. They represent three different
versions of faith healers. Benny Hin, his thing is is,
(24:23):
like you're saying, he runs around on stage and waves
his coat. His thing is he is healing like a
specific disease. At that moment, he'll be like, I can
feel the cancer being healed in this room. And then
after that he'll be like, who's felt that? Whose cancer was?
Just He'll come on up here and somebody will run
up and be like, you just here my cancer. Thanks
(24:44):
a lot, right. He apparently does not use He was
tracked by a documentary filmmaker and investigated pretty thoroughly back
in two thousand. He apparently does not use plants. Um
he apparently did. I don't really know enough about the
guy to know how true his faith is, but it's
(25:04):
it says a lot that he wasn't caught using plants
or any kind of technical assistance whatsoever. People have planted
people there though, that are healthy, like sting operations at
Benny Hin shows. Yeah. Yeah, so that they would plant
it like a whatever, some new show would plant someone
in the audience, have them go up on stage and
said they were healed, and he would tout them as
(25:26):
being healed. And then when he's interviewed and said, hey,
this person was a plant. They weren't even sick, and
he said that she was sick and you healed. And
his response was literally like, well, you know, I'm I'm
just a man like you, and I'm trying to do better,
and I'm always trying to do better. So that's not
an answer. So that's actually a pretty pretty common um investigation.
What they're doing is that's remember how we said like
(25:48):
that the God or the Holy Spirit gives you divine gifts,
and one of those gifts is the gift of knowledge. Well,
what they were doing was challenging the idea that God
was giving them information based on the idea, right, God
wouldn't have given you this bad information That was a lie,
so therefore you don't have this pipeline to God. I
could see Bennie Hin just being like, hey, as happens, right,
(26:12):
He's he's famous for the saying that, uh, the second
category is exposed legitimate, straight up fraud, and that the
poster child of that is Peter pop Off. He was
he was exposed, exposed at the kind of the height
(26:34):
of his earlier career. Yet he still makes a ton
of money today selling holy water water. He don't he
doesn't sell it. If you send a donation and as
a thank you gifts, he'll send you your holy spring water.
Get it right, So, and then people who have gotten
this holy spring water come on and say, right after that,
(26:56):
I got a check from the I R S that
I wasn't expecting and now my house is paid off.
Thank you Peter pop Off. Right, that's what he's doing now.
So he went bankrupt getting caught red handed. The amazing
Randy James Randy exposed Peter pop Off on Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show in front of millions of people. Totally ended
the guy's career right there. He went bankrupt very quickly afterwards,
(27:19):
like he was. They were the ones using the earpiece. Right. Yeah,
So Peter pop Off was getting like you said, basically
the premise of Fletch Too. His wife was going through
prayer cards, saying people's names, saying the details they'd written
down about what diseases they wanted cured and what their
prayers were. And Peter Popoff was being fed this information
(27:39):
through an earpiece. Well, he was pretending that he was
getting this information from God the gift of knowledge and
wowing people seven days a week, six days a week
at his revivals and making a lot of money. James
Randy went to one of his revivals Number one, inserted
a plant in there a couple of times, a few
(27:59):
different plants, so disputed his gift of knowledge. But then
also made a recording of the radio transmission of his
wife and then plays it on the Carson Show. So
ends this guy's career. Um, this is in. By two
thousand five, he was back to making like twenty four
million dollars a year through divine debt relief. How did
(28:22):
people not pick up on that in the audience, I
don't know. I think it's probably all I know how
they pick up on it, And that's part of what
makes this so sad is they are so desperate for health,
good health that they will believe anything. They don't think,
oh my god, this guy just called my name out
(28:44):
of thin air, uh and said all these details that
a weight that I wrote down on an index card
on the way in and handed to somebody Like, they
don't make that connection. So I think that's a pretty
good point. They're either desperate to be he old or
this is like their genuine belief that some guy has
come in and been like, oh, this is what you believe, Well,
(29:06):
let me figure out how to work that into my
into my scam. Either way, it's it's I mean, don't
you you shouldn't. Shouldn't. I'm not saying you are. I'm
talking to you people out on podcast Lane her like
what suckers, what chumps? That's that's not for you to judge.
