Answer: Why won't God heal amputees? [#2772]

[Fiji]

Fiji

WordAboveYourName is the only person ever to know how to read the bible correctly

Not at all. Christians need to start reading what is written, not what we've been taught, or would like to believe. I'm still not great in this respect, most weeks I still "see" something I didn't realise before, in the bible. I've got a long way to go.

Thing is, how do you know that the things you "see" are correct? How do you know your new insight is closer to the truth than you were before? What's your yardstick?

[jdawg70]

This is not an excuse, but a challenge. God created mankind from dust, so to re-grow a missing limb is not going to be difficult for him. We need to magnify God, rather than the missing limb. If we’re more focused on our God, than on the problem, the problem can ultimately be overcome.

This appears to be extremely dangerous thinking.

[RubyLeo]

Hi again

A lot to respond to, I'll try to start from the top.

RubyLeo

it seems that he is saying it's not on god to heal an amputee, the burden is on the believer

I guess at one level that's what I'm saying the situation is now. I said at the end of the article, that there is more to say about the basis for healing. I'll try and sum it up as briefly as possible:
Basically, Jesus Christ, on the earth, healed ALL who came to him. Through his death, resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit was able to come and live in Christians, giving them the power, ability and responsibility to the preach and heal.
The closest the New Testament comes to commanding Christians to "pray" for the sick, is in James 5. The rest of the time it commands us to "heal" the sick. Even in James 5, if we read carefully, it says the "prayer of faith" shall save/heal the sick. Not, pray enough and then God will do it.
When Jesus died he said "it is finished". Now it's in our hands. I delibrately haven't quoted any bible verses stating that healing is provided for in the atonement of Jesus, but can do if needed.

why can't HE make it happen? ... what's up with the failure rate?

I am bothered by the failure rate. When we're talking about life and death, either physical or spiritual, numbers matter! Every number is a person. However, if I focus more on the failures, then I'm going to fear failure every time I lay hands on someone. If I focus more on the success I'm going to grow in faith and expectation. So I'm not healing amputees, but I know they can be healed, because Jesus didn't say "it is partially finished". I fully expect to get to that point. To be honest I find it astounding and disgraceful, that a website like this should be able to thrive. We should have people in the church healing amputees and us Christians are helping to give God a bad name.

Indeed.  Why not? And he didn't mention taking up the challenge.  Again, why not?

Seriously, I give it my best shot any time I come across an amputee (assuming they want to be healed, I do know of some who don't). One day I want to come back here and let you know it's been done, just not sure how long that's going to take!

I know most people here will not be convinced until they actually personally see an amputee healed, that's your choice (for others, I'm not sure even that would be enough). For me, I've seen too much healing to believe that God doesn't exist and that he doesn't heal, that's my choice.

I'm passionate about healing. Mark 16 tells us that signs will confirm the word. If we're preaching without signs, why should people listen to us? Luke 10:8-9 tells us to heal the sick FIRST, then preach.

I'll respond to others later, I've got to work now.

Thanks for some genuine responses

Hi WordAboveYourName, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Your answers were heartfelt and thoughtful, and I appreciate that very much. 

[WordAboveYourName]

Tero

your god may be real to you, but he does not operate in the physical universe

That's probably off-topic, since it requires a discussion on creation. I stress again, my concern that led me to write this was the (mis)use of scripture in "Chapter 5". The author tried to use scripture itself, to confirm that God doesn't exist, because he doesn't heal amputees.
I'm just saying that was imho a misuse of scripture, explaining what I believe to be the correct use of scripture, and I'm kind of waiting for it to be challenged

Fiji

Thing is, how do you know that the things you "see" are correct? How do you know your new insight is closer to the truth than you were before? What's your yardstick?

Very good question. Maybe the best way to answer is like this(not saying it's an infallible explanation, but hopefully helpful). If the bible is true, then all of it must be true, and all of it must fit together, kind of like a big puzzle. When you're doing a big puzzle, you start with the most obvious bits, like the 4 corners, and then you work down to more detail. You know if a section is correct because it fits together with the rest of the puzzle

I know too many Christians whose doctrine doesn't fit together. I want to have my doctrine challenged, because it's like being presented with another section of the puzzle, and having to see how it fits.

