-13

Claims of unexpected and spontaneous fillings or full restorations of teeth with gold are not unheard of in many faith healing services and other religious gatherings. For example, in a video recorded at the Demonstrate Conference (an event hosted by Jennifer Eivaz), a woman testifies (*):

[...] I was, you know, asking God ... Holy Spirit to come ... and the miracle started happening ... and then I got a gold tooth! And it's so crazy, because you open your mouth, and everyone has their cameras looking at your mouth ... so I can't wait to brush my teeth and look at my gold tooth.

Similarly, in this thread a woman shares (*):

[...] I attended a healing/revival meeting tonight, put on by Jeff Jansen, of Global Fire Ministries, and the Lord gave many people gold teeth!!! I had been praying and fasting all week for the Lord to show Himself big and make Himself soooo real to me !!! And guess what? I got one, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [...]

Many people got gold teeth tonight and NO ONE can tell me that it wasn't real because I saw it with my own eyes....one lady first noticed that God turned 3 of hers gold on the top and I looked and saw them. A few minutes later, two of hers on the bottom had turned and I saw them. A few minutes later, 8 had turned gold and I saw them all--before and after!!!!

(*) Emphasis mine.

In fact, the phenomenon seems to be relatively widespread, as many more examples recorded in different places and countries can be found with a quick YouTube search: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, etc.

Of course, spontaneous gold dental prostheses is not something you would expect to happen naturally according to modern physics, but we never know if exceptions can show up that would force us to revisit our theories.

Is it true that in certain religious gathering people are spontaneously receiving gold dental prostheses without the assistance of a dentist?

Note: as there is no known way to provide a mundane explanation for the phenomenon based on natural science (as @TCooper's answer correctly explains), this leaves us with only two options left: 1) the divine is true, or 2) claimants are lying (either intentionally as part of a hoax, or unintentionally due to very bad memory). Since option 1 cannot be proven scientifically, and option 2 cannot be assessed exhaustively for practical reasons, I think a fair compromise for an answer is to select a modest but representative sample, say, 3 to 5 video clips where claimants are shown excited about very notorious gold prosthodontics (to rule out bad memory as a possible explanation), and then proceed to debunk the ministries holding the events where the purported miracles took place.

  • There are also many videos of "time travelers" on Youtube, these claims are not notable or on topic for the site. – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 15:38
  • @TCooper how is it off-topic? There are tons of people making the claim (I can provide more examples if you want), and the phenomenon can be examined empirically. Time travelling claims, as far as I'm aware, do not always agree with each other, are not as popular, and cannot be verified empirically via scientific methods. –  Sep 18 '20 at 15:57
  • 3
    In the dire first video, the speaker talks about miraculous tooth events he had *heard about*, not even a first-hand account, let alone his **own teeth**, so I did not get very far with this "notable claim". – Weather Vane Sep 18 '20 at 16:03
  • @WeatherVane I think that can be fixed by moving the first-hand accounts to the top, thanks for pointing that out –  Sep 18 '20 at 16:04
  • 1
    Yes please, with timing cues too. I am unwilling to trawl through them all for something that is not very credible. – Weather Vane Sep 18 '20 at 16:06
  • @WeatherVane Forgot the time cues, but at least the first 5 or 6 videos are now first-hand accounts, most of them displaying golden teeth on camera –  Sep 18 '20 at 16:10
  • 4
    What is the **proof** that these golden crowns were not put by a dentist and were rather spontaneous? Just by them *saying* doesn't claim that to be miraculous. It is quite common in dentistry to restore a missing tooth or a carious tooth by a golf crown or restoration. – Ojasvi Sep 18 '20 at 16:28
  • 1
    Also kindly check out this [article](https://www.tenth.org/resource-library/articles/god-and-the-golden-teeth/) – Ojasvi Sep 18 '20 at 16:36
  • 1
    I watched the (now) first video. A couple of people are shown to have gold teeth, which is not at all unusual. The account given by one, when asked, was indistinct, and the rest was just "wowing". I can only imagine that the miraculous event was having the money to pay for it. People can be hyperbolic, for example some years ago I found a video of people supposedly "levitating" but it turned out they were just bouncing around on mattresses, in a yogic position on their knees. – Weather Vane Sep 18 '20 at 16:39
  • @Ojasvi shouldn't what you have said go in a canonical answer to the question debunking the claims? –  Sep 18 '20 at 16:41
  • 1
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator Fair enough, I removed my downvote. I'll attempt an answer to debunk the obvious fraudulent attempts to lure fools into "churches". – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 16:44
  • 6
    I can think of two ways to answer this, but you've ruled both out: 1) We could address a specific example and present evidence that it was a hoax (as in Ojasvi's answer); but if the question is "has this ever happened", that will never be enough, because you can keep adding more examples. 2) We could address the plausibility of this happening according to current science (as in TCooper's answer) but if the claim is "it happened miraculously", that will never be enough, because you can counter with "things happen that science can't explain". The only other option is to hope the answer is "yes". – IMSoP Sep 18 '20 at 17:22

