Amputee Healings?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
241

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:<<< you must demonstrate either 1) an event that cannot be naturally explained >>>[/quote]How bout a 9 year old boy’s kneecaps moving right before his eyes from pointing toward one another to normal? Does that count.
[/quote]I just did it myself, so I’d say not.[/quote]You’d have to be born with your legs bending outward toward your shoulders. Kneecaps facing each other with your legs straight and then watch them move around to normal within seconds in answer to prayer in the name of Jesus. Lemme know when ya pull that off. I am telling you that if you knew this guy and saw the pictures, our conversation would now be about how whatever fixed this boys legs, it wasn’t Jesus.
[/quote]

Have you talked with a doctor to confirm this is medically impossible?

People have been known to perform superhuman feats, like lifting a car, under the right conditions.

How are the kids knees today, following the “miracle”? Are you saying there was no change from birth whatsoever from birth, then a sudden miraculous change, and that the knees have never reverted in the slightest since then? And how do you know this…based on the kid’s unbiased account?

Most importantly, why are these miraculous faith healings never replicated in a lab? Surely god could heal someone in a lab where the patient’s history, diagnosis, and condition could be medically confirmed by a professional?

On a recent episode of Miracle Detectives, there was a guy in a wheelchair who was 100% convinced that god would heal him in the last day of a spiritual treat. They priest prayed over him and invoked the Holy Spirit to heal him…but he collapsed back into his wheelchair unable to walk.

Maybe he didn’t have enough faith? Or maybe god is camera shy?

Just maybe it’s because the guy’s spinal cord was severed, and it would have been a true miracle for him to suddenly walk.[/quote]

forlife, all conjectures regarding the validity of the act aside, let me ask you something:

If there really was a miracle. Like, a for real, honest to GOD, actual hand of God coming down from Heaven and fixing kneecaps for protecting that cloak from the bomb we talked about a while back miracle, in short, if there actually is a God and he is the God of the Bible and has deigned to intervene in our pitiful little lives, then wouldn’t Matthew 4:7 apply all the more poignantly?[/quote]

Matthew 4:7 is a clever escape clause, that effectively frees believers from having to back up any of their claims. Every time these claims cannot be replicated under reliable conditions that rule out natural explanations, they utterly fail. And surely that’s because god will not be tested, rather than because people desperately want to believe these things are real. It allows people to claim anything they want, and provides a sham protection for their beliefs.

Which is fine, if the goal is for people to have comfort and meaning in their lives. But it doesn’t mean any of it is actually based in reality.

People readily understand and agree with this when it comes to miraculous claims of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and even certain Christian sects, but they are blind to the logical flaw when it comes to their own beliefs.
[/quote]

Let me pose the scenario a different way. From a completely anthropomorphic standpoint (and not one I am necessarily pushing as what “is,” only attempting to provide an alternative perspective) :

Imagine you are God. You can do whatever you feel like. Give or withhold health, wholeness and comfort to whomever you choose. You can be the God of the Bible or you can even be Allah or a Hindu God or whatever Zoroaster believed in, doesn’t matter. As God, who are you more likely to heal? Someone who supplicates himself before you, asks with the utmost humility, sincerity and belief in you, and whose opinion of you will not change whether or not he is healed; or the cynical, skeptical agnostic, who has spent countless hours doubting or even outright deriding your works to date, who would demand that YOU prove yourself to him else he shall withhold belief in you.

Really, who would you feel like helping?
[/quote]

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.

Also, as a god hopefully I wouldn’t be so insecure as to need the affirmation of my creations. I would be perfectly happy and fulfilled, and would only want what is best for them.

I’m not sure how the scenario applies though, since I’m asserting that if god actually does heal believers at a greater rate than nonbelievers, this should be observable and verifiable.

242

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
Why would an atheist believe a regenerated leg to be a miracle, but not the creation of an entire human body in the developmental process of a baby?

