Levin J S
Department of Family and Community Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk 23501, USA.
Altern Ther Health Med. 1996 Jan;2(1):66-73.
This article presents a theoretical model that outlines various possible explanations for the healing effects of prayer. Four classes of mechanisms are defined on the basis of whether healing has naturalistic or supernatural origins and whether it operates locally or nonlocally. Through this framework, most of the currently proposed hypotheses for understanding absent healing and other related phenomena-hypotheses that invoke such concepts as subtle energy, psi, consciousness, morphic fields, and extended mind-are shown to be no less naturalistic than the Newtonian, mechanistic forces of allopathic biomedicine so often derided for their materialism. In proposing that prayer may heal through nonlocal means according to mechanisms and theories proposed by the new physics, Dossey is almost alone among medical scholars in suggesting the possible limitations and inadequacies of hypotheses based on energies, forces, and fields. Yet even such nonlocal effects can be conceived of as naturalistic; that is, they are explained by physical laws that may be unbelievable or unfamiliar to most physicians but that are nonetheless becoming recognized as operant laws of the natural universe. The concept of the supernatural, however, is something altogether different, and is, by definition, outside of or beyond nature. Herein may reside an either wholly or partly transcendent Creator-God who is believed by many to heal through means that transcend the laws of the created universe, both its local and nonlocal elements, and that are thus inherently inaccessible to and unknowable by science. Such an explanation for the effects of prayer merits consideration and, despite its unprovability by medical science, should not be dismissed out of hand.
本文提出了一个理论模型，概述了祈祷产生治愈效果的各种可能解释。根据治愈是源于自然主义还是超自然主义，以及其作用是局部的还是非局部的，定义了四类机制。通过这个框架可以看出，目前提出的用于理解远距离治疗及其他相关现象的大多数假设——这些假设援引了微妙能量、超感知觉、意识、形态场和扩展心智等概念——并不比常因唯物论而遭嘲笑的对抗疗法生物医学的牛顿机械力更缺乏自然主义色彩。多西提出，根据新物理学提出的机制和理论，祈祷可能通过非局部手段实现治愈，在医学学者中，几乎只有他指出了基于能量、力和场的假设可能存在的局限性和不足之处。然而，即使是这种非局部效应也可以被视为自然主义的；也就是说，它们可以用物理定律来解释，这些定律可能让大多数医生难以置信或感到陌生，但却正逐渐被公认为自然宇宙的运行规律。然而，超自然的概念则完全不同，根据定义，它超出了自然的范畴。这里可能存在一个完全或部分超越的造物主上帝，许多人相信他通过超越被创造宇宙的规律（包括其局部和非局部元素）的手段来实现治愈，因此从本质上讲，科学无法触及且无法知晓这些手段。这种对祈祷效果的解释值得考虑，尽管医学无法对其进行验证，但也不应被轻易摒弃。
