The God of Convenience

[abaris]

If the person had specifically prayed to God, and there is no natural explanation for it, why couldn't it have been God that did it?

First, why couldn't it have been Aesculap being in a generous mood?

Also, to take your earlier Lourdes example. Each year, millions of people travel to Lourdes. And between 1858 and present days there were 69 "confirmed" miracles. That's a pretty low number in any case.

[Mudhammam]

A person has a terminal illness and one day it is gone. A team of doctors and scientists examine him and find no natural explanation for the sudden cure. There is no evidence for a supernatural cure or that nothing beyond natural exists? Who is living in a box here?

Let me step out of the box and see if I can come up with an explanation that satisfies you.

It was Olympus Zeus summoning the healer Apollos from his halls because the person sacrificed every year in his holy temple.

No wait.

It was a young girl endowed with special gifts in the arts of demonic magic.

P.S. She must be exercised right away!

No wait.

It was Jesus Christ our Lord because I prayed with my WHOLE heart and BELIEVED he would pull through for the person!

Now I just can't figure out why this one person was cured while the 99 over here are all dead. I suppose it would have helped if I had realized the label on the box said "For serious people only: Inside progress on an actual understanding of the sickness and cure awaits."

[Lek]

Well, we have actual writings from Plato himself, plenty of reference to his impact in both Athenian and Syracuse politics- in fact it was a christian emperor that eventually closed his Academy for good, on the basis that it was pagan- and numerous secondary sources too.


Not to mention, the claims regarding Plato are way different from those regarding Jesus; the former are mundane, whereas the latter are extraordinary. If you truly wouldn't accept the existence of Plato- assuming you're being serious and not just engaging in equivocation- on the basis of better evidence than we have for Jesus, then what business have you accepting the existence of Jesus, for whom the claims are vastly more impossible, on worse evidence?

I do believe that Plato existed based on the evidence that we have for that assumption. We don't have better evidence for the existence of Plato that we do for Jesus. You claim that the writers we attribute to the books of the new testament are not the actual writers. Why should be assume that the 1,300 year or older copies of Plato's works were actually written by him?

Put simply, accepting the probability of Plato's existence (because all of this is probabilistic), even if the level of evidence was equal with that of Jesus, doe not require me to believe that the physical laws of the universe were ever suspended, as acceptance of Jesus would.

Why not? We have unexplained healings now. Why couldn't Jesus have the done the same thing then?

Well, given that even church historians accept that the new testament authors were anonymous, and that the names attributed to each book were added later, and in some cases even the idea that those names refer to the apostles specifically were added later still, I don't think I'm being particularly controversial. You really need to do some research on the history of the gospel, Lek; do you realize that in this conversation it's the atheist that is in line with the opinions of christian historians, while the christian is directly contradicting them?

No. Your're wrong about that. Some church historians attribute them to someone else. I'm aware that it appears that the synoptic gospels relied on other sources for information, but that doesn't mean that they weren't written by the named authors. Many authors rely on other sources.[/quote] If you think that all christian historians agree with you, read the introductions to the books of the new testament in the New International Version and the New American study bibles. These bible translations were accomplished by teams of qualified bible scholars and historians.

Besides, none of the gospel authors ever made the claim that they were contemporaries to Jesus. I know that's what you think, because it's more convenient, but if you actually read the books, not a one of them contains that claim; you're just patching it together based on an assumption, made without evidence, that they truly were who the books claim them to be... and we know that they aren't, because we know when those names were added to the books.

Did they have to? The early church carried along that knowledge, just they carried along the gospel message.

This is only an issue if you continue to assume that the only thing you're going to get is a lack of evidence for natural means, which isn't what you need. If you get positive evidence for supernatural causation, which is what you'd actually need for scientific verification, then there would be no question that the cause was supernatural.

Beyond that, it's not my problem that your claims aren't falsifiable or capable of generating positive evidence. That's a problem with your claims, not the methodology that would verify them.

If it's supernatural, natural science is inadequate to verify it. We've given science a chance to decide if there was a natural cause for the healing of individuals, which they didn't find, and we've determined that these people did have faith and prayed for healing. We don't have any instruments to detect the power of God working in them. Based on that and other countless other testimonies to the power of God, I'll accept it. You need more so you won't. Okay.

[FatAndFaithless]

Lek, there are plenty more people who pray for healing and only get worse and die, how exactly do you account for those people?

[Lek]

Let me step out of the box and see if I can come up with an explanation that satisfies you.

It was Olympus Zeus summoning the healer Apollos from his halls because the person sacrificed every year in his holy temple.

No wait.

It was a young girl endowed with special gifts in the arts of demonic magic.

P.S. She must be exercised right away!

No wait.

It was Jesus Christ our Lord because I prayed with my WHOLE heart and BELIEVED he would pull through for the person!

Now I just can't figure out why this one person was cured while the 99 over here are all dead. I suppose it would have helped if I had realized the label on the box said "For serious people only: Inside progress on an actual understanding of the sickness and cure awaits."

Okay. I give up!

---

Lek, there are plenty more people who pray for healing and only get worse and die, how exactly do you account for those people?

God didn't want to heal them. God isn't a thing that just reacts to a stimulus, but rather a being with thoughts and will.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're still doing it Lek.........

[robvalue]

Bible says you get what you pray for, every single time. Unless Jesus was a liar, that is.

[FatAndFaithless]

Let me step out of the box and see if I can come up with an explanation that satisfies you.

It was Olympus Zeus summoning the healer Apollos from his halls because the person sacrificed every year in his holy temple.

No wait.

It was a young girl endowed with special gifts in the arts of demonic magic.

P.S. She must be exercised right away!

No wait.

It was Jesus Christ our Lord because I prayed with my WHOLE heart and BELIEVED he would pull through for the person!

Now I just can't figure out why this one person was cured while the 99 over here are all dead. I suppose it would have helped if I had realized the label on the box said "For serious people only: Inside progress on an actual understanding of the sickness and cure awaits."

Okay. I give up!

---

Lek, there are plenty more people who pray for healing and only get worse and die, how exactly do you account for those people?

God didn't want to heal them.

What a douche.

[Lek]

Bible says you get what you pray for, every single time. Unless Jesus was a liar, that is.

No doesn't say that. We are always to pray according to God's will.

[robvalue]

You're right, it doesn't.

It says it about 4 times.

Have you not read it?