These these people are are in some cases being very
much preyed upon. Oh yeah, not in all cases, though
(29:30):
there are so so far, We've got Benny Hin, We've
got Peter pop Off. I know it took me forever
to be like that's not a that's not a typographical error.
But I can't tell you how many times I tuned
in to watch Benny Hill. I was like, man, when
am I going to learn? They're both? And then the
third type is um exemplified by a guy named Hobart Freeman.
(29:54):
You would call these people utterly and complete true believers, right,
they are the ones who die because they're walking the walk.
Actually not Hobart Freeman. He died in part of complications
from gang green and his leg that he wouldn't go
get medical treatment from. So he was actually preaching sitting
down and not walking at all. But he died. He
(30:15):
he prayed over his sicknesses, his pneumonia, his gang green,
and his leg. And he had something called faith assembly
I believe in Indiana, and he was preaching that medical
not just you know, come and get your your your
faith healing. But medical interventions are not. It's not it's
a sign of that's that's evil. That's basically a sign
(30:37):
of a lack of faith in God. Yeah. I mean
he was to the point where he was like, don't
even clean my wound, like that's medical treatment, and I
refuse that, yea, And so he died. I'm not quite
sure how old he was the problem is this is
like he's an adult, he can make his own decisions,
especially in the United States, where religious freedom is vehemently protected.
(31:00):
It yea. The problem with him and his Faith Assembly
was that he took like ninety people with him while
he was doing this, including babies who were neglected um
any kind of medical care, children who were um who
died of easily treatable diseases, women who died in childbirth. UM.
(31:21):
Ninety people they decided died and I think between five
and ten years at Faith Assembly who probably otherwise would
have lived had they sought medical treatment as well as
as faith healing. Yeah. And this this is where it
can overlap with Christian science. Um, they don't believe that
(31:41):
medical science is uh. They issue medical science and medical
um assistance right. UM. I guess depending on there may
be a range. I don't know if I'm not. I
don't know any Christian scientists, so I don't know if
some of them are if they're a hardline there's and
other people that are like, no, well we will take
(32:02):
a little medicine for this and that. But ostensibly Christian
scientists don't believe in medical intervention. UH. So there is
some overlap there, but it's uh what they will say
if someone dies, even a child. Is it's either God's
will or in the case of faith healing, if it
doesn't work, they will say that they didn't truly believe
(32:22):
they would have truly They put the vain the blame
back on the sick person and say, if you didn't, uh,
if you didn't get healed by my hand, then that
means you didn't truly believe in that you aren't devout,
which is it's that's one thing if like you're a
true believer faith healer, but if you're a con man,
and that's how you're getting out of it is saying
(32:44):
you don't have enough faith. What a crippling thing to
do to some a person of faith. You know how
despicable is that? Well? I think it was, um Benny
hens Uh was it Benny Hinder pop Off, one of
them's nephew. I read an article by him, and he's
still very much a devout Christian, but he saw the light.
(33:04):
He was a catcher for a while and to catch
the people on stage and he was like, it wasn't
until I met my wife, uh, and she couldn't speak
in tongues and everyone was like, you gotta you can't
marry her. She started opening his eyes too. I guess
the um the other competing Christianity, which says, you don't
speak in tongues, you don't um faith heal and he
(33:27):
has put all that behind him and said that, I
mean he feels guilt now for this lavish lifestyle. I mean,
that's the other part of this prosperity thing is they
believe that God has is blessing them with all these
riches and these Italian villas and the fleet of Mercedes
in the driveway and the helicopter, and that it's all
God's will. But he had a big, big problem with
(33:49):
the fact that they would then in turn blame the
people who didn't get healed because they weren't devout. It's
really sad. Yeah, it is sad. So there's a few
there's a few really bad nag get of outcomes from this.
