I'd be interested in seeing a link. At first blush, it sounds most likely to me someone lost their outer ear structure along with, perhaps, some actual functionality (presumably in a traumatic event). Then the remaining "stump" of an ear healed and functionality improved over time. Maybe a significant perceived improvement was experienced as something quite dramatic during a charismatic faith healing service?
Are you going to claim that they were lying/deceived?
Maybe it's something less malicious than that? Maybe they just projected their beliefs onto a circumstance? Maybe the story got a bit inflated in the repeated re-telling?
Couple other examples of similar miraculous healings:
Charles Templeton, one of Billy Graham's preaching partners, before his deconversion. I found this account on a blog, and I've read it elsewhere. (I found a more detailed account from Templeton's memoir here...but it might be more interesting to start with the account I've pasted.)
It was during the time spent as minister of the Avenue Road church in Toronto that Templeton witnessed two cases of instantaneous healing. Not to say that he is in favor of mass healing rallies, which he has always viewed as a health hazard rather than a blessing "since they leave behind an emotional wreckage and illnesses often worsened by neglect." The two instances that Templeton witnessed occurred in private. In neither did he expect a healing to occur. In the first, an infant suffering a big defect—a muscle that was misattached, causing the baby's head to be twisted to one side—was healed within minutes after Charles laid his hands on the child and prayed. The child's condition prior to and after the healing was documented at the time by hospital physicians. New World, a Canadian version of Life magazine, ran the story and a full-page picture of the mother and child.
In the second instance, Templeton prayed for his aunt after exploratory surgery revealed that her stomach cancer was both malignant and inoperable. As he laid hands on her and prayed, he says he "felt something akin to an electrical charge flow through my arms and out my fingers." Within hours his aunt, who had been bedridden for weeks, was up and about. The cancer did not return, the pain from the adhesions ended, and she lived for another forty-two years.
Despite his opposition to "the public healing services of contemporary evangelism--wherein "the 'healers' are often simpletons or rogues or both"—Templeton says he is convinced that "what may loosely be called faith healing is an area of medicine with unrealized potential".
Interesting accounts since Templeton left the ministry. My my understanding, he did hold onto a belief in some sort of spiritual faith healing throughout his life, despite leaving the Christian faith.
It's hard to know what actually happened in these cases. In the case of the infant, it's my guess the child had something like this going on. Checking out the memoir account, the child received daily treatment and visited the hospital weekly. Also, notice the story in the New World was written four years after the event, something not mentioned in the blogger's account.
In the case of the woman with cancer, I don't know. It is my understanding spontaneous remission of cancer is possible. As far as the "electrical charge" Templeton felt, maybe he felt that as a result of the rather dramatic and emotional situation?
(Anytime I hear faith healing accounts, I always think. "Why don't they just set these faith healers loose in the world's hospitals??? Have them go room to room!")
My general sense is that there are improvements—sometimes dramatic improvements—in people's health that coincide with prayer. If it's a one-in-a-million chance and you pray for one million people, you're gonna see a miracle!
Further, I think people sometimes get a boost in adrenaline/confidence after being prayed for which perhaps masks their symptoms for a few days. In non-terminal cases, maybe they get out of bed and start eating right, exercising and being more active? Maybe their whole perspective changes and they become more positive and healthy?
Long time lurker, but I've barely posted anything. I'd like to ask Less Wrong for help.
Reading various articles by the Rationalist Community over the years, here, on Slate Star Codex and a few other websites, I have found that nearly all of it makes sense. Wonderful sense, in fact, the kind of sense you only really find when the author is actually thinking through the implications of what they're saying, and it's been a breath of fresh air. I generally agree, and when I don't it's clear why we're differing, typically due to a dispute in priors.
Except in theism/atheism.
In my experience, when atheists make their case, they assume a universe without miracles, i.e. a universe that looks like one would expect if there was no God. Given this assumption, atheism is obviously the rational and correct stance to take. And generally, Christian apologists make the same assumption! They assert miracles in the Bible, but do not point to any accounts of contemporary supernatural activity. And given such assumptions, the only way one can make a case for Christianity is with logical fallacies, which is exactly what most apologists do. The thing is though, there are plenty of contemporary miracle accounts.
Near death experiences. Answers to prayer that seem to violate the laws of physics. I'm comfortable with dismissing Christian claims that an event was "more than coincidence", because given how many people are praying and looking for God's hand in events, and the fact that an unanswered prayer will generally be forgotten while a seemingly-answered one will be remembered, one would expect to see "more than coincidence" in any universe with believers, whether or not there was a God. But there are a LOT of people out there claiming to have seen events that one would expect to never occur in a naturalistic universe. I even recall reading an atheist's account of his deconversion (I believe it was Luke Muehlhauser; apologies if I'm misremembering) in which he states that as a Christian, he witnessed healings he could not explain. Now, one could say that these accounts are the result of people lying, but I expect people to be rather more honest than that, and Luke is hardly going to make up evidence for the Christian God in an article promoting unbelief! One could say that "miracles" are misunderstood natural events, but there are plenty of accounts that seem pretty unlikely without Divine intervention-I've even read claims by Christians that they had seen people raised from the dead by prayer. And so I'd like to know how atheists respond to the evidence of miracles.
This isn't just idle curiosity. I am currently a Christian (or maybe an agnostic terrified of ending up on the wrong side of Pascal's Wager), and when you actually take religion seriously, it can be a HUGE drain on quality of life. I find myself being frightened of hell, feeling guilty when I do things that don't hurt anyone but are still considered sins, and feeling guilty when I try to plan out my life, wondering if I should just put my plans in God's hands. To make matters worse, I grew up in a dysfunctional, very Christian family, and my emotions seem to be convinced that being a true Christian means acting like my parents (who were terrible role models; emulating them means losing at life).
I'm aware of plenty of arguments for non-belief: Occam's Razor giving atheism as one's starting prior in the absence of strong evidence for God, the existence of many contradictory religions proving that humanity tends to generate false gods, claims in Genesis that are simply false (Man created from mud, woman from a rib, etc. have been conclusively debunked by science), commands given by God that seem horrifyingly immoral, no known reason why Christ's death would be needed for human redemption (many apologists try to explain this, but their reasoning never makes sense), no known reason why if belief in Jesus is so important why God wouldn't make himself blatantly obvious, hell seeming like an infinite injustice, the Bible claiming that any prayer prayed in faith will be answered contrasted with the real world where this isn't the case, a study I read about in which praying for the sick didn't improve results at all (and the group that was told they were being prayed for actually had worse results!), etc. All of this, plus the fact that it seems that nearly everyone who's put real effort into their epistemology doesn't believe and moreover is very confident in their nonbelief (I am reminded of Eliezer's comment that he would be less worried about a machine that destroys the universe if the Christian God exists than one that has a one in a trillion chance of destroying us) makes me wonder if there really isn't a God, and in so realizing this, I can put down burdens that have been hurting for nearly my entire life. But the argument from miracles keeps me in faith, keeps me frightened. If there is a good argument against miracles, learning it could be life changing.
Thank you very much. I do not have words to describe how much this means to me.