This was written in response to a Christian's claim to miracles as evidence of God's existence. This is taken from Post 18 in that thread.

Atheists who have been pronounced dead get up and walk. Christians for whom thousands are praying get no answer to their prayers and a little boy, the victim of an avoidable accident caused by sloppy highway workers, is condemned to a lifetime in a wheelchair dependent on others for personal care; his entire family deconverts because God continues to be absent throughout the years as the family adjusts to the changed life situation and grapples with legal and medical issues. The father concludes that he is better able to look after his family than God. The trials of this accident have brought him and his wife closer together, while many marriages dissolve over this kind of difficulties. Let me repeat, these people were very devout Christians at the time and for years after the accident. The accident happened ten years ago and in the meantime they deconverted.

This past fall a Christian promised the father that by Dec. 15 the son would be healed. If atheists and other unbelievers pray, then we on exChristian were praying that the Christian would be right. There were pledges to conversion and even to take up priesthood if the boy was healed. I know these pledges and promises were sincere. The Christian made the prophecy perhaps six weeks in advance. The discussion on exC died down but was revived when Dec. 15 arrived.

As Dec. 15 was drawing to a close, starting with a hardcore atheist in the UK who had pledged himself to the priesthood if the boy was healed, we started counting hours left for God to heal the boy. As midnight passed across the time zones, someone suggested perhaps God went by Alaska time. The family lives in California. Dec. 15 came and went and there was no change. There was an infection that required hospitalization, but this was nothing out of the ordinary.

I was bothered by all these pledges to convert based on the healing of a sick person. That still would not answer my Big Question over which I had deconverted. I raised the issue. The father of the boy apologized for not being clear, and said that he did not mean for anyone else to be obligated to convert but that he personally would convert if his son were healed.

That made sense to me because it was the main issue over which he had deconverted. But it was not at all the issue over which I had deconverted. Health or lack thereof had nothing to do with my deconversion.

So there you've got some facts, whether or not you accept them. I can find the url to back up my claims if that would help.

1. An atheist who was pronounced dead got up and walked. (I don't think I can find the url for that one but I may be able to find the person who made the claim.)
2. An accident victim was not healed despite thousands of prayers and devout religious parents.
3. Hard-core atheists were prepared to convert if God performed a miracle on or before Dec. 15, 2007.
4. God did not show up. Instead, the patient got a routine infection that required hospitalization.

All medical science of today has irrevokably pronounced the son past healing many years ago. The window for "miraculous" healing was the first two years after the accident. Ten years have already passed. God did not intervene, yet even hard core atheist exChristians hoped against all their better knowing. I was truly amazed. At first I thought our UK guy was being sarcastic but it seems he wasn't. He REALLY wanted the boy to be healed.

Not even for such an opportunity to increase faith on earth would God show up. Surely a real God who cared about keeping people out of hell would not miss such an opportunity.

My dear RSM,
If you really think that Gramps (I read the ex-christian boards occasionally, although I’m not a member there) was prepared to become a priest if the little boy was healed, then I’m afraid you’re being too gullible for your own good.
Actually it was quite a safe thing for him to say, when you think about it, I suppose.
1 He (Gramps) would in all probability have rationalized the ‘healing’ (had it happened)
2 He would be aware that he would not be accepted for the priesthood as easily as all that, if at all.


The fact that all of you put such faith and hope in the words of a disembodied person in cyberspace should surely make you wary of being so ‘taken in’ in future .

There are millions of people who pray for healing and who think they know exactly how God should go about it.

To me, healing is ‘wholeness’, and does not necessarily include physical healing, although this can happen (in my experience)

Marti

By the way, your link took me to a site called 'Holdeman'???

What is that?

Thanks

Marti

If you want to challenge Gramps's sincerity about taking up the priesthood I suggest you join exC and debate him directly.

Holdeman is the popular name for Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, of a group of conservative Mennonites started by John Holdeman in the 1800s.

Okay, this conversation is not exactly going in the direction I had expected but such is life. This seems to be one outcome this topic on the interface of religion and nonreligion.

Marti, if I remember correctly, you posted somewhere that you are a scientist. May I know what kind of scientist you are? I ask because you posted the following:



Obviously, you followed the story of Hans Jr. and ChibiQ's prediction of Hans Jr.'s healing. Having done so, you must also have read of Grandpa Harley's (a.k.a. Gramps) extensive medical knowledge. As a scientist you would know the general implications of this.

You know that Mr. Hans is minus some vital organs and that his spinal cord is broken in more than one place. You know that medical science cannot possibly fix this at this point in history. You also know that no miracle of God has ever fixed such a problem after the "window of miracles," which is two years, is past.

Despite these huge medical issues you suggest that psychological/spiritual maturity can equal "wholeness" and that healing can occur. What kind of scientist can you be to make such unusual statements?

Marti, I never cease to be amazed at Christian witnessing. Christians try to convert the atheist with posts like these but they don't answer real questions about their faith or the Bible. Remember, several months ago you promised to answer my question about the inconsistencies in the Bible. I am still waiting for your answer.

Instead of answering that question you suggest that Gramps would not take a serious look at a God who can restore Hans Jr.'s body. This fact in itself suggests that there are no answers and that your god does not exist.

Certainly. I am a geneticist.



I don’t consider my statements to be at all unusual. You have misunderstood my statements, however.

Here’s what I said:
“To me, healing is ‘wholeness’, and does not necessarily include physical healing, although this can happen (in my experience)”

I ask you to note the emphasised words, which you may have skipped over. I’ll offer an example:

My wife has breast cancer. She is having chemo. She was consumed by fear when diagnosed – couldn’t sleep, or eat, extremely anxious.
The tumour has been removed, but the cancer may have metastisised, so – chemo and radiotherapy.
Her hair has fallen out. One week after each chemo session her white cell count is around zero, which makes her abnormally tired and
liable to succumb to every infection going.

