Apologetics: The Argument from Miracles
The argument from miracles is one of the simplest (and stupidest) apologetic arguments. Essentially, it goes like this:
1. Miracles happen.
2. Therefore, god exists.
This leads to a few obvious questions. First, what is a miracle? Second, how would we identify a miracle if one were to occur? Third, do miracles actually happen?
The first answer is easy. For the purposes of this argument, a miracle must be defined as something that cannot be satisfactorily explained except through divine intervention. Unlikely isn’t good enough. It has to be something impossible according to the laws of science. If I take an event that is merely improbable as evidence of god, then god must exist because improbable things must happen. If I flip a coin 25 times, it might come up heads every times. It wouldn’t happen often, but once every 33,554,432 times I try it (on average) it will happen. 25 heads = god? No. So, to continue the analogy, what we’re looking for is an event in which I flip a fair U.S. coin once, and it comes up “arms” or “spleens” or some such thing. THAT would be a miracle.
The second answer is also easy. How would we identify a miracle if one were to occur? We can’t. It’s impossible. We can’t prove a miracle any more than we can disprove the existence of god. I know many of you disagree with me on this point, but so be it. The theist says that if I haven’t experienced god, I just haven’t looked in the right place yet. Since I can’t check everywhere at once, I can’t prove that he doesn’t exist. Similarly, to prove a miracle, one must disprove not only every scientific explanation available to us based on our current understanding of the universe, but we must also check the events against all the things we don’t know yet. In other words, to prove a miracle, one must know everything. One must have a complete understanding of every scientific principle by which the universe operates. If it were even possible to have this total understanding, it still wouldn’t be enough. You would have to prove that there was nothing else left to learn. Good luck with that.
So, based on that, the third question is moot. Do miracles happen? I don’t know. Prove it to me. You can’t? OK. Then they don’t happen.
That about does it for the argument from miracles if one is to look at it logically. However, the actual argument as made by theists looks more like this: “My step-niece had Ebola, and she was cured. Praise Jesus.” Allow me to respond to this pedestrian and uninformed version of the argument, also. Back in October, I posted after learning that I had a potentially fatal medical condition. The echocardiogram showed an aortic aneurysm that could suddenly pop and drop me like John Ritter. Not only that, though. It also showed a thickening of the muscle in my left ventricle. This condition (LVH), which I didn’t even talk about, could also be suddenly fatal. Well, after three months in the care of a cardiologist, which included two more EKGs, another echocardiogram and an MRI, I just learned on Tuesday that there isn’t a damn thing wrong with me. None of these other tests showed a problem. The measurements of my heart and aorta were normal. So, is it a miracle? I assure you that I didn’t pray. In fact, for those three months, I’ve been verbally kicking god in the nuts on a regular basis on this blog. Hell, I call him a dick every Sunday. Did he cure me to reward me for this behavior? Obviously. Well, I suppose it could have been a problem with the initial test… Nah. God cured me. Praise Jesus.
~I AM~
January 19th, 2006 at at 2:33 am
Congratulations!
Praise Hector! (Makes about as much sense as praise Jesus.) 
I just wish my atrial fibrillation and hypertension would clear up as easily. 
January 19th, 2006 at at 7:06 am
I just wish my atrial fibrillation and hypertension would clear up as easily.
Now that I have experienced a miracle, I will soon be selling small vials of my tears on eBay for $125 each. Just get one for the fibrillation and one for the hypertension, and you should be all set. Repeat as often as necessary to keep the symptoms under control.
“You are broken now, but faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.”
“Opiate”
Tool
January 19th, 2006 at at 9:30 am
Well, after three months in the care of a cardiologist, which included two more EKGs, another echocardiogram and an MRI, I just learned on Tuesday that there isn’t a damn thing wrong with me. None of these other tests showed a problem.
Hot damn skippy. Praise all things Peanut Butter and Jelly! Glad to hear you’re okay.
Maybe god inflicted you in the first place then realized how much of dick he really has been over the years by reading your blog and decided to heal you. Maybe you changed god’s mind about something. It’s a miracle!
January 19th, 2006 at at 10:18 am
Glad to hear it I AM. Maybe I could buy a few gallons of those tears wholesale and sell them to the locals.
January 19th, 2006 at at 11:57 am
The Laws of Science have been kicking god in the nuts for centuries. Keep up the good work, I AM!!
January 19th, 2006 at at 1:43 pm
You know, it’s because you have all those theists coming out here saying they are praying for your soul. If God kicks you to the curb now, your soul is damned. This is his way of giving you a second chance.
Oh, and you should buy a lottery ticket tonight. Hey, maybe God wants to give you a few million bucks, too. Then you could just buy a soul, like Joel Osteen.
