Amputee Healings?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]siouxperman wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:<<< Next time you’re with a group of children, and their parents, tell them all about this. See how they react.

“My god killed a bunch of kids about your age, once. Its ok, he promised he would.”[/quote]It was more than once and it’s common knowledge among the fanatics I roll with… and their children. Rest easy. We also know that our God in His Christ fulfilled all the earthly dominion and His kingdom not being of this world will never require that again.
[/quote]

So, and I guess I’m being kinda serial here, what’s the point of living? Just to praise God and sort of accept that he plans your death and it’s out of your hands? Like, when you see genocides in Africa do you think we should stop those? If the people getting killed are just going to heaven then what’s the point of stopping it? I don’t get the life perspective here.[/quote]On the contrary. There is no point in living were it not for His all encompassing purpose.
[/quote]

So then the other part of the question, and I’m sure it’s been asked before, how do you see things like genocide? If you think it’s fine that would seem to follow what you’ve already said. But if you think it’s bad, then why is that?

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I will attempt to answer (yes for the 100th time =] )this very reasonable question later tonight.

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[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]saveski wrote:
Still no answer to my post - why has God never healed an amputee?

I see all kinds of other mumbo-jumbo but no ANSWERs.[/quote]

IF one accepted your (argument sake) premises that God performs explainable miracles like curing cancer and healing other diseases, but does not heal amputees, the obvious answer would be that he only performs miracles that could have another explanation. Or put another way he only performs miracles that don’t violate laws of physics, but that he only shifts or manipulates reality within the parameters of the probabalistic laws of physics.
[/quote]

I thought god was supposed to be omnipotent. What you’re saying, essentially, is that miracles don’t exist and everything follows the laws of nature. If that is true, a supernatural god is both impossible and unnecessary.[/quote]

Define Omnipotent. IF God is truely omnipotent to the extreme definition then he can violate the constricts of logical argument. You can’t logically limit a OMNIPOTENT being.

Others have argued that God is omnipotent to the degree that he sets the laws and does but not break his own laws.

If he is the creator of natural laws, and desires not to violate them, then when he heals an amputee, he would do so by going back in time and keeping it from happening in the first place and we’d never know.

Or he would erase any inconsistency from the history of the universe and we’d never know.

Or if he wanted to change something that would be unexplainable, he’d change the laws of physics and then we wouldn’t consider it to be unexplainable anymore.

Lastly, all that my statement requires is that a god would chose not to perform miracles by violating the lmits of physics, but only by manipulating reality within probabilistic constraints. If its a choice then it does not limit omnipotence.

But “some god” could still steer the universe within probability limits, and he actually does this through our unexplainable free will ability to affect the universe within the limits of probability. Some “god” whatever you call it, only need to be the last step beyond the edge of scientific explanation, and that science itself requires. Science can never completely describe reality because science is a creature of reality. It is part of it and a map can never contain the territory that it is mapping, unless the map is greater than the territory.

So as far as God being possible or necessary, that does not require that he perform unexplainable mysteries, except the one unexplainable mystery of non-determinism, which allows the ability for “probabalistic miracles”. Would it be explainable if you flipped a coin and it cam up heads 50 straight times? A god could avoid violating laws, and still basically dtermine the coin flip for every binary quantum event.

“Everytihing” does not follow the laws of physics anyway. The laws of physics are non-deterministic. They only set limits so that part is a misunderstanding too.

[/quote]

Excellent! Except for the part of laws not being deterministic. Constraints are causal too. Otherwise, well said!

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[quote]pat wrote:<<< If I were God, I would be very offended by your description of Him. >>>[/quote]Yeh, but you’re not and my description is His description of Himself. That’s what confess means Pat. To agree or say the same thing. Not even your own church agrees with your description of Him and your brethren should be telling you that if they cared about you like I do.

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:<<< If I were God, I would be very offended by your description of Him. >>>[/quote]Yeh, but you’re not and my description is His description of Himself. That’s what confess means Pat. To agree or say the same thing. Not even your own church agrees with your description of Him and your brethren should be telling you that if they cared about you like I do.
[/quote]

I would never attempt to describe God. That’s limiting and blasphemy. I only know the things about him that he allowed me to know either through his word, creation, or revelation. You say I said things about God I never said. Your the one who says God is the ‘Master of Puppets’, not me. That’s flat heretical.
You make God to be things he is not, and that, is a problem.