However - she feels more ‘herself’, more ‘whole’ than she has ever felt – in her entire life.

The fear has gone.
She is vibrantly aware of God with her, alongside her, with the medical staff treating her, with and in her family and friends, many of whom are
also scientists.

She has discovered the love and the faithfulness of God in a new way, and our lives have been transformed.

Both she and I believe that she is experiencing healing (wholeness) - but not necessarily physical healing, although she may experience that too, due to the improvements in cancer therapy over the past 20 years or so.

Now, if someone, on an internet forum, had predicted (for my wife) physical healing by a certain date, we would not have been so gullible as to even consider for one second that there was the slimmest chance of this happening.

It amazes me that atheists seem to have been taken in by this con-artist.

Isn’t it Christians who are supposed to be irrational?



There are inconsistencies in the Bible.
Why? Because the Bible is a collection of books written by men.
Men are fallible.
The Bible is not the word of God.
Jesus is the Word of God.
In the beginning was the Word ....

In my opinion.

Marti

Edited by RSM on Aug. 25, 2008 to differentiate quotes from text, and to clean up waste space. See my post below.

Marti, I have taken the liberty to do some fairly extensive editing of format in your post. You did not show the quotes you took from my post--see below for more detail. Also, you left large empty spaces between the different parts of your post. I have only so much space on the server and cannot afford to waste it like that. You can use lines or asterisks for dividers if you want to divide your post into sections. Use quotes to show who said what. You also have the option to use colour codes if desired.



Marti, I did not reread this entire thread. I looked the thread up because I wanted to link it to a thread I started just now. And then I found your post. I don't know what you are referring to here with "Here is what I said." You seem to be referring to something I missed that you said in an earlier post, and that brings me to the problem with your formating.

Your formating style makes it very difficult for me to find the things you say. As stated, you did not use quote boxes to show who said what. All of the text looked the same, except for the bolded lines.

I have low vision, in addition to other significant visual perception problems. Only now have I seen that you said more in this post than the bolded lines. All these months I have been waiting for you to answer questions you apparently answered back in February. I have been accusing you of not answering my questions because I did not know you answered them. I am saying this in public to underscore the importance of following regular posting format.

I am on a number of other online forums and all of them follow basically the same format. I think anyone who has learned to read and write knows that there are strict rules to follow if human communication is to take place via marks on a surface--be it stone, wood, paper, computer screen, the sky, whatever. Because I did not know that you said more, your post made little sense to me and I did not bother responding at the time.

I see now that it is worth responding and will do so now in my next post.

I have no idea what a geneticist is so I looked it up in wikipedia. I'm not much wiser than I was. The opening paragraph says:



Are you a professor at a university?

At the bottom of the article it says "Categories: Geneticists | Genetics | Medical doctors by specialty." Are you a medical doctor?

In between those two items they list pretty much everything I've ever heard of that confuses my brain. Okay, they don't list math and engineering which also confuse my brain. The bottom line is that I like to know something about the people I talk to. The claims you make for yourself do not agree with what I see of your writing. In addition, your writing style is inconsistent from one time to another. Why? What is going on? How many people are using your account?



Re the red part: Few people consider their own statements unusual. But I may have missed or misunderstood and I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate.

The atheists were not "taken in" by a con-artist. We are merely asking God to keep his promises. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name it shall be given unto you." "Ask and it shall be given." Those are but two verses. Read Why Won't God Heal Amputees: Why Is The Question So Important? Read till you find the Bible verse on which it builds. I would like if you could find time to read the entire website and then explain to me why you think we should not expect broken people to be healed when Jesus promises to answer all our prayers.

I realize this might be a harsh assignment given your wife's health condition. All the same, you claim to have educational credentials that the masses trust. The word of scientists carries weight that the average lay-person's does not and scientists need to take responsibility. The world is suffering serious consequences because of misguided religious ideas. It is past time for scientists to put aside their religious prejudices and tell the truth.

Just to clarify, I found this site Why Won't God Heal Amputees decades after I first had problems with God's broken promises. It only confirmed that I wasn't crazy for having these problems. You think God can't heal paralyzed wheelchair patients. Here are some of the avowedly miraculous healings Jesus accomplished:

According to the NT, Jesus himself brought dead people back to life--even Lazarus whose body had already started decomposing. Jesus healed a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years (the man who was unable to get to the pool by himself and he had no one else to help him; Jesus said to take up his bed and walk; he did so and was healed). Jesus healed dried-up limbs. He healed an ear that was cut off. He healed from a distance--the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue and the servant of the centurion. Jesus said his followers would do greater things than he did. If God could do these things in Jesus' time why can't he do them today? Why did these signs and wonders stop at the close of the NT--sufficiently in the distant past so that nobody can confirm or disprove that they ever happened?

It seems Paul healed a young man who fell out of a second story window and got killed. Probably broke his neck or spine or skull or all three. Yet God could heal him. Why can't he heal this kind of thing today?



Do you expect me to believe that--"In the beginning was the Word"? That comes straight from the Bible--also straight from some pagan beliefs or Hindu or Greek or wherever it originated. But I think you got it from the Bible. And you tell me not to believe the Bible because it is merely the work of men. But to believe Jesus. Yet you depend on the Bible for your knowledge of Jesus, right? Why should I believe that verse if not the rest of the Bible? Or why should I believe Jesus if not the Bible?

The evidence is strong that Jesus never existed. It is true that the Bible is the work of men. I know and believe these things and that is why I am an atheist. But what basis does a Christian have for his beliefs if he also believes these things?