God makes a person!, The leg is amputated. If he doesn’t make a new leg then there’s no miracles and no God.[/quote]

Human fertilization, growth, and development are known natural processes. Regrowing a human limb has never occurred in human history. It would be a true miracle, requiring supernatural intervention.

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[quote]forlife wrote:

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.
[/quote]

As a parent and as a teacher of many hundreds of different kids, I try not to reward behavior I want to see less of. But, to each his own, I guess.

[quote]

I’m not sure how the scenario applies though, since I’m asserting that if god actually does heal believers at a greater rate than nonbelievers, this should be observable and verifiable.[/quote]

Who’s to say that everything claimed a miracle actually is one? Perhaps the actual number of real, ahem, honest to God miracles are statistically insignificant. But, again, particularly under the conditions you described earlier, you can call it an escape or cheating or whatever you will, but you are still putting the Lord your God to the test.

244

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.
[/quote]

As a parent and as a teacher of many hundreds of different kids, I try not to reward behavior I want to see less of. But, to each his own, I guess.

So if your child had cancer, and you could cure it, you would refuse to do so unless she followed all the rules?

If it occurs so rarely that it’s actually statistically insignificant, don’t you agree that calls into question whether it occurs at all? And if it’s that rare, what is the point of praying in the first place? Does it only happen to the .00000000001% of believers with enough faith to make it happen?

Refusing to be put to the test sounds petulantly childish, to be honest. As a loving father, I would gladly be put to the test.

If nothing else, hopefully you can at least understand why honest people might question whether these things actually do occur in very rare instances, to the point of statistical insignificance, that can never even once be replicated under reliable controlled conditions that rule out natural explanations.

245

[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’ve always found it amusing if not pathetic when I read these type threads and see itty-bitty lil humans angrily and derisively shaking their itty-bitty lil fists at what they perceive to be a non-existent God (and at those who believe He does indeed exist).

Saveski, and others, why does it vex you so? Why can’t you just walk away from the subject and let the simple-minded, theistic supporting arguments and its proponents founder on the rocks of your vastly superior trump card of “God doesn’t God heal amputees, ha!”?

“My tiny mind can’t comprehend You so therefore I have decided You don’t exist.”[/quote]

No problem at all. Believe all you want what you want. My problem is when your belief affects others. If you believe that God created everything 6,000 or so years ago and that evolution is some sort of atheist conspiracy, great, go with that. But when you say that your myth should be taught as science, then yeah, I have a pretty big issue with that as I believe this is taking scientific progress backwards to the middle ages.

So, are you willing to keep your beliefs to yourself? If not, then people like me are going to be “vexed” about it.

246

[quote]forlife wrote:<<< Are you saying there was no change whatsoever from birth, then a sudden miraculous change, and that the knees have never reverted in the slightest since then? And how do you know this…based on the kid’s unbiased account? >>>[/quote]Yes. I met him when he was 19. I knew him for over a year before I even found out. Totally normal. He was on the college wrestling team. We invited him over for dinner one night. The discussion turned to miracles actually and how few there were these days (late 80’s).

He opened his covered bible with pockets in it and pulled out pictures of himself as a baby and throughout his childhood until he was nine when he was healed. My eyeballs almost fell out. He looked like an upside down letter T. His knees were on the inside of his legs. He told me that a man at his church (I cannot remember who) came and squatted down in front of him and put his legs up on top of his own thighs.

The man put his hands up by my friends (his name is Jeff) knees. He told Jeff that Jesus was going to make him whole and asked if he believed that. He nodded his head. I don’t remember the exact words, but he told Jeff’s legs to be straight in the name and for the glory of Jesus. Jeff told me there was no sensation good or bad, but he sat there and watched as his legs straightened out. Took one to two seconds. He said strangely he wasn’t even surprised.

What would have convinced you more than the pictures which were clearly him, was this young man himself. Not even you would have accused him a being a liar if you knew him. Like I say. This conversation would be you sniveling about “whatever did this it wasn’t Jesus”. Anything except the truth.

