"Your Faith Has Healed You"
Is Your Worldview Filtering Out Evidence?
We live in an age in which the prevailing zeitgeist is predominantly materialistic. Much of modern Western culture assumes that physical reality is all that ultimately exists, and that whatever happens in the world must, in principle, be explicable through natural causes.
This does not mean that science itself necessarily requires philosophical materialism. Science is extraordinarily successful at investigating the physical world, but the philosophical conclusion that the physical world is all that exists is a much larger claim. The distinction is important. A scientific method may investigate natural causes, while philosophical materialism asserts that there are no causes beyond the natural world.
There are also legitimate questions about the pressures that can influence scientific research. Researchers depend upon funding, publication and professional recognition, and there is evidence that career incentives can influence which results researchers publish and how findings are reported (Doucouliagos and Stanley, 2022). This does not mean that scientists are deliberately dishonest, nor does it invalidate scientific research. Rather, it reminds us that scientists, like everyone else, operate within human institutions and are not completely immune from professional pressures.
This is one reason I found James Tour’s discussion, What Scientists Admit Behind Closed Doors, interesting (Tour, n.d.). Tour raises questions about the assumptions and limitations within contemporary scientific research, particularly when questions of origins and the emergence of life are considered.
The larger question, however, is philosophical: are there realities that cannot be adequately explained by material causes alone?
I was musing on this when watching a scene from The Chosen, in which a woman approaches Jesus after suffering from prolonged menstrual bleeding for twelve years. The account is based upon the Gospel narratives in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Mark describes her as having “suffered a great deal” under many physicians and having spent everything she had, yet without receiving any benefit (Mark 5:26).
In the historical and cultural setting of the story, her condition would have involved not only physical suffering but also significant social and religious consequences.
The woman approaches Jesus believing that if she touches his clothing, she will be healed. She touches his garment and is immediately healed. Jesus then asks who touched him. When the woman identifies herself, Jesus says:
“Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering” (Mark 5:34, NIV).
There is something profound here. The story does not present the garment as possessing magical power. Jesus does not say that the clothing healed her. Instead, he directs attention towards her faith.
This distinction matters. Christianity does not teach that physical objects possess magical powers. Rather, Christian faith is directed towards a person — ultimately, towards God himself. The woman's action of touching Jesus' garment was an expression of her trust in the Father and Jesus.
This raises an interesting question about the nature of faith. Faith is sometimes portrayed as believing something without evidence. But that is not necessarily what Christian faith means. Biblical faith involves trust, and trust can be based upon evidence, testimony and experience. The New Testament itself repeatedly presents people as witnesses to events and invites others to consider their testimony (John 20:30–31; Acts 2:32).
I was thinking about this again recently while watching Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles, a CBN documentary presented by journalist Billy Hallowell. The programme examines claims of supernatural events and includes interviews with medical professionals, researchers and Christian authors, including Craig Keener.
Keener's work is particularly interesting in this context. In his two-volume study Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, he examines a large number of historical and contemporary miracle claims and argues that such claims should not simply be dismissed without investigation (Keener, 2011). His work does not establish that every reported miracle is genuine. Rather, it challenges the assumption that miracle claims can automatically be rejected simply because they involve supernatural explanations.
That distinction is important.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that a miracle can broadly be understood as an event that exceeds the productive power of natural causes, while also recognising the long philosophical debate concerning whether testimony can provide rational grounds for believing that such an event has occurred (Larmer, 2024).
This brings me back to my own experience.
I was once a sceptic, albeit a Christian. That changed when I witnessed what I believe to have been miracles in my own life.
I recognise that personal experience is not, by itself, sufficient to establish a universal proposition. People can misunderstand events, remember things incorrectly or attribute supernatural causes to events that have perfectly natural explanations. These possibilities should be taken seriously. Genuine investigation requires humility.
But the reverse is also true.
It is not intellectually satisfactory to reject an event as impossible before examining the evidence for it.
This leads me to a question that I think every sceptic — and indeed every believer — should be willing to consider:
If miracles really can occur, what would count as evidence for one?
And if the answer is “nothing,” then we have moved beyond scepticism into something else. We have adopted a philosophical position in which miracles are excluded before the evidence is even examined.
There is a significant difference between saying, “I have examined the evidence and I am not convinced,” and saying, “Miracles cannot happen; therefore, no evidence could ever convince me.”
“What would count as evidence that a miracle had happened?”
That is a question worth investigating.
And this this is where faith and reason meet. Faith need not be the abandonment of reason, just as reason need not require the exclusion of God. Both can be involved in the search for truth.
My own journey from scepticism to belief did not begin with abandoning questions. It began with becoming willing to ask different ones.
Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles is available on Amazon Prime.
Harvard reference list
Doucouliagos, H. and Stanley, T.D. (2022) ‘Bias and careers: Evidence from the aid effectiveness literature’, European Journal of Political Economy, 71, 102056. (ScienceDirect)
Keener, C.S. (2011) Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Larmer, R. (2024) ‘Miracles’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by E.N. Zalta and U. Nodelman. Available at: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Miracles (Accessed: 25 August 2026). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Tour, J. (n.d.) What Scientists Admit Behind Closed Doors. YouTube. Available at: James Tour – What Scientists Admit Behind Closed Doors (Accessed: 25 August 2026).
The Holy Bible, New International Version (2011) Holy Bible. Colorado Springs, CO: Biblica.
Hallowell, B. (n.d.) Investigating the Supernatural: CBN Documentary Examines Evidence for Miracles. CBN News. Available at: CBN News – Investigating the Supernatural (Accessed: 25 August 2026).