January 19th, 2006 at at 1:43 pm
PS. Got eager and hit submit before saying I’m really glad you’re okay. I’m sure your family must be thrilled, too.
January 19th, 2006 at at 2:24 pm
Congrats, I Am! This definitely fits into a hypothesis I’ve been working on– God loves atheists.
January 19th, 2006 at at 2:39 pm
An excellent exposition on the subject of miracles is here:
http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com/
I haven’t seen it linked from your blog, so I thought I’d mention it.
January 19th, 2006 at at 3:12 pm
Glad to hear the good health report, I AM!
In my opinion, atheists should press Christians on the topic of miracles as much as their sense of good taste will let them. Jesus’ ability to “heal every sickness and every disease among the people” (Matthew 9:35) is one of the central themes of the Gospels, and he explicitly promises the same results to all who believe in him. (See John 14:12-14, Matthew 7:7-11, Matthew 17:18-20, Matthew 21:22, to cite a few such promises.)
So, where are the miracles? Where are the dead being raised? Where are the paraplegics leaping up from their beds? Where are the blind being made to see? Jesus did all these things without fail in the Gospels. Jesus tells his followers, “He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do.” (John 14:12).
Encourage any of your Christian friends who debate this point to read Matthew. (Any of the Gospels will do, but Matthew is a good place to start.) I counted 23 healing miracles in Matthew alone, and I may have missed some. There are even instances where Jesus or his disciples heal entire “multitudes” and “cities and villages.” So, when Jesus promises, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer”, there are two possibilities: (a) No one believes in him, or (b) Jesus is full of shit.
January 19th, 2006 at at 4:18 pm
I saw a news report on the miners from W Virginia. At the memorial service they had 12 white candles and 1 red candle. The red candle was for the 1 survivor who they refered to as a miracle. Sheesh. ?????
JIM
January 19th, 2006 at at 6:21 pm
Does ‘God’ even have nuts?
January 19th, 2006 at at 9:59 pm
Does ‘God’ even have nuts?
Not according to Kevin Smith.
January 19th, 2006 at at 10:03 pm
Ironic, huh?
January 19th, 2006 at at 10:46 pm
I did it. I was able to prove everything there is to prove, including all the things that we don’t know yet. I just don’t know how to prove I did it.
I really feel bad for people that need some “higher power” to make them feel better. Personally, I’ll stick with the easter bunny. He’s not as vengeful.
January 20th, 2006 at at 7:00 pm
Don’t forget the 1969 Mets!
January 26th, 2006 at at 5:20 am
“You would have to prove that there was nothing else left to learn.”
My brain just exploded.
This is very well done, Yammy. Too bad it will be missed on 99.9% of the xians who read it. You’re definition of “miracle”, although perfectly accurate, is far too strict. Xians believe everything is a miracle.
Jim rrr: I wrote on the miners. It’s unbelievable how these people are so blinded.
January 26th, 2006 at at 7:37 pm
Good post DUB. Speaking of the 700 Club, I remember Pat Robertson claimed that the people of Dover, PA should not look to God to protect them in the event of a disaster because they voted the Intelligent Design proponents off of the school board, but the people of Tallmansville, WV gather in their church to pray for their loved ones and 12 out of 13 die. Maybe God meant to hurt the people of Dover, PA, but his aim really sucks!
January 27th, 2006 at at 2:40 am
My thoughts are that those who want to disbelieve will no amount of proof would convince them. I have been healed after prayer, my doctor a record of tests proving the illness I had and though she could offer me no cure, she also has a record of my miraculous healing after prayer which she cannot explain. There is a doctor on the Coast that puts out a book cateloging the miracles of God that he personally has verified and witnessed. What would you accept as proof?
January 27th, 2006 at at 2:45 am
You know, it’s because you have all those theists coming out here saying they are praying for your soul. If God kicks you to the curb now, your soul is damned. This is his way of giving you a second chance.
Oh, and you should buy a lottery ticket tonight. Hey, maybe God wants to give you a few million bucks, too. Then you could just buy a soul, like Joel Osteen.
January 27th, 2006 at at 2:46 am
Joel Osteen rules! Check him out on pay tv.
January 27th, 2006 at at 12:30 pm
Hey Social Scientist. While I cannot claim to speak for all atheists, there is a standard of proof that could be met that would convince me.
For starters, Roman records of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus (who would actually have been called Jehoshua). Jesus could apprear to me in person for say about 60 seconds, enough time to tell me “Thomas, everything the Bible tells about me is true and it is very important for you to believe in me.”
As for your miraculous cure, we of course have only your word on it. I don’t suppose you would want to offer us your medical records and a few minutes of time to interview your doctor. There are also people who claim to have seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, or to have been kidnapped by extraterrestrials to have medical experiments performed on them. Why should we give you any more credence than we would such people?