One is you might die because you aren't going to
seek medical treatment. And even if you're going to a
faith healer and you're not say like a Christian science adherent,
(34:11):
but you you are a true believer in faith healing.
If you go to a faith healer and they're like,
we I just cured your cancer, you might be like, well,
I'm not gonna go spend any more money on co
pays for any follow up stuff. I'll just go home.
I don't like going to the hospital. I hate chemotherapy.
And then if that treatment was keeping you alive or
(34:31):
prolonging your life, um, you might die from because you
believe that the faith healer has healed you. Another one
is that like you're you're losing money. If this stuff
really actually doesn't work, then you're just throwing your money away,
or put a different way, it's being conned out of you.
(34:52):
That's another negative outcome of it. Um. And then yes,
the injuries like Catherine Coleman and the woman with the
spinal cancer whose spine color lapsed. Should we take a break?
I think so? Man, all right, we're gonna take a
break and come back and talk a little bit about
psychic surgery and a bit more on Christian science right
after this. Alright, So psychic surgery is something that we
(35:43):
have not mentioned yet. Uh. This is uh. I guess
it's a kind of faith healing. But um, if you
ever saw or if you know anything about Andy Kaufman,
or saw the movie Man on the Moon with Jim
Carey as Andy Kaufman. You remember the scene where or
if you grew up in the seven and eighties, you
remember seeing this stuff on like sixty Minutes or PBS.
(36:04):
It seems like it was a big thing. Then. Uh,
these psychic surgeons will um use their hands. Um. Most
of the time it's on your like your your belly,
and you'll lay you down with your shirt off, and
it looks like they are reaching into your body with
their hands and pulling out organs or tumors or something, right,
(36:28):
pulling out some sort of fleshy, meaty product. Right. So
what's really going on with psychic surgeons is it is
a complete fraud. They are masters of slight of hand
and they are covering up um. If you've seen the video,
they're always covering up what they're doing with the other hand.
(36:49):
And they have blood packets in their hand, and they
have like chicken gizzards or something tucked away that you
don't see. And it's just a big slight of hand
magic show. And in the Man in the Moon movie,
it was very sad because Andy Kaufman was kind of
at his wits end. I was trying to heal him,
you know, get healed of cancer medically, and he took
a chance traveled to where Philippines was at the Philippines,
(37:14):
and Um, I saw the guy palming the chicken gizzards
knew it was a fake. This is a very sad
moment in his life and in that movie. So I wondered.
I remembered that being the case in that movie too.
But I had read like an account of his experience there,
and from what I could gather, he he left for
(37:35):
the Philippines feeling like the psychic surgery had worked. That
the movie contrived or inserted that part. Yeah, because he
spent I think six weeks over there getting almost daily
psychic surgery, and he apparently improved. He started to gain
some weight as spirits improved, so much so that he
left the Philippines expecting to heal. But when he went
(37:57):
back to the United States, he died pretty quickly after that.
It was pretty sad in the movie at least. Yeah,
it really was, because he starts laughing at like the
whole cosmic joke of the whole thing. Yeah, so, I mean,
what can happen if some of these people maybe he
did feel better. Uh, sometimes people do kick cancer. Um,
and they will say it's because of the either intercessory prayer,
(38:19):
the faith healing or both. Um. What skeptics will say
is no, sometimes people heal from cancer. You know I do.