[quote]forlife wrote:<<< Most importantly, why are these miraculous faith healings never replicated in a lab? Surely god could heal someone in a lab where the patient’s history, diagnosis, and condition could be medically confirmed by a professional? >>>[/quote]Har dee har har. See, God is not at all desperate to prove Himself or for you or anyone else to believe Him. He is already plainly self evident everywhere. The problem is you, not Him.

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[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
Can science “explain” wave particle duality? Can God make the photon go through one slit and not the other? Well it went through one, and science is presumably utterly incapable of explaining why.

Can a butterfly flapping its wings cause a hurricane to hit an island? Yes, in fact, but it can never be known that it DID regardless of the completeness of our scientific models.

Miracles are foreordained in the laws of nature. And yet they can be done imminently, because to God their is no “before” and “after”.

[/quote]

We’ll never know everything, although it’s very likely our knowledge of reality will continue to grow over time as we use the scientific method.

You don’t seem to be allowing for the possibility that miracles don’t happen.

[/quote]

Miracles, by your definition might not happen. I am not sure what my definition of miracle is now.

I believe that God turned events in my life that made me angry into the best. Meeting my wife was dependent on what at the age of 13 was what I perceived to be the biggest tragedy. When I see my children, I know in my heart that they were intended to be, and not someone else. I do not believe that I could have been and stayed married to anyone else. I also believe that he gave me a gift that saved me from alcoholism. I tried to quit for about 10 years, and was almost killed at least 3 times, arguably dozens, and after a period of a few months off of it, I had a temptation to drink-which at that point would have meant that I would have drank to the point of unconsciouness. I took a sip, and as hard as I tried I could not swallow. I basically had an “explanable” panic attack which forever removed any desire to drink alcohol. Will be 10 years this summer. For me, that is a miracle, and yet for you that COULD NEVER be defined as a miracle see.

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[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.
[/quote]

As a parent and as a teacher of many hundreds of different kids, I try not to reward behavior I want to see less of. But, to each his own, I guess.

[/quote]

Are you serious? I agree that you don’t want to reward bad behavior. But there’s a difference between withholding TV time, for example, and withholding medical treatment!

“Well, son, I see you didn’t clean your room like I asked. As punishment, I will withhold that chemotherapy you need this week. We’ll let that tumor in your brain grow a little bigger. That’ll teach you to listen next time!”

Wow. Just, wow.

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[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.
[/quote]

As a parent and as a teacher of many hundreds of different kids, I try not to reward behavior I want to see less of. But, to each his own, I guess.

[/quote]

Are you serious? I agree that you don’t want to reward bad behavior. But there’s a difference between withholding TV time, for example, and withholding medical treatment!

Wow. Just, wow.[/quote]

But we’re swithing context here. Earthly healing versus losing your soul is basically the question.

Should God have healed Lt. Dan?

252

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:
Of course, I believe the bible is a book of fabricated stories so it doesn’t really answer the question for me.
[/quote]

Even the crucifixion, empty tomb, resurrection, and martyr parts?[/quote]

Like I said, people make up shit all the time. They made up shit 2,000 years ago just like they make up shit today. And for the same reasons.

Even the Catholic church acknowledges this. They’ve rejected scores of letters written at the same time as the letters they ultimately sanctioned, on the basis of those letters being fraudulent and claiming fictional events that weren’t facts. It’s more than coincidence that the letters they decided to adopt happened to support their particular doctrinal beliefs, while other letters cast doubt on those beliefs.[/quote]

Most of those ‘letters’ that were rejected were not written at the same time, unless you considered the middle of the second century as the same thing as the first century and early second century…and no scholar don’t. Most of the letters they rejected didn’t cast doubt on their beliefs, the books were exaggerated (Gospel of Peter from 150 A.D) or weren’t used as liturgical readings (Proto-Evangelium of James).[/quote]

What is your explanation for the slew of letters that claimed false facts?[/quote]

You mean the one’s deemed not divine?[/quote]

Yes.[/quote]

Easy, hardly anyone used them in their liturgies and the council’s are guided by the Holy Ghost (I’m sure you’ll not take the latter part as just religious conjecture).

