What is "Laying On Hands"?

In the ancient days, when medicine and spirituality were inseparable, people often used rituals and invocations to elicit help from divine sources. This practice continues today, through a number of techniques collectively known as faith healing. But what is it, exactly? How does it work? Could mere physical touch from the right person heal otherwise incurable medical conditions? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into fact and fiction of faith healing.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul mission Controled decade. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Crucial disclaimer for this episode. Nothing
we talk about and today's show is medical advice and

(00:49):
it should not be mistaken for such. Could it be
mistaken a spiritual advice? Are we Maybe we should disclaim
that too. That's that's all in the eye of the beholder,
I suppose, right true. Yeah, the stance of this show
has always been that your spirituality is your own, so
we would never dispense spiritual advice either. But to the

(01:09):
point about medical advice, the reason we're saying this at
the top of the show is that at some point
in every single person's life, no matter who you are,
your health becomes your number one priority. Princes, princesses and
paupers alike and When people are beset by chronic, debilitating,
or terminal conditions, we often turn to any possible avenue

(01:32):
in search of a cure. In the US, the health
care system also forces many many residents to seek out
alternative medicine, simply due to the fact that traditional medical
care can be enormously expensive, and for other people, the
alternative care route is already seen as somehow more reliable

(01:53):
or at the very least less dangerous than established medical practice.
One of the oldest, most common forms of early medicine
comes from the ancient days of religion and what we
today call science and ritual and procedure, back when all
these things were lumped into a single entity, when medicine,

(02:14):
such as it was, was less a matter of science
and more a matter of faith. So today's question, what
is faith healing? What is the laying on of hands?
Here are the facts. Yeah, I mean, you know, the
laying on of hands beyond the notion of you know,
I think the image that a lot of us conjure
when we hear the term faith healing of somebody in

(02:36):
a position of leadership and a church taking their hands
and laying them on someone and healing the sick or
the idea of you know, Jesus laying his hands on
Lazarus and curing him of his leprosy, or or what
have you, you know, restoring sight to the blind and
the like. But laying on of hands is a lot
more than that. I mean, it's it's in in the

(02:56):
Christian tradition. It is a form of trans mithting blessings
and sort of um being a conduit for God's message
or God's kind of power. I guess, depending on who
you talk to. But it is something that is in
the Bible and is a very basic tenet of the
Christian faith. It's one that people often overlook. UM. So

(03:20):
what is the laying on of hands um? In the
genre of faith healing uh, that term being an umbrella
term for kind of rituals and practices meant to create
some sort of divine or supernatural result uh In like
I said, healing someone's physical, psychological, or spiritual malady. UM.
Some other examples can include things like visiting a shrine

(03:43):
in other faiths or religious sites, some sort of pilgrimage UM,
doing a group prayer, channeling this kind of spiritual energy
in a group UM, incantations, contact with an artifact, a
sacred relic and so on. UM. And again this is
is beyond the Christian faith. I mean, that's the term
they use. But it's been around for thousands and thousands

(04:05):
of years, right absolutely. UM. It's been used in organized religion,
and I guess more traditional UM religions that go like
as you said, far beyond the concept of laying on
hands or some kind of spiritual interaction that is manifested
through a physical touch. It doesn't necessarily mean healing, or

(04:29):
it isn't always restricted to healing. There there are some
other things that that action has been used for. For instance,
in Judaism, the semicaw is an action of ordination that's
some UM it's not necessarily like physical healing, but some
type of blessing that can be bestowed upon somebody. UM.

(04:51):
It can confer like that blessing from one to another
or even the authority of that one person holds to
give it to another. UM. It's pretty pretty interesting stuff.
You can find references to this in numbers twenty seven,
fifteen through twenty three. And in this story from the Bible,
Moses like gives his power essentially to Joshua through this action. UH.

(05:15):
It's pretty interesting. Oh, it's all another verse in numbers
eleven sixteen through um Moses then has a group of
seventy elders around him and through this action again I'm
I'm probably pronouncing it incorrectly, but simca, he he ordains
them with his powers, but he does not heal them.

(05:35):
To your point, right, this is this is a conference
of authority. And although you know, the one of the
most important myths to bust here is that conflation of
faith healing with Christianity. Uh, it occurs in Christianity, but
that doesn't make it Christianity in any way special. Because

(05:56):
of our association with Christianity in the West, our most
apparent examples of faith healing come from that spiritual system.
So various Christian denominations have practiced laying on hands both
as an act of faith healing and also, to your point, Matt,
as an act of conferring some sort of authority ordaining someone.

