I am looking for documented evidence of a miraculous healing that has
taken place within the past 100 years.  I have heard stories of such,
but I have never seen well documented evidence.

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Request for Question Clarification by mvguy-ga on 13 Jun 2002 22:07 PDT

How strong of evidence do you need?  What do you mean by "miraculous"?
There are many, many cases of spontaneous recovery. If one of of
10,000 cases of a certain type of cancer end with unexplained
spontaneous recovery, is that one case a miracle or is it merely the
result of chance?  Certainly many people that happens to would
consider it a miracle, especially if they had prayed for a recovery.
Similarly, there is at least one documented case I know of of a person
who was once infected with HIV but now is apparently uninfected.  Is
that a miracle?  In order to let you know if there is documented
evidence of miracle, I need to know what you mean by the term. 
Thanks! 

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Clarification of Question by nonac-ga on 14 Jun 2002 19:57 PDT

I am not looking for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, just evidence
that is not likely forged or misinterpreted.
 
Something like before and after pictures of a severed limb that
regenerated after prayer would be ideal. 

There's a rather well documented case of a man brought back to life in
africa. Is this what you're looking for? There are also videotaped
"healings" of people with terminal diseases in nigeria. Actually, more
"before" and "after" shots as the process was over a couple of days.

You might want to look at the canonizations (saint-makings) of the
Roman Catholic Church.  One of the criteria is that there is a healing
associated with the candidate, before or after his death.  Apparently,
the procedure is very rigorous and the healing(s) must be fully
documented.  There might possibly be something about this on the
Vatican web site http://www.vatican.va/index.htm

You may be able to find documentation of remarkable or inexplicable
healing, but you will never find documentation of a miracle, because
there can never be sufficient evidence to prove that any event was
miraculously caused. David Hume put it pretty well in his essay "On
Miracles": a miracle is by definition the least likely thing that can
happen - a suspension of the normal laws of physics. So for any given
phenomenon, there will *always* be some natural explanation for it
that is more likely than a supernatural one - however extraordinary or
well-documented it may be. It will always be more reasonable to
suppose that, for example, the witnesses were mistaken, or that there
is some natural explanation unknown to science. That is not to say
that miracles are impossible - simply that it can never be rational to
believe that one has taken place.

This is an interesting question, nonac, but it's fraught with
difficulty from the answerer's point of view.  While your hardnosed
empiricist, on one hand, is unlikely to be satisfied with ANY proof,
your "true believer" will be unlikely to demand any proof aside from
the experiential.

I know, from prior reading, of reported healings within the Christian,
Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths.  There are undoubtedly more,
which do not lie within my personal knowledge.

Within Christianity (my own faith, and the one with which I am best
acquainted) reports of healing have accompanied most or all of the
Church's cyclical upswings.  This includes the many people flooding
into a handful of widely-reported and controversial charismatic
churches across North America and Europe (Toronto Airport Christian
Fellowship, for example).

I know of two spontaneous healings in the last few years, just within
the circle of my own acquaintance.  Neither of these would be
"documented," however.  I will be looking throughout the day for
something that is reasonably verified, but will not lock your question
as a courtesy to any other researcher who may be working on this.

Two very close friends of mine, L. Paul and Alice Prather, wrote a
book in 1995 that details several healing miracles that they have
experienced in their lifetime, as well as miracles of all types. The
book is appropriately titled, "We Believe in Miracles", ISBN
0-89228-002-6. You can purchase this from Amazon.com for $7.95 via
this link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892280026/qid=1024058680/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-7189484-2008753.
 Alternately, I may be able to get you a copy directly from them for
free, if you are interested.

Their son, Paul D. Prather, has also written a book on miracles,
entitled "Modern Day Miracles: How Ordinary People Experience
Supernatural Acts of God". The Amazon.com link is
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0836221745/qid=1024059024/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7189484-2008753,
but it looks to be officially in "out-of-print" status now. Paul D.
Prather is a Christian minister and the former religion editor for the
Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader. The ISBN is 0-83622-174-5
.