For example, when you "see" that the New Testament tells us to heal the sick, rather than pray for them, you change a section of your puzzle that didn't fit before, but now it does. Also, the same goes for the poor. Jesus doesn't want a church full of people praying for the poor, but giving to the poor.

I hope that answers your question. Basically, scripture must fit with scripture, otherwise either the scripture is faulty (which I don't believe apart from some human errors in translation) or our understanding is faulty.

[neopagan]

WAYN-

My initial comment to you was based on what we see from many drive by theists here - they don't answer the question and jump to trying to save our souls and tell us how we've taken the bible out of context.  My apologies, since you intially seem to be generally sticking to the question in your responses.

So, as best I can tell from your responses:
  1. You (with your God) do some healing;
  2. You have personally witnessed many healings;
  3. All Christians should be doing tons of healings;
  4. You fully expect someone to heal an amputee some day (and it might even be you)
 
Ok, so just a few questions about what you said...

   Q: How do you define heal?  Please be specific, since we get a lot about healing souls and praying for colds to go away (and dogs being healed, for Anubis-sake!).
   Q: Please describe the healings you've witnessed and how your knew they were "supernatural"
   Q: If you attribute the healings to your God, then how do you know it's He/She/It doing it?
   Q: If all Christians should be healing machines, yet they have a remarkable failure rate over the last 2000 years, especially when it comes to healings like amputees, Down's Syndrome, anencephaly, etc. - what gives us any reason to believe your claims are true?   

Btw, thanks for dropping by to play along.  I hope you enjoy your time.  Also, if questions come at you too fast, just wave your hand - it can get a little crazy here when we have a new theist to play with... 
   
   
 

[Ataraxia]

This is not an excuse, but a challenge. God created mankind from dust, so to re-grow a missing limb is not going to be difficult for him. We need to magnify God, rather than the missing limb. If we’re more focused on our God, than on the problem, the problem can ultimately be overcome.

This appears to be extremely dangerous thinking.

Doesn't it just.

WAYN, do you not see how morbid and negative your outlook to humanity appears, because the thing is, if we are to focus on anything, then it is to club together and find a solution to healing amputees with the resources we have available to us through our endeavours in science and technology.
What I also find sad is that when such an achievement is made through years and years of dedication, research and damned hard work, I predict that you will dismiss the human achievement and heap all the praise on God.

This is the thing with this religion, it makes you think that you and the rest of humanity are shit, and that you are useless and amount to nothing. It feeds on the vulnerable, the depressed and those with low self esteem. It takes you, reminds you of this and accentuates it even further before dangling the big shiny carrot of hope in your sunken face to alleviate you of the massive put-down the religion itself, has just given you.

Humanity, for all its faults, is a bloody clever, innovative, caring, loving and empathetic conglomerate, not some pathetic, worthless, nasty creature that you wouldn't give the steam off your piss. No, such sentiment should be aimed at the people propagating this disgusting religion, for they are stupefying and suppressing the abilities we have fought so hard to freely express.

[jaimehlers]

WordAboveYourName:

I'm going to take some time to respond to you in the hopes that you'll consider something.

There's a serious problem with saying, "God heals", or "Jesus heals".  It's that there's no real way to support those contentions.  All you have to support them are stories from the Bible.  There isn't one single account outside of the Biblical text that supports God or Jesus actually doing, well, anything, though there are lots (and lots and lots and lots) of claims to that effect.  That makes those stories apocryphal at best, dubious, but believed true because most people don't know any better.

But that isn't even the most serious problem.  So you have God and Jesus who can do this magical, miraculous healing.  So why don't they ever do so in ways that can be clearly attributed to them, instead of in ways which are effectively indistinguishable from chance?  Take prayer, for instance.  Lost of people pray for their loved ones to heal, and occasionally, they do get better.  But more often nothing happens.  Sometimes they get worse.  But neither getting worse nor getting better happen very often - most often, nothing seems to happen.  This is exactly as we would expect from a random distribution (a bell curve), but not from an agent acting to heal those people.

