Stuff You Should Know - Why Do People Believe In Faith Healing?

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

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? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.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'll happen? Maybe nothing. Who knows? Yeah, that was gross. How so? Lay your hands on me?

Isn't that a Bon Jovi song? No, hold on, who was that? Wasn't that Bon Jovi? No, oh, lay your hands, oh, lay your hands. Thompson Twins, maybe? Jerry, did you hear her? She just said Duff Leppard. No, that's pour some sugar on me.

Good God, what is wrong with you two? Pour some hands on me. No, lay your hands on me. Lay your sugar on me. It's like, I think it's a Thompson 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.

I'm thinking of the Bon Jovi song. I'll bet the Bon Jovi song is dirtier than this song. The Thompson Twins? Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. Thompson Twins were real clean cut. Not Bon Jovi. I ended up weirdly seeing Bon Jovi in concert two times.

I'll bet that was weird. I'll bet you're like, what am I doing here? Well, one time they opened up for 38 Special. How did I get here? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second, I'm sorry. You walk right past that one. Yeah, does that mean you intended to be at the 38 Special concert?

Oh yeah, dude. Okay. Yeah, it was like 12. All right. I went into the Southern Rock scene back then. Okay. And still am to some degree. I still like me some 38 Special.

Okay. And then Bon Jovi opened up. It was before they were, you know, before they were Bon Jovi, 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 person at my high school had bought two tickets and could not get any of the girls at school to go with them. Weird, during the height of Bon Jovi's fame. Yeah. 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 the kind of guy I was back then. These days I would have said buzz off. Are you still friends with this guy? No. Okay. Does he listen to the podcast? Maybe. Well, let's just edit out.

Make me calling him a dog then. I'm sure he grew into a fine specimen. No. Okay. Well, as you know, I can play all of Bon Jovi's Slippery when wet on the Quaker Oat boxes in my air band. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. Yep. Although I never saw him in concert. Well, I gotta say that that second, like I never would have paid to go see them, but it wasn't bad. Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be. I mean, they're pros.

They know what they're doing, you know? Yeah. 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. That Tom Petty song? No, no, no, she's a little Runaway, Bon Jovi's.

Oh, I didn't know that was, I thought that was Thompson Twins. This has been a great opening. Yeah, especially for people who are interested in faith healing and are like, who are these guys? Well, 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 2008 20 minute long How Prayer Healing episode works. Wow. Remember that? Nope. That whole cardiology study about intercessory prayer didn't ring a bell with you at all?

Little bit. That was where it found its purchase originally. Okay. So this is a 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.

One is prayer, right? There's this idea, and it's a pretty widely held idea of 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 you're praying for,

whether it be like that the ants that have taken up residents in their cast go away or that they get over their cancer or that they have a better day than you know they're having, whatever it is. If you step back and look at it, what you're talking about is completely senseless as far as science is concerned.

And it's a form of faith healing. It's saying, I believe that by praying, I can affect something about this person's physical or mental state. That's one form of faith healing. Yeah, and for me, I'm not a religious guy anymore. As people know, but if someone says to me for any reason that they're gonna pray for me,

depending on who it is and the mood I'm in, it can vary from me just sort of call it, like I would never confront someone over that or say, don't do that, I don't believe in that. You don't bare your teeth and hiss at them. But it might in my own brain either be like, whatever. All the way to, you know what, I'll take that. Thank you.

Well, depending on what kind of procedure you're going in for, somebody says that you may want to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, just hold off on that one, okay? Oh, what do you mean? So there was a study. Oh, that. Yeah, there was a study on intercessory prayer. And it was a pretty good study using the scientific method

that cut people up into three different categories. It was 1800 and I think two patients, all receiving the exact same procedure, coronary bypass surgery at six different hospitals and three groups of people who I think like represented Catholics, non-denominational Christians, and I think Carmelite nuns were all approached and asked to pray for these people, these patients.

Did you say caramelized nuns? Carmelite nuns, they're not nearly as delicious. They're regular nuns. So 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 see to feel better. And then they specifically, all of them prayed

specifically for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Those were 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 they divided them up into three groups.

There was a group that did not receive any prayer. There was a group that did receive prayer but were told they may or may not be receiving prayer. Then there was a third group that received prayer and were told that they were receiving prayer. And then when they went back and looked at these 1800 and two patients, they found that the group that received prayer

and knew they were receiving prayer fared worse than both of the other groups. And that actually the group that didn't receive any prayer at all fared the best of the three. So if you're going and getting a cardiac bypass surgery, you may want to say, just don't pray for me this time around, okay? Yeah, and was this a Grabster article?