(06:21):
In multiple New Testament passages, laying on of hands is
depicted as just that, an act of ordainment, and in
Pentecostal churches, especially in recent years or in recent eras,
this act accompanied by prayer is considered a crucial component
of faith healing. You'll also see that it's not uncommon

(06:42):
in charismatic churches often associated with a single individual, mortal
personality who has some sort of distinct, unique connection to
the divine again, whatever that divinity may be. Yeah, and
and it certainly takes on kind of theatrical quality, you know,
when you are this very charismatic individual that's you know,

(07:05):
bringing someone up onto the stage to perhaps cure them
of some mality. Uh and and you know, witnessed by
your congregation, and it creates this kind of fervor and
kind of works people up into you know, a frenzy oftentimes.
So so it is sort of used in that way,
especially in modern day, but you know, we we see
it all the time in history. And like these kind

(07:26):
of big tent revival kind of church services that would
do just this, and it would be a matter of like,
you know, an individual, a single kind of leader, having
this very specific ability that was believed in by a congregation.
And perhaps there were skeptics on the fringes are on
the outside of that group, but the folks that actually

(07:46):
follow this individual around would have believed that what they
were seeing was the work of God. Being done are
kind of funneled through this one person. Yeah, and we
see this in cultures across the world to cross the
timeline of human history. For instance, it's present in some
form in the Navajo spiritual system. But and this might

(08:10):
surprise people, it's one of my favorite things about this.
It was also a secular power for a very long
time back when uh the notion of the right to
rule was also tied up with the notion of religion.
For centuries, French and English monarchs would practice something called
the royal touch. The royal touch is what it sounds like.

(08:32):
They would deign to touch their subjects, and this would
be perceived as a means of treating a disease. They
started out with any old condition that caught their eye,
just like a celebrity on Twitter. If you're a peasant
and you have a condition and you catch the king
or the queen on a good day, then they may
lay hands on you. They may royally touch you, and

(08:55):
you know your chances are being cured, it would assume
would rise. However, from about the sixteenth century on, these
monarchs began to focus on specific ailment scruffula, which was
also at the time known as the King's Evil. Oh
I love that name. Well, I mean, it's it's another

(09:15):
example of the power of belief. I mean because a
lot of these monarchs, you know, they operate under this
principle that their power came from God, you know, and
so therefore they were like the hand and the voice
and the you know, mandate of God on earth. And
a lot of their subjects believed that too. So Scruffula, scruffula,

(09:36):
what be them? The scruff or the King's Evil? Well, uh,
it's pretty pretty cool to look into it, because it's
actually a really early version of perhaps marketing. Hey, Edward
Bernes wasn't involved at this time. You know. I'm so
glad that you said that, Matt, and a little piece

(09:58):
of me hopes that burn As was at least aware
of this brilliant con and I'll call it a con.
This may be a controversial episode, Uh shoot me. Yeah,
So you're right. They focused on this specific thing, this
specific condition it's dressed up name when it goes to
fancy parties is tuberculosis cervical lymphidnyitis. The King's Evil. As

(10:24):
we said, the thing about this condition tuberculosis, cervical lymphidniitis.
If you want to search it to your heart's content
is that you'll find it rarely leads to death, and
it often, even back then, would go into remissions seemingly
on its own. So, and this is very important. Later
the Royal Touch appeared to cure the condition. Unlike paralysis

(10:48):
or blindness, conditions that could be easily discerned just for
making us someone uh, this was something that you know,
the person who is suffering from the affliction would be
the was aware of. And that's why the Royal Touch
looked like it worked, or just as importantly, it looked
like it didn't fail. But like, is this are these

(11:09):
uh symptoms that were so pronounced that it could be
super clear They're like ha ha, and your symptoms have
now left you entirely or was this so thought all
that well? Wake it worked eventually, you know what I mean?
Like did there need to be a big aha moment
or it was it like okay, now go home and
get some rest and call me in the morning kind
of situation. It seems a little more like that. And

(11:31):
then they would report back, I'm cured, And then the
King's Touch was smashing success or thought of as infallible.
Is that kind of the shape of it been. The
big physical indication. The most apparent physical symptom is swelling
of one or more length notes. So you was swelling
would go up and then it would gradually go down.
And some people who had pre existing or concurrent unrelated

(11:56):
conditions would also have things like fever, weight loss, fatigue,
night sweats. In other words, a bevy of symptoms that
could come from any number of ailments. So worse comes
to worst if the royal touch, if the King's touch
has not cured someone of the King's evil, they can
always say that they cured that one specific thing, the
King's evil. And what's uh, what's really getting you is

(12:19):
leprosy or not praying hard enough. Yeah, well, let's not
forget too. This was a time of uh, very poor
medical care, so a lot of people were sick a
lot of the time. I would imagine, you know, hey, guys,
I just thought of something outside of the healing, just
to take a quick detour. Here we're talking about the
king's touch or the queen's touch, or the physical act

(12:43):
of someone in royalty touching another person, connecting that to ordainment.
I was thinking about being knighted or you know, taking
up something like that where you're using a physical thing
a sword in a lot of cases, some kind of
weapon to touch another to then send the hours that
you already have into that other person, yea, and symbolically

(13:05):
show that you are the difference between their life and
their death. Not for nothing is it a sword, right, right?
So so the weird thing is this sounds like an
historical footnote, right, one of those other kind of obscure
things that are fun to hear about. The last known
example of the royal touch occurred as recently as eighteen

(13:25):
five at the coordination of the French King Charles the tenth.
And then after that, these superpowers of monarchy sort of
fade away. And it's good to know that they faded
away if you're a fan of medicine, but if you're
a fan of folklore, it's a little bitter sweet to
see them go. You know, they went the way of
the Dodo, along with other royal superpowers, like the ability

(13:46):
to craft magical curative objects, or of course the ability
to exercise demons, because you see, science becomes the new
kid in town. Well yeah, but even like things like
we've talked about previously like unicorn horns being ground up
or what they thought were unicorn horns which are actually
like Norwald tusks that were traded by the Vikings. Um,