Here's the thing that chuck. This is where science has
kind of fallen down and allowed faith heeling to continue
on basically unabated. They they don't have in science doesn't
(38:45):
understand why some cancer spontaneously remits. They just don't. They
They know that some types of cancer are more likely
to undergo spontaneous remission. They also suspect that people may
actually developed cancer and their body might overcome it and
they will go their whole lives without realizing that they
(39:06):
ever had cancer at some point, but they don't understand
the mechanisms behind it. Where I feel like science has
fallen down is this misunderstood. Frankly, faith based explanation has
been has been used to replace another faith based explanation,
which is that the Holy Spirit healed these people. They're saying, no,
(39:28):
it's spontaneous remission. Well what is that? Well, we don't
really know, but it's not the Holy Spirit. And I
feel like that's that's just that that doesn't fly at all.
And for people who believe in in faith healing when
they hear spontaneous remission and they ask, well, you know,
how does that work? And science as we don't know,
but just trust us. That's what it is. That's not
(39:49):
going to change anybody's view if you're a true believer
in this kind of thing. Yeah. And it also points
out that some of this could be due to the
placebo effect, which can remember which show, but we've talked
about that before. For sure, we did a placebo effect show.
It was probably that one. Uh. And that's of course
when fake treatments, uh, it seem like they have actual
(40:11):
positive effects for the patient. Um. So some of that
could be this. Some of it could be they have
comfort therefore reduced anxiety, and it has been shown when
you have reduced anxiety and stress, then that can um,
that can help your your case medically. Um. Which is
also actually I think why that first study you talked about,
(40:34):
UM with the bad outcome didn't wasn't one of the
explanations possibly that people it increased their anxiety. Yeah, like
they gave them performance anxiety, Like they didn't want to
let the people who were praying for them down right,
or let God down. So they actually became anxious, which
in turn created negative outcomes or complications from the surgery,
(40:55):
Which is just someone surmising what that could mean, that
outcome could mean. Right again again. So like if if,
if science is taking it upon itself to two challenge
faith healing, I don't think it's doing a very good
job right now because the polace Evo effect that's not
explained very well either. Um, the idea that anxiety can
(41:17):
can lead to negative outcomes. These are things that it's like, yes, science,
you're on the right track. Keep going. Don't just stop there.
I hope not. I don't think so. But you do
get the impression that if you ask a scientist about
faith healing, they just throw out, well that that holy
spirit thing, that's just mass illusion. There's spontaneous remission of cancer,
(41:37):
so just leave it at that and you get a
little pat on the head. I just don't think that works.
So who knows, Maybe twenty years down the road, when
we understand spontaneous remission, we can say no, you were
not healed. This is what your body did. I think
in that case, then the people say, well, yeah, God
made my body do that through the faith healer. I
don't think it's ever going to end well. Yeah, and
(41:59):
there's also the ace that um, the Peter pop Offs
of the world selling are sorry, not selling taking donations
for Holy spring water. Um. At one point I think
he was a an actual company. And then of course
the government starts poking around the books and fraud claims,
and then he re registers as a as a religious
(42:20):
group and their religious protections in this country and exemptions
from the i r S such that they can get
away with some of the stuff. They don't have to
show their books. It's tricky. Speaking of laws as well
to um the the there are laws on the books
that protect religious groups and I think like nine states
(42:41):
from criminal negligent manslaughter, homicide charges for withholding um, withholding
medical care from children. Yeah. It's weirdly. Just came up
today actually in real time as we record today in
the news. Did you see that in Idaho? I didn't.