Yeah. He points out, and 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 an intercessory prayer. And I don't remember if we covered that 10 years ago or not. We did. But it's just, sample sizes are tough.

The measuring of the health outcome is hard because did they live for a week? Did they live for the rest of their, what would have been a long, long life? Right. He mentions the sharpshooter effect, which is there are so many potential outcomes that anyone can group something together

and say, well, we learned this. And then, who's doing 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 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 the friends and family who are actually praying for them and interfering in the study? So there's, people have taken this quite seriously. They've studied it seriously, but 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 problems. So intercessory prayer out of all of the types of faith healing are probably the most investigated through science and scientific studies,

peer-reviewed 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 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 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 probably. Lay evangelical preacher? No, no, no, conceptual walls. Oh, nice, okay. That'd be a good band. That would be kind of like a Thompson Twins cover band. So you said he in the terms of the faith healers and you generally see this more as a man that does this

in my research at least, but there was a woman. There's been a few. In the 60s and 70s, it was very popular named Catherine Coleman, who was a faith healer. And it looks like she should have been on the, on He-Ha or something with her, those just great lacy long dresses that they were in the 60s and 70s. And in 1967, they did a case study.

And again, these are problematic because of sample size, but they studied 23 people that she supposedly healed. And they found out later on that none of them were healed. And in fact, one woman, they do this old trick where they're like, get out of your wheelchair and walk over to me and this woman in a wheelchair had spinal cancer. She threw off her back brace and ran across the stage.

And then they followed up with her. Her spine collapsed the next day and she died four 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 hears the follow-up story that's in that auditorium.

Right, yeah. And a lot of the success stories are anecdotal for sure 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 we come back, 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. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope so. Love you. I love you. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So we promised to, um, to tell you what it was 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, 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 and a service. Sure. Uh, one thing you're going to have in your pocket is some cash money or a checkbook. Or I imagine they probably take credit cards these days, uh, 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 have your, um, your chance to, uh, faint in front of thousands of people. Right.

So usually, um, we'll take, uh, Benny Hinn as an example of what these things can be like. Oh, that guy. So Benny Hinn is a, he's a faith healer. Um, I'm not sure. I believe he's non-denominational, but all of 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 1906 called the Azusa Street revival. Have you heard of that? Yeah. And, and we should point out, you said charismatic, um, Ed is quick to point out that charismatic religion doesn't mean, boy, that, that person up there preaching sure has a lot of charisma. It's actually a form of Christianity that is rooted in, uh, Pentecostalism. Yes. That, that basically means that, uh, they believe that God is in the building that day

and literally can do things 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 very big schism actually in Christianity today between Pentecostalism, which is a form of charismatic Christianity and traditional Christianity. And with Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity, 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 glossolalia, where you suddenly start speaking in tongues. Have we covered that in earnest? I don't think so, man. If not, we definitely should.

We did snake handling, which definitely fits. That was a great one. Charismatic. It definitely does. Yeah. But the basis of charismatic is that God is part of your everyday life and can do things to you, imbue you with divine powers. And one of those divine gifts is called the gift of healing.

Now, not everybody has it, but potentially anybody could have it if, if 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's able to heal through faith, the more somebody is wealthy. I 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 ones who are saved more than

other people. That's charismatic religion. The other side, the traditional religion that you're probably familiar with is like, whoa, whoa, whoa. The scriptures, the Bible, that stuff doesn't talk about any of this. And when 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, God is in scripture

and that's where you, where you find your answers to God, not in, you know, holy laughter or glossolalia 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 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 in every four American Christians is a Pentecostal now. Interesting. I think it's the fastest growing group in America by far. So none of this is new. This all started in the 19th century as far as faith healing goes. People like John Alexander Dowie, people like Rua Hepatipa, Hepatipa? No, I like the second one more. Hepatipa.

I bet Rua likes it more too. Frank Sandford, not Fred Sandford. Right. Vincent Ida Hossa. These are all faith healers who have done everything from said I can heal, like raise people from the dead to I am actually Jesus Christ. So it kind of has run the gamut throughout history. People like Benny Hinn and who's the other guy?