(14:07):
that was something that even the royals believed in, you know,
pretty uh, pretty heavily, and they would have like scepters
may out of these things and these is like magical objects.
Which is interesting to me because if if, if there
was this emphasis on the royal touch being so powerful,
how come they couldn't use it on themselves. It's a
good question. That was probably the the moment in court

(14:29):
where a philosopher got kicked out. They don't we don't
want to hear that. We don't want to hear any
of that, and exactly. But then thankfully science did sort
of supplant a lot of this, uh a lot of
this stuff. Uh So, what what does science have to
say about the this whole concept of you know, imparting
the power or healing to others just through physical touch. Well,

(14:54):
I mean, the scientific community in the modern day, largely
fast majority lee dismisses faith healing as being a thing.
They say that it's pseudoscience. Um, I mean, I mean,
that's just kind of the stance. Right, that's the way
it's going to be, and in the way the way

(15:14):
it has been for quite a long time. But there
are many others in the world, from true believers to
people who are even more skeptical. Um. They do, they
do object to this concept of it being complete pseudoscience.
There there are people, I would say, kind of like me,
I don't want to put myself to deep into this

(15:34):
camp early on in this episode, who think there might
be something to it, to that physical physical connection of
cells atoms together that could do something right um. And
people who are who believe this a little more, they
argue that faith healing should be viewed viewed as a
spiritual practice in itself, and that is it. It is

(15:56):
a spiritual practice, right um. And the concept of using
faith faith healing or believing in faith healing or accepting
faith healing has nothing to do with science and scientific claims.
It should be treated as a matter of faith, and
that's that's it. Period. But but it's no surprise that
this practice is still really popular and there are things

(16:19):
that have grown out of it, um. Different kinds of faith,
different kinds of touching or almost touching, and thinking about
raiki where there's almost touching. Um, it's the same kind
of physical act without the physical touch or or think
about this, I'm a tell evangelist. Put your hand against

(16:41):
the screen will be healed for folks watching the video there, Man,
I felt it hard, ben or but but but the
flip side of this is like, if if you can
heal somebody like this, can you also harm somebody like this?
Could you? Could I manifest like cancer into you my

(17:02):
mi an enemy or at the very least, I mean,
isn't this sort of like a reverse curse almost? I
don't want to derail us too much, but it does.
It feels like there ought to be a flip side.
If you believe in the one, shouldn't you believe in
the other? You know, the left hand path? Yeah, Yeah,
it's a it's a it's another episode of one we
should do. I think that's a fantastic idea. Actually, I'm

(17:23):
gonna write that down. Yeah, if one exists, then the
other would have to write. Well, that's what Uh, that's
what our various philosophical schools tell us. Uh. And that
makes that future episode even more chilling for reasons that
will soon become a parent. Yeah, in many parts of
the world. We have to remember even millions and millions

(17:47):
of people have no realistic access to modern medical care,
and overwhelming evidence proves that all things being equal, a
patient will tend to be much better off with a
doctor than with a priest. The vast majority of spiritual
authorities these days, with some notable exceptions, welcome the practice
of modern medicine. They do not see it as conflicting

(18:10):
with their personal beliefs. Please say, religious authorities, go to
a doctor, pray and you know, go to the doctor.
So the question then, is why does faith healing persists?
More importantly, why are so many people convinced that it works?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Has

(18:32):
this ever happened to you? Please heal my grievous wounds? Well,
my son, I want to, but I have so many
other people to heal, and I've only got these two hands.
It's a problem familiar to any work in faith healing.
You've got money rolling in, You've got a line of
desperate people out the front door of the revival of
local megachurch. But how are you to get to everyone's

(18:55):
bank account in time? But can't you just pray from
more hands. Pray to God for more hands. If only
I could, my son, if only I could wiper to God.
When you can thank Many Hands. The newest product from
Illumination Global Unlimited guaranteed the revolutionize the faith healing industry.
Are these gloves with a bunch of other plastic hands

(19:16):
attached to them. That's right, don't overthink it. Just slip
on these convenient vented gloves and let many hands warm skin.
Helping hands instantly quadruple your output and your income. Wow,
it feels like you're touching me with a real hand.
How a patented adjustable distance technology means you can lay
hands on update victims patients at once as long as

(19:36):
they're properly positioned. Amazing, are touching you and you and
you and me, best and me. Do you feel it,
my son? Do you feel the power of the divide?
Hang on to me. Just adjust my glove here. I
feel it all right. I feel something that's good enough
for me and that's good enough for God. Yeah. Us,

(20:00):
but away those tiresome obstacles to spiritual fame and financial success.
With Many Hands, available now at a disreputable house of
worship or department store near You rated eight of eight
simultaneous high fives by faith healing is across the globe.
Note many hands bears no responsibility for lack of actual medicine, dizziness, euphoria, dropsy, cropsy,
itchy palms, microplastic inhalation, the nihilistic dread of swindling the

(20:22):
ill and the dying into prim malfunction with MC diarrhea, earworms, tapeworms, hookworms,
laundry expenses, and any fees associated with court costs or
legal rule leads in any hand is a subsidiary of
Illumination Global Unlimited. Wow, they're back one of our first sponsors. Yeah,
yeah they are, yep, And boy are they helpful given