Now, take a doctor.  Doctors work to heal a lot of people.  So you end up with some people getting worse, some people staying the same, but most people getting better.  It represents more of a hockey stick than a bell curve.  Not only that, but you can even tell the difference between a good doctor and a mediocre doctor - or a quack - by how those probabilities work out.  A quack's results are going to be closer to a bell curve, whereas a mediocre doctor may have a fairly flat distribution or perhaps a rise in the number of people getting better compared to the number who stay the same or get worse.  And a good doctor is going to have a higher proportion of people who get better compared to the numbers who stay the same or get worse.

So why is it that doctors have a higher success rate than God and Jesus in the modern day?  One would think it would be the exact opposite - as you say later on, it should be trivial for God or Jesus to replace a lost limb.  Yet, nobody has ever regrown a severed limb.  Instead, we have people (doctors nowadays) replacing the lost limb with an artificial prosthetic; a peg leg or a hook hundreds of years ago, compared to an artificial hand or foot nowadays.

Not only that, but there are actually animals in the real world which are capable of regenerating a lost limb.  Starfish can lose their arms and grow them back without a problem; salamanders can lose their tails and limbs and grow them back no problem.  Yet chop off a human's hand or foot, and it's gone (unless you're extremely lucky and someone saves it so it can be reattached).  For that matter, chop off a single finger or toe, and it's gone too.  The difference is in the biology - starfish and salamanders have biological mechanisms which take care of limb regeneration for them.  No prayer or divine intervention needed, it happens in every single one unless you actually damage the tissues that actually perform the regeneration.

With humans, it never happens on its own - the healing process simply covers the wound with tissue.  If you lose a finger or an arm, it'll eventually cover itself with skin (after scabbing/scarring over), but that's all that ever happens on its own.  We've finally progressed to the point where we can reattach severed limbs, provided the limbs were kept cold so that they didn't die, and provided you have a doctor on hand quickly enough to actually do the surgery.  And we've been able to perform extremely limited regeneration through medical treatments.  Think regenerating a fingertip, and even that's questionable.

Not only that, but it doesn't happen with prayer or faith healing either.  No matter how long you pray for someone who's lost a limb, no matter how much faith healing you get, that limb will stay gone.  Even you have acknowledged that you haven't managed to make an amputee regrow a missing limb (which is honest, and I respect that).

You say it's a matter of having enough faith.  So why is it that nobody has enough faith to perform feats of healing which would be truly miraculous - regrowing completely severed limbs, bringing someone back to life, curing cancer, etc?  Why is it that faith healing can only recover ailments which can heal naturally?

What I'm trying to get at is that we should see the same kind of statistical distribution for people who pray to be healed, and people who use faith healing, as we do with doctors.  Indeed, it should even be better, since they're calling upon a god with superhuman powers.    But we don't see that.  We see a statistical distribution that more resembles the bell curve you get from nature, than the hockey stick you get from doctors.

[Astreja]

WAYN, I don't think you've thought your beliefs all the way through.  I see some holes big enough to drive an iron chariot through.

First of all, why is it so important to you that all of the Bible is true?  Like it or not (and admit it or not), there are clearly contradictory passages.  This can be expected in an anthology, with multiple people riffing on the same mythological theme, but a god should really know better than that.

And do you really believe all of it, without qualification or qualm?  (And if so, could you please get Me a Talking Snake™ of My very own? {Genesis 3})

Secondly, why do humans have to do the heavy lifting as regards healing?  If human prayers had the power to heal amputees, your god would become superfluous -- And if your god has the power, but is just sitting there waiting for humans to pray "hard enough," it's a jerk.  Is that really what you want to worship?

[WordAboveYourName]

This appears to be extremely dangerous thinking

So that I can respond to it, please would someone care to expand on that statement?

RubyLeo

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Your answers were heartfelt and thoughtful, and I appreciate that very much

You're welcome, thanks for the chat

neopagan

My apologies, since you intially seem to be generally sticking to the question in your responses

No problem

Q: How do you define heal?  Please be specific, since we get a lot about healing souls and praying for colds to go away (and dogs being healed, for Anubis-sake!).

Haha, that made me chuckle. I wish Christians would care about other people as much as they care about their pets!

I do believe colds/headaches etc can be healed, and I have seen them healed (meaning migraines leaving instantly instead of gradually). However, as you point out, it's not exactly mind blowingly miraculous.

