SteveII Wrote:Redbeard The Pink Wrote:All events. Our experience supports that in ALL events. Of the known explanations and causes for things, we have natural things, and we have unknowns. There are absolutely zero known, demonstrable supernatural causes, effects, or objects.Your first paragraph relies on dismissing the entire NT (and any other claims of miracles). But in addition, even though you are carefully wording your sentence, you are really saying that events can only have naturalistic explanations. You are simply moving "unknowns" over to the naturalistic column for no reason other than they must not have had a supernatural cause. Why is this not the equivalent of saying " miracles do not exist because miracle can't happen"--which is circular?
Aside from that caveat, I appreciate the concession. I am still a little unclear, however, on how you're distinguishing a regular unlikely event from a miracle. If the person happens to have prayed for it first, how do you rule out coincidence (and how do you explain the fact that prayers, regardless of the religion, have zero demonstrable effect on any outcome when compared with pure chance?)? If the person came to god or experienced personal growth from it, how do you explain when that same thing happens, but with somebody else's god? If an unexplained tumor-remission brings someone closer to Thor, is that evidence that Thor exists? If not, why should it be evidence that Jesus exists?
I do keep hearing the claim that healing happens at the same rate between religious and non-religious. Do you have something that explains that study? Please note, I was not using modern healing miracles as evidence in this discussion because of some of the reasons you pointed out.
There's a point where this repeated accusation that people are really saying events can only have natural explanations when they've explicitly said no such thing needs to be called out for the mealy-mouthed evasion of dealing with what's actually being said that it is.
The reason you haven't heard of the study is that the Christian majority in this country doesn't want anyone to know how effective Christian prayer is. No, wait, that's preposterous. If any study showed Christian prayer was more effective than chance at curing cancer, it would be headlines around the world. It's studies that show otherwise that you have to Google. But you don't care enough to bother looking yourself, you want it spoon fed to you. Is it one of your goals to waste our time doing your research for you?
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.