A reader sent along this site which asks "Why Won't God Heal Amputees? The point of the site is to convince readers that either God doesn't exist or that he hates amputees.
Billions of people believe in the power of prayer and pray their own prayers. Not only do they pray, but they personally witness God answering their prayers every single day. In addition, the entire industry of inspirational literature is built around God's ability and willingness to have a personal relationship with us and answer our prayers. Any Sunday morning we can find thousands of ministers and priests preaching about God's grace, God's love, God's blessings and God's desire to hear and answer our prayers.Nonetheless, the amputated legs are not going to regenerate.
What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them. ...
In the same way, any medical miracle that God performs today is obvious. The removal of a cancerous tumor is obvious because it is measurable. One month the tumor is visible to everyone on the X-ray, and the next month it is not. If God eliminated the tumor, then it is openly obvious to everyone who sees the X-ray. There is nothing "hidden" about removing a tumor. So, why not regenerate a leg in an equally open way? If God intervenes with cancer patients to remove cancerous tumors in response to prayers, then why wouldn't God also intervene with amputees to regenerate lost limbs?
The gist of this argument is that regenerating lost limbs would be the same as healing a tumor, and yet though people are quick to believe that God heals tumors he never seems to regenerate lost limbs.
Howver, it seems to me that those two types of healing are actually quite different because of one characteristic: deniability. It doesn't seem that God performs undeniable miracles any more. (Which begs the question: are any miracles undeniable? In any event, restoring lost legs would sure be a lot harder to deny than the removal of a tumor.)
So the question then becomes, why doesn't God perform undeniable miracles? In order to understand, consider why God ever performed such miracles.
John 10:24-2624 The Jews gathered around him [Jesus], saying, "How long will you
keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The
miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26 but you do not
believe because you are not my sheep.
The miracles Jesus, the other prophets, and the apostles performed were intended to prove that the words spoken by the prophets and apostles were true. There are no prophets or apostles now (because there is no new revelation) so there is no need for miraculous signs. The earlier signs verified the revelation in the Bible, and the Bible needs no further verification because it has not changed.
Interestingly, you'll notice from that passage (and remember from the
Old Testament) that despite witnessing many miracles there were still plenty of people who still refused to accept the Word of God. They killed the prophets in the OT, and they killed Jesus. Even if God were to restore amputated limbs today, there would still be plenty of people who would not believe or accept his message. Do you think the people who own WhyDoesGodHateAmputees.com would believe if they saw limbs restored, or do you think they'd find a different excuse to reject God's teachings? This is why I asked whether any miracle is truly undeniable -- humans have a remarkable capacity for denying anything they don't like.
Similarly, my experience with many "intellectuals" is that they first decide to reject God and then start looking for ways to justify their rejection. There's something appealing to the intellectual to reject the primitive beliefs of the uneducated rubes. Nonetheless, many of the most intelligent and wise people I've known have been strong believers, which leads me to think there may be a self-selection factor independent of intelligence that affects who travels in "intellectual" circles.
The point, made often in the Bible, is that God wants us to come to him through faith.
Hebrews 11:1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
The lack of undeniable miracles is a feature that God intended, not a bug that demonstrates his nonexistence.
Good post.
The reason Jesus has never appeared to me in bodily form, nor why the (correct) answers suddenly appeared on the math test in front of me, nor why God didn't suddenly lift the deer that ran into my car into the air away from me or turn it into a squirrel, is because that would cause me to believe in Him because of a magic trick. Yes, it would solidify a belief, but it would be the same way I might believe in a magician. It contradicts the requirement that we have to have faith to believe. The moment it's "proven" the faith diminishes.
Or something like that. The wording's not exactly how I want it to come out, but that's the gist.
A young man in our church tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. He was so close to death, the family had pulled the plug and was waiting for him to die. The church family pulled together like never before and had been praying for days... But after the respirator was stopped, he didn't die. And he's recovering today. Can anyone explain it medically? Not really. Was it a miracle, helped by fervent prayer? I think so. Does that mean it was undeniable miracle? No, because there are many part of human biology and physiology we don't understand. It could have been perfectly natural and coincidental he didn't die - but I don't think so. I have faith.
