Teen God Squad Culture Shifters' Miracle Cure Claims

Grant Shaw from the Bridgeman Downs Christian Outreach Centre attempts to heal journalist Anthony Gough. (The Sunday Mail/Peter Wallis)

     Culture Shifters is a Pentecostal group comprised of teenagers and twenty-something adults based in Queensland, Australia. The group has claimed to have healed over 200 people last year through prayer and boast a 95 percent success rate. The injuries and diseases that they have reported to have healed include; restoring a girls hearing, curing both cancer and multiple sclerosis, bringing sight to a girls eye, mending the injuries of an entire football team, as well as various other maladies they encounter while walking the streets of Queensland. For the full story click here. The group is continuing to grow in Australia as the number of members has increased to over 160 youth. Culture Shifters is a dangerous group that preys on the willingness of their inflicted audience to be healed.

       Faith healing is a dangerous practice because it operates under the assumption that proven scientific methods are inferior to prayer and religious faith. It casts away the need for doctors, nurses, medicine and hospitals. The practice also manipulates those who claim to have been healed into a sense of belonging, health and gratitude based on a nothing but a temporary feeling of euphoria. The healed wants to feel better and the healer wants it to happen. The combined effect of these two needs results in a self-fulfilling prophecy which allows for the smallest of evidence to be used to the greatest degree. This process is further exemplified with the presence of not one healer but a crowd of them surrounding the individual. The video below was uploaded by Culture Shifters in order to promote their faith and healing abilities and demonstrates the mentality I just described. 

     It's important to understand that I'm not attacking faith, organized religion or prayer. I believe that faith is the cornerstone of any functioning society and prayer is vital to the continued existence of faith. I am however, willing to go on record standing firmly against faith healing to any degree. Proven instances of faith healing are notoriously fallible, as can be seen here. In many instances those who have claimed to be healed have either been on their way to recovery, experienced an increased desire to perform under the circumstances (using their muscles to exert increased energy to stand or walk) or have not been healed at all. 

     If Culture Shifters were truly healing people suffering from cancer or multiple sclerosis there would be headlines across the world. Hundreds of thousands of people would be flocking to Australia to be cured of their alignments. The group would go viral as medical professionals begin testing and re-examining patients who had gone to Australia to receive blessings. There are those who claim that society is unwilling to believe in the miracles performed by Grant Shaw and his followers. People who put their lives and the lives of those they love in the hands of faith healing are understandably scared and desperate for a miracle. That does not excuse ignorance and irresponsibility when making choices about your health and well-being. To further understand the devastating impact of faith healing click here.