(43:02):
The article is called an Idaho and Idaho medical care
exemptions for faith healing come under fire. Uh. And this
was breaking news like three hours ago. Uh. There's a
cemetery in Boise called Peaceful Valley Cemetery, six hundred grave
sites and nearly a third of them are children. And
while it's impossible to tell how many UM died because
(43:24):
of UM negligent parents, uh, they think that a great
many of them did. They've tried together corner reports, autopsy reports,
UM advocates have tried to do this, uh, but basically, UH,
they estimate that a hundred and eighty three Idaho children
have died since the nineteen seventies because of parents withholding
(43:47):
medical treatment. And I think they lead the nation in UM, yes,
as more children die of faith based medical neglect in
Idaho than any other state. And so they had a
rally I think today where they had UM hundred and
eighty three child's eyes caskets delivered I think to the
(44:08):
capital steps and Boise, and they're calling on reform and saying,
you know, you can't do this anymore. Like I know
that parents like these children's can't advocate children's. These children
can't advocate for themselves, so it's up to the parents
to make sure that they get medical treatment if they
(44:29):
need it. And and again though these parents will literally
watch their kid die and say it was God's will right,
And I mean like this, this country was founded on
religious liberty, so there's just such a sticky situation where
it's like, like, we have the technology to save your
child and you're not letting us do it. And in Idaho,
(44:50):
like you said, is the state that leads that. Other
states don't have anything like that any and haven't for
a long time. Some have loopholes that allow that, but
say like, if if this happens to multiple children of yours,
like your you've let more than one kid die as
God's will, We're gonna actually come after you. And then
(45:11):
other states, I think, like Florida and I can't remember
the other state basically say yes, we're you're you're we're
not going to criminally charge parents who withhold medical care,
but the court can still come in and be like, uh, sorry,
t Ys, your kid is getting this life saving medical
care whether you like it or not. Well, apparently everything
changed in nineteen seventy four. That was um the Federal
(45:33):
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and at the time,
the Department of HHS interpreted that to say that states
must implement faith healing exclusions, and so in order to
get uh federal funding, a lot of the states passed
these faith healing exemptions so they could get funding, and
later on the Department said, you know what we were
(45:54):
send that interpretation. That's not what we meant. But it
was too late at that point. Yeah, And and I
think it was two thousand three was when they finally
rescinded it. But and so all of these these exemptions
are relics from two thousand three at the latest, I
think of the nineties, a lot of them were removed
to So I have a feeling that's not gonna be
(46:14):
around for much longer. They'll probably be like one state
that's like the holdout state, and I'll be surprised if
it's not Idaho. But I don't think there's gonna be
too many states with it around ten years from now
or five years from now. I watched a lot of
YouTube today, by the way, Yeah, yeah, I used to
We used to watch. We used to watch in college.
(46:35):
We would go to my friend Clay's house and he
had VHS tapes of faith Healers and uh Peter pop
Off for sure. And then although he wouldn't have Faith Healer,
did you ever watch uh Robert Tilton? No, the name
sounds familiar. You've probably seen the fart compilation. He was
a televangelist in the eighties. He's still around, I think,
(46:57):
but I think he might have been one of us
went broken then cut rich again. But he was a
televangelis in the eighties that had this great, great show,
um something power. I can't remember what it was called.
But no, we're talking about I know exactly what you mean.
(47:18):
You'd probably recognize this guy. But Clay had a bunch
of these dubbed and we would we would sit around
late at night and watch Bob Tilton speaking tongues and
stuff on his show. And he was I watched his
bunch today. It took a stroll dumb memory lane. Yeah,
it's really funny to watch Bob Tilton, I will say, so,
what do you mean the fart accomplishing as he fared
a lot as well. No, years later someone did a
He would make all these funny faces and herkey dierky movements,
(47:41):
and of course someone later on dubbed in farts every
time he closed his eyes real tight or made a
funny move, And it's that's funny to watch. But it's
also funny just to watch Bob Tilton because he is
like it's entertainment. It was hysterical but you know, people
would write him big X and go broke and not
(48:01):
be able to pay their mortgages because they're sending him
money because they His whole deal was the prosperity thing,
like you you will get rich if you if you
send your money, it will come back tenfold. That kind
of deal. Yeah, we definitely have to do an episode
just on that. Back in the day, real quick, did
you um, did you ever watch Cartoon Network when Adult
(48:22):
Swim was just like an hour long block at night? Yeah? Sometimes,
so there was like Space Ghost Coast to Coast was
like I think their first show. Yeah, our friend Dave
Wallis was one of the creators right before Space Goest
Coast to Coast. They kind of dipped their toe in
it where they would run old Space Ghost um cartoons
(48:43):
just normal, but they would dub in like inappropriate laugh tracks,
and it made it like one of the most bizarrely
funny things you've ever seen. Like somebody would just deliver
a line that was maybe mildly like like n S
Space Ghost costoon fun, but then like the crowd in
this the studio audience would just start laughing. It was.
