Putting God to the Test

[FutureAndAHope]

Christians are perfectly capable of understanding what would constitute verifiable, scientific evidence. The only reason for them not to be able to produce such for their miracles would be that they can't. They don't want their 'miracles' scientifically scrutinized, because they know in their hearts that their reports can't survive that kind of examination.

Hi this is not actually the case. As I posted earlier, there is a group of Christian doctors who document cases of divine healing. You are welcome to contact them for the proof you seek. They have a Website where they list cases they have investigated. It is at http://www.wcdn.org/wcdn_eng/case/divine_case_e.asp

Also in regard to the other posts regarding religion helping to reform alcoholics, it has also been shown that Christianity helps reform criminals. We had a court case in Australia where an Athiest was trying to remove Christian chaplins from schools. During that period I came across some studies that had been done to prove the effectivness of religion in reforming prisioners. One study found that there was a 15% reoffence rates to people who completed the bible study to 42.2% for those that did not. Two studies done had results like that. A further study found the following, it found that the religion-trained ones had an 11 percentage point lower recidivism rate than the control group. Forty percent of the religion-schooled group committed new offenses, while 51 percent of the others did so. The religiously trained group also had a longer crime-free period following release, and when they did commit new crimes, the crimes were less severe compared to past offenses. The control group had increased crime-severity. The recidivism rate for women who took religious training was even lower, only 19 percent, compared to 47 percent among the control group of women. With all three studies combined the average rates are around 18% for religion to 45% for no religious training.

Also as a note for the poster who said that secular societies are more prosperous than religious ones, all the secular societies have a Christian history, and also larger Christian populations, it could be argued that it is the church not the very small group of atheists who benefit society. As an example the country where I live Australia is very prosperous and the census put the population to be 61.14% Christian. One of the most prosperous countries the USA puts it at 73% Christian. So the richest nations have more Christians than secular people. I believe that the reason Christian nations prosper is Christian religion is more open to prosperity, where as Buddhist nation encourage poverty by promoting self denial.