Many atheists, including myself, were once believing Christians, but like Morpheus said to Neo in ‘The Matrix’, we just couldn’t shake this feeling that something was not right, and when we began to examine the Bible more critically, we realized it was not the eternally true word of a one true and all powerful god, but rather a cobbled together work created by people who wanted others to believe that it was the word of god.
January 27th, 2006 at at 8:26 pm
To Thomas Kearney - I admire the fact that you at least stand by your belief (or disbelief) we will have to agree to disagree.
January 27th, 2006 at at 9:05 pm
Thank you Social. Not to delve too much into my personal life, but this past summer I made a mistake that I deeply regretted and I feared that my marriage and my life were going to be destroyed. But at no point during that most difficult time in my life did I shed my atheism and resolve to return to a belief in Jesus and the Church in the hopes that my problems would be solved by divine intervention. Everything ended up being fine.
There is an old cliche that there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, while I cannot claim to have been in a foxhole in a combat situation, I was in a situation where I thought everything I held dear in my life would be lost, and I did not veer from my atheism. But if a different person in my situation who was an atheist decided to find religion again, only for everything to turn out alright for him as it did for me, he would superstitiously owe his happy ending to his acceptance of Jesus as his lord and savior. Sometimes what you think is a miracle from God is simply a matter of convenient timing.
January 30th, 2006 at at 8:23 pm
to Thomas Kearney,
I believe that what a lot of people put down to a conveniently timed coincidence is a Godincidence. And some answers to prayer can only be explained as outright miracles in that they defy the laws of nature or science and cannot be explained by any other means. Smith Wigglesworth who was an English Christian who lived 100 years ago raised 14 people from the dead in public view, one was a patient in the hospital morgue in front of hospital staff, another was at a funeral in front of dozens of relatives of the deceased. As you would know, when a person is prepared for burial all their internal organs are removed so they do not explode in cold storage, therefore these people could not just revive, therefore if they do resurrect after being declared clinically dead then it entail recreating all new organs for them to live.
January 30th, 2006 at at 10:26 pm
Social Scientist, with your last post, I can only conclude that you are seriously brain-damaged. I make it a policy to be courteous and polite when debating with others on blog comment threads, but you obviously do not have a grip on reality when you honestly believe some guy raised people from the dead 100 years ago in England. And the U.S. government has the corpses of extraterrestrials recovered from a spacecraft that crashed in New Mexico 60 years ago. Been nice chatting with you buddy, but you are just way out there.
January 31st, 2006 at at 6:24 pm
To Tommykey,
A more recent person to raise the dead that I know of is Mel Tari an Indonesian Pastor who had a revival during the East Timor uprising, he is still alive now and probably still doing such miracles. I met the 14 year old woman who was raised from the dead by Mel Tari as a child, she also is living proof of God’s miracle working power. Mel Tari has written a book about Christianity in East Timor called ‘Like a mighty rushing wind’ perhaps you can get a copy of it and read about the other miracles that occured in the East Timor uprising as Christians were targeted for death.
January 31st, 2006 at at 7:03 pm
Mel Tari has written a book about Christianity in East Timor called ‘Like a mighty rushing wind’ perhaps you can get a copy of it and read about the other miracles that occured in the East Timor uprising as Christians were targeted for death.
Oh, you mean this Mel Tari…
Evangelist Mel Tari, whose best-selling book “Like a Mighty Wind” claimed to detail miracles that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, has been ordered to pay a former supporter approximately $1.1 million for fraud.
After a four-day trial in late June, an Orange County (Calif.) Superior Court judge ruled Tari had “conned” Christine Kline out of her inheritance.
It is unclear whether Tari will appeal the ruling.
Kline, 41, a former Youth with a Mission worker, was heir to a small fortune in corporate stock. She met Tari in 1985 and told him of her interest in using the stock assets to support herself and others in mission work.
Tari convinced Kline that he would set up a trust fund with the money. But instead, he sold $400,000 in stocks and used the proceeds to invest in a resort company. Tari claimed the funds had been a gift.
During the trial, accounts from Tari’s books were read, detailing miracles performed in Indonesia, including a legless man growing legs instantly after Tari’s prayers. Kline testified that, at the time, she believed Tari had special powers to work physical and financial miracles.
The judge ordered Tari to pay $725,000 in damages. With interest, the award was estimated to be $1.1 million.
Yes, I am sure that’s a very reliable source, yeah, very reliable…
January 31st, 2006 at at 8:29 pm
Social Scientist (I love that moniker btw, makes it sound like what you say is grounded in science or something), you remind me of that infomercial huckster Kevin Trudeau “there are natural cures to cure [you fill in the disease], but the government won’t allow the products to be sold saying they can cure those diseases.”