I guess my actual definition of healing would be pretty general, but my answers to your next questions will help as well. I define healing as a faster than natural (and preferably instant) recovery of any medical condition.

Q: Please describe the healings you've witnessed and how your knew they were "supernatural"

OK, here I'll stick to some of the more impressive ones, there are a lot of more mundane healings I have seen.

Firstly, very close to home, my daughter's ears were healed when she was about 3. Her hearing was at about 30%, she had already had an operation which had failed, and the doctors were saying she needed another one. It was a heartbreaking time, when I spoke to her, she would climb on my lap and put her ear to my mouth and ask me to repeat it. This was fairly close to the beginning of our "journey" in to healing. One night my wife and I learn't something of our authority over our bodies, and over our daughter. We went in her room while she was sleeping and commanded her ears to open. From that night onward, she heard us perfectly. We took her back to the doctors, they re-ran the tests and told us her hearing was 100% and they never needed to see her again.

About a year ago I prayed for a guy in his 60s/70s who had osteoporosis. He was on medication to try and prevent it getting any worse. I prayed for him, he stopped taking his medication (completely his choice, I never advise anyone on medication). He was like a new man. I saw him work harder than young guys in the church and he was completely healed. Unfortunately it meant he left our church about 6 months later, as he only moved here because the climate was meant to be better for his condition.

Even in cases where we ultimately lost the battle, and someone we were praying for died, I've seen too many people defy what the doctors expected, as a result of prayer (I understand this isn't what you asked about, but it's great to hear a doctor say "I just don't understand what's going on"

The most recent major healing was a couple of months ago, when a man (unbeliever and friend of ours) had been taken into hospital with suspected cancer. He was in a lot of pain, and after about 10 days in hospital they were going to send him to a bigger hospital, to cut him open because they were convinced they would find the tumor. Obviously we prayed for him, and a day or 2 later they say they don't know what's happened, but he can go home, as the jaundice disappeared, and the pain left.
There was a lot more to that last story, but I've kept it brief.

Q: If you attribute the healings to your God, then how do you know it's He/She/It doing it?

Well, there's got to be an expanation for something that is naturally unexplainable. I'm not really sure how to answer this. For example, our friend who had suspected cancer, is still an unbeliever, so obviously he believes there's another explanation, but I've seen far to many things for them all to be coincidences, including healing in myself and my wife

Q: If all Christians should be healing machines, yet they have a remarkable failure rate over the last 2000 years, especially when it comes to healings like amputees, Down's Syndrome, anencephaly, etc. - what gives us any reason to believe your claims are true?

I feel like I should first of all point out that what I'm trying to do, is show what I believe the bible says. That's my point about this, the misunderstanding of scripture in Chapter 5. I didn't come here to convert you. If you don't want to believe, that's your choice.

I agree with the incredible failure rate. If you look at church history though, for 1200 or so years the church was in a mess, and so incredibly far from the bible that it's no surprise there were so few healings. People who experienced the holy spirit in a visible way were often accused of being witches and burnt!

My view is that the church is increasingly understanding more and more of the bible, recovering from this dead period. I am building on what people have done, taught and understood before me, and it's my hope that people will come after me and go further and achieve more than me, building on the things I teach.

I will respond to the other posters as soon as I can, I just have loads to do. I start typing and suddenly I've lost half an hour of my life!

[jdawg70]

This appears to be extremely dangerous thinking

So that I can respond to it, please would someone care to expand on that statement?

I find the idea of promoting the idea that, in order to better solve a problem, one should reduce there focus on the actual problem to be rather irresponsible.

[Nam]

WAYN,

I think it's naive to say that either every last word is literal or figurative. For example, when Jesus said "I am the good shepherd", I don't know anyone who believes Jesus was literally saying he was actually a shepherd. Having said this, I believe that physical healing is biblical, and literal, 100%. Hope that clarifies my viewpoint

Who decides what is literal, and what is not? It seems to me you[1] decide. Which invalidates the Bible and makes it fiction.

