"What makes you think she is a witch?" "Well, she turned me into a newt!" "A newt?" (mumbling) "I got better..." -------------------------------------- The, ah, frequency of occurence is a bit off don't you think? This type of thing has never been legitimately recorded or documented by anyone, anywhere, even as countless numbers of people get hit with cancer, leukemia, etcetera every day, all kinds of soldiers coming back from Iraq with fewer arms and legs than they went over with... and yet we're supposed to be convinced by some bloke in Portland (whose name you probably can't recall) with a toe in a jar? Wouldn't it be fun, though, to track down the doctor of the jelly-legs girl. You can imagine he might have been a bit surprised. "Well, hello! Bloody crikey, maybe I should mention this to those New England Journal chaps..." How 'bout at least a before and after photo or two? Still no cameras in South America? What I'm most curious about is the miracle-approval process. "Right, sorry, no luck for you masses of humanity. Got to keep ourselves out of the press and all that. All you lot of devout Christians, you're 99.9% out of luck too. Miracles don't grow on trees you know. But you there, stumpy-toe, and you there, jelly-legs, good news... you've won our once-per-century powerball drawing..." p.s. from the Wikipedia entry on John G. Lake: The incredible stories of his ministry are too numerous to recount [and impossible to verify]. Too numerous to recount, yet not one single genuine verification. Not one. Bit of an odd juxtaposition, that. Almost miraculous... even if you choose to believe some wacky suppressed evidence theory--heathens denying the truth and all--there are plenty of religious doctors around. With miracles popping up like weeds, why hasn't even one credible medical professional bothered to speak up with something too compelling to be ignored? Why don't we have more examples (any examples) of hardened atheists trying to explain away obvious miracles documented by legitimate medical procedure?
Maybe you could document even one miracle or prayer ever working. I for one would concede immediately that Christian god exists if i ever saw or heard of even one miracle or prayer working. The ball is in your court. It is your god given duty to provide any evidence to unbelievers so they can correct the error of their ways. I await your documentation so that i can research it.
I just want to say a quick thing about the above that's underlined. It appears you might have misunderstood something about Christianity. Just for argument sake, let's say that the God of the bible is THE GOD! (insert: echo effect) If He or someone proves he exists, this new fact means nothing towards your salvation as you will not believe but will know. God doesn't ask for your service as all serve God. Sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly. Nor does God count your knowledge of him as anything since the human mind cannot fully grasp things related to non-linear and eternal things. So along with the "proof" of God, one also needs to prove that salvation is no longer a matter of faith, but a matter of knowledge (like the Gnostics adhere to). Yeah, yeah, everyone wants what doubt Thom had going on. But what most fail to understand about Thomas is that he wasn't in doubt about a messiah, only in doubt that Jesus was the one who filled those shoes. So Thomas already had faith in God and his prophetic word. He just wanted to make sure that Jesus was the messiah sent. John the Baptist had the same dilemna when he was in prison. Wondered if this really was the messiah. Reponse was to refer to the signs. These signs were prophesied for hundreds of years before. There are a few other examples in this vein. But none of them have a biblical character asking for proof of God. They already believed in God's existence. No atheists in the bible being converted by proof or signs. Just theists, be they theists of the bible God or other God(s). Ok, so that wasn't a quick thing... Terribly sorry.
Nonsense. All who know would believe. If âfaithâ is a prerequisite in a belief in order to see the truth of the belief, being if there were evidence there would be no need for âfaithâ in any particular belief. All supernatural beliefs require âfaithâ in its truth, being there is no evidence proving any particular belief. So it must be the âfaithâ itself that dictates what is true. Therefore every one of the worlds religions are true, being they all rely on the âfaithâ of the believer to see its truth.
LOL@nonsense. I like that. Anyway, you completely missed the point. No biggie though. Let's work with your idea for a second. In a superficial way, you're correct. All religions require faith to one degree or another. But here's the rub. For practically all religions, their method of salvation does not change whether their adherrents have faith or knowledge of God. Why is that? Because the method of salvation is works. By works I mean simply, reward for doing and/or not doing. So in this case, knowledge of God means nothing. In fact, some people are already doing what would be required of some religions without following this or that religion. That's why I said "the God of the bible" in my prior post. He doesn't require doing or not soing as a matter of salvation. Only faith. And if faith, then knowledge damns if it occurs before faith. You can't have faith in something you know to be true. You simply know it to be true. So aksing for proof of the bible God and receiving it does nothing to improve your salvation status. If the God of the bible shows up, you will then KNOW that he exists and all that he said is true as he's sure to confirm the bible. So what's left to believe in? Call it a catch 22. Faith is required for salvation. Yes, even Thomas had faith as I described above. Nothing shaky about it. He already believed in a messiah and his coming. He just needed to make sure that he was going to be "worshipping" the real McCoy. Something all Christians are warned to do.