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[quote]pat wrote:
Excellent! Except for the part of laws not being deterministic. Constraints are causal too. Otherwise, well said! [/quote]

I haven’t been able to understand what you mean by deterministic. For me, when I say that the universe is non-deterministic, I mean that humans can make choices and have free will. You could actually do one thing, or another.

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[quote]mertdawg wrote:<<< Define Omnipotent. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[/quote]Now you’re killin me man. What is all this sophistry? God does not violate TRUE logic, that is, His own nature, in anything He is or does. He simply is uniquely and comprehensively cognizant of His own nature and is hence alone privy to the answers to all that is mysterious and incomprehensible to us. My inability to understand one God in three persons, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance, says absolutely nothing about the factuality of such a proposition in light of God’s own declaration that He does in fact thus exist. Agree or no?

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:<<< Define Omnipotent. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[/quote]Now you’re killin me man. What is all this sophistry? God does not violate TRUE logic, that is, His own nature, in anything He is or does. He simply is uniquely and comprehensively cognizant of His own nature and is hence alone privy to the answers to all that is mysterious and incomprehensible to us. My inability to understand one God in three persons, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance, says absolutely nothing about the factuality of such a proposition in light of God’s own declaration that He does in fact thus exist. Agree or no?[/quote]

That is what I’m saying. God doesn’t violate true logic, his nature, his own law, but it doesn’t mean he’s not omnipotent like the athiest arguments always go, it just means they don’t understand omnipotence.

The typical simplistic atheist argument that I get from the most simple minded is that if God is all powerful and all good, he can’t have created a universe that allows evil. That is purely a trick of language, of using the word omnipotence to have a “floating” or amorphous meaning. They use the term omnipotence to place a limit on God, which is an oxymoron-“an omnipotent god can’t do such and such.” The answer is that he’s not omnipotent based on their definition, which requires a god to be two mutually exclusive things. If he can do 2 mutually exclusive things then he is not the subject of a logical argument which is why its a moronic argument in the first place. “If a god could violate logic, then what can we say about him.” NOTHING! because we couldn’t use logic to figure anything out about him if he could violate logic.

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[quote]mertdawg wrote:<<< That is what I’m saying. God doesn’t violate true logic, his nature, his own law, but it doesn’t mean he’s not omnipotent like the athiest arguments always go, it just means they don’t understand omnipotence. >>>[/quote]From the standpoint of our finitude and sinful finitude at that, God appears to be supRA logical. Above and outside of logic altogether. When in reality, from His own infinite standpoint, He is actually supER logical. Authentic, divine logic does not end where ours does, but ours is only authentic insofar as it reflects and bows to His. 2+2 does indeed in ultimate fact =4 because the practical certainty of mathematics is His signature upon both the universe we live in and especially ourselves as created in His image.

In my view the proper use of logic finds the triune God of holy scripture preeminently stamped on every fact there is or ever could be as he himself is THE source and definition of all “fact-ness”. From the view of the spiritual grave of death in sin, the children of Adam will find absolutely ANYTHING with logic except Christ and Him crucified as Paul says in the first chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth. From any of an assortment of vanilla theistic first principles, to a variety of groovy self created religious alternatives to absolute professed atheism and anything in between. ANYTHING except the God who is there and what actually is the redemptive gospel history of creation.

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I don’t know. Good question.

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You don’t know what?

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[quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< So then the other part of the question, and I’m sure it’s been asked before, how do you see things like genocide? If you think it’s fine that would seem to follow what you’ve already said. But if you think it’s bad, then why is that?[/quote]For now please see my posts to Mertdawg on this page. Yes they absolutely ARE relevant. Evil exists and it is defined by God Himself and He alone.

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< So then the other part of the question, and I’m sure it’s been asked before, how do you see things like genocide? If you think it’s fine that would seem to follow what you’ve already said. But if you think it’s bad, then why is that?[/quote]For now please see my posts to Mertdawg on this page. Yes they absolutely ARE relevant. Evil exists and it is defined by God Himself and He alone.
[/quote]

But I still don’ quite understand how you separate evil from God’s plan. In the case of genocide, if it is God’s plan and it’s all well and good, but how do you know if it’s not? Many things that seem evil to me have been described as in God’s plan, but what if they were actually part of Satan’s plan and we’ve confused them? How the hell do you make sense of when terrible things happen? Regardless of whether it was Satan or God killing the people, the Christians will go the heaven, right? So why not just throw up your hands and say I believe in God but have no power to influence the events of my life and am just waiting to die?

