Does the priesthood work on incurable diseases?

[_A Light in the Darkness]

That is the perfect deconstruction of the pretend power of the Mormon priesthood.

God never gets the blame.

IF the person is healed, then it IS from god, not just circumstantial. If the person dies, its cuz god had a greater plan for them.

So why pray at all.

Look at the story at the mine in utah.

Applying the same "logic" to secular healing, since people die in spite of medical care, why go to a doctor?

Does this make sense to anyone else but PP?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I don't think you understood PP Wade. He wasn't saying that blessings are ineffective because people sometimes remain unhealed. Here's what he is saying:

Suppose someone believes in rain dances.

Somtimes it rains when he dances. When this happens, he concludes that his dance was a successful petition to the gods for rain. He takes the connection as evidence of the efficacy of his dances. Sometimes it doesn't rain when he dances. When this happens, he explains this as part of a greater plan of the gods that does not in any way bear against the power of the rain dance. Now if the latter is true, than the former is a misunderstanding of how evidence works. That's PP's point. The problem here isn't with that point so much as his representation of why LDS believe in the healing power of blessings. And when I say that, I don't mean to imply that no Mormon has ever thought this. I just mean that LDS can and often do believe in blessings without resorting to this kind of reasoning. All PP managed to do is set a strawman ablaze.

[Guest]

That is the perfect deconstruction of the pretend power of the Mormon priesthood.

God never gets the blame.

IF the person is healed, then it IS from god, not just circumstantial. If the person dies, its cuz god had a greater plan for them.

So why pray at all.

Look at the story at the mine in utah.

Applying the same "logic" to secular healing, since people die in spite of medical care, why go to a doctor?

Does this make sense to anyone else but PP?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

It doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me.

This has GOT TO BE one of THE most asinine arguments I've ever read on this board.

Apparently Wade subscribes to the particular belief system that totally discounts empirical evidence.

I can show you mountains of empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of modern medicine.

Can you, or any other believer, provide for me even one scintilla of evidence that priesthood blessings result in rates of "healing" that are systematically greater than similar situations without a priesthood blessing?

Of course they can, Guy! Their feelings are evidence, and we're all supposed to accept them as irrefutable! Feelings are what give Mormons a "perfect knowledge" that God lives and the Mormon church is true and feelings are their evidence that priesthood blessings work. Who needs objective evidence or measures when feelings are such a sure-fire indicator of truth?

KA

[_ozemc]

How are the priesthood blessings presented here any different from the Christian Scientists who pray and don't use modern medicine?