SS (that’s what I will call you from now on), when the Christian Europeans reached the Americas, untold thousands, perhaps even millions, of Native Americans died because they had no immunity to the diseases that the Europeans had long since developed an immunity to. Was the death of all of these Native Americans a miracle from God? Did they deserve what happened to them because they were “heathens”?
January 31st, 2006 at at 8:39 pm
It’s funny SS that if all these faith healings were happening, there would be hundreds of thousands of well documented cases by independent and impartial third parties to prove it. Heck, the Amazing Randi would give one million dollars to someone who could heal a sick person or bring a dead person back to life in a controlled setting. Just think what it would do for health care in America if true believing Christians could heal the sick and raise the dead. No one would need health insurance anymore. Heck, just go to your local Christian healer and you will be good as new in a matter of seconds. We wouldn’t need any more doctors. The pharmaceutical industry would be put out of business. So why hasn’t this happened yet SS?
January 31st, 2006 at at 8:42 pm
Oh, one more thing SS, would a Christian be able to heal a man with erectile dysfunction, and if so, would he (or she) have to touch the man’s flaccid penis in order to achieve the cure?
Favorite scene from the movie “Born on the 4th of July”:
Ron Kovic’s mom: Don’t you say “penis” in this house!
Ron Kovic: Penis! Penis! Penis!
February 1st, 2006 at at 11:25 pm
LBBP,
I did not know about the fraud claim about Mel Tari, and I do thank you for enlightening me on this. Nonetheless having said that …. does the court always get it right? And even if it was a correct decision by the court it was money fraud not fraudulent claims about miracles was it? I actually met a young girl who was raised from the dead by him about 10 years ago, I did not just hear about her I met this young woman (14 years old) she would be about 28 now.
February 2nd, 2006 at at 1:34 am
TK,
Actually there are heaps of documented cases of healings, as I mentioned previously my doctor has a record of my healing, the baby’s healing, the doctor up the road put out a booklet documenting authenticated healings he had verified that he could not explain e.g. of incurable cancer etc. There is loads of proof out there in hospitals world wide, the difficulty in accessing your own medical file let alone other people’s file is what makes it difficult to present documented proof.
February 2nd, 2006 at at 1:42 am
TK,
I am a woman not a man, the reason I call myself Social Scientist is because I have a Bachelor Degree in Social Science (with majors in Counselling, Human Services, Community Development, and electives in Psychology and Welfare Law). However I am very interested in all Science and have read dozens of New Scientist magazines and Science books too such as Stephen Hawkings and others.
February 2nd, 2006 at at 10:41 am
I know that you are a woman SS by the way you write.
What you offer is not documented proof. The “doctor up the road” who “put out a booklet documenting authenticated healings he had verified” is not a reliable source because there is no third party unbiased observer. The medical profession is filled with quacks (Deepak Chopra anyone?).
There is not “loads of proof” out there SS, because if there was. “healing by Christian prayer” would be documented in reputable medical journals and it would be incorporated into medical practice.
Let me put it to you this way SS, say your child had a serious heart complication requiring surgery(which I of course would hope would never happen in real life) and you had a choice between the world’s greatest heart surgeon who happens to be an atheist, or a Bible believing Christian with little experience fresh out of medical school. Which surgeon are you going to choose to perform the surgery on your child?
February 3rd, 2006 at at 12:47 am
To Tk,
Here are some documented Miracle healings of God you can look up on the net:
The Big Rocker grants The Hawk a miracle
Ronnie Hawkins no longer has cancer, say doctors
Sharon Dunn
National Post
Saturday, May 03, 2003
Last time they gave me an MRI I was as clean as an angel’s drawers.”
A while back, I visited rocker Ronnie Hawkins and wrote a piece about how he had pancreatic cancer and had mere months to live.
The tumour was diagnosed last July when Ronnie got jaundice. He received the death sentence Aug. 13, following which old pals like Kris Kristofferson, Robbie Robertson and Bill Clinton rallied ’round for the remaining months of his rockin’ rowdy life.
Then a few days ago, I get an e-mail that says, “The Hawk Starts His Pay-Off to the Big Rocker.” Seems the Hawk is suddenly cancer-free — “miraculous cure” are the words used — and rallying ’round Toronto with a campaign to fight the lingering fear of SARS.
Huh? Miraculous cure? Did I miss something?
http://awesomepower.net/miracles.html
John G. Lake “A Man of Healing”
John G. Lake was born in Canada in 1870. In his personal account, “Adventures in God,” Lake wrote: “As I think back over my boyhood and young manhood, there comes to mind remembrances like a nightmare: sickness, doctors, nurses, hospitals, hearses, funerals, graveyards and tombstones; a sorrowing household; a brokenhearted mother and grief-stricken father, struggling to forget the sorrows of the past, in order to assist the living members of the family who needed their love and care.”
