Originally Posted by dog-on

Third-hand hearsay is evidence, of course. Not accepting it in the case of the supernatural, while accepting it in a case where I tell you that my sister told me that her neighbor owns a dog, would be the bias.

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

So burn the witches?

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Or perhaps we should just burn the witches....

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Why is Biblical scholarship filled with people whose standards for accepting the supernatural are so low that they cannot even be parodied, or ridiculed, just gawped at?

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Craig Keener is a Biblical scholar.

http://www.charismamag.com/index.php...he-still-heals

Here is an example of the standards he sets.

'When Thérèse was 2 years old, she cried to her mother that a snake had bitten her. By the time Antoinette Malombé reached her daughter, little Thérèse had already stopped breathing.

Antoinette lived in a remote region of Republic of Congo in central Africa where medical resources weren’t immediately available. Strapping her child to her back, she started running to a village where a family friend, evangelist Coco Moïse, was staying. When he prayed for Thérèse, she began breathing again. By the next day she was fine.


This account was reported to me directly by Antoinette. When I spoke more with her about it, I asked how long Thérèse had gone without breathing. She paused and thought about the distance she had to traverse to reach the evangelist’s village and said it took her about three hours.

The human brain suffers irreparable damage after only six minutes without oxygen, even if the person can be artificially revived. Thérèse had gone close to 180 minutes without taking a breath. Yet she suffered no brain damage—as she herself can attest to today, many years later. Thérèse recently completed seminary.

I am married to her younger sister, Médine Moussounga Keener, and Antoinette is my mother-in-law. Though not meaning to question my relatives’ account of Thérèse’s healing, I nonetheless checked with Moïse, just to be sure, and he confirmed the story as I had heard it.'


The Congo also has many documented stories of child witchcraft. Sometimes the child witches are killed.

As Dr. Keener believes all stories told to him by Christians in the Congo, why is he against killing child witches, as Christians in congo can produce many, many stories of witchcraft done by children?


Why is Biblical scholarship filled with people whose standards for accepting the supernatural are so low that they cannot even be parodied, or ridiculed, just gawped at?

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

The evidence that the child had stopped breathing for some hours is, I agree, very weak.

However, we have quite strong evidence, (assuming FTSOA that Dr. Keener is giving accurate reports of what he was told), that a young child had become unconscious following a snake bite, and recovered shortly after being prayed for.

This seems to be prima-facie evidence for healing by prayer.

Andrew Criddle

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Now that you have accurately repeated what you were told, we now even have confirmed evidence of miraculous healing by prayer.

And those stories of child-witchcraft in the Congo are looking better and better with each person who believes hearsay reports.

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

This isn't really hearsay. (Unless you are making the correct but irrelevant point that we only have Dr. Keener's word for any of this.) Two people, the child's mother and the evangelist who prayed for the child, separately reported the story. Both of them were eyewitnesses.

Andrew Criddle