Miracles, ----

This thread is not intended as a challenge to religious sensibilities. I do not want to "show someone to be wrong", I just want to hear the arguments from both sides on this relatively interesting topic.

Miracles are considered the supernatural intervention of a deity into the natural world. While this exists either paradoxically or not is a matter of continuous debate
--See "On Miracles" by Hume

It has been my general experience that miracles are supported with the same poor evidence as the loch ness monster, UFOs, and conspiracy theories. The evidence normally relies on a single observer, and typically someone who is already predisposed to believing in the event. They may also rely on circumstantial evidence.

If miracles are the acts of God, then why are they not more substantially confirmed.
i.e. Why doesn't God heal amputees?

If the counter-argument is that God does not wish to make his interactions known(the classical "test of faith" clause), then why does God perform miracles at all?
Just to speed the discussion along, the general explanation I have encountered is that God wishes to help people. If that is the case, then why do the 'miracles' do little to help people....but simply seem to help confirm their faith.
For that matter, why is God performing miracles for the believers. Wouldn't it be far more beneficial to be performing miracles for the non-believers?

Interesting question. I don't believe in a god myself, but according to chaos theory, a small change can have massive effects as time goes on - an example is, if you kill a mosquito which would have been the mother of another mosquito which would have been born in Africa (which is unlikely to say the least, but I'm just giving an example), which would have carried malaria, which would have bitten a doctor, who would have died (again, unlikely), and would have been able to save an injured person's life, you would, in a way, have killed that person. Sort of (sorry if my example is a little convoluted). Anyway, perhaps these "miracles" changed certain things to give us a better future. Or, perhaps if God didn't preform these miracles, we would have a really bad future. This would explain why miracles are very infrequent. That's just my opinion, though. You can probably find a much better argument somewhere.

- Gehn

Puck,
There is no way I can do your topic justice, but will briefly touch on a few things you brought up.
Why doesn’t God just heal all the amputees? Since you are going there, hey, why doesn’t He not give them an extra limb in the process so they could theoretically be superior at certain tasks (a little far fetched also).

The short answer is I do not know, I am but finite & limited as well.

I generally have just a little time on these subjects so may give you a few thoughts to consider:

Why doesn’t He liberally dole out little ‘magic tricks’ or miracles to keep us all from wondering.
Why doesn’t God simply reveal Himself to people, proving that He exists? Surely if God would just appear everyone would believe in Him! (See bullet point 4 below). The problem with this idea is perhaps it is not God’s desire to just convince people that He exists. The Israelites in the time of Moses & the Exodus saw incredible miracles, but they did not follow God in their hearts. They still went after false gods and wasted away in the desert.
Maybe He is more concerned with us being people of a certain type of character than just being comfortable, completely healthy and without heartache or hardship, having more food than you need, a growing 401K account and living beyond the median lifespan. Yes choices we make can influence those things, but our tomorrow is not guaranteed. One can have all that & more and still be without peace.

The link Below was written by someone else and is a more direct response to your question.


Why Does God Hate Amputees? Or, Why Does God Love Marshall Brain?
(on healing amputees)

See also a related topic:
Scientific Evidence for Answered Prayer and the Existence of God

There are links you can access there to read the actual research papers if you wanted to.

One more consideration for you regrading prayer/miracles:

Why hasn't God answered me yet?
No one can say for sure why God hasn't revealed himself to a particular individual.

But let us consider the case of a hypothetical person, Aaron the Atheist. Aaron has prayed to God and not gotten an answer, or simply has never seen any reason to believe in God. Why not? There are many possibilities, a few of which are:

1. Aaron may need to go through some experience before being able to believe. Perhaps Aaron has no interest in God or religion because things are going just fine for him without God, and it's not until everything falls apart that he's willing to pay attention to the evidence that's given to him. Perhaps Aaron will believe in God when his prayer for his wife's health is answered and his wife is miraculously cured of cancer, but in order for him to be motivated to pray, it has to be his wife who falls ill (and thus he wouldn't have this evidence of God until after he got married).

2. It may be that Aaron's coming to believe in God is a process that doesn't occur instantaneously, but over a longer period of time. Changing one's beliefs from atheism to one who follows the teachings of Christ represents a dramatic shift in one's worldview; such a change usually doesn't happen overnight. Perhaps Aaron has prayed, and the first steps in this process have already occurred, but the steps are gradual enough that it's not yet evident to Aaron that his prayer is being answered.

3. It's possible that Aaron's attitude prevents his prayer from being answered. Faith in God is not required for a skeptic's prayer of "please reveal yourself to me" to be answered (see How can I trust God without knowing him first?) at the link below, but at the very least, intellectual honesty and a genuine willingness to communicate with God is required. God told the Israelites, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer 29:13). As far as I know, God does not answer sarcastic prayers (e.g. "Okay, I'll believe in God if he suspends me in mid-air in the next five seconds...I'm waiting...Well, I'm still sitting down, so God must not exist").