In 1908, God sent him to Africa, where he moved in healing, and helped establish over 100 churches. Upon his return to America, Lake came to Spokane, Washington. He rented a suite in the Rookery Building to pray for the sick. It was known as the Healing Rooms. Lake and his assistants, who were known as “healing technicians,” prayed for the sick. Over a five-year period, there were over 100,000 documented healings. The U.S. Government declared Spokane the healthiest city in the world.
Lake’s healing and preaching ministry spanned the years from 1898 until his death in 1935.
http://www.utahhealingrooms.com/healinghtm/aboutus.htm
Carole Miller McCleery
Carole Miller McCarole Miller McCleery
Carole Miller McCleery has been going all over the world glorifying
Jesus for bringing her back from the dead and giving her new life.
Her body that failed her has been made whole again. These are not merely statements but medically documented facts. Carole has given her testimony in meetings around the world, in a mighty
demonstration of the Holy Spirit, with souls being saved, healed, and
delivered by the Power of God.. Now here on Healings and Miracles,
you can watch videos of some of these services and be touched by that
same Power of God. Cleery has been going all over the world glorifying
Jesus for bringing her back from the dead and giving her new life.
Her body that failed her has been made whole again. These are not merely statements but medically documented facts. Carole has given her testimony in meetings around the world, in a mighty
demonstration of the Holy Spirit, with souls being saved, healed, and
delivered by the Power of God.. Now here on Healings and Miracles,
you can watch videos of some of these services and be touched by that
same Power of God.
Absolute Proof!
Carole has been chosen to spread the word of God and news about the miracles He has bestowed upon her. Included here on this website are her x-rays, personal photos, her Doctor’s contact information and photos from some of her world travels. See for yourself.
Click here for Medical pictures
Click here to watch one of Carole’s TV interviews
http://www.healingsandmiracles.org/
Miracles
- and the unexplained, explained by the Bible
A famous evangelist of the 1950’s, Jack Coe, was sued by the State of Florida for ‘practicing (also documented) medicine without a license’. Everyone knew, even the secular world, that people were being healed at his crusades and meetings. Now Jack wasn’t using medicine, but rather the power of the Hold Ghost. Grounds in the thousands were seeing first hand the healings, but the secular world tried to put it off as ‘medicine’.
Dr. Eberle died from a smashed head when falling onto concrete head first from two stories high. His brains had come out and were spread all over the ground. He was pronounced dead, but they stapled his head shut after shoving the brains back in for the funeral. While in a corpse room, after 18 hours of being dead, he got up. He arose from the dead, had a heavenly experience, and it’s documented. You should think about what the doctor said when he saw the man up (and a doctor did see him)!
A woman was dying of fibro sarcoma cancer which had grown around her jugular vein and up into the base of her braqin, which caused her to be paralyzed. The doctors couldn’t do anything, but after prayed over, were amazed to find no evidence of cancer. No medical treatment had been given, and yet healing occurred. This lady was Norma Anne Wilson Wright.
Art Mathias was healed of small fiber neuropathy (which was diagnosed at the May Clinic in Arizona, and which the doctors could do nothing about), of over 100 different food and fabric allergies (including her own saliva), and purposed MCS/EI. This is truly a testimony.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/truth/1Cmiracles.html
February 5th, 2006 at at 7:26 pm
Those are not documented cases verified by an impartial third party SS. Just look at the names of the web sites you cite: healingsandmiracles.org, for example. That would be like citing a web site bigfootexists.org to “prove” that Bigfoot exists. If you honestly expect any of us here to believe that a person can come back to life after falling and having his brains dashed all over the pavement only to have it all shoved back into his head again and sewn up, you are seriously delusional. If it really happened and was conclusively documented, everyone would have known about it by now. That is the paradox of your argument. You claim that faith healings are well documented, and yet they are not common knowledge.
Let me quote to you the following from a review of the book “Pseudoscience and the Paranormal” in the January/February 2006 issue of ‘Skeptical Inquirer’:
“Helen Sullivan could walk only with a back brace, due to the cancer that had weakened the bones of her spinal cord. But when faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman told her that her cancer was cured, Sullivan threw off her back brace and ran across the stage several times as the audience applauded and Kuhlman praised the Lord. For the rest of the evening, Sullivan felt no pain, but by early morning, the pain had returned, only more intense than before. Without the support of her brace, one of her vertebrae had collapsed. Two months later, Sullivan was dead of the cancer that Kuhlman had “cured” her of.”
