Why is it when one visits the pagan healing sites in Turkey and the Christian healing sites in France, one can find a lot of cast-off crutches and canes at the end of the shrines but can find no cast-off prosthetic limbs?

Maybe because people missing limbs are smart enough to know that "miracles" will not solve their problem.

If God can resurrect a dead body to life and turn water into wine, surely he can restore an amputated limb. Uh, can't he? What are miracles anyway?

This reminds me of an interesting story. We had a regular in the AOL atheist chatroom who had a habit of going into the christian chatrooms and pretending to be christian (not that I condone this. I think it's rude, but the story is interesting nonetheless). He entered a discussion about God's power to heal and began telling everyone how he had been involved in a horrible car crash that nearly cost him his life but through the power of prayer he was healed of all his injuries. A chorus of "amens" followed. Finally, someone got around to asking him what kind of injuries he had sustained, and he replied that his head had been completely severed from his body, but his parents had prayed to God to heal him and he miraculously grew a new head. Naturally, the "amens" stopped and everyone figured out he was faking. They were pissed, and I don't blame them, but I think their reaction is very telling: not even "believers" believed the claim that a decapitated person had grown a new head.
Why were these believers prepared to believe that someone had been healed of "generic" injuries ( and on the basis of nothing more than their say-so) but not prepared to believe that they had grown a new head? One would think that in a world where God heals disease and illness through prayer, growing a new head would be no less believable than being healed of a tumor or arthritis.

[This message has been edited by Echo (edited May 26, 2001).]

Water into wine, walking on water, multiplication of loaves and fishes--these are the "miracles" in the gospels taken literally by both fundamentalists and many skeptics.

As to the poor car crash victim, he obviously found out how to "get ahead" in the Christian world!



[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 26, 2001).]

The definition of miracles depends on the definition of nature. Miracles, as I understand them, operate outside a natural system, so it's necessary to define the uniformity of nature and its consistency (or not) first.

No miracles occur where there are no laws.

Also, as concepts of laws change, concepts of miracles change. Lightning was a miracle until its natural explanation (some kind of ionization, right? I don't know) was understood. No doubt, computers still work like miracles to Bushmen. Their concept of natural law at work there did not encompass electrical engineering.

So, miracles occur in context only. However, for a given context, it thus may be reasonable to believe that a miracle has occurred if that context fails to explain the miracle.

Miracles stand out as inexplicable events against a backdrop of explicable events.

I'm sure there are other formulations too.

Cheers,
Dan

There are no miracles today. That is a fact. Now the question is, were there any in the past? I have reason to believe there weren't. Miracles are invariably found in the following places:

1. Books whose target is to make pious, God-fearing people, like the Bible and the Qur'an. They abound in miracles in order to show God's power. They are as trustworthy as politicians' electoral campaigns.

2. Contexts where the ancients were ignorant of natural explanations and exaggerated an impressive natural event into a miracle. An exceptional earthquake may be exaggerated into descriptions of "rising of the dead", for instance. You'd never find such things today.

The burden of proof is on the claimant: no miracles by default, and if you say there are then you need to prove it. As far as I'm concerned, the Universe is entirely natural, and I've found no sound evidence to the contrary.

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Originally posted by zzang:
Maybe because people missing limbs are smart enough to know that "miracles" will not solve their problem.
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If God can resurrect a dead body to life and turn water into wine, surely he can restore an amputated limb. Uh, can't he? What are miracles anyway?

Forget arms and legs: To my knowledge, gods cannot even restore a single hair to a bald man's head--and I know a lot of men who have prayed for their hair to come back. How much power would it take for a god to restore a functional hair follicle?

rodahi




[This message has been edited by rodahi (edited May 27, 2001).]