(20:44):
those products to us that we just need so so badly.
That was such a great ad break. Let's let's take
another one. Here's a word from our sponsors. Here's where
it gets crazy. The answer, but whether or not faith

(21:07):
healing works and laying on hands is not as clear
cut as we might like to think. Science has proven
that physical human contact and yes, in some ways, even
the process of laying hands on people may have genuine
medical benefits. That is a very very bold claim, but

(21:27):
it's maybe not as crazy as it sounds. I actually
have first hand experience with this UM because it appears
that the laying on of hands, the physical touch is crucial,
absolutely crucial to early childhood development. If you're a parent,
you may have experienced this. I certainly did. You've you've
probably had multiple conversations early on after having your child,

(21:51):
before having your child, perhaps UM talking about the importance
of something called skin to skin contact UM. And you know,
there is a lot of misinformation out there that you
can find on the internet and in so many books
about babies. There's so many of those, but it does
seem to be very important, and it appears to be
important at least in our case with with my son

(22:13):
and my wife, where that immediate skin to skin contact
was was very much encouraged by everyone around us and
was told we were told to do this prior to
having the baby. But also it was good for I
would say, for me to have like my child touch
my skin and like the sense and there it's one

(22:34):
of those weird things that feels like it goes beyond science,
but but in reality it does seem to be things
that are very scientific, like like the like the very
animalistic almost like the scent, the touch, the tactile feel,
the warmth, um, the sounds. It's fascinating stuff. Matt. Did

(22:56):
you notice a line item on your hospital bill for
skin to skin contact. Yes, that's a real thing. That's
a real thing they charge you for. Like the act
of it's like it's a service they're providing, but it's
basically just ticking the baby and giving it to you.
Um really quickly though that it's also important for bonding,

(23:18):
you know, Like I mean, we've seen scientific studies with
like animals where that's you know, what was the study
with the wire monkey versus like the actual real mom,
you know, touch it like with with a newborn baby monkey,
Um given contact with this like wire monkey, and then
the ones that actually were able to be you know,
skin to skin nurtured by the real mother and there

(23:40):
was you know, the bond was crucial and that's something
that I think was important with humans as well. It
reminds me of the infamous Romanian orphanage studies that show
there are lasting developmental effects based on the amount of
interaction a very very young human has with an adult.
There's a professor of developmental psychology at St. Francis Xavier

(24:02):
University in Nova Scotia name is and Bigelow, and she
says she agrees with you, Matt, that the science is
there and it's compelling. Uh. And with your point and
all about emotional bonding. It's proven that babies who have
this skin to skin contact do appear to cry less,
they have more RESTful sleep. And additionally, the practice can

(24:25):
benefit the parents. It reduces levels of stress and the
parent the caregiver, it reduces levels of depression, and it
does this by releasing oxytocin. There there is neurochemical science
here and of course that helps with bonding on an
emotional level. You can kind of envision the positive feedback loop.
I feel calmer when I hold my child. My child

(24:48):
also feels calmer because they're picking up you know, my
vibes for a super scientific term, and this works again,
this works with fathers as well. Really clearly, the thing
I was talking about, the experiment I was for saying
was the Harlow monkey experiments, and it wasn't with the
real mother ever. It was one monkey, uh surrogate was
made of wire and provided nourishment, and the other one

(25:11):
was made of soft terry cloth. And felt much more
like a real mother kind of his experience and didn't
provide nourishment, and that was the more important bond than
the one that felt less motherly and and you know, cuddly. Uh.
It proved that that was a more important connection than
even the providing of food. I just want to say

(25:33):
that study is messed up. All of this guy's studies were.
This guy is an awful person. Harlow. Yeah, big, big,
very very bad reputation in the scientific community. I'm imagining
it being done to humans and just what that would
actually look like, and I'm horrified, and now i kind
of want to write something about it. I'm sure it happens,
but maybe without the the near of scientific experimentation. Humans

(25:59):
are so messed up, and there's so many of us,
and we've been around for a pretty long time. So yeah,
one of us did something like that easily. Yeah, well,
speaking of psychologically being messed up or okay, let's talk
about the psychological effects of the stuff. We're talking about

(26:22):
skin to skin connection. Yeah, we know that we know
that there is something that babies can innately sense about
a human caregiver. And this this is part of why
I imagine the Harlow experiment occurs with another primate, right,
because that's something you can get closer and closer to

(26:44):
human comparison with this. This has proven and as you said, Matt,
there there are a plethora of books about this. I
am using the word correctly. I feel like there are
too many. But but we know that reallytionship is real.
That is a situation where laying on hands or skin
to skin contact does matter. And if you are a mother,

(27:07):
shortly after you give birth, you get a couple of
superpowers related directly to this. You'll find that the temperature
of the skin in your chest area is a degree
or too higher than the temperature of the skin across
the rest of your body. This makes a natural kind
of like warming cradling area for the for the your kiddo.

