Family Man

I had a thread called Personal Experience, or Manufacturing Your Own Evidence that you might want to take a look at. At the very least, you'll see how a theist reacts to questioning the value of personal experience as evidence.

You ought to keep in mind that you wouldn't be generalizing about Christians, but about humanity. There is always the temptation to represent your point of view in terms that are more favorable than they probably deserve, and the last time I checked, Christians weren't immune from normal human impulses.

And there is not a lack of such examples. The most famous one I can think of is the Cassie Bernall "I believe" statement. This has been shown to be absolutely false: the girl under the table denies she said anything, several witnesses id'd another girl (who survived) as the person who said it, the girl herself claims she said it, and the source of the orginal claim pointed in the direction of the second girl when asked where he heard the statement. And still you'll get people telling you that she really did say it.

You also might want to look at James Randi's site for other examples where he has exposed pious frauds. Just put James Randi in a search engine.

But, in most cases, the first point is probably the most telling. The most famous example I can think of from this board occured a couple of years ago. One of the theistic regulars at the time claimed that, while he was running through the woods as a boy, his dog suddenly turned around and snarled at him, stopping him in his tracks. Directly above the dog was a hornet's nest. Had the dog not stopped him, he would have run right into it. His claim was the dog couldn't have possibly known the danger and the dog wouldn't have had enough time to react if not given divine help.

The perceptual problems here are obvious. How did he know that the dog wouldn't have recognized the danger. Dogs are highly instinctual creatures with greater awareness of the world than humans do in many respects. Moreover, the dog would have recognized the danger earlier than the guy would have, creating more time for a reaction.

The bottom line here is that that poster was projecting his own perceptions onto the dog, then came to a conclusion that was unwarranted by the facts -- a conclusion that was completely in line with his preconceived notion.

Millay1313

When I was in the 6th grade, something happened to me.
Growing up in a "mildly" religious home, I knew what a miracle was supposed to be and assumed what happened to me had to be one. As I become older (I am 31), I thought maybe what happened to me was just simply something unexplainable.
I still am not sure. I am not bothered at all by the notion that not all things are explainable.
Now if $30 million dollars dropped out of the sky into my lap and I did not have to pay taxes on it, that to me would be a miracle even though I am sure someone would be able to explain it all away somehow.

Koiyotnik

I think it's time for a shameless plug for Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World (I hope I did the SecWeb reference correctly).

Octokun

Here's a list of problems he's claming healing of, not necessarily from his church:

Cancer
Diabetes
His back wrist and back pain (of which I somehow never knew of before)
Bad vision


Well, to be more detailed, he claims his wrist pain went away after drinking whine at the communion, and likewise for his back pain.
As for the rest, he's not basing it on any personal experiences but rather things he watches on t.v. or hears of from others.

(sorry to reply so late by the way, I'm not on the comp 24/7 )

Kalkin

I agree with what most of the people on this thread have been saying, but there's an additional point - the case for God in several other areas really depends on God being no longer interested in performing miracles. There are a couple reasons why a reasonable Christian needs to argue God finished with miracles when Jebus died:

-First, where are all the verifiable modern miracles? It's pretty suspicious that all these miracles are subjective and seen only by fundies. If God is really performing miracles, sure, some of them might be unprovable, but one would expect at least a few that were undeniable.

-Second, if God is willing to perform miracles regularly, that destroys any defense against the Argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief. The Free Will Defense is gone - if God is willing to reverse the consequences of free will in some cases, he should be willing to do so in other cases. God will cure a believer's cancer, but isn't willing to, say, give Hitler a heart attack at age 16, or move some stars to write "Yahweh is Real" and save all the athiests? Wtf? His priorities would seem pretty skewed... if God is willing to cure some Christians miraculously there's no justification for him allowing other, equally good ones to die.

Defiant Heretic

My favourite response to that argument comes from this post by Boro Nut.

JerryM

William Nolen, M.D. investigated various faith healing phenomena in the early 70s and documented his findings in the very interesting and readable book "Healing, A Doctor in Search of a Miracle," (Random House, 1974.) So called "healings" were either temporary symptomatic improvements after which the symptoms quickly returned, or outright fraud (psychic surgery.) It's well known that many chronic medical conditions are subject to spontaneous remission, even various malignancies. The fact that someone may feel better after some kind of religious ministration is no proof of a deity. If you believe in a god who heals, the better question is why are so many sincere believers with incurable diseases NOT healed?