-Nam

1.	in general

[ParkingPlaces]

WAYN

First of all, I want to commend you for being responsive to our questions and putting effort into explaining your position. If all theists who come here were able to do the same thing, we could have some fine conversations even as we disagreed with each other completely. Alas, that is seldom the case. Thank you for doing your part in keeping this both civil and useful.

That being said, I, as an atheist, have no particular reason to believe what you are saying about healing. I am not accusing you of lying, but I tend to think that you either misremember the incidents or that your beliefs have caused you to reinterpret the past to fit your version of reality. I am not saying I am absolutely right and that you are absolutely wrong. I am just telling you what my response to your healing stories is in this case.

If indeed you have a been involved with such healings, it seems that you have found a magic combination that so many believers don't know about. In my almost long life I've watched people pray for healings many dozens of times without noticeable results. I'm not talking about colds and rashes, I'm talking about serious stuff, like your daughters hearing and your osteoporosis story. (In an earlier post you defined healing as faster than natural. But in these two cases, and perhaps the third, undefined medical condition, 'natural' healing for those conditions doesn't exist. Getting better is not normal, especially with hearing and osteoporosis problems. So you might think about extending your definition to cover situations where such reversals are not medically expected). If one or both or all three of these healing actually happened, it seems that first of all, you and your brethren should be hanging around hospitals 24/7 and providing humanity a great service.And with such proof in hand, you should be leading sincere efforts to redefine christianity in the shape of your version, since it is so demonstrably effective.

I'm not surprised to hear that doctors are sometimes confronted with healing and recovery that they didn't expect. I have a very non-religious friend who recently survived colon cancer, and when she we declared cancer free, her doctor told her that frankly, he didn't think she would live three more months when he first saw her. No prayer was involved, just real serious chemo and radiation therapy and stuff. So Christian intervention doesn't appear to be a necessity, either for healing or for surprising doctors.

In any case, your claims qualify as fantastic, and if you have really been involved in actual, non-medical healings, you owe it to the world to take your message far. Much further, by the way, then you will ever get it while participating here. But if you are indeed involved in facilitating the production of miracles, and if you consider humans important, you need to find a way to spread the word. Simply holding bible and saying it is true is woefully inadequate. Too many have tried that and failed/split their congregation/caused wars. You need to set about finding humans in need of healing, stand in front of the medical community and the press, tell them that you are about to ask god to heal the person, and then do it. Over and over until all doubt is erased. Surely there are enough good people (especially children) on this planet in need of your god-given talents to justify such an endeavor. And even if it happens that your god isn't big on media coverage and doing it openly will fail, you should be working behind the scenes, again 24/7, to heal the kids at Shriners hospitals, in war torn African countries, in drone-attacked muslim countries, in proverty-stricken parts of the U.S. and elsewhere.

If you feel rewarded because of your involvement in the three healing you mentioned, imagine how rewarded you will feel after your first hundred healing. Your first thousand. And how grateful family after family will be as you help, through your god, make people whole again. I don't even care about the amputee thing. Heal some more deaf kids. That would be marvelous.

Do it enough, and all of us will become believers.

[Iamrational]

I start typing and suddenly I've lost half an hour of my life!

You needn't worry about losing time here. After all, this mortal life is but a drop in the bucket compared to eternal life.

[Ataraxia]

I guess my actual definition of healing would be pretty general, but my answers to your next questions will help as well. I define healing as a faster than natural (and preferably instant) recovery of any medical condition.

What does "faster than natural" even mean? Any medical condition you come across will be taking place within the natural world, and any affect on that condition will be natural if you can perceive the change and then communicate that to others.
All of the examples of "healing" you have since mentioned, that you say you have witnessed, have all happened in nature, therefore they will all have natural explanations that have the potential to be investigated by the scientific method. If you want to invoke God as being behind those natural explanations, then you'll have to come up with a method for falsifying supernatural claims. Good luck with that.

 

Well, there's got to be an expanation for something that is naturally unexplainable.

So to repeat and reiterate the point, any natural event will have a natural explanation. Taking a natural event for which we don't know the explanation for, and opting for "goddidit", is pandering to your personal incredulity, your bias and your erroneous default position. Plus, when you see God as a panacea, then you have no way of distinguishing when God is or isn't behind a natural explanation of healing, even when we do know the explanation.

