Yes, you can often find a rational explanation for an apparently miraculous healing, but what often happens is that the healing coincides with a prayer in a way which is just too difficult to pass off as a coincidence.
Eerm, that is what we would expect from a placebo effect.
Alan you show your selection bias and confirmation bais over and again, in highlighting anecotes that might bolster your particular beliefs but you ignore 'miracles' from other faith contexts.
If you really wanted to witness to the truth you would learn to discipline yourself against being so transparently selective. There have been two major studies of the healing properties of prayer under controlled conditions; they found, at most generous, some element of placebo effect at work. This is why, if you visit Lourdes for instance, you might find crutches left behind by people who have found the self belief to rid themselves of a limp, but we don't see amputees coming away with suddenly regrown limbs or any other such truly miraculous healing. It's all in the mind.
Fully support what you say here, Torri.
After reading Alan's Mess 1994, and, what, to me, is his rather pointless example, I was reminded of a Christian lady on an Alpha course I went to. She was talking about the efficacy of prayer in her case(I think it was Session 4). Some time previously she and her husband had wanted to buy a certain house, but unfortunately the owner had agreed to sell to someone else. She told us that she had prayed that that deal would fall through, and that she might be favoured by God so that she could buy the house. And the original deal did indeed fall through because the other person had had mortgage difficulties, so she and her husband were delighted to step in and buy the aforementioned house. She was adamant that God had answered her prayers. Obviously the whole incident was simply a matter of circumstances, but at no time did she consider the selfishness of her position.
Also, when a natural disaster occurs, and you hear of someone who thanks their God for the fact that they survived where others have died, I have always found it a rather distasteful, if understandable, part of human nature that they consider themselves to be of primary importance in their God's eyes.
