The fact is that god is not a scientific theory, hypothesis or anything, it's just religion. It's by definition something that you have to believe in based on faith, not evidence, which is what everyone does. Faith is not a good path to the truth, that's also a fact.
In my opinion, the experiences with God are not necessarily based on faith or belief. Some people have experienced true, personal, life changing miracles that prove to them God is real. To them, they don't need to believe in God, they know God exists.
''have experienced true, personal, life changing miracles that prove to them God is real.'' This is by definition faith. It's called delusion. How do they know it's true? They don't, there is no evidence, therefore it's faith.
When you get right into the reason why some medicine seems to heal people, you have the same thing. Here's what happens.
We get some medical testing that shows biochemically in the lab that a particular medicine works. Then in live testing, some people seem to be healed by the medicine in question. Some are not. The thing we don't understand enough, is the working of the psyche, to be able to say for a fact that it was the medicine that healed them.
Well, if it wasn't the medicine, then what was it? Maybe 90% of the healings are placebo effect... faith (even in animals). Maybe, when it comes right down to it, close to 100% are placebo-like effect.
Maybe being healed by medicine has to do with the treated person subconsciously recognizing, through his nervous system, that there is some biochemical activity going on from the medicine. And then he heals himself by what he feels through his nervous system. The medicine action doesn't really have anything to do with the actual healing in a biochemical way.
Some studies suggest that placebo effect heals in as many as 30+% or the cases. We simply don't know enough about the psyche of people in general to know if it is more or not. And the medical doesn't want to do these kinds of studies in a big way. Do enough of them to make it look like we are studying placebo effect. But don't do enough to take business away from Big Pharma.
No. Placebo effect exists, that's true, however you will not be ''cured'' by placebo effect alone. No one has been ever ''cured'' from cancer due to placebo. It's true that when it comes to pain relief treatments, the placebo effect can play a big role and a lot of people can feel better even though they are getting worse. This is because the placebo effect is a psychological effect not physiological. The brain is the responsible of pain and other symptoms, pain is literally a fabrication of your brain and the placebo effect can stop it, however that's where it ends, it does not heal you from deadly diseases.
Quite the opposite. Placebo effect acts in both directions... to heal and to make ill. You've heard of people who died after the doctor told them they only had a couple months to live. Did they die because of faith in what the doctor said?
The basic idea of placebo effect has to do with what you believe. You believe this way or that, and you prove it by what you do. It is happening all around us in politics and all of everyday life. People do what they do because they believe that way.
Placebo effect is simply bodily regulation through belief. Often people don't know that they are using placebo effect. Double blind medical studies prove this out.
Trying to force yourself into a position of believing yourself cured doesn't work very often. Why not? Because the thing you accidentally focus on is the thing that you are trying to push out of your mind. You focus on it because you are trying to force it out. But by focusing on it, you are really keeping it in mind.
We don't know enough about the psyche to easily fathom its inner workings. Placebo effect cures some cancer. Placebo effect out-performs medicine. We might be finding out that placebo-effect/faith is the only medicine, and that Big Pharma medicine only acts like placebo effect in the central systems of the body.
Since the question about placebo effect exist, we are really only guessing that medicine does anything at all.
Incidentally, you fail to answer me realistically, because you know that I am right, and you can't force yourself into believing the garbage you say. You are using a form of placebo effect, and you are using it against yourself.