(49:05):
It was great stuff. Well, I just love that I'm
like almost forty seven years old, and I have put
myself out there in public as a learned, researched man,
and there's nothing funnier to me than uh, Bob Tilton
part compilation. Nice. Hey, what's funny? It is funny? That's right. Well,
if you want to know more about faith heeling, Um,
(49:26):
I don't know, like, go on to YouTube, maybe goes
check one out yourself. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? Uh?
And since I said who knows what will happen, it's
time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this using us
in the classroom. We've got a few of these lately,
which always makes us happy. Hey, guys, big fan recently
saw you in San Francisco. It's sketch Fest and it
(49:47):
was even better than what I've been hoping for. Uh.
And by the way, I want to point out to people,
when you come see us live, it is better than this. Yeah,
you get a free dumb dumb sucker just for coming. Well,
they're funnier, they're more fun, they're funnier shows. Uh. You
get to hear say dirty words here and there. Um,
we drink a hundred percent more than we do in
(50:07):
the studio. That's true. Anyway, he went to to San Francisco.
Reason I'm writing is that I'm an eighth grade English teacher.
My class has been reading about Harriet Tubman for the
past few weeks. This morning, I woke up and saw
that you release an episode about her. I knew what
it was meant to be. It's part of my lesson plan.
It was a bit nervous with my morning class because
I hadn't listened to the episode yet, wondering if you
(50:28):
might go off on some weird tangent that my students
would be confused by. But you did an incredible job.
I feel like that one was pretty tangent free. It
really was we we Yeah, we stuck to the story.
We were both a little awe struck. That's right. Despite
all the distractions inherent and being a teenager, my students
were absorbed and entertained by your explanation of this amazing
person's life and our contributions to America. Today was many
(50:53):
of my students first time listening to a podcast, and
I'm so happy I was able to introduce them to
Josh and Chuckla And that is President Rob Carter so,
Mr Rob Carter's Class, I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I
hope you started listening to our show regularly. You guys
and gals are the best. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mr
Carter and Mr Carter's Class. Did you call him President
(51:15):
Rob Carter? No, I'm almost positive you said that was
President Rob Carter. Really. Yeah, you just elected that gout
of high office, so that would be a weird thing
to say. You're welcome, President Carter. I just got a
a gift of an edible arrangement from Hugh Jackman. Yeah,
so maybe he'll get this guy like your president. He
(51:36):
can't wait for that. Amy simple McPherson role. I looked
at her picture. I know you saw me over here.
She I would go with Amy Adams. She do good. Sure.
I think just about any actress working today, any of
the big names, would do a pretty good job with it.
There's some some pretty good actresses working today. Well, you
know what, your your future is not in casting. You
(51:59):
don't think so who shouldn't be, Josh, You do not
think any of the anyone it should be pretty good, right,
just you know, throw a dart. They're all talented. They
are all talented. Who was the one in um La
La Land. Oh wow, I want to say Emma Blunt,
but that's not Emma Blunt. Emma Stone, Emma Stone. Emily
(52:19):
Blunt was in Cicaro, right, Yes, and then Amy Adams
was in a Arrival. Yes, Yes, she'd probably be pretty
good at it too, But I still go with Jennifer Lawrence.
Sounds like my dad. I feel like your dad right now? Hey, Well,
at any rate, listen this episode? Shall we Yes? If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
(52:40):
tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or
Josh onm Clark. You can hang out with us on
Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or slash
stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(53:02):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
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