Peter Popoff. Yeah, Peter Popoff are some of the, they've been around for a while too, but they're the newer version of this 19th century huckster. Yeah. When I was starting with the Benny Hinn thing, Benny Hinn service or revival is about 24 hours long. Man. They may be actually a little longer because I think it consists usually of six services

each about four and a half hours each. Okay. So we're talking like 27 hours of this revival and the whole thing is basically stage or created or carried out in a way that you're getting more and more excited, more and more jazzed. And from the perspective of the believers who are there, the Holy Spirit is now coming to this place and you've got all this, like its appearances going on through Holy Laughter where people are just ecstatically laughing and they feel so great or they're speaking

in tongues or they're writhing on the floor. The Holy Spirit is present in the building, right? And after everybody is good and worked up and the Holy Spirit is present, finally Benny Hinn 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, I guess any kind of preaching

is some kind of a performance or sermon is. But like in the 1920s is when, especially with Amy Simple McPherson is when these really highly produced dramatic stage shows started to kind of take place. I was reading about her, it blows my mind that she does not have multiple movies made about her. Oh yeah. She was extraordinarily interesting and she was based in L.A. too. Yeah.

I mean it's a really surprise. There should be, I'm trying to think how I would cast who should I, whose career should I make? Jennifer Lawrence would probably do a pretty good Amy Simple McPherson. Oh, 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. Okay. As well. What if it turns out to be Hugh Jackman? Very brave performance. Yeah. So she, yeah, she really got things going in the 1920s and she used everything from

props like ships and Trojan horses to motorcycles. Benny Hinn, I mean, did you watch, did you go into a YouTube rabbit hole with these things? I've seen Benny Hinn before, yeah. Like he will, he's one of the most physically, I was about to say charismatic, but I don't want to confuse it, but in the true sense of the word charismatic, physically aggressive and charismatic in that he's running all over the place. He's using his coat, his jacket to, he will wave it over the crowd and the first 20 rows of people will fall back into their seats as if blown back by the spirit.

He will, you know, put his hands 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, these kind of big men usually who, who catch these people and put them on the stage, help them back up again. Right. And they're all a part of the, if you've ever seen, well you never saw Fletch 1, right?

No, I didn't. Was there a preacher in Fletch 1? No, in Fletch 2. Oh, okay. I'm waiting for you to be like, oh no, I saw the sequel. I don't, no I didn't. Fletch 2, that's what the story was, was what's his face, Arlie Ermey from Full Metal Jacket played a faith healer 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 have this ailment and then they will put in the earpiece and they will say, I'm thinking of someone, 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 them on stage, lay the hands and by all accounts these people are so caught up in this religious hysteria of the moment and the drama that sometimes they do faint. Right.

So this is, 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 and what they would say is they would describe all this to the Holy Spirit flowing through them being at this revival, being part of the energy and the air. What skeptics would say is, well actually this is all just part of a mass hysteria, 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 falling backwards and to them 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 faking in the sense that you and I would be like, oh, these people are faking. They're participating in something that is happening that's connecting them to everybody around them and the people on stage at the very least in the ones that are the most legitimate. Well, yeah, they're either that or sometimes they are actual plants. Okay, so let me give you three examples. Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff and Hobart Freeman. They represent three different versions of faith healers.

Benny Hinn, his thing is, is 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 who's cancer was just he'll come on up here and somebody will run up and be like, you just healed my cancer. Thanks a lot. Right. He apparently does not use, he was tracked by a documentary filmmaker and investigated

pretty thoroughly back in 2000. He apparently does not use plants. He apparently, I don't really know enough about the guy to know how true his faith is, but it says a lot that he wasn't caught using plants or any kind of technical assistance whatsoever. Well, people have planted people there though that are healthy like sting operations. At Benny Hinn shows? Yeah, yeah.

So 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 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 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 investigation. What they're doing is that's remember how we said like that, that God or the Holy Spirit gives you divine gifts. Right. And one of those gifts is the gift of knowledge. Well, what they were doing was challenging. Yes.

The idea that God was giving them information. Like why didn't they know that? Yeah. They couldn't have given you this bad information that was a lie. So therefore you don't have this pipeline to God. I can see Benny Hinn just being like, Hey, that's happens, right? Yeah. He's famous for the saying that the second category is exposed legitimate straight up

fraud. Right. And that the poster child of that is Peter Popoff. Yeah. So he was exposed, 100% exposed at kind of the height of his earlier career, yet he still makes a ton of money today selling holy water, holy spring water. He doesn't sell it. If you send a donation and as a thank you gift, he'll send you your holy spring water.