Another evidence I see of miracles happening today - it's not "undeniable" but I really don't see much more of an explanation - is that the US hasn't had another major terror attack on our soil since 9/11. Maybe that will change today, tomorrow or 5 years from now, but I think the combined prayers of the country and the world bring Him to keep us safe.
God has NEVER performed an undeniable miracle. "The bloke was dead and in the grave! and Jesus just called to him and he came walking out!" "Oh humbug! he was sleeping! And his family is to daft to tell the difference!"
You pick the miracle out of the Bible, and I'll show you someone who denies it. But that's part of the whole plan.
I believe that there will always be at least one "atheistic" explanation for any event, however miraculous it might look...or be. This might be part of the Plan -- God's not talking, and who else would know? -- but it's certainly part of human mental freedom, which is made possible by the very natural laws we exploit for explanations of the events around us.
Our comprehension of the workings of natural law will always be incomplete. Therefore, our desires to include or exclude Divine intervention from the "solution space" for any event will never be satisfied.
It's an issue that is foggy at best, in my opinion. The website participants of WDGHA.com have boxed themselves into a corner through resentment, bitterness, and self-victimization. On the other hand, the Bible says God is a loving God and wishes good things for us, so why isn't healing considered a good thing? On the third hand, we can't expect God to be a magic genie.
I believe the website participants of WDGHA.com are a bunch of angry, wounded people who are so quick to give up faith or hope in God because of an Earthly affliction. However, I am hardly one to pass judgement on them or their feelings. Their feelings are at least validated, in my opinion. But spiritual matters meeting Earthly needs is again a foggy topic, at best.
Good topic. Another point you wont hear brought up in an evangelical church on this line of thinking is Mark Chapter 4 vs 10-12 where the disciples ask Jesus why He speaks in parables. Jesus replies that He does that so that NOT everyone would repent & believe.
From the DNS info of the website in question, the registrant is Marshall Brain, who can be verified as the author through his Wikipedia entry.
I've had this conversation with several different athiests who asked me why God wouldn't prove that he exists. I asked them what God could possibly do that would convince them. They've never been able to give me an example of a miracle where I couldn't come up with an alternative explanation that they would prefer to the miraculous explanation.
At the very limits, you can always suppose a being or civilization that is so technologically advanced that they can do anything we can imagine. There is nothing that can happen physically that cannot possibly have been caused by physical beings, therefore there is nothing that God could do that would prove that He transcends the physical world.
Tim, I've heard the topic of Mark 4 brought up in at least two evangelical churches. What makes you think it wouldn't be brought up?
To me, it's a question of likelihood. Is it likely that there is a "God", in the sense that most major religions believe.. who sets laws, tenets, and commandments? Or is it more likely that there is a being (or are beings) who are so very much more advanced than us that they cannot exist in or interface with our physical world but, at the same time, don't particularly care about what we do? The former seems less likely to me than the latter. The fact that many religions and their beliefs are very old, very respected, and very much a part of all our lives doesn't prove their validity or, by themselves, dismiss other potential explanations for that which we cannot see, smell, hear, taste, and touch.
This is interesting. I've been talking to a few people about Deuteronomy 13 (which is to do with killing Jews who convert in pre-Christian Israel).
One idea that came up was that God's reality was so obvious to ancient Jews that there was no reason aside from perversion to turn from His covenant.
(certainly true for those Jews who were involved in exodus from Egypt, recieved manna from heaven etc.) From then onwards there was, the continuous presence of a small number of prophets was enough to make conversion inexcusable, and the death penalty justifiable.
This is all the idea of one person I spoke to. I'd like to submit the miracles surrounding Exodus as candidate undeniable miracles. What do you think?
jez: That brings up a good question -- Did Egyptians independently record any of the miracles that Moses performed? If there are some hieroglyphics somewhere that show Moses bringing on locusts or parting the Red Sea, then that would be pretty hard evidence.
I've always wondered if all those dead Egyptians were found at the bottom of the Red Sea...