(27:28):
And additionally, your body as a recent mother, can also
thermo regulate the child if the baby's this crazy. If
the baby's temperature rises, yours goes down in response. That's fascinating. Yeah,
but it's also not quite the same thing as laying
hands on someone to heal an injury or condition. To

(27:51):
talk about that, we have to talk about being healed
versus feeling healed. We have to introduce the placebo effect.
Make sure you do and and and again. Like I
always kind of lump these two and together. The placebo
effect is a very measurable, uh metric of the power
of belief, the idea of actually being healed versus feeling

(28:14):
like you're healed, um. And a lot of that has
to do with your belief in the individual that is
imparting this, neither medicine or touch or something bigger, whether
it's some kind of ritual or uh, you know, whatever
it might be, UM, some sort of holistic approach. You know,
there's a lot of power of belief and placebo effect

(28:35):
tied up with some of that kind of stuff too,
And that's lumped into the realm of pseudoscience, like the
idea of colloidal silver or certain you know, um kind
of medicinal herbs or what have you that that maybe
people swear by and they swear that it changes their
entire life when they take witch hazel. But then science
maybe says, well, one of the jury still out on that.

(28:56):
But faith healing operates as the name implies on fay. Thus,
from a scientific perspective, you can't measure faith. Faith is
a very individualistic thing, and it is a very personal thing.
So that makes it a nonstarter scientifically because it's not measurable.
Faith is by nature it's an unexplained dare we say,
kind of magical and ephemeral thing. Uh, that's incomprehensible in

(29:20):
the realms of science, which relies on um scientific measurements
and being able to objectively compare two different things and
the effects, so it can't be weighed, can't be measured.
You can't you know, meet it out in doses like
you can drugs or pharmaceuticals, etcetera. You know, it's just
a completely different universe, uh, than than science or medicine.

(29:46):
And there's certainly no shortage of individuals who believe they
themselves have been healed or they know someone who has
been healed through faith alone, through the laying of hands,
through the touch of God, or someone you know man
festing God's power through them. And I mean, that's it's amazing,
and it's actually really cool to read a lot of

(30:08):
these stories. Um, it's a hopeful thing to go down
that pathway, but those personal anecdotes don't add up to
real evidence, at least scientific evidence, unfortunately, And it's not
going to satisfy those listening right now who are more skeptical. Yeah,

(30:28):
and that doesn't mean that anyone is automatically wrong. That
means that we have to do our due diligence and
investigate it. Right, So faith healing when it appears to work,
they're very compelling cases where it appears that something happened.
When this appears to work, it may be one of
the earliest examples in humanity of what we call the

(30:50):
placebo effect. Record scratch. Some of us listening today may
think that calling something the placebo effect is the same
thing as is missing it. But this could not be
further from the truth. And Paul edit me. Here here
is the crazy part. Placebos are proven to work in

(31:10):
about thirty percent of patients. You can find more research
on this sided in how self Works article How the
placebo effect works. This means that the simple act of
taking something on a doctor's recommendation is more similar to
taking the advice of a religious figure than we may
want to think. In the modern day, you get a

(31:34):
sense of well being, you get what's called subjective verification,
and some research indicates that the placebo effect may indeed
go beyond the psychological realm inducing or inciting a physiological response.
It's it's super crazy. And and just just to double
back to what I brought up earlier, the idea of

(31:55):
like what's the opposite of faith heiling? And this is
for another episode. I just wanted to point out placebo
effect does have an opposite and it's called the no
sebo effect, and that is a detrimental result of an
inert substance based on belief. So you know what I mean.
I mean, I really think that those things do go
hand in hand with this, and I'd love to explore

(32:17):
that in conjunction with the idea of a curse or
imparting some kind of malady or negative effect to to
somebody you know, through touch or psych you know, or suggestion. Right,
So there are there are multiple studies that confirm the
efficacy of the placebo effect. And I do want to

(32:40):
mention just for the Latin Nerds, placebo is Latin for
I will please. So a major doctor is just like
convinced that you will feel better even if they don't
believe you have a real condition if they give you
sugar pills. That's the one of the common examples but
a study conducted by researchers at the u c l
A Neuropsychiatric Institute in two thousand and two gave two

(33:04):
different groups of patients experimental antidepressants, and they gave a
third group a placebo, And after several weeks of taking
these pills, the real ones and the placebo version, each
group's brain activity was measured using e e g. S.
The patients who have been on the placebo and also
reported a positive effect, I feel less depressed. In other words,

(33:27):
they showed a greater increase of brain activity than the
people who had responded well to the actual drug. The
activity also recurred in the prefrontal cortex. That's important because
it suggests to us that the brain isn't necessarily being
fooled by a placebo after all. Instead, it's responding to
this placebo in a different way than it would respond

(33:50):
to an actual drug. Mm or maybe that drug was
just garbage, an antidepressant was just a depressant. Maybe it would,
but then you can you can see that, you know,
there's some other excellent research at two thousand four study
at the University of Michigan that shows placebo effect has

(34:13):
some relationship with endorphins your brains natural pain relievers. And
so when you see when you do brain scans or
when they did in the study, and you see someone
given a placebo, then what you'll see is that their
brain activity will change, particularly in their opioid receptors which

(34:34):
receive endorphins, and in in there will also be activity
in areas relating to processing and responding to pain. It
is then scientifically proven that the mere expectation of pain
relief caused the brain's pain relief system to activate, and
that means it works. And and that also means that

(34:57):
the important part of why it works hinges on our perception.
The nature of the placebo doesn't matter, you know what
I mean. There is no curative spoon to bastardize the
matrix so long as the patient has some sort of
faith in the individual administering the treatment, or more importantly,
in the process of receiving the treatment, than a pill