Get it right. So, and then people who've gotten this holy spring water come on and say, right after that, I got a check from the IRS that I wasn't expecting and now my house is paid off. Thank you, Peter Popoff. Right? Yeah. That's what he's doing now. So he went bankrupt, getting caught red handed.

The amazing Randy, James Randy exposed Peter Popoff on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Yeah. In front of millions of people, totally ended the guy's career right there. He went bankrupt very quickly afterward. Like they were the ones using the earpiece, right? Yeah. And Peter Popoff 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 through an earpiece while 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 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. This is in 1986, by 2005 he was back to making like $24 million a year through divine debt relief. How do people not pick up on that in the audience? I don't know. I think it's probably a... Well, I know how they pick up on it and that's part of what makes this so sad is they are so desperate for good health that they will believe anything. They don't think, oh my God, this guy just called my name out of thin air and said all

these details that await that I wrote down on an index card on the way in and handed to somebody. Right. Like they don't make that connection. So I think that's a pretty good point. They're either desperate to be healed or this is like their genuine belief that some guy has come in and been like, oh, this is what you believe? Well, let me figure out how to work that into my scam.

Yeah. Either way, you shouldn't... I'm not saying you are, I'm talking to you people out on podcast lane who are like, what suckers? What chumps? That's not for you to judge. These people are in some cases being very much preyed upon. Oh, yeah. Not in all cases though.

So far we've got Benny Hinn, we've got Peter Popoff. Yeah, Benny Hill. I know, it took me forever to be like, that's not a typographical error. Right. But I can't tell you how many times I tuned in to watch Benny Hill and I was like, man, when am I going to learn? They're both very funny shows though. And then the third type is exemplified by a guy named Hobart Freeman.

You would call these people utterly and complete true believers, right? Yeah. The ones who die because they're walking the walk, actually not Hobart Freeman. He died in part of complications from gangrene in 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 prayed over his sicknesses, his pneumonia, his gangrene in his leg.

And he had something called faith assembly, I believe in Indiana. And he was preaching that medical, not just come and get your faith healing, but medical interventions are not, it's a sign of, that's evil. That's basically a sign 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. Right. Like that's medical treatment and I refuse that.

Yeah. 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. The problem with him and his faith assembly was that he took like 90 people with him while he was doing this, including babies who were neglected, any kind of medical care, children who died of easily treatable diseases, women who died in childbirth, 90 people they decided died.

And I think between five and 10 years at faith assembly, who probably otherwise would have lived had they sought medical treatment as well as faith healing. Yeah. And this is where it can overlap with Christian science. They don't believe that medical science is, they issue medical science and medical assistance. Right. 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 there are hardliners and other

people that are like, no, we will take a little medicine for this and that. But ostensibly, Christian scientists don't believe in medical intervention. So there is some overlap there, but it's, 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, they would have truly, they put the blame back on the sick person and say, if you didn't get healed by my hand, then that means you didn't truly believe in that you aren't devout. Yeah.

Which is, it's, that's one thing if like you are a true believer, faith healer, but if you're a con man and that's how you're getting out of it is saying 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, Benny Hynns, was it Benny Hynner Popoff? 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. He was going to catch her for a while and we catch the people on stage and he was like,

it wasn't until I met my wife and she couldn't speak in tongues and everyone was like, you got to, you can't marry her. She started opening his eyes to, I guess, the other competing Christianity, which says, you don't speak in tongues, you don't faith heal. And he 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 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 the fact that they would then in turn blame the people who didn't get healed because they weren't devout. Right. It's really sad. Yeah, it is sad. So there's a few really bad negative 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, 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 going to go spend any more money on copays 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 prolonging your life, 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 were just throwing your money away or put a different way. It's being conned out of you. That's another negative outcome of it. And then yes, the injuries like Catherine Coleman and the woman with the spinal cancer

whose spine collapsed. Should we take a break? I think so, man. All right. We're going to take a break and come back and talk a little bit about a psychic surgery and a bit more on Christian science right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