255

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]saveski wrote:

[quote]byukid wrote:
GUYS! I just realized: God has never caused gold to spontaneously appear in my hand, therefore he can’t be real. [/quote]

So, your all-powerful, all-loving god created the ENTIRE universe, can cure diseases, part the sea for Moses, preserve the bodies of saints, etc., but can NOT for some reason do a simple amputee healing or materialize a trivial bit of gold in your hand.

Hmm. Am I asking for too much from your god?

And here’s another question which will befuddle you since you won’t use your faculty of reason.

How do you know there’s only one god?

And don’t give me a self-referential answer like it says in Leviticus 13:1 that Jesus said there is only one god therefore I believe whatever it says in there since I can’t use my brain.

(Still amazes me how people are so blinded by mythology.)[/quote]

I didn’t know Jesus was speaking in Leviticus.

Two reasons, according to the truth and Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Kalam Argument, Thomas Aquinas there is one god/intelligent mind/greater good/&c. Moreover, Occam’s Razor. Why would we need multiple eternal, timeless, space-less, personal beings when one is enough.[/quote]

If you want to invoke Occam’s Razor, 0 gods is less than 1 god.[/quote]

It says not to multiply or to complicate, not to not have one.[/quote]

Concocting a supernatural magical being that knows all and has all power is an unnecessary complication that violates Occam’s Razor.
[/quote]

I maybe wrong here, but looking at the facts of the Big Bang Theory, the Kalam argument would prove that one immaterial, eternal, powerful, intelligent, and personal first cause would need to exist. Now, this first cause Thomas Aquinas calls ‘G-d’ and so does the catholic Church. Now, that doesn’t describe all of G-d, but it is a large chunk of what G-d is. On top of the fine-tuning of the universe, objective morals, personal experiences, and as well, the historical account of Jesus Christ I have five good reasons to believe G-d exists, and yet zero reasons not to believe G-d exists.

And on the matter of amputee healing, it seems it’s an argument for evil in the world. Well, G-d did create the laws of nature like gravity so the Universe didn’t just expand infinitely. Moreover, when one walks off the edge of a building one will in fact hit the ground because of that same gravity. Now is that a natural evil? Yeah, does it make G-d non-existent or bad? No.

Same with this argument, not only is it a false dichotomy, you have to look at the second part of the premise, ‘then G-d does not exist.’ Well, I have five reasons that this is wrong. Therefore, by this logic there is in fact someone that had a cut off limb healed. This logically is unsound if I said because G-d exists, there is amputees who have been healed.

There is no proof of the latter either way, and would be conjecture at its best. However, the actual option is that G-d does exist, and it is possible that amputees have been healed.

Side note, this amputee thing reminds me of a saint, St. Denis, look him up if you want an awesome story.

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THE ARGUMENT IS FALLACIOUS BECAUSE IT IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY. STOP ARGUING.

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[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’ve always found it amusing if not pathetic when I read these type threads and see itty-bitty lil humans angrily and derisively shaking their itty-bitty lil fists at what they perceive to be a non-existent God (and at those who believe He does indeed exist).

Saveski, and others, why does it vex you so? Why can’t you just walk away from the subject and let the simple-minded, theistic supporting arguments and its proponents founder on the rocks of your vastly superior trump card of “God doesn’t God heal amputees, ha!”?

“My tiny mind can’t comprehend You so therefore I have decided You don’t exist.”[/quote]

No problem at all. Believe all you want what you want. My problem is when your belief affects others. If you believe that God created everything 6,000 or so years ago and that evolution is some sort of atheist conspiracy, great, go with that. But when you say that your myth should be taught as science, then yeah, I have a pretty big issue with that as I believe this is taking scientific progress backwards to the middle ages.

So, are you willing to keep your beliefs to yourself? If not, then people like me are going to be “vexed” about it.[/quote]

Ahhh, this is an easy one to respond to. Let me search for the right words…here we go…ready?