4. It may be that Aaron is a staunch skeptic and nothing would convince him that God exists. If he saw a miracle occur, he'd insist there was a scientific explanation for it, or believe that he was hallucinating; if given further evidence that was convincing, he'd conclude that his emotions were getting the better of his reason, or come up with a reason why it still couldn't be true.

I did not write this but it’s from:
Why Skeptics Should Pray


I think He is interested in more than a person just believing in Him & I would suggest it involves a certain level of trust.
Best wishes and I hope you will have a great day.

Well, I could address the rest of your post, but I believe you missed the point entirely with this first post. I am not asking why God does not heal ALL amputees, I am asking why God never heals amputees. Sure, God can restore the ability to walk, cure strange diseases, etc....but all of those are questionable. It would be impossible to fake being an amputee. You either were an amputee, or you were not....and even a casual observer could voice an opinion. There is no chance of a misdiagnoses, or a rare random cure(as in the case of cancer).

The closest claim of God healing an amputee comes from the bible, where Jesus healed a man's ear. However, that is not beyond limits of even ancient science. The outer ear does really contain much that needs to be "reconnected".

Why has God never grown back a man's arm? Any man....
You only get two choices
1) God cannot do it...and therefore negates himself as God
2) God will not do it...which if he performs other miracles of healing....would be rather odd. He will cure paralysis, blindness, etc....but he doesn't like to touch amputees.

Hope that clarifies my point a bit....the rest of your post gets into a lengthy discussion about why you cannot expect God to do anything specifically. That is very true, and I understand that completely. The question was not about healing all amputees...but rather healing ANY amputee.

Yes, you did clarify your point, thanks.
I was going to the far extreme that if one proposes for the awesome Creator to ‘rebuild’ an amputee, why not ask Him to take care of all of them. But who am I to be able to demand such favor. It was my bad of missing your primary point of why hasn’t He healed ANY, as in, just one amputee. Thank you very much for clarifying that.

Yes you are correct, we do have recorded that Jesus healed the high priest’s slave’s ear. The text says it was cut off by a sword, but what is interesting to me is it says, he touched his ear and healed him, (not that he picked up the severed piece and reattached it and told him to keep applying pressure, go find a doc immediately to stitch it on and keep it wrapped up with clean bandages, etc.)

So the question is particularly geared towards a more significant amputation such as an arm or leg which is missing bone, muscles & nerves etc.

My general response to this is still I do not know.

But I will mention that this is based on the assumption that God has not healed any other amputee in all the history of mankind. But how could we know this for sure since we are not omniscient? Yes, our common experience is a limited survey of ‘usual’ occurrences which at most suggests that miracles are the rare exception. But this just makes them significant.

I would not quite say that God doesn’t like to touch amputees. As far as I know, Jesus healed all who came to him and we are given a number of examples that he ministered to the untouchables of society. Also God’s love is expressed to all people including amputees.

Thus far to date, my limbs are in tact and useful to me, so I cannot say that I can relate or understand the struggles, frustrations, or challenges amputees may have faced or have overcome. Yes, I agree it would be a spectacular occurrence if we could observe a supernatural interruption of our time and space for the rebuilding of a persons limb, and perhaps it would be easier us to form an opinion on it as to its validity as you have said. But it would not solve the dilemma we face, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, many of the Jews did put their faith in him, but others went away and ratted on him. Matthew (16:1-4) also reports that Jesus refused the Jewish leaders when they came to Him and tested Him by asking Him to show them a sign from heaven saying that none would be given but the sign of Jonah, so that would be a good place to start.

Physical healing is not man’s greatest need. Life is a mere short prequel to the life that is to come.
God wants to do more than just heal physical bodies, which are temporary. God wants to heal your soul, which is eternal. God will heal amputees and everybody else who wants to be healed spiritually, to receive perfect spiritual bodies in heaven. (see 1 Corinthians 15:42-44) However, God does not want to force anyone to act against his own will, so He give us choices.
Best regards & have a nice weekend.

It is important to mention that death was a condition that was much more fluid until recently. The legends of vampires and zombies may have been born from people mistaken for dead. The legend of Lazarus is not particularly moving. They did not verify how they knew he was dead, and I am sure near death states have been experienced by many people....

However, I have never heard of a pseudo-amputee. You are either missing a limb, or the limb is intact.

Also, the story of the "healed ear" came from the Gospel of John. It is odd that Jesus' most amazing miracle came from a mystery author who wrote in the 3rd century. Why was it not mentioned in Mark?

The point is simple, Jesus did not perform any miracles that were any more amazing that miracles performed by other famous figures in history. The most undeniable miracle would be healing an amputee...but no account exists in recorded history. Why would God do so many other great things, but ignore a simple amputee?