According to the author, Terence Hines, instances of faith healing can be explained by the role that emotional arousal plays in pain suppression. The brain produces a class of chemicals called endorphins that are released to suppress pain during times of stress or emotional arousal…. Patients who seek miracles cures are excited by the prospect of a cure, and the music, singing, and oratory that precede faith-healing events heighten this emotional arousal. Thus, during and shortly after the faith healing session, the patients feel less pain due to the release of endorphins, although they attribute this to the powers of the faith healer.
After the session, the pain returns, often magnified by subsequent damage, but, as Hines points out, “faith healers almost never follow up on cases they claim to have cured, [so] it is easy to understand why both members of the audience and the healers themselves can become convinced that their cures are real.”
February 5th, 2006 at at 9:43 pm
Tk,
I am in full areement that there are many fake counterfeit healings out there in the world but there are real healings too. If you will note all the healings I quoted are documented and witnessed by imparial people e.g. in http://awesomepower.net/miracles.html Sharon Dunn of the
National Post, Kris Kristofferson, Robbie Robertson and Bill Clinton as well as the doctor who treated rocker Ronnie Hawkins all are witnesses of the legitimacy of Hawkins’ healing by means other than medical treatment. Hawkins is still alive and is a witness to this fact. In http://www.utahhealingrooms.com/healinghtm/aboutus.htm there are 100,000 documented healings that the US Government is aware of in Spokane. In http://www.healingsandmiracles.org/ Carole Miller McCleery’s x-rays, personal photos, her Doctor’s contact information are available if you go to this site so you can verify this healing for yourself. I am sure you are aware it is not really in a doctor’s financial or professional interest to verify cost free healing of any disease let alone of disease they can’t cure, by any other means such as prayer, they even try hard to discredit naturopaths, herbal healers and other cures they cannot profit from.
February 5th, 2006 at at 9:52 pm
Tk,
Also as you would be aware Governments, particularly the US Government, are masters at keeping secrets and covering up supernatural events to keep the public in the dark. If Governments won’t tell and most Doctors won’t tell about healings who will? Obviously the only people left are miracle healers, the recipients of miracle healings and their friends and family who witnessed and know about the medical condition of these people prior to and after the request prayer. If these are all declared liars then there are no other sources left to prove this occurs.
February 6th, 2006 at at 10:29 am
I bet you’re a big fan of the ‘X-Files’ SS.
February 6th, 2006 at at 1:19 pm
Oh, you forgot to answer my question, if you or loved one needed complicated heart surgery to save your life and your choice was between the best heart surgeon in the world who also happens to be an atheist, or a bible believing Christian fresh out of med school, which surgeon would you choose?
February 6th, 2006 at at 4:45 pm
Tk,
lol I am a fan of X Files. I would choose the atheist with more experience for the operation on my child. Let me qualify that statement: The Bible says that the gifts of the Spirit of God are given to some people and therefore not all have the gift of healing. I also fear that I have created the impression somehow that I or God are against going to the doctor in an either or sort of way, which is not the case at all. In the Bible the head Apostle Paul said to his charge Timothy “Have a little wine for your stomach troubles” also Luke was a physician in the Bible who no doubt would have continued to heal sick people with medicines he knew would work for their conditions. When I was missions secretary at church all of the missionaries I dealt with at one church were nurses and doctors that operated a leprosy hospital in India, they used only medicine to heal the leppers and then ran programs to help healed leppers become self sufficient seeing as they were stigmatised in the eyes of potential employers because of their disease even in remission.
February 8th, 2006 at at 11:57 pm
I am Carole Miller McCleery and I am living proof of the healings and miracles from Jesus Christ.
There is too much to write here but please go to:www.healingsandmiracles.org and review the
documentations. You can call and leave a message at: [PHONE NUMBER DELETED] and I will call you back. I will pray for you and send the testimony book if you request.
God bless you,
and
I love you!
CAROLE MILLER MCCLEERY
February 9th, 2006 at at 12:23 am
Does ‘God’ even have nuts?
If he didn’t he would not have climbed upon a cross to save and give the chance at eternal life to a piece of crap like you. Would you do it ? If by sacrificing your life and nailing you to a cross to save the world would you do it. Or would your twins dissapprear into your gut somewhere. I am sure it’s the later of the two. I can tell by what you write your to much of a coward to make such a comment whether or not God has nuts.
February 9th, 2006 at at 10:15 am
I love you too Carole, and Jesus Christ had nothing to do with what happened to you.
February 9th, 2006 at at 8:18 pm
Carole Miller McCleery Says:
February 8th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
“I am Carole Miller McCleery and I am living proof of the healings and miracles from Jesus Christ.
There is too much to write here but please go to:www.healingsandmiracles.org and review the
documentations. You can call and leave a message at: [PHONE NUMBER DELETED] and I will call you back. I will pray for you and send the testimony book if you request.
God bless you,
and
I love you!
