Criticism
There have been heavy criticisms from the scientific and non-religious communities towards the practice (as is the case of virtually every form of faith healing), such as that it has been touted as a cure for life-threatening conditions like brain damage, venereal diseases, diabetes and cancer, among others, which can and many times has led to a casualty that might have been avoided or delayed with scientifically proven methods. Also that the sort of the "energy field" created by the "vital energy" sent by the practitioners (i.e. the Japanese ki, the Chinese chi, the Indian prana, or a form of animal magnetism) cannot be detected by any scientific instruments, remaining thus in the realm of speculation and fantasy. Another thing that is strongly criticised on the practice is that, upon failure of the treatment, practitioners tend to use excuses such as that the patient was a non-believer, didn’t have enough belief or faith in the practice or practitioner, including other excuses that shield the practitioner at the cost of the patient. Claimed cures with the imposition of hands are usually dismissed by the scientific community either as a placebo effect or as a spontaneous remission. One cannot however differentiate between a remission and a healing.
For a broader view on the criticisms that apply to the practice, see also:
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- Criticism section on Miracles
- Criticism section on Faith healing
Read more about this topic: Laying On Of Hands
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)