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All right. So psychic surgery is something that we have not mentioned yet. 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 Carrey as Andy Kaufman, you remember the scene where, or if you grew up in the seventies and eighties, you remember seeing this stuff on like 60 minutes or PBS. It seems like it was a big thing then. The psychic surgeons will, um, use their hands, um, most of the time it's on your, like, your,

your belly and they'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. Pulling out some sort of, uh, fleshy, meaty product. Right. So what's really going on with psychic surgeons is it is a complete fraud. They are masters of sleight of hand and they are covering up, um, you, if you've seen the

video, they're always covering up what they're doing with the other hand and they have blood packets in their hand and they have like chicken gizzards or something talked away that you don't see. And it's just a big sleight of hand magic show. Uh, and in the Man on the Moon movie, it was very sad because Andy Kaufman was kind of at his wits end, uh, was trying to heal and, you know, get healed of cancer medically and right. He took a chance, traveled to where I can't remember, was it the Philippines and, um,

saw the guy palming the chicken gizzards knew it was a fake. It was just 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 a, uh, an account of his experience there. And from what I could gather, he, he left the Philippines feeling like the psychic surgery had worked that the, 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, his spirits improved so much so that he left the Philippines expecting to heal. But when he went back to the United States, he died pretty quickly after that. Well, it was pretty sad in the movie at least. Yeah, it really was. Cause 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, the faith healing or both. Uh, um, what skeptics will say is no, sometimes people heal from cancer. You know, I do. Here's the thing though, Chuck. This is where science has kind of fallen down and allowed faith healing to continue on basically

unabated. They don't have any, science doesn't understand why some cancer spontaneously remits. They just don't. They, they, they know that some types of cancer are more likely to undergo spontaneous remission. They also suspect that people may actually develop cancer and their body might overcome it and they will go their whole lives without realizing that they 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, uh, has been, has been used to replace another faith based explanation, which is that the Holy Spirit healed these people. They're saying, no, it was 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 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 says we don't know, but just trust us. That's what it is. That's not going to change anybody's view if you're a true believer in this kind of thing. Yeah. And Ed also points out that some of this could be due to the placebo effect, which, uh, I can't 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, uh, fake treatments, uh, seem like they have actual positive effects for the patient. Um, so some of that could be this, some of it could be, uh, they have a comfort, therefore reduced anxiety and it has been shown when you have reduced, uh, 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, um, with, with the bad outcome, didn't, uh, wasn't one of the explanations possibly that people, it increased their anxiety. Yeah.

Like that gave them performance anxiety. Like they didn't want to let the people who were praying for them down or let God down. So they actually became anxious, which in turn created, um, negative outcomes or complications from the surgery, 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, to challenge faith healing, I don't think it's doing a very good job right now because the placebo effect is not explained very well either, um, the idea that anxiety can, 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. Well, I don't think they are stopping, are they? I hope not.

I don't think so. But it, it, you do get the impression that if you ask a scientist about faith healing, they just throw out, well, that Holy spirit thing, that's just mass delusion. There's spontaneous remission of cancer. 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 20 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 there's also the case that, um, the, the Peter Popoffs of the world selling or, uh, sorry, not selling, taking donations for Holy spring water. Thank you.

At one point, I think he was a, uh, 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 group and their religious protections in this country and exemptions, uh, from the IRS such that they can get away with some of this stuff. They don't have to show their books. Right. It's tricky. Speaking of laws as well too, um, the, the, there are laws on the books that protect religious

groups. And I think like nine states from criminal negligent, uh, manslaughter or 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. Uh, the article is called an Idaho, uh, an 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 a Boise called peaceful valley cemetery, 600 gravesites and nearly a third of them are children. And while it's impossible to tell how many, um, died, uh, because of, um, negligent parents, uh, they think that a great many of them did. They've tried to gather a corner reports, autopsy reports, um, advocates have tried to do this. Uh, but basically, uh, they estimate that 180, uh, 183 Idaho children have died since

the 1970s. Wow. Uh, because of parents withholding medical treatment. Uh, 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, uh, I think today where they had, um, 183 child-sized caskets, uh, delivered, uh, I think to the, the Capitol 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 add advocate for themselves. Uh, so it's up to the parents to make sure that they get medical treatment if they need it. And, and again, though, these parents will literally watch their kid die and say it was God's will. Right. And, 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, and Idaho, like you said, is the state that leads that. Other states don't have anything like that and he, 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 York, you've let more than one kid die as God's will. We're going to actually come after you. And then 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, sorry, TS, your kid is getting this life saving medical care, whether you like it or not. Well, apparently everything changed in 1974. There was the federal 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 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 rescind that interpretation. That's not what we meant, but it was too late at that point. Yeah. And, and I think it was 2003 was when they finally rescinded it. But, and so all of these, these exemptions are relics from 2003 at the latest, I think of the nineties, a lot of them were removed too. So I have a feeling it's not going to be around for much longer.