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[quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< But I still don’ quite understand how you separate evil from God’s plan. >>>[/quote]I don’t. Evil IS included in God’s plan. In His sovereign might and wisdom He orders ALL things to His own purpose and glory, not the least of which is every act of unthinkable evil and depravity in history. [quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< In the case of genocide, if it is God’s plan and it’s all well and good, but how do you know if it’s not? >>>[/quote]It is not possible for one single sub atomic particle or one single thought or act of man or beast to defy the eternal decree of almighty God. [quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< Many things that seem evil to me have been described as in God’s plan, but what if they were actually part of Satan’s plan and we’ve confused them? >>>[/quote]Everything Satan does or can do is under God’s sovereign control. Satan conducted a horrific campaign of destruction against Job, but was required to ask God’s permission every step of the way for example. Read chapter 1. [quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< How the hell do you make sense of when terrible things happen? >>>[/quote]As I said, God orders all things to His own purpose and glory and therefore to those who have been made new in Christ EVERYTHING makes sense though in a sinful world, this side of the resurrection, much of it is unpleasant to us. [quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< Regardless of whether it was Satan or God killing the people, the Christians will go the heaven, right? >>>[/quote]Right. [quote]siouxperman wrote:<<< So why not just throw up your hands and say I believe in God but have no power to influence the events of my life and am just waiting to die?[/quote]Because in the supER logical, mind numbing plan and providence of God, man can be free, accountable, responsible and utterly predestined all at the same time. To quote the apostle Paul when he anticipated the exact question you are wondering which is " Why does He still find fault for who resists His will"? The apostle answers: “who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”. Romans 9:19-20. (Read that whole chapter if you’re interested)

To me this is not even a slight problem. Evil. True evil. Damnable, sinful, death worthy evil is made by the most high God to ultimately praise His glorious name. He displays both his justice in His flawless judgment of all evil AND His unthinkable grace in judging His own Son guilty in my place (and maybe yours) that I may not only be declared not guilty, but be counted as His brother, bride and son. A blood relative of the God of all things seen and unseen. Once He makes one aware of His unsearchable mercy and majesty what I’ve just said is not merely possible, but anything else is just manifestly IMpossible.

I know. More new questions than answered, but I’m doin the best I can as your questions are good ones. Ones I had myself even after coming to know the Lord.

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[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Excellent! Except for the part of laws not being deterministic. Constraints are causal too. Otherwise, well said! [/quote]

I haven’t been able to understand what you mean by deterministic. For me, when I say that the universe is non-deterministic, I mean that humans can make choices and have free will. You could actually do one thing, or another.[/quote]

What I am saying is that the laws a particular thing is bound by is deterministic. In other words they (the laws) will determine how a ‘thing’ reacts to a contextual situation. Like I said I agree, only that with a conscience and a free will can choose to do otherwise.

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Because in the supER logical, mind numbing plan and providence of God, man can be free, accountable, responsible and utterly predestined all at the same time.
[/quote]

Absolutely incorrect. There is no way this is possible, no way, no how. It isn’t because God isn’t capable, it’s simply because that is not how he designed it. There is no way that something can be known in advance, and also have had the chance or ability to do otherwise.

This does not speak to a inability of God at all. Actually it’s the opposite. See man often thinks, based on his own abilities or inabilities God functions the same way. What it speaks to in reality is that God is the master of his own faculties. I.E., he can also choose to not know and therefore not know. An omnipotent being can do this. Another scenario that is possible, is that choice is not temporal therefore all of it happens simultaneously, therefore there is no ‘pre’ anything as it happens all simultaneously.
The scenario that is absolutely impossible is that he knew what we would do before we do it and yet we still had the option to choose otherwise. Again. it isn’t because God can’t do it, it simply means that he did not do it that way.

The reason why this is hugely problematic, is that for predestination to be true, as a Christian, is slashes huge swaths of scripture as either wrong or utterly meaningless.

God requires us to gain wisdom as well as trust in him. He provides us the clues to understand, not everything, but enough. The clues he provides in scripture, in creation, in revelation does not support, one single stitch, of predestination.