CAROLE MILLER MCCLEERY”
Hey I am why did you delete Carole’s phone number? If she was happy to have it publically displayed to atheists that was her choice. Are you affraid that atheists will contact her and find out the truth or encounter God in the process?
February 9th, 2006 at at 8:31 pm
Tommykey Says:
February 5th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
“Those are not documented cases verified by an impartial third party SS. Just look at the names of the web sites you cite: healingsandmiracles.org, for example.”
The doctors, hospital, xrays etc. are all impartial third parties TK, if you don’t consider these impartial third parties you tell me what is? She even gives her doctor’s contact details on the site http://www.healingsandmiracles.org and how can you say an xray is not impartial?
February 9th, 2006 at at 10:53 pm
What does an x-ray have to do with Jesus? Does his image appear in the x-ray like the shroud of turin?
February 9th, 2006 at at 11:30 pm
Tommykey Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
“What does an x-ray have to do with Jesus? Does his image appear in the x-ray like the shroud of turin? ”
You aren’t too quick on the uptake TK are you? Let me SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU lol. An xray is a document that can be called upon to verify an illness or injury, an XRAY is AN IMPARTIAL DOCUMENTED VERIFICATION of an illness, xrays are never converts to Christianity or atheistism. THE DOCTOR Carole saw is an IMPARTIAL THIRD PARTY whose field of experise qualifies him to verify both the illness or injuries that xrays show and the presence or lack of that illness or injury after the prayer. Now do you get my drift?
February 10th, 2006 at at 12:01 am
You can’t take a frakkin joke can you?
I visited Carole’s web site, and what is there is not sufficient for me to believe her claims.
I would need to see a true copy of the accident report from the car accident in 1981.
I would need to see a true copy of the morgue records that report her as being deceased.
I would need to obtain true copies of the x-rays and MRI’s directly from the doctors in question. Pictures of these documents on a web site can be photoshopped.
Since all of these people and records are in Florida, and I am way up here in NY, I do not have the means or the time to go snooping around Florida to personally investigate her claims. However, I have contacted someone who might possibly be in a position to do so, and I will see what her reply is.
February 10th, 2006 at at 6:52 am
Hey I am why did you delete Carole’s phone number? If she was happy to have it publically displayed to atheists that was her choice. Are you affraid that atheists will contact her and find out the truth or encounter God in the process?
I’m uncomfortable with phone numbers in the comments. I’m not sure why, but I can’t help but feel that it’s a bad idea. I’ve deleted atheists’ phone numbers before, so this is not without precedent. Besides, her number is on her web site (which I left in place), so people can go get it if they want to. I guess if she receives some kind of threatening phone call, I want to be able to say “They got the number from you, not me.” You’re new here, so you don’t know me very well yet, but long-time readers can tell you that I’m a bit paranoid.
February 11th, 2006 at at 7:25 pm
Tk,
I felt that I was on stirring terms with you by now because we have gone at it like a pair of pit bulls non-stop. I actually respect the fact that you have held to your guns and not folded your argument and degenerated into pointless petty insults by now. You are my main nemisis on this forum and I look forward to seeing what clever ways you will destroy all my evidence which has taken so much time to gather up, you have made me work hard on this forum lol. My normal experience with atheists is that at a certain point they lose it with me and out come the knives, but you have hung in there with strength and control which makes me very curious to see what makes you tick. Dare I say it ….. you have earned my respect and raised the status of atheists in my eyes.
February 12th, 2006 at at 8:06 pm
SS, I’m not going to degenerate into petty insults (though I may get cranky from time to time) because there’s no point to it. Ultimately, what I think about anything is of little importance in the grand scheme of things.
What makes me tick? I’m strongly influenced by Eastern thought as written in texts like ‘The Dhammapada’, ‘The Upanishads’ and so forth. It is our desire for and attachment to the things of this world that causes us misery. It does not mean in my opinion that we should never desire anything, but that we should not get caught up in having luxuries and putting ourselves deep in debt, or letting ourselves become obsessed.
I have always loved history, not just American history, but the history of many cultures and civilizations, like the Chinese, the Japanese, the Romans and so forth. It was in learning about different cultures that attained great heights in civilization, and seeing that the religious and ethical texts of many disparate cultures contained some common moral truths, which played an important role in my abandonment of the Roman Catholic church in which I was raised. I was amazed that there were some phrases in both the ‘Dhammapadda’ and Proverbs’ that translated into English were almost identical. From that, I came to the conclusion that if cultures that had no contact with the ancient Israelites or the early Christians were able to elucidate many of the same moral truths, then the Bible was not the sole source of truth in the world, and thus it became diminished in my eyes.