There'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 going to be too many states with it around 10 years from now or five years from now. I watched a lot of YouTube today, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. I used, we used to watch, we used to watch in college. We would go to my friend Clay's house and he had VHS tapes of faith healers and Peter

Popov for sure, and then although he wasn't a faith healer, did you ever watch 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, but I think he might have been one of those that went broke and then got rich again. But he was a televangelist in the eighties that had this great, great show.

And power, I can't remember what it was called, but Clay had a bunch of... The hour of power? No. Okay. No faith to power, maybe. I know what we're talking about. I know exactly what you mean. You'd probably recognize this guy, but Clay had a bunch of these dubbed and we would

sit around late at night and watch Bob Tilton speak in tongues and stuff on his show and he was... I watched a bunch today. It took a stroll down memory lane. Yeah, nice. It's really funny to watch Bob Tilton, I will say. So what do you mean the fart compilation? Is he fart or louder?

Well, no. If someone did a... He would make all these funny faces and herky-jerky movements and, of course, someone later on dubbed in farts every time he closed his eyes real tight or made a funny move. That's funny to watch, but it's also funny just to watch Bob Tilton because he is... It's entertainment. It was hysterical, but people would write him big checks and go broke and not be able to pay their mortgages because they were sending him money because his whole deal was the prosperity

thing. Like, you will get rich if you send your money and 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 ever watch Cartoon Network when Adult 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, Dave Willis. Yeah, our friend Dave Willis was one of the creators, right? Before Space Ghost Coast to Coast, they kind of dipped their toe in it where they would run old Space Ghost cartoons. Just normal, but they would dub in inappropriate laugh tracks and it made it one of the most bizarrely funny things you've ever seen. Somebody would just deliver a line that was maybe mildly 1960s Space Ghost cartoon funny, but then the crowd in the studio audience would just start laughing.

It was great stuff. Well, I just love that I'm almost 47 years old and I have put myself out there in public as a learned, researched man and there's nothing funnier to me than Bob Tilton fart compilation. Nice. Hey, what's funny is funny, Chuck. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about faith healing, I don't know, go on to YouTube, maybe

go check one out yourself. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? And since I said who knows what will happen, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this using us in the classroom. We've gotten a few of these lately, which always makes us happy. Hey guys, big fan recently saw you in San Francisco at Sketchfest and it was even better than what I've been hoping for.

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. You get to hear, say dirty words here and there. We drink a hundred percent more than we do in the studio.

That's true. Anyway, he went and saw us in San Francisco. The 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 released an episode about her. I knew what it was meant to be as part of my lesson plan. I was a bit nervous with my morning class because I hadn't listened to the episode yet, wondering if you might go off on some weird tangent and 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 stuck to the story. We were both a little awestruck. That's right. Despite all the distractions inherent in 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 of my students' first time listening to a podcast, and I'm so happy I was able to introduce them to Josh and Chuck. La la. That is President Rob Carter. 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 Rob Carter? No. I'm almost positive you said that was President Rob Carter. Really? Yeah. You just selected that guy to high office. That would be a weird thing to say.

You're welcome, President Carter. I just got a gift of an edible arrangement from Hugh Jackman. Yeah. So maybe I'll get this guy a lucky president. You can't wait for the Amy Semple McPherson role. I looked at her picture. I know you saw me over here. 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 pretty good actresses working today. Well, you know what, your future is not in casting. You don't think so? Who should it be, Josh? You don't think anyone should be pretty good?

Right. Just, you know, they're a dart. They're all talented. They are all talented. Who was the one in La La Land? Oh, wow. I want to say Emma Blunt, but that's not Emma Blunt. Emma Stone.

Emma Stone. Emily Blunt. Emily Blunt was in Sikaro, right? Yes. And then Amy Adams was in Arrival. Yes. Yes, she'd probably be pretty good at it, too. But I still go with Jennifer Lawrence.

You sound like my dad. I feel like your dad right now. Hey. Well, at any rate, let's end this episode, shall we? Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast or Josh O'Clarke. You can hang out with us on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.