Mark: Humans tend to be terrible judges of likeliness.
jez: Despite the miracles recorded in the OT, the Israelites constantly wavered between God and the paganism that surrounded them, which implies that the miracles were deniable... except I suppose someone could acknowledge a miracle and still decide to reject God. So it somewhat depends on what we mean by "deniable".
DD: I'm not sure, but I bet people have looked into it before and addressed the question. Let us know if you find anything out!
MW: And what would you consider a better judge of likeliness?
Mark: the important distinction is between analysing the results of a rigorous trial and saying "oooh, I don't think that's very likely!" Unfortunately religious beliefs tend to be unresponsive to trials (I guess those that could be investigated have been, and have thus been dismissed). It's impossible to say how likely a christian style God is.
jez: My sense of what is likely and not likely is not some flippantly arrived at conclusion, but the sum of everything I know and everything I feel.
That's precisely the kind of judgement human's aren't good at.
Think about how often the results of trials are counter-intuitive.
This isn't a matter of clinical trials or an analysis of data. The same "gut feeling" upon which many people's adherence to a particular religious faith (and belief in a religious concept of "God") is based is what I'm talking about.
The most compelling "evidence", to me, is the concept of "sins" and "forgiveness". It appears to be simply a way to apply and release guilt and shame with "God" or priests (or their counterparts in other religions) being at the switch. In other words, a measure of control, which seems like purely a human creation.
Good points. God is not going to show himself to the author of "WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com". LOL God performed many spontaneous miracles long ago and still people did not believe. Why would He do so anymore? God was ON EARTH - performing un-deniable miracles - and still people would not believe. Why would He bother anymore? He's not obligated to. He will no longer do this.
To the author of "WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com". You continue to deny God after you die and see where you end up.
Bryant, consider this - these alleged miracles would have happened nearly 2,000 years before I was born. I never witnessed them and no evidence exists that irreffutably proves that they happened. The closest thing to evidence is a book - also written practically 2,000 years before I was born - that claims to documents these miracles. This book was written years after Jesus's death and could have lies and exagerations or could be intended to be purely symbolic. To top it off, the book has more than likely been changed hundreds of times and, since I don't speak the language it was originally written in, I have to read a translation which may not be accurate.
Consider this and maybe you'll see why so many don't believe.
So, why doesn't God ever heal amputees?
That rebuttal shows, as the title of this page implies, you are a master of saying nothing, but you use a lot of words that's to be certain.
How about quoting the full site here(or at least much more than you did) rather than cherrypicking the parts you are able to attack? It wouldn't be because they actually quote the bible as well would it?
I assume you do know that, coming from your background, it was PREDICTED that you would answer that way to such a truth that is condemning beliefs you have likely had since you were a child. It was expected that you would defend your beliefs rather than to take a good look at them to see if they were real. All you did was illustrate that the bible is FULL of contradictions, something I'm sure you'll have something to say about as well....
Better to be quiet and let the world think you a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.
Here's another question for all of you inquiring minds: Why does god allow children to be molested and tortured? Up until last year I was a child welfare worker in Buffalo, N.Y. I dealt with neglected and abused children for 11 years until I finally burned out. Jesus loves the little children aye? Apparently not in Erie County.
I know a born-again Christian who told me a few months ago that she was molested as a teenager for many years. She was furious at god for a long time until one day she realized that, even though god didn't stop the molestation, he was with her through it all.
Uh, ok, what was god doing while she was being molested, jerking off, reading the Sunday paper or trying to cop the solo from Stairway to Heaven? I didn't relay my thoughts to her out of respect - she was trying to convert me - this is America and we can believe what we want to, right? She meant well. (As an aside, funny isn't it that the pilgrims came here to escape religious persecution and proceeded to burn innocent people at the stake for witchcraft).
Anyways, she thought her disclosure would make me believe in her god. It had the opposite effect. A god who allows children to be molested is not a god I want to spend eternity with. All of you born-agains out there - please explain god's rationale for allowing this to this poor dumb heathen.