I find this an interesting example, recently I was talking to a man who told me he had purchased a riding lawn mower to mow a church. The man was very upset because the lawn mower was defective. He complained about how unChristian it was to sell a church a faulty lawn mower. I wondered why he didn't just pray for the lawn mower. Surely Jesus might be able to fix it. He told me I was an idiot, Jesus doesn't fix lawn mowers. Why not?
If Jesus is more likely to heal the devoutly religious than the atheist...why is he not more likely to fix a lawn mower for the "real" Christian church?

The point is that even most Christians know that God is only capable of performing miracles that possibly could occur without the intervention of God. They might pray for God to get their car to work IF they do not know what is wrong....but no mechanic prays for God to fix a vehicle when he KNOWS what the problem is.....

Strange huh?

I can only speculate, but I would imagine the life of an amputee might be quite unpleasant. It would not simply be the physical impairment. There would be the possible social isolation of a young female or male attempting to conduct relationships and perhaps not fitting into a group. Of course, that is not even to consider the devastation of a double, triple, or quadruple amputee.

To those missing a limb or two, divine intervention might seem to be a reasonable request.

The fishes live in the sea (water) but they don't recognized that they re living inside of the water. The people are the same we live together with the energy of GOD! if you think that the god is live in different places part from us you re wrong! all your question actually for your self..not to the God..you can ask How can I became a benefit usefully person for my self with your miracles? maybe you can get 1 one day

You seem to assume amputees were as common in the world Back then as they are now...silly assumption.

Most people, back then, with such kinds of wounds-wounding, died.

The frequency of amputees is not really important...

People see monsters in lakes, or UFOs in the dark night sky....they see healings in cancer, and miracles in random acts of kindness...

No one sees a monster walking through a field in broad daylight.
No one sees a UFO abduction in New York at 3 in the afternoon.
And no one sees amputees healed.

The reasoning is simple....while the former examples all hide in the mysterious, the latter would all be easily verifiable. While it would not be perfect proof, it would be much less likely to be a case of mental trickery.

"The frequency of Amputees is not important" meaning that if there were none, it wouldn't really matter ...right?

No Sterilization back then, nor proper instruments for the cuttings, nor knowledge of the stitching it back up to save the life if they survive the infections to follow...

Your 'logic and reasoning' that follows that Most inane intro, makes about as little sense as you do.

Probably the reason why you see 'mental trickery', you see yourself...and well.

Umm....Mr. Parsons....so you do not believe that God performs miracles any longer?

No, as....

Babies being born, all the time...Yup!

Food, Still grows....YUP!

Still living ...still....YUP!

Knows how to show me just how inane (Self deceived) another can really be...YUP!

PuckSR, I think your "mental trickery" phrase nailed it! :0 Human foibles and delusional thinking also apply. The religious grasp at straws to find what they claim is some "concrete" form of "evidence" to support their claims. Paranormal, supernatural, miraculous, divine intervention and the like are the nebulous, false claims of the desperate. If there was a God or gods and miracles, long before now proof would have surfaced. I have posted on threads touching on the topics of religion and the religious as compared to science and the scientific method and you have as well, for many months, and I have not seen ANY convincing evidence from the religious ranters here to support their views. We can point out the inconsistencies, the many thousands of deities, the many thousands of different creation stories, the many thousands of religions, sects, cults and faiths and the foible of attempting to choose from such unfounded chaos, one "faith" to pursue! We can show how religions suppress scientific knowledge and the advance of learning and education throughout history. And still these people cling desperately to their myths, in direct opposition to the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Discuss evolution, and they deny it. Show the clear false premise of "creation museums" and they still believe. Point out religious scandals, pedophilia hidden by church elders, televangelist failings and church/political mixings that are illegal AND immoral and they still believe. Explain the body of knowledge painstakingly built on science that forms the core of human thought and experience and directly relates to our civilization and the technological advancements we appreciate in today's society and there are still people who say religion built that! There will always be delusional people in modern cultures. We just have to keep giving the true accomplishments of science their due and let the slow advance of reason and rationality eventually overpower the dogma and irrationality of the religiously indoctrinated and brainwashed. I have posted quotes from some of the greatest thinkers of mankind who have countered religious dogma and I own an autographed copy of one of Bertrand Russell's books, a reputable anti-religious thinker. I have given links to websites like http://www.edge.org and others. I have used bibliotherapeutic techniques and listed the titles of books like, "2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt" by James A. Haught. And I have given links to wikipedia articles that dispel the ignorance that many religious people have toward science. What further educational techniques can be employed to end the dogma?

This post has been edited by photojack on Jun 30 2007, 05:25 PM

During my composition of my post above, Mr. Parsons, the consummate ranter of religious dogma, came back with more inane denials and illogical, poorly constructed and falsely reasoned evidence showing how self-deceived he is! Is there a method to his madness? Only to use religion as a crutch to support his untenable beliefs. Where is his (false) "ability" to "feeel" others from afar? :wacko;

"There is no leader, Follow science!

This post has been edited by photojack on Jun 30 2007, 05:37 PM