No problem at all. Believe all you want what you want. My problem is when your belief affects others. If you believe that God didn’t create everything 6,000 or so years ago (or more) and that creation is some sort of religious conspiracy, great, go with that. But when you say that your myth should be taught as science, then yeah, I have a pretty big issue with that as I believe this is taking scientific progress backwards to the middle ages.

So, are you willing to keep your beliefs to yourself? If not, then people like me are going to be “vexed” about it.

There. That feels rather good. Thank you, Mike.[/quote]

AHHHH yourself. I don’t merely believe in evolution, I regard it as science. Evolution is backed by EVIDENCE. I’ve got fossils. You have a 2,000 year old book that’s gone through a few translations. See, there’s a difference. But I don’t want to open this can of worms.

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[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]JEATON wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:
If it’s not supposed to be a miracle, why do people constantly interpret it as such and use it to support their belief in their god?

And if god doesn’t prove himself through miracles, does nobody find it a little suspect that every single one of these “miracles” can occur spontaneously, while there isn’t a single example of something that would not be possible spontaneously?[/quote]

As I’ve posited before, science can never explain free will/non-determination. It is a) part of the standard copenhagan model of quantum physics and b) is by definition in that model “beyond further explanation” and yet free will would make every human thought and choice a miracle. Science can not explain why the universe is a collapsed wave function-an “observable” and not just a superposition of all mathematical possibilities.

I think the root of your question is not about “miracles”, but about why God allows pain. Maybe I’m wrong here, but let me ask, why would God heal a missing leg?

Why is there pain, and why doesn’t God just show himself beyond any human capacity to doubt seem to be the deeper questions. No?[/quote]

Why would god heal the blind, cure cancer, and perform other miracles that just happen to occur spontaneously, but never, even once, perform miracles with no alternate explanation?[/quote]

I have not read through every post, so this may be covered.

Discussions such as this never lead anywhere because they begin with an erroneous assumption.

I will not address every single miraculous event in the Bible. However, time and time again in the New Testament Christ does not take credit for the miracles that occur. He clearly states that it is the FAITH of the recipient that produces the miraculous result.

Let me repeat this again. It was the believer’s faith in Christ, not Christ himself, that performed the miracle.

As you believe, it shall be done unto you.

Do not blame Christ, blame the amputee if you are intent in assigning blame in this most arbitrary of examples.

Even in the Old Testament, when Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt and the Pharaoh’s armies were catching up to them by the edge of the sea, it was not God who split the seas. In the ancient Aramaic translations, when Moses called out to God to save them, God’s response came back something along the lines of “why are you bothering Me?” In other words, it was Moses’s faith in God that split the waters and held them wide for the Isralites to pass through.

[/quote]

So miracles that can be explained through natural means are attributable to a person’s faith, but true miracles that would require supernatural intervention never occur in a controlled, confirmable setting because the person never has enough faith?
[/quote]

Read my post again and come up with a better question. This is gibberish.

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[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

I would heal both. As a parent who loves my children, I still do my best for them even when they are brats.
[/quote]

As a parent and as a teacher of many hundreds of different kids, I try not to reward behavior I want to see less of. But, to each his own, I guess.

[/quote]

Are you serious? I agree that you don’t want to reward bad behavior. But there’s a difference between withholding TV time, for example, and withholding medical treatment!

Wow. Just, wow.[/quote]

But we’re swithing context here. Earthly healing versus losing your soul is basically the question.

Should God have healed Lt. Dan? [/quote]

I was responding directly to the question posed by Cortes: If I were God and I could heal two people from a physical ailment, would I heal the religious person or would I heal the skeptic/agnostic? Like forlife, I would heal both.

But I get what you’re saying. LT Dan may have been confined to a wheelchair on earth, but his soul was saved. He just needed to be patient. My question is, why NOT offer a little comfort from earthly sufffering if all the rules are followed? Would you work for an employer who promised you a huge paycheck, but only after you worked there for 5 years?