P.S. Pleae don't tell me that god makes people go through this to make them stronger or so that they can help others who have been molested. Most people who are molested as children live with the pain for the rest of their lives and often suffer from various mental illnesses. Wouldn't it be a tad more logical (and moral) for god to simply stop children from being molested?
barry: The evil that you've witnessed is a direct consequence of man's free will. Yes, God could stop all evil, but not without enslaving us all.
Michael,
What about the child's free will? When a child is abused or molested that child has no free will.
barry: It is a fact that one person can use their free will to hurt another person against their will. That's a consequence of freedom. People take away others' freedom all the time, which is undoubtedly an affront to God. What you're asking is certainly a big, hard question: why did God give us free will? I don't know, but apparently he didn't want to create unthinking robots. That decision had a lot of ramifications, and along with our free will God gave us a responsibility to use it to do good, not evil. Unfortunately, we often fail to live up to that responsibility... but that's our fault, not God's.
So...God could stop it, but won't (or might not), because he wouldn't want to impede on our free will. What about kids who die from malnutrition caused by drought, or people who suffer from any sort of natural disaster? These things aren't concequences of freedom. And God got fed up with doing miracles, because he wasnt getting enough credit for all the great things he was doing, because the doing of the good deeds wasn't rewarding enough...
So what does this God of your's do, anyway?
joe: Actually, every case of mass starvation in the world that I'm aware of has been due to human action, typically communism or facism. Tyrants who enact economic policies that starve their people aren't caused by God -- again, they've caused by humans.
I'm not sure what God you think I believe in, but even in the Bible there were famines (back when it didn't take a human to cause one) and God didn't always intervene with a miracle.
I'm not trying to be condescending, but you're making a common mistake in thinking that God shares your priorities. In fact, he's much more concerned with peoples' spiritual wellbeing than with the mere physical. (What's far more tragic even than starvation is that so many people in the world are dying without ever hearing about Christ. And whose fault is that? God's? No, because he told us to "go and tell the world" and gave Christians the power to do so.)
This world is a passing thing that will not last forever, and no one's life ends with their physical death. God is more concerned with the eternity that follows death than with the 100 years that precede it. If you think about life from that persective, you may begin (as I am only beginning) to see the world as God sees it.
I'm sorry, but that's the biggest load of horsesh!t I've ever heard. You honestly believe that mass starvation is less tragic than that they weren't Christians? Utterly ridiculous. Insanity.
That's similar to saying that mass starvation isn't quite as tragic as the fact that few have heard of Horus, the ancient egyptian sun diety who just happened to be both the son of, and a reincarnation of, his father, Osirus. Read up on it, it's interesting stuff. All the best, Joe
Michael Williams,
Every case of mass starvation was due to human action? Really? Do you really think that? No natural causes have every caused a famine? EVER?
Oh... I missed that it was only ones you have heard of. I'll start it off:
Great famine of 1315-1317?
It was a long time ago, but I guess your God rules go right back ... to before Christ right?
...talking of which, he did take his time popping down didn't he.. Lucky we weren't around before we could be told the GOOD NEWS! Phew!
God doesn't heal amputees because god does not exist. Let's reason, shall we? If Biblegod created everything, would he really be so petty as to pick out a planet in the back of beyond, pick one species out, choose a group of these species,choose one sex of this species over another, then give contradictory and obscure symbolic instructions on how to get salvation to this group before clearing from whence he came and nothing since? If he loved us enough to die for us, surely he would provide us with the unambigious way to salvation, instead of leaving it to human intepretation. (How many different sects say THEY have the way and everyone else hasn't, from JW's to the RC's to the Baptists et al?) And as for the notion that healing someone or saving a life interferes with our free will, then why does he heal sometimes and not others? Isn't that interfering with our free will? Believers should wake up and see the Bible is a made up collection of tales about as true and relevant as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Greek myths and the almighty, loving oh-so-involved Biblegod does not exist. The thing I do agree with is that crime and most disasters are the fault of human greed.
Sarah: You say "pick" as if he surveyed a bunch of pre-existing things and then made a selection, but I think rather that God created us, our planet, etc on purpose. Plus, I think he did provide an unambiguous way to salvation, but mankind still rejects him. People like to claim things are unclear when they don't like the obvious truths.