(35:20):
is the same as a palm. So we have a
scientific case for how this process could in some instances
work at could function. But when we talk about faith healing,
we also have to address a darker, more controversial, more
disturbing aspect of the practice, which will do after word

(35:43):
from our sponsors, We've returned, and as we continue delving down,
we're reaching the rotten route of the controversy surrounding faith healing.
Make no mistake, this involves real life conspiracy, not theories,

(36:07):
no guesses or speculation, proven conspiracies that are both dangerous
and ongoing, perhaps in an area in your you. Sadly,
one of the most common insidious conspiracy surrounding faith healing
involves con artists, by which we mean people who know
they cannot cure cancer through the power of their physical

(36:28):
touch or connection with the divine, but will gladly pretend
to cure anything you want so long as the price
is right. Yeah, it's very true. You may remember from
a previous episode we did on Televangelists. There's there's quite
a bit of crossover in this episode and in that episode.
And you know, one person that I don't think we

(36:51):
mentioned in that episode. Guys, correct me if I'm wrong,
is someone known as mar Joe. We did not. I
went back and checked. Yeah, okay, cool, so mar Joe.
The name, by the way, is Mary and Joseph Portmanteaus
shoved together there and it's not really portmantead, but it's
shoved together. At least um Marjo is the name of

(37:14):
a boy, or at the time, a very young boy.
I believe he was four years old when he got
his start as a preacher. At least that's when he
got his start, when his parents began putting him in
front in front of executives in media and other industry, saying, hey,
let me introduce Let me introduce you to our son

(37:35):
mar Joe, and he would go in and recite passages
from the Bible. He began preaching I think at the
age six. Maybe he was even younger than that when
he was out giving sermons to enraptured audiences hanging onto
his every word. By the way, it's mar Joe Gordner.
That's the person's name. And there is a documentary that

(37:59):
you can check out. The one that I was able
to actually find was titled The Story of mar Joe.
I was able to find that on Vimeo. If you're
interested in checking it out. It's about an hour and
a half hour twenty something and it goes over the
entire life story of this child who grew up doing
this um pretty much forced by his family. I mean

(38:23):
anytime your child, as young as he was at the time,
your guardian or your family is going to have a
lot of say in what you do and do not do.
And in this case, it was his family that pressured
him to continue doing things like this. I think he married.
I know he started marrying people around the age of five,
four or five, Like he was he was officiating sermons um.

(38:46):
But it it it continued and continued in I would say,
an evolution of a snowball that was rolling down a
hill that was pushed by his parents. By the end
or towards the middle, he was laying hands on people
like huge, huge, essentially tents, you know, tent style revivals

(39:08):
where they're just hundreds and hundreds of people, and he
would go around and touch people where people would look
like they're having a seizure, and at least the televised
or the recorded versions of it where people would claim
to be healed by him, where he and his parents
were making those kinds of claims. And here's the problem.
He came forward a little bit later in his life

(39:30):
and essentially rejected everything that he had done because he
felt very bad. Least according to what I've read that
all of this stuff was a sham and it was
a show that they were putting on and people were
getting you know. Essentially, he said that people were getting
hurt and he felt terrible about it. Um. Anyway, there

(39:51):
there's more we could talk about. It might even be
a whole episode, but fascinating stuff. It's one example of
how this can go wrong, how the concept of faith
healing can be used by someone or a group of
people to just get money from others. Mm hmmm. And
then we have other examples such as stage acts like

(40:13):
Peter pop Off spelt like its Sounds, who claimed to
get messages from the divine. This is unfortunately a common grift. Uh.
He was actually getting information from his wife and co
conspirator who was sending it to him via a pretty
modest headpiece, and they would collect this information when people
wrote about their lives on these index cards as they

(40:36):
entered the grift. So there are so also some things
that appear to be cures because the condition itself was
incorrectly diagnosed, so the actual medical condition went away on
its own over time. But now the healer is able
to take credit for the miracle, which which happens a

(40:57):
lot with the unscrupulous. Some deadly serious conditions Furthermore, like
multiple sclerosis or cancer, can go into remission for months
or years at a time for reasons that we don't
fully understand. However, the healer will still be their front
and center to claim responsibility for yet again something that

(41:19):
they didn't do. And should the condition return, the healer
is long gone. You know, maybe they'll performatively, uh, pray
for their victim if it comes up in conversation right
on the way to another grift. And I know maybe
the language I'm using is strong here, but if you

(41:40):
are doing this to people and you know that it
does not work, then you are a terrible person. These
swindlers rely on what's called subjective validation, the idea that
because I feel this is true, it is true, right,
and and my sertitude is is of the higher priority

(42:02):
and value than any objective evidence presented. You know, it
reminds me of what we're talking about at the beginning
of the show, the whole King's evil thing. But if
that came back, I mean, it's the king, you would
never call that into question, right, But it's the same
situation where that particular malady the I can't remember the
long form. But the King's Evil was the kind of

(42:23):
shorthand had a tendency to disappear on its own, or
at the very least some of the symptoms would go
into remission. So this is a much more you know,
specific grift than that even but kind of relying on
the same principle, right, yeah, yeah, And and the process
has been ironed out so that it can work even

(42:45):
if you are royalty. Think about the people are self
selecting right for a hopeful positive outcome. That means they're
pre selected to validate what they're told is happening. Additionally,
unlike a medical appointment, there's not going to be a
follow up. They're not going to check back in on