2 Answers2

7

There is no genuine proof that those golden/silver crowns were not put in by dentists. It is quite common in dentistry to restore a missing or carious tooth by a gold crown or a gold restoration. Also according to the article God and the Golden Teeth:

One pastor peeled back his lip to show reporters a glittering gold crown, which he claimed had miraculously appeared last March. In fact, however, a dentist had put in the crown a decade earlier. When confronted with his old dental records, the pastor rather sheepishly said, “I’d have to say I was absolutely wrong…

The whole thing is a fraud, of course. I say this, not because God is unable to turn silver into gold, but because he has no reason to. Surely God has better things to do than improve our dental work.

Community
  • 1
Ojasvi
  • 406
  • 3
  • 5
  • 2
    The article you are citing also says "Part of the explanation, of course, is that false miracles are the work of Satan". Should I take your source seriously? –  Sep 18 '20 at 16:53
  • 3
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator: I don't see how attributing gold teeth to Satan is any different from attributing them to God. – jwodder Sep 18 '20 at 18:05
  • @jwodder the point is that an article that is purportedly intended to debunk the supernatural, paradoxically claims that the supernatural does happen (caused by God, Satan or whatever). Would you consider such an article a reliable source? –  Sep 18 '20 at 19:58
  • 2
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator Who said the point of the article was to broadly debunk the supernatural? The point is show the preacher preaching God turned his teeth to gold was simply lying for attention. Here's the same documentation of his dental records from the LA Times, if it suits your needs more adeptly: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-25-mn-57606-story.html – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 22:06
  • @TCooper that's just one case among [many](https://www.christianforums.com/threads/its-a-miracle-i-got-a-gold-tooth.3262453/). –  Sep 18 '20 at 22:54
  • 6
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator What answer would satisfy you? Should we investigate the dental history of 10 people claiming this? 20? 100? Even if every one of those was proven to be a fraud, you could just present one more, saying that maybe _this_ one was the true miracle. It's not like having a gold tooth is in itself a surprising or mysterious event, so why should we not accept the obvious explanation, that they were put there by dentists? – IMSoP Sep 19 '20 at 11:45
  • @IMSoP you just can't forget that you had a notorious gold crown or gold tooth put in your mouth by a dentist, especially when you are reminded of their existence every time you brush your teeth, which for an average person should at least happen several times a week. Therefore, if someone is shown on camera clearly amazed and surprised that they have a gold tooth / crown, there are two reasonable explanations: 1) they are a paid actor, or 2) they are genuinely surprised because a gold tooth / crown that they didn't have before has unexpectedly appeared in their mouth. –  Sep 19 '20 at 15:45
  • @IMSoP I think a fair compromise would be to select a reasonable sample, say, 5 video clips where 1) individuals show surprise, excitement about the purported miracle and 2) the individuals have evident, notorious gold teeth / crowns that would be pretty much impossible to forget about if you are a reasonable person who brushes their teeth frequently. Then, for these 5 representative cases, investigate the ministries behind the purported miracles, and show that they are all fraudulent. If the supernatural is false, then they **should** be fraudulent hoaxes, I don't see more options. –  Sep 19 '20 at 15:50
  • @IMSoP On the contrary, if you fail to show that they are frauds, that wouldn't prove that the supernatural is true but at least would give it more credence (assuming that a thorough investigation was carried out). –  Sep 19 '20 at 16:03
  • 3
    @SpiritRealmInvrstigator So essentially the answer to my semi-rhetorical question about how many examples you'd want to see debunked is "about 5". Everything else you've said there is just restating the claim: obviously, if these are hoaxes, then the people in the videos are acting - or, to put it less charitably, lying. – IMSoP Sep 19 '20 at 17:25
  • @IMSoP basically yes. Asking for more than 5 would be way too much IMO for an answer on this stack. The point is that if you select a modest but very representative sample, and after diligent investigation consistently confirm that they are all frauds, that would be already very telling despite not being exhaustive, and would be confirmatory evidence for the hypothesis that all cases are hoaxes. –  Sep 19 '20 at 20:00
3

The only known way to produce gold (outside mining from the earth the deposits left by ancient stars) is through nuclear transmutation, or in the specific case of gold, the term "alchemy" may be used. Occurrences of "alchemy" are indeed possible via modern technology, so we can study the requirements to make gold from another material, as outlined in this Scientific American article.