[WordAboveYourName]

Hey everyone

Thanks for all the replies. I really want to respond to everyone who has taken the time to comment, there are some good things that need to be covered. I will try to do this over the next couple of days

I feel like I need to draw a line at this point however, and state that I won't be able to respond to future comments. Partly because I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, and partly because actually, very few, if any, of the comments have come close to countering my biblical viewpoint with a scriptural argument. Bearing in mind this is all a response to "Chapter 5"

There is just one question I would like to ask of you guys and gals. I'm not trying to be argumentative in any way, I genuinely want to know your answers, even if I don't have time to respond to it.

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

Like I said, not trying to cause an argument, just want to understand your thinking

Meant to be preparing a message for Sunday at the moment, so gotta run, but will try to finish responses over the next couple of days

[Foxy Freedom]

Hey everyone

Thanks for all the replies. I really want to respond to everyone who has taken the time to comment, there are some good things that need to be covered. I will try to do this over the next couple of days

I feel like I need to draw a line at this point however, and state that I won't be able to respond to future comments. Partly because I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, and partly because actually, very few, if any, of the comments have come close to countering my biblical viewpoint with a scriptural argument. Bearing in mind this is all a response to "Chapter 5"

There is just one question I would like to ask of you guys and gals. I'm not trying to be argumentative in any way, I genuinely want to know your answers, even if I don't have time to respond to it.

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

Like I said, not trying to cause an argument, just want to understand your thinking

Meant to be preparing a message for Sunday at the moment, so gotta run, but will try to finish responses over the next couple of days

The point of the website is to help people. Delusions are dangerous both to the individual and to society.

[neopagan]

I feel like I need to draw a line at this point however, and state that I won't be able to respond to future comments. Partly because I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, and partly because actually, very few, if any, of the comments have come close to countering my biblical viewpoint with a scriptural argument. Bearing in mind this is all a response to "Chapter 5"

We (to include the mysterious author of "Chapter 5") read your book and say it doesn't make sense and you ask us to counter your view with scriptural arguments... that's funny! 
I think "Chapter 5" speaks for itself. What is your viewpoint, other than prayers don't really work, but Christians need more faith as evidence by their lousy track record?

As for the second part of your reply (the why do it?)... that's a different question, and you've been loathe to get off Chapter 5 - so why should we bother?

[Astreja]

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

Because the real world is much more beautiful and engaging than a pious delusion.

Speaking for Myself, I don't consider it a waste of time to confront ancient superstitions that have somehow snuck through to the year 2013.  I consider it an absolute necessity.  How can we collectively solve the problems of humanity if we're divided against ourselves -- Some of us slogging it out in the here-and-now, while others pin their hopes on an improbable utopian future, pissing and moaning about the Evil World but not trying to make it better?

[Aaron123]

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

If there is no god, and no afterlife, then pursuing god, Jesus, etc, is a waste of time.  Leaving everyone to their delusions means that all that people waste their lives on something that doesn't even exist.  In light of that, trying to convince those people otherwise is a worthwhile endeavor.

[Foxy Freedom]

If you believe that you have cured people, why would you think that Jesus had anything to do with it?

People of every religion claim to have cured people. Why not just assume that you are doing it yourself ?

You appear to be assuming you are doing it yourself here,

One night my wife and I learn't something of our authority over our bodies, and over our daughter.

Some people on this site have asked for prayers to heal their eye defects. Maybe you could try that.

[jdawg70]

Hey everyone

Thanks for all the replies. I really want to respond to everyone who has taken the time to comment, there are some good things that need to be covered. I will try to do this over the next couple of days

I feel like I need to draw a line at this point however, and state that I won't be able to respond to future comments. Partly because I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, and partly because actually, very few, if any, of the comments have come close to countering my biblical viewpoint with a scriptural argument. Bearing in mind this is all a response to "Chapter 5"

I know that you're not going to respond to future comments, but I guess I'm just throwing this out there to throw it out there then:

This may very well be me misunderstanding things here, but it seems like you yourself refuted your own argument.

Your refutation of 'Chapter 5' seems to be: no, the Bible does not say that you can pray to god for healings.  Christians have been empowered by god to do the healing.

Yet you've stated here in this thread that you have been witness to healings as a result of you praying to god.