(43:07):
you after they blow through town. That makes it easier
to sweep victims under the rug. And of course, as
horrific and inhuman as this is, if there is an
obvious failure that you can't you know, sideline, or you
can't sort of negate or diminish, then you, as a
faith healer, have one supermove. You can just imply that

(43:30):
the victim didn't have enough faith or they didn't follow
the procedure you set forth through them, which is extra punishing,
lee awful because these people they all they have is
their belief. They're they're they're they're entering into this agreement
based on their belief. Uh, and then you're taking advantage
of that, and then when it doesn't work, you're calling

(43:52):
their whole like basis for existing into question. Can you
imagine if you believe your cancer was healed by a
faith healer because of the power of God and your
faith in God and this individual, and then it didn't
work and you were told, well, I guess you don't
believe in God enough. Well, there, there's there is that,

(44:13):
and that's off. It's mind boggling. But there's also an
internal logic to um some spirituality, and a lot of
it is based on a belief in destiny or you know,
predetermination or a version of you know, God, whatever entity

(44:35):
has a plan or a map and we are just
following along on this map and this timeline and this
story in our time when it is our time is
our time, right, So if this, if this faith healing
didn't work and the person still passed away, it was
just God's plan or it was when that person was
supposed to go. And it doesn't matter if they were

(44:58):
going to be healed, or if the healing would have worked,
it's what God intended. So I mean there all of
that kind of works with each other to set the
person up that I think we're pretty clearly labeling a
swindler here to win. Yeah, so win win situation. I
would also add to that threat of conversation that the

(45:23):
interesting part of that argument is that it means free
will at the best takes a very far back seat
in the bus of existence, and therefore it would be
useless for us to record this episode. But we have
to do it because we're not choosing to do so.
And the illusion of choices, you know, it's a big

(45:44):
thing in stage magic and all kinds of scams. But
you're right, it's the game is rigged for again these
unethical faith healers, who I would say are not faith
healers because they don't believe in what they're doing. These
people are setting up this when when anything bad that
happens is not the healer's fault. If for some reason

(46:06):
anything good happens, for like due to any variable, then
the con artists can take every bit of the credit.
And then, of course, if they're super good at their job,
they'll make sure to pay a little lip service to
a divine being that they probably don't believe in, just
because that keeps the show going. You know, it's kind

(46:27):
of a k sort of thing. But this isn't to
say that there is not science of play. Patients will
feel better, the endorphins are churning. This leads to the
physiological stuff we outlined earlier. It can be a genuine,
albeit temporary respite, and and I think we have to
just spend a little bit of time on this. We're

(46:49):
being hard on the bad actors here right, We're being
hard on the grifters and the criminals, but we are
by no means saying that all faith healers are bad
or cynical parasites or credit thieves. In fact, many faith
healers are practicing and well good faith. It's true. There

(47:11):
are undoubtedly people out there right now, maybe you listening,
who truly believe that what they're doing is helping someone.
If they are a faith healer, if there're someone who
does lay on hands, no matter what the spirituality and
belief of that person and the people that they're administering
it to um and they believe that or they at

(47:34):
least truly want to believe that because they want to
help somebody, and they have the faith and belief in that,
you know, and their abilities and the abilities of whatever
deity to apply that. So, you know, given given what
we know about the policeitebo effect, what we've discussed on
this episode and previous ones, depending on the perception of

(47:58):
the person that the faith healing is being administered to
the patient, it seems like this practice laying on hands
could actually genuinely provably trigger those positive psychological changes in
that person. And again that's why I bring up something
like raiky where even if it's over a camera, someone

(48:22):
like pulling your energy out right, having that time and
the belief that it's working, it could do something to
your brain. Well, it could thirty percent at a time,
right or more. In general, though, I mean, like with
this whole quarantine situation, I think people are almost downplaying

(48:42):
the mental health aspects of of what this is doing
to people not having human touch, the ones that are
so paranoid about getting sick because maybe they have autoimmune
uh issues or what have you, or they're older. Uh.
It's it's really difficult to overstay how important human contact
and human touch is for just human beings in general.

(49:05):
We're not designed to be isolated in this way. And
and who knows if just the power of having someone
physically touch you in a way that has a meaning
imparted behind it, right, that is powerful in and of itself,
And and and it's enough to turn some screws in
your in your brain, that could then turn some screws

(49:26):
in your body. And maybe it's not actually curing the thing,
but it's sure as hell can make you feel better. Um.
You know, there's even this idea of self soothing where
if you're going through anxiety, or if you're experiencing physiological
responses to anxiety, you can just touch hold yourself, you know,
like literally give yourself a hug or or stroke your
arm if there's no one else around. And that's got

(49:48):
proven uh positive qualities as well. Um, no substitute for
having somebody else do it though, right, So, I don't know.
I think a lot of this is really wrapped up
in that how the power of the power of human interaction,
I think is at the core of all of this.
And we know that regardless of whether or not you
consider yourself a skeptic, there is at least evidence, we've

(50:11):
at least built a case of how this stuff called
faith healing could impart psychological and physiological changes. It can
alleviate pain. Faith healing has a clear scientific path to
do that, but we have to remember alleviating a pain
is not the same thing as curing and ailment. And many,