They specifically mention:

“We could have used lead in the experiments, but we used bismuth because it has only one stable isotope,” Morrissey says. The element’s homogeneous nature means it is easier to separate gold from bismuth than it is to separate gold from lead, which has four stable isotopic identities.

I quote that because the closeness of bismuth (or lead or mercury) on the periodic table allow the experiment to use fewer resources to achieve this.

For an idea of how much gold may be produced this way:

In 1980, when the bismuth-to-gold experiment was carried out, running particle beams through the Bevalac cost about $5,000 an hour, “and we probably used about a day of beam time,” recalls Oregon State University nuclear chemist Walter Loveland, one of the researchers on the project. Glenn Seaborg, who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with heavy elements and who died in 1999, was the senior author on the resulting study. “It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment,"

While a full ounce of gold isn't required for a crown or filling, you get the idea.

With this in mind the human's head, whose teeth are turned to gold, would need to be exposed to extreme particle conditions for a substantial period of time. We also can't forget the make up of teeth it no where close to bismuth or another element near gold on the periodic table. Even silver or ceramics are a far (but silver is at least a "reasonable") distance.

The point being to transmute a tooth or any material used in fillings other than gold, the required nuclear conditions are many orders of magnitude beyond the (already extreme) requirements to convert bismuth to gold.

"So they just need to be exposed to these extreme conditions, it doesn't prove it can't happen!" Please see here, they most likely wouldn't have a head left if anything close to the transmutations mentioned were to happen, and at the very least would instantly and continually be battling severe health problems the rest of their life.

In short, no this is not happening and is scientifically impossible to occur within a living human body.

EDIT:

I realize I've made a fundamental error in the above, and while I think majority of the research is worth maintaining for reference of the extreme conditions, the chemical composition of a tooth, or any fillers (silver, or ceramics) are all composed of elements that would require nuclear fusion to create gold. (which has yet to be achieved by any known source) So rather than a bombardment of particles an intense heat (not to mention pressure) would be required, which is so great it would more or less instantly melt through a human. Further, that's for fusion to begin, gold is only formed through fusion at the death of a star during it's supernova state

Finally, as they burnt silicon to make iron, they exploded as a supernova, and for a few short moments, each star would release as much energy as all the regular stars in that galaxy put together. In that cataclysmic explosion, for the first time, atoms of gold were manufactured — and then hurled out into the Universe, along with the other debris from that explosion.

So while I initially made a fundamental error in the direction of atomic change, the physical impossibility remains.

TCooper
  • 876
  • 4
  • 14
  • This answer is basically ruling out the possibility that gold teeth may have appeared spontaneously through known mechanisms, but in no way it is demonstrating that the phenomenon has not occurred through other means. In other words, all what you are saying may be true, and gold teeth may still be spontaneously appearing at faith healing services by other (unknown) means. –  Sep 18 '20 at 17:10
  • 6
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator No one on this site can confirm or deny anything beyond "known mechanisms" - otherwise it wouldn't be backed empirically which is a requirement of this exchange. If you don't adhere to empirical evidence then the question is once again off topic. – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 17:22
  • No one is asking you to do anything other than use empirical evidence. But there is more that can be done. Claims about gold fillings appearing spontaneously can be tested empirically as well. We can test empirically whether there was no gold before and there is gold afterwards, even if we don't understand _how_ that could even happen. If at least one case turns out being veridical, then we would need to revise our theories to account for the _how_, but that's another issue. –  Sep 18 '20 at 21:45
  • 1
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator I've actually already outlined how it is strictly impossible using real data. If you need this to tie it all together: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introchem/chapter/the-law-of-conservation-of-mass/#:~:text=The%20law%20of%20conservation%20of%20mass%20states%20that%20mass%20in,the%20mass%20of%20the%20reactants. – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 21:53
  • 1
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator If you can present a verifiable video which has undergone scrutiny to prove it wasn't edited in anyway, that in one continuous shot shows a person's tooth or filling spontaneously becoming gold, I'm happy to revisit. Otherwise I suggest you actually read and *understand* the concepts presented before continuing to pretend there is any evidence to support the claim, as there is overwhelming evidence in contradiction to the claim. – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 21:57
  • @TCooper There are no absolutes in science. If new evidence presents a corner case in which the "law of conservation of mass" does not hold, then the theory needs to be revised to accommodate the new evidence. So if you empirically test whether gold has appeared or not, and it turns out being the case that it did appear, then the facts would need to be accepted and theories would need to be revised. –  Sep 18 '20 at 21:58
  • 5
    @SpiritRealmInvestigator Certainly, no one is looking for absolutes in science, yet there is no demonstrable proof of gold spontaneously occurring and many years of research and well documented study that demonstrate the impossibility of the claim. Prove the law of conservation of mass wrong rather than the aforementioned video and I'll also be happy to revisit. – TCooper Sep 18 '20 at 22:01