In addition to history, another interest of mine has been astronomy. The vastness and beauty of the universe astonishes me. And eventually I thought that it was ludicrous to think that some omnipotent deity is going to go through the trouble of making what for all intents and purposes is an infinite universe, filled with countless galaxies, which themselves contain even greater numbers of stars and planets, and then this same deity is going to make a covenant with one guy and his ancestors in the deserts of the Middle East. This all powerful entity then commands them to occupy a land that is so geographically situated as to guarantee that every major power in the region is going to invade them and kick their asses. I mean, if a nation is supposed to have the almighty creator of the universe on its side, I would expect that such a nation would never be conquered. But the Israelites were ruled over throughout most of the last 1,500 hundred years B.C. by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ptolemaic Greeks, Seleucid Greek, and the Romans. Even in the brief periods of independence, the Israelites never controlled all of the land that God supposedly gave to them. Chosen people indeed. I was also appalled, after having read the Bible 3 times in a row and consulting it frequently, by the slaughter of people supposedly sanctioned by a god who is supposed to be merciful and loving. And with the OT becoming discredited in my eyes, it only followed that the NT became discredited too, since Jesus was supposed to be a fulfillment of OT prophecy. I had also read books and articles that examined the Bible critically. From them, I learned that the OT books were not dictated by God to Moses or whomever. Instead, the ancient Israelites, being a confederation of semi-nomadic tribes, got their ideas for monotheism from the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, and they were also strongly influenced by the civilizations of Mesopotamia.
I did not become an atheist right away after losing my faith in Catholicism. For a couple of years I believed in a Creator and that all religions were barriers that separated people from this creator. I became an atheist as I lost my belief in the supernatural. To me, believing in god was like believing in astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and extraterrestrials visiting the Earth in flying saucers. As to whether there is some higher power in the universe that created us, I suppose it is possible, but if there is one, I doubt it takes much notice of us or that it intervenes in human history to decide the outcome of a battle or to heal a person who is dying or whatever.
I am also essentially a libertarian at heart, though not a Libertarian with a capital “L”. Basically, I just like to be left alone, so I naturally reject a meddling busybody God who watches everything I do, who is going to make a stink if I eat meat on a Friday during Lent, or who unleashes AIDS on the world to punish homosexuals. I am not anti-religion, though that might surprise you. The libertarian in me who wants to be left alone believes that the best way to protect my freedom not to believe is to protect the freedom of others to believe. What I do have a problem with is when people cite the Bible or the Koran to support policies or actions that hurt other people. While I have a bigger gripe with Christianity because I live in a “Christian” country, I am deeply troubled by Islamic fundamentalism and militarism.
We’re living in an age when we have the technology to destroy the human race, along with most living things on this planet. There are fewer things more frightening to me than having such destructive technology falling into the hands of fanatics who believe that blowing people up is carrying out God’s will. If there is a God, or even a multitiude of deities or higher powers that created us and take an interest in us, I would think that they would rather we live for them rather than kill or die for them.
I could probably go on and on, but I think I’ve given you enough insight into what makes me tick. Kind regards, TK.
February 13th, 2006 at at 7:52 am
TK,
Mmmm you are indeed a D & M (deep and meaningful) person. I can see your line of reasoning in what you say and understand your motives now for such a belief in atheism.
February 13th, 2006 at at 11:28 am
While I can’t speak for all atheists and agnostics, I believe you would find that most of us became so over the course of time and after much thought and examination. Being an atheist isn’t easy, at least in America. Because my wife, who immigrated here from the Philippines, is Catholic, I had to go through the motions of getting married in the church and having our two children baptized. During the holidays, my wife nags me to put up christmas decorations (though thankfully they are secular ones, deer, tree, snow man etc.). I am fortunate in that my wife is not particularly religious. Her aunt and one of her sisters pesters her about her not going to church anymore, but she does not have time for it anymore even if she wanted to go. Besides, I tell her, if God is everywhere, then one does not need to be in a particular building on a particular time and day of the week to worship such an entity.
September 26th, 2006 at at 8:48 pm
[...] Despite their failures, at least these studies do no real harm: the participants always receive competent medical attention along with their ineffective dose of prayer, and no one is convinced to forsake their doctor’s care. The same is not true of faith-healing revivals, where evangelists deceive supplicants into believing their ailments have been cured, often encouraging attendees to abandon traditional medical care in the process and causing them to suffer terribly or even die as a result. One particularly horrifying case: Helen Sullivan could walk only with a back brace, due to the cancer that had weakened the bones of her spinal cord. But when faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman told her that her cancer was cured, Sullivan threw off her back brace and ran across the stage several times as the audience applauded and Kuhlman praised the Lord. For the rest of the evening, Sullivan felt no pain, but by early morning, the pain had returned, only more intense than before. Without the support of her brace, one of her vertebrae had collapsed. Two months later, Sullivan was dead of the cancer that Kuhlman had “cured” her of. [...]