Michael: Please let us know what of the following is unambiguous:
A book (one of thousands pertaining to gods, creation and salvation), is written 3000 or more years ago over a period of 1500 years,
A god in it is referred to my several different names, mentions "Us" implying other spiritual entities on a par with him and creates a planet.
He creates beings with free will but no knowlege of good and evil.
He decrees that they will spend eternity in tortuous hell for gaining that knowlege.
He then starts wars, floods the whole planet to kill everyone and everything, orders genocide on many occasions, sends his 'children' into slavery and tells everyone he's the god of love.
He then decides to sacrifice himself, in order to appease himself because mankind broke rules he made up himself that he knew were impossible for mankind to keep - according to some letters written by people 70 years after the "sacrifice" in a dead language edited and translated dozens of times with the originals no longer in existence.
He hides himself away, performing "deniable miracles" and in no way alerting us to his undeniable presence.
He states that unless we believe on him by faith, we live a short 80 years here then spend an eternity being tortured in hell regardless of how good or otherwise our life was.
But he is a god of love.
Sorry dude, but I don't see a lot of clarity in that.
Andrew: Oh c'mon, that's completely facile. I'm the master of absurdity, and I know how easy it is to make anything sound ridiculous. It's fun, but it's still nonsense.
Michael: Well, not that facile...
Seriously then. The Bible may state unambiguously that "salvation" is to be had through faith in Jesus as the son of god - but just because it is a clear statement, does that mean there is any actual truth to it at all? To illustrate (admitedly simplistically), "arsenic will not kill you" is a clear, unambiguous statement, but it is obviously not true.
Why is the bible "more true" than the teachings of Buddha, Shiva, Krishna, Mohammad, John Smith, Akhnaten, Mithra, Wiccans, Zeus, L. Ron Hubbard (etc. etc. etc.) - all of which are at odds with the bible's clear message of Salvation Only Through Jesus?
Is it because Jesus backed up his statements about his divinity with miracles? Mostly he healed people. He was not the only healer at that time and in that place even. Miracle healers existed before him. They existed after him. They still exist in every major and minor religion alive - not to mention new age crystal-y stuff and psychic surgeons and the like.
Will you tell me that every miracle not directly attributable to the standard christian doctrine is a demonic deception? Including all those that happened before ever yahweh/elohim/jehova made his existence known?
Is it because he "rose from the dead"? Krishna is reported to have done the same. And Mithra. The writings about these guys are just as clear and adamant as the gospels.
Sure, people can shy away from obvious truths, like "you're doing the wrong thing" - but "when you die you will spend eternity in hell or heaven" and "jesus died and rose again to eternal life" are not in any way 'obvious truths'. A belief, a hope, a dream, a faith even - but not truths.
Andrew: Well yes, of course Christianity is based on faith, and explicitly so.
As for Krishna, Mithra, and whomever else, I'm not aware of any written testimony to their lives, deaths, resurrections, or anything else particularly reliable. Plus, it's significant to me that the early church founders -- who knew Jesus personally -- were willing to be martyered rather than deny his divinity.
Michael: Read up on the Bhagavad Gita - holy book of Krishna written 5000 years ago. There are differences in 'how the cosmos works' but it contains much of sort of 'home truths' Jesus preached - like self-sacrifice, serving one another, origin of sin, the fact he's the incarnation of the creator, come to save the world from its fallen state... I wouldn't count on the gospels as 'reliable' either. They were first written 70 to 120 years after Jesus' death. They weren't written by eyewitnesses but did collect some eyewitness testimony often 2nd or 3rd hand (also notoriously unreliable). There were many, many letters and documents written saying a lot of contradictory things about Jesus. 4 of them were picked out over 300 years after Jesus' death at the Council of Nicea by men far removed from the original times and culture and the rest repressed, often extremely violently. I think it is a little arrogant and mistaken to count the Bhagavad Gita as 'unreliable' next to that!
If christianity is based only on faith it is then pretty hard to say that it is 'truth'. I guess I'm equating truth with 'reality' here.
Not all early founders hung around to be martyred - many fled, but I take your point.