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[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Because in the supER logical, mind numbing plan and providence of God, man can be free, accountable, responsible and utterly predestined all at the same time.
[/quote]

Absolutely incorrect. There is no way this is possible, no way, no how. It isn’t because God isn’t capable, it’s simply because that is not how he designed it. There is no way that something can be known in advance, and also have had the chance or ability to do otherwise.

This does not speak to a inability of God at all. Actually it’s the opposite. See man often thinks, based on his own abilities or inabilities God functions the same way. What it speaks to in reality is that God is the master of his own faculties. I.E., he can also choose to not know and therefore not know. An omnipotent being can do this. Another scenario that is possible, is that choice is not temporal therefore all of it happens simultaneously, therefore there is no ‘pre’ anything as it happens all simultaneously.
The scenario that is absolutely impossible is that he knew what we would do before we do it and yet we still had the option to choose otherwise. Again. it isn’t because God can’t do it, it simply means that he did not do it that way.

The reason why this is hugely problematic, is that for predestination to be true, as a Christian, is slashes huge swaths of scripture as either wrong or utterly meaningless.

God requires us to gain wisdom as well as trust in him. He provides us the clues to understand, not everything, but enough. The clues he provides in scripture, in creation, in revelation does not support, one single stitch, of predestination. [/quote]

Lots of good trip weed being smoked in this discussion.

You seem to have a direct line to the Lord himself. Can you please ask the Great One -

HOW COME THERE HAVEN’T BEEN ANY AMPUTEE HEALINGS?

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[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Because in the supER logical, mind numbing plan and providence of God, man can be free, accountable, responsible and utterly predestined all at the same time.
[/quote]

Absolutely incorrect. There is no way this is possible, no way, no how. It isn’t because God isn’t capable, it’s simply because that is not how he designed it. There is no way that something can be known in advance, and also have had the chance or ability to do otherwise.

This does not speak to a inability of God at all. Actually it’s the opposite. See man often thinks, based on his own abilities or inabilities God functions the same way. What it speaks to in reality is that God is the master of his own faculties. I.E., he can also choose to not know and therefore not know. An omnipotent being can do this. Another scenario that is possible, is that choice is not temporal therefore all of it happens simultaneously, therefore there is no ‘pre’ anything as it happens all simultaneously.
[/quote]

Yes for God, he sees all of the “universe”-beginning middle and end, but still changeable.

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[quote]pat wrote:<<< The reason why this is hugely problematic, is that for predestination to be true, as a Christian, is slashes huge swaths of scripture as either wrong or utterly meaningless. >>>[/quote]On the contrary. All scripture comes to life and the true awesomeness of God is thereby magnified and exalted. He’s nothing like you Pat regardless of how badly you wish He were.

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[quote]saveski wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Because in the supER logical, mind numbing plan and providence of God, man can be free, accountable, responsible and utterly predestined all at the same time.
[/quote]

Absolutely incorrect. There is no way this is possible, no way, no how. It isn’t because God isn’t capable, it’s simply because that is not how he designed it. There is no way that something can be known in advance, and also have had the chance or ability to do otherwise.

This does not speak to a inability of God at all. Actually it’s the opposite. See man often thinks, based on his own abilities or inabilities God functions the same way. What it speaks to in reality is that God is the master of his own faculties. I.E., he can also choose to not know and therefore not know. An omnipotent being can do this. Another scenario that is possible, is that choice is not temporal therefore all of it happens simultaneously, therefore there is no ‘pre’ anything as it happens all simultaneously.
The scenario that is absolutely impossible is that he knew what we would do before we do it and yet we still had the option to choose otherwise. Again. it isn’t because God can’t do it, it simply means that he did not do it that way.

The reason why this is hugely problematic, is that for predestination to be true, as a Christian, is slashes huge swaths of scripture as either wrong or utterly meaningless.

God requires us to gain wisdom as well as trust in him. He provides us the clues to understand, not everything, but enough. The clues he provides in scripture, in creation, in revelation does not support, one single stitch, of predestination. [/quote]

Lots of good trip weed being smoked in this discussion.

You seem to have a direct line to the Lord himself. Can you please ask the Great One -

HOW COME THERE HAVEN’T BEEN ANY AMPUTEE HEALINGS?[/quote]

Look at my first post on the previous page. It ends the paradox. You can then say “well that’s not the kind of God your supposed to believe in” but that’s about all you can do.

And what is the source of your pain? Did you believe in miracles once?