(50:35):
many people who are with the with full sincerity practicing
as faith healers have are you know, they're not trying
to rip people off, They're not trying to harm people. Uh.
They may in many cases be saying, hey, let's go
through this process together, and also let's do that in

(50:55):
addition to traditional medical care, you know what I mean.
These things aren't always at logger heads, even though that
would make for uh, you know, a more sensationalistic story.
A lot of these faith healers, again not the con artists,
the people who really believe in what they're doing. They
will say that they are working with powers human beings

(51:16):
do not readily understand, and to a degree that is
absolutely true from everything we know about this process right now. However,
it seems that the power at hand, the prime mover here,
is science rather than something divide. But we can't prove

(51:37):
that it's not something divine. We can just prove that.
Over the course of history, a lot of people have
abused the the concept of having divinity or experiencing divinity
or channeling it. Yeah, I mean I like that point
because we see here the character of humanity writ large.

(51:59):
We see some male valence, right, we see lack of ethics,
but then we also see inspiration. Right. We see people
trying to help each other, which is one of the
most beautiful things this species can do. And we know
that we know, as we always say when we're addressing
matters of faith, we're showing that faith does have a

(52:20):
scientific impact on individually human life like another another thing
would another you know, pin to put in this conspiracy
board is the fact that strong faith in something can
help bolster the human immune system. Your body seems to
know when you believe in something. That's maybe a very

(52:42):
simplistic way to put it, but it holds true. And
we want to hear what you think. Have you where
someone you know experienced firsthand, I'll stop faith that that
that appeared to work, right, And do you believe this
can be explained through something like the placebo effect or

(53:02):
to your earlier point Noll, the power we feel, the
way our bodies and our hormones and our intecrine systems
respond to human contact. What do you think about some
of the research here? Do you think that science maybe
should not attempt to explain faith healing? Should it exist separately? Well?

(53:22):
Like should? Right? Is this something that I don't know? Man,
Like it's one of those things where it's like, aren't
something's better left to the realm of the metaphysical as
opposed to trying to like explain them with science. I
don't know, Like I think some things about religion are
wrapped up in the placebo effect. To me, in general,

(53:43):
they can make you feel better even if quote what
you're quote unquote believing in isn't provable. That's what faith is, right,
So I mean, like, do you do we want science
to explain whether there is there isn't a God? Doesn't
that kind of fly in the face of the whole
concept of faith. That's the whole point of science. If
there is some invisible hand guiding everything, then science is

(54:08):
kind of a buzz kill sometimes, Like, I don't know.
I'm not a religious person. I'm not, but I would
consider myself a spiritual person. And I don't know that
I need science to to put that in a box
for me. You know, I don't know like I should
to hear what listeners? What? What? What? You? What? You?
What you folks think? And it also reminds me of
Arthur C. Clark's famous quote, any sufficiently advanced technology, well

(54:32):
just insert science here, maybe indistinguishable from magic. It also
reminds me for anybody who is interested in the intersection
between technology and the divine. If you have not read
it yet and you have a spare ten minutes sometime
after you listen to this, please check out the Nine
Billion Names of God. It's a short story. I won't
spoil the ending, but it is just chef's kiss, top

(54:55):
notch reading. Uh. And while you're on the internet, Uh,
let snow was something about your take on some of
these questions we post. You can find us all over
the place. Uh, except on a couple of live journal.
It's just they got too popular. They won't answer our emails.
You guys, we got a message about Pinterest. We got

(55:17):
um educated. Are we being shamed being Pinterest? No, it's
very kind actually about Hey, here's exactly what pinterest is
and what you use it for and how I use
it and thanks for writing in on that one, because
I too remember the days when access to Pinterest was
a pretty exclusive thing. There was sort of a digital
velvet roop around it. That's Catherine by the way, Thanks Catherine,

(55:40):
Thank you, Catherine. So you can find us at the
dive bars and uh gin joints of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
Uh you can find us on Facebook and Twitter as
conspiracy Stuff. We're on Instagram as Conspiracy Stuff Show. If
you wish, you can also find us as an individuals
on social media. Um, I am on Instagram at how Now,

(56:01):
Noel Brown, I am at Matt Frederick Underscore iHeart and
special shout out to all the A s m artists
out there, thanks for helping us all get to sleep
easier and comforting us in these lonely times with your
virtual faith healing and reiky sessions that I looked at
for this episode. And of course special thanks to our

(56:23):
fellow listeners who write in every so often to say
love your show. It helps us fall asleep. That's all
my favorites. Yeah, you can find me Twitter at Ben
bolland hs W. What's the h s W? For longtime listeners.
You know. You can also find me on Instagram at
Ben Bolland. But I hate social media, you say, shaking

(56:43):
your fist at the sky. I have no faith that
there's a salve for that. I'm a phone call person.
Well you are in luck. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. Leave us
a message it exactly what you want to say, anything
you want to say, everything you can. You can have

(57:04):
a musical soundtrack, although we probably can't play that in
the background because we wouldn't be able to afford the rights.
Unless you're playing the music and it's your own original
score and you send us a license agreement, it'll get complicated.
Justin's you can just hum it now or or whatever,
play it on the kazoo, or just use your voice.
Whatever you want to do, give us a call. If

(57:25):
you don't want to do that, you can always give
us an old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know

(57:53):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.