Early followers of Mohammad were persecuted and killed - and still are today. Followers of Buddha have always been willing to be martyred for the cause. Followers of Ghandi did the same. Followers of Communism have sacrificed their lives for it. Willingness to be martyred for a belief is not 'significant' if plenty of other people are willing to be martyred for a thousand other beliefs. It does not necessarily mean that the belief contains any more 'truth' than any other.
Have a fine wedding and pleasant honemoon!
Andrew: Actually, I think most historians date Luke and Acts from before 70 AD, Matthew between 50 and 70, John between 70 and 90, and Mark earlier than any of the others. And yes, of course there was a lot written about Jesus, but from what I've read there wasn't much disagreement about what books to include in canon... only what to exclude. There seems to have been general agreement about the four gospels selected and the letters of Paul, at any rate.
Michael: Yep, it seems Mark was first and around 50CE and the others followed anywhere between 60CE and 125CE (according to the NIV). None were written by eyewitnesses to Jesus' life - and couldn't have been as the average life span at the time was early 40's.
Matthew and Luke apparently largely borrow from Mark and another, unknown source (called Q). Even then, the earliest known original document is 125CE and the author is unknown - it doesn't belong to any of the four canonical gospels.
Interestingly Mark, the earliest, contains nothing about the resurrection beyond the women finding an empty tomb and a man (not even an angel) telling them Jesus wasn't there. Other details were added later - as much as 70 to 125 years later - long after anyone involved would have died. The gospel of Thomas was written in this timeframe but is considered 'heresy'. The gospel of Mary was written a little later and suggests Mary and Jesus were fairly intimate and Mary had a very significant role in the early church - also considered heretical and for some reason scandalous. Owning either book in the 400's would be enough to get you killed horribly by the good church...
Consider: Many Scientologists consider L. Ron Hubbard to be a virtual demi-god. Much has been written about his supposed exploits and teachings - much of that demonstrably false. 300 years from now in a world far different from our own, a group of people already convinced of Ron's divinity get together and throw out any information (regardless of accuracy) that disagrees with their preconception and put together a small collection of books supporting their position.
They then ruthlessly stamp out anything disagreeing with this over the span of a few hundred years (ye olde Inquisition).
2000 years from now, in a world so far from this one we wouldn't recognise it, people read these stories and, amazed at how they correlate, consider them 'true'. They'd never be able to know L. Ron was a liar and con-artist extraordinaire who died a lonely, sick old man. They might hear rumours, but that would only serve to convince them of his divinity.
No doubt Jesus lived. No doubt he was a charismatic teacher with great messages for his time (and our time). No doubt he collected extremely devoted followers. No doubt he was a faith healer. He probably was crucified. Evidence of a resurrection is no more than hearsay, merely hinted at in the earliest known gospel and embellished later - carrying little more weight than those hundreds of sightings of Elvis...
Andrew: There were plenty of false messaiahs back then too, just like we've got our L. Rons today, and none of their cults survived long at all. In any event, without a time machine there's no way to prove anything, but I consider the evidence to be pretty compelling.
Michael - Yep, I guess you wouldn't be a christian if you did not consider the evidence compelling. I have to say though, that if the "evidence" for jesus resurrection is compelling, then so is the evidence for John Smith's magic gold glasses (with which he read the first Book of Mormon). It's written down and millions of followers over several generations attest to it's truth, so much so they devote their whole lives to it, dying if necessary.
I guess if credibility depends partly on duration, you'd have to say Islam, in particular, was pretty credible. It covered most of the known world at one stage and is still one of the biggest around, undergoing a massive resurgence even now. Buddhism has been around longer than any. Taoism as well.
I guess it is easiest to just go with whatever you were raised in. Spouting it as the ultimate truth though seems to require large blinkers and a fair bit of hubris. Something not only christians are guilty of.
It's really a pity that your version of God denies the prayers of his followers in order to spite the non-believers who would simply deny the miracles if they were witnessed. I wonder how all those Christian amputees feel, being cheated out of limb regeneration because God doesn't feel it necessary to perform an undeniable miracle. Is that why so many Christians feel obligated to proselytize? After all, if we all believe, everyone gets healthy and gets their limbs back.