Maybe I'm just really confused at what 'praying' is all about.  Who are what were you praying to, if not god, to heal these people?

[Nam]

Hey everyone

Thanks for all the replies. I really want to respond to everyone who has taken the time to comment, there are some good things that need to be covered. I will try to do this over the next couple of days

I feel like I need to draw a line at this point however, and state that I won't be able to respond to future comments. Partly because I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, and partly because actually, very few, if any, of the comments have come close to countering my biblical viewpoint with a scriptural argument. Bearing in mind this is all a response to "Chapter 5"

There is just one question I would like to ask of you guys and gals. I'm not trying to be argumentative in any way, I genuinely want to know your answers, even if I don't have time to respond to it.

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

Like I said, not trying to cause an argument, just want to understand your thinking

Meant to be preparing a message for Sunday at the moment, so gotta run, but will try to finish responses over the next couple of days

Because Christians, for the most part, wish to force their beliefs on everyone else. You wish us to leave Christians to their "delusions" yet you[1] don't wish to show the same respect. Many laws in the world, in Christian countries (or other religions in other countries) are centered around their beliefs for all rather than just them. It's imposing unjust laws. We, for the most part, don't care if you want to believe but when you force others to believe, that's when we, and others have a problem. There are laws in the United States based on Christianity. A free country having laws forcing one religion on all others. That's not a "free" society.

That's why websites like this exist.

-Nam

1.	you is general

[WordAboveYourName]

Ataraxia

This is the thing with this religion, it makes you think that you and the rest of humanity are shit, and that you are useless and amount to nothing

I don't think this could be further from the truth according to "real" Christianity. The bible says we have been made in the image of God(Genesis 1:27). He says he loves us so much that he sacrificed his Son to redeem us from our mistakes(John 3:16). He wants to adopt us as his sons(Galatians 4:5), and give his sons the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18)

I don't see how that should make anyone feel useless. Even if a person chooses not to accept God, it doesn't change how God made them and what he has done for them.

Maybe I'm missing the point somehow....

jaimehlers

Thanks for taking the time to write that. I understand your doubts, and obviously it's your right to question this.

One thing that I would like to clarify to you, and a number of people who have raised the issue in a roundabout way. When I talk about praying for people, I'm not talking about praying to God, really I'm just telling their bodies to be healed in the name of Jesus. Sorry if I haven't been clear about that.

Sometimes I use language that I guess could be interpreted either way. I'm not sure if you realise this, but most Christians hate what I say as much as they hate what you say! People don't like being told they have a responsibility.

All you have to support them are stories from the Bible

This may be true initially, but personally, I have much more than that now. My absolute belief in the validity of the bible even goes beyond healing, other things have happened that can't be explained naturally. And, as I have already mentioned, I have seen a number of healings first hand (just realised I mentioned this after you posted your post). I recognise this isn't going to convince anyone else, just saying that I'm not purely reliant on a few stories from the bible to support my belief.

Astreja

why is it so important to you that all of the Bible is true

The bible makes a number of claims about it's own validity. I'm my opinion, if I can't trust that all of it is true, I can't trust that any of it is true. In my study of the bible so far, any errors I have found have been the result of bad translations.

why do humans have to do the heavy lifting as regards healing

Ok, now this is getting onto something that I really should have explained earlier, but again, for some reason, even many Christians don't like hearing this. According to the bible, the "heavy lifting" was done 2000 years ago.

It says that Jesus destroyed the works of the devil (1 John 3: (this includes sickness).
I'm not sure if this will make much sense, it depends on your knowledge of the bible (I'm sure there are some here who know it well). There are prophesies in the Old Testament, that get fulfilled by Jesus in the gospels. These basically say that the sacrifice of Jesus is not just to defeat sin and death, but also physical sickness. These verses are :
(Isaiah 53:3-5, Matthew 8:14-17, 1 Peter 2:24), Psalm 103:2-6, (Psalm 107:20, John 1:1)

A person on their own cannot supernaturally heal another person. When I say it's our responsibility as Christians, I'm talking about how we need to enforce the victory that Jesus has already won 2000 years ago. God already did his bit, and he gave us the power to continue to do Jesus' works here on earth, by faith. God can never become superfluous because without his victory and the name of Jesus, no amount of praying can heal.

