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The classic response here is “why does god hate amputees?”
“Miracle” is a red herring. Can an actual effect be observed even if the mechanism isn’t understood?
If a claimed effect can’t ever be separated out from other causes then it sounds made up.
“Testimonies” of a phenomenon are a starting point for investigation, not strong evidence by themselves. The paper you linked to is about one lady.
If the power of god via the laying on of hands or prayer is so unreliable that it can’t be distinguished from other causes then that’s normally something we would judge to be made up. Faith healers will go on TV and touch people but no one’s showing studies over time where say, inexplicably, those people have a 35% better chance of outcomes relative to average. Or say Christian hospitals consistently outperforming secular ones. Or Muslim surgeons outperforming secular ones.
Robust studies showing consistent effects would signal there was something going on, even if we couldn’t directly detect the mechanism.
If the power was real and as effective as adherents claim the evidence would not be so shy about being observed. Biblically, the power of god gets demonstrated quite strongly but we can’t seem to get that to happen nowadays. The simplest explanation consistent with human behavior and the laws of physics is that it was just made up.
“I do a wishful thinking and sometimes magic happens that can’t be measured/observed by others” is not a strong approach to reality regardless of whether it’s associated with religion or not.
The user above you cited a specific “miracle,” restoration of eyesight, and you cited a lack of a different category of miracle, regrowth of a removed limb. You wouldn’t claim Viagra doesn’t work because boners could have other causes but it doesn’t make bald people grow hair.
Even disregarding the categorical error, there’s another point to be made. Instead of claiming your null result negates and dismisses the documentation of a positive result as a single anecdote instead of data, come up with a different falsifiable hypothesis rather than jumping to the null hypothesis. If there is a fully material way to restore macular degeneration, the world needs to know it to relieve much suffering.
It seems that in the cited restoration of sight, the person knew they were being prayed for. We also know that yogis can perform incredible feats of biofeedback manipulation through meditative states and/or self-hypnosis. The accounts of Jesus at least once have Him saying, “Go, your faith has healed you.” Perhaps there is a method of hypnosis which can cure certain types of blindness. Come up with an experiment to falsify that hypothesis, changing no factors from the cited anecdote.
It’s not a categorical error to:
The null hypothesis is that lots of health outcomes happen for reasons we don’t understand the murky details of, because the human body is simultaneously wondrous and a dumpster fire, and there’s no reason to go claiming miracles from god when a positive outcome happens. That’s just picking hits and ignoring misses.
If faith healing happened commonly, as many claim it does, then there ought to be a way to show that systematically. Not one offs.
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