And if your god has the power

According to the bible, God gave man dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26). Man then submitted to the devil. The only way God could win back that dominion for us was to come as a man(because they were given dominion) and live perfectly and then make one perfect sacrifice to pay for all the sin of the world. God's plan then involves sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and give us the power(Acts 1: and authority to do what Jesus did (John 14:12)

I know I'm posting from a biblical point of view. I'm not assuming you believe the bible, or me, but just showing you were I'm coming from, and what I believe the bible teaches.

Will respond to the rest tomorrow. Night all!

[shnozzola]

But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

My thoughts too before 9/11

[wright]

If there is no God, no afterlife, no healing etc, then seriously, what is the point of this website, and all you guys spending so much time disputing this with others. I understand why Christians try, because they believe there is an afterlife and they want to make a difference. But if there's no God etc, why not just leave everyone to their delusions and find something more worthwhile to spend your time doing? If you're right in what you believe, then surely you're all wasting you time here?

Speaking for myself, I would be quite happy to leave every theist to their beliefs. Unfortunately, not all of them feel the same way about everyone else.

As a citizen of the US, I'm very concerned about the ongoing attempts to impose sectarian religious views onto secular law and society. I find the deliberately secular character of the US government one of my country's great strengths. Nations with far less overt religion in their societies seem to do quite well, in some cases better.

On this site (and similar ones) I find others who share those concerns. Here we can discuss, affirm, pool knowledge and resources.

[shnozzola]

 - and, if these happy possibly deluded theists you speak of would respect, hire, protect, stand up for, work for, etc., atheists - I would also not mind the delusion.  But we all know that many places, lets say Utah, or Texas - there are some followers of Jesus that would happily drag an atheist behind their pickup trucks, with the local lawman watching with a toothpick in his mouth saying, well.........but that's Murka, where everyone has equal rights.     Lets talk about Iran and the treatment of an atheist.  You think these debates aren't important?

[Willie]

I am bothered by the failure rate. When we're talking about life and death, either physical or spiritual, numbers matter! Every number is a person. However, if I focus more on the failures, then I'm going to fear failure every time I lay hands on someone. If I focus more on the success I'm going to grow in faith and expectation. ...

Focusing on the hits while ignoring the misses is a good way to convince oneself of a belief, and I suppose that "to grow in faith and expectation" is an accurate, even if somewhat euphemistic, description of that. The problem is that this method can work as well for a false belief as for a true one. If "to grow in faith and expectation" is your sole goal, convinced that the belief in and of itself is good, then you have the right approach for achieving that goal.

I think that this underscores a very fundamental difference between religious thought and skeptical thought. It seems to me that the religious are primarily concerned with whether a belief is good (feels morally right, brings comfort, encourages good behavior, etc.), while the skeptic is primarily concerned with whether a belief is true.

It seems to me that what motivates believers of pretty much any religion is not their belief in gods, but rather a belief in belief.

[Chronos]

If I am reading his article correctly, it seems that he is saying it's not on god to heal an amputee, the burden is on the believer.  In other words, if just one believer (he said it didn't need to be millions praying, just one), had enough belief/faith - it would happen.

Therefore, no one believes sufficiently or correctly in god for god to provide a restoration of the amputee.

[Astreja]

The bible makes a number of claims about it's own validity. I'm my opinion, if I can't trust that all of it is true, I can't trust that any of it is true. In my study of the bible so far, any errors I have found have been the result of bad translations.

So you can get Me a Talking Snake™, then?  Kewl!

Seriously, why do you have to view the Bible in such stark terms?  Why not see some as true and some as allegorical, rather than all or nothing?

A person on their own cannot supernaturally heal another person. When I say it's our responsibility as Christians, I'm talking about how we need to enforce the victory that Jesus has already won 2000 years ago. God already did his bit, and he gave us the power to continue to do Jesus' works here on earth, by faith... God's plan then involves sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and give us the power(Acts 1:8 ) and authority to do what Jesus did (John 14:12)

But apparently no one can command sufficient faith to heal amputees... Or your god isn't giving the faithful enough power to do so.  The plan doesn't seem to be working.