That's a bunch of horseshit. You're talking about the same God of the bible that knocked Saul / Paul down on the side of the road with a blinding white light and a booming voice to make him believe. The same God of the bible, in human form, that delivered a full-on miracle in front of the apostles (Luke Chapter 5, the nets bursting with fish) to make them truly believe. The same God of the bible, again in human form, who got thousands of onlookers to believe through concrete demonstrations of his divinity, and who instructed the apostles to go out and do faith-inducing miracles in his name. Furthermore, your statement is inconsistent with the supposed reality of miracles and the logical profession from evidence to faith. These people who are supposedly getting miraculously healed must have unsaved relatives. Those unsaved relatives have to be affected somehow when medical miracles take place within the family. But if "knowledge damns if it occurs before faith," as you say, then Paul, and the apostles, and any unbeliever in near proximity of a miracle, or anyone who gets their hair blown back by concrete evidence of a divine experience while they are still outside the faith, should be automatically damned. Ridiculous. You just stone cold made that shit up. When someone asks for evidence that miracles occur, they are asking for a stronger dose of evidence than that which they've gotten so far, usually zilch. For you to say they can't have it because it might damn them is completely asinine. The theological connection between faith and works is hotly debated. Ever looked at Calvinists vs Arminians? Ever read the book of James? The bible does not clarify the issue, it blatantly obfuscates it. (As with a great many other things.) Furthermore, you have no idea what might or might not improve someone's "salvation status." (All this guy needed to see was a weird photo of a dude with a moon on his chest.) What IS abundantly clear at this point is that you're an armchair philosopher quite willing to talk out of your ass.
Actually John Lake's ministry was brought into question by officials in the city of Spokane and they did a thorough investigation in which they determined that the healings were in fact real. There were more than 100,000 documented cases in Spokane alone. Here is a recent story. This spring my family was on a cruise. My sister at the time was 3 months pregnant and became very ill while in Cozmul Mexico. When she was back on the ship, the doctors ran blood work on her 3 times because they were shocked at how low her blood count was and how high her liver enzymes were. She was diagnosed with HELP syndrome which as I understand it is a condition pregnant women get when their bodies are rejecting the pregnancy. The only cure is to deliver the baby early or if it is early in the term, abort the baby. To make a long story short, there was a Christian conference on the ship and many of the people were praying for my sister. The next day we were to dock in the Caymans and the ship had arranged for my sister to be taken by ambulance to the hospital there. That night I went to see her in the ships infirmary. I walked in by myself and she was barely conscious. I simply prayed something to the effect of "In the name of Jesus, No." As I walked out, the nurse stopped me. She said, "I dont know what you said to her but we have been trying to get her blood pressure down for hours and when you walked into the room her heart rate went down and her blood pressure is now normal." The next day we left her with another family member in the Caymans. They held her for several hours and concluded that she could safely travel to the US although her liver enzymes were still extremely high and her blood count was extremely low. By the time she made it home to the US the next day she was completely healed. The doctors were amazed for several reasons. For one, they had not seen anyone recover from HELP without ending the pregnancy. Second, in looking at the blood work from the ship which had been done three times, and the blood work in the Caymans, they couldnt understand how her blood count had risen so quickly without her having had a transfusion. The doctors ran alot of tests trying to discover if it could have been some other illness but in the end it was for them at least, a mystery. In fact, her doctor told her that he is going to write about her case in a medical journal because it is so unusual. She gave birth to my nephew last week . I regularly see God do amazing things. You state that there is no proof, no pictures, no doctors etc, but this is simply not true. If I were to point to cases with pictures you would probably say they were manipulated. If I gave you cases that were supervised by doctors perhaps you would question their credentials and honesty. -qwik
I can tell you many such stories. One cool and unusual story happened about 4 weeks ago at my church. I play acoustic guitar in our worship band and during our last song for the night I heard a loud shout. I turned to see who was shouting and everyone in the congregation was sitting down (it had been a long session) and only one person on the team was singing. Then I heard a chorus of 15-20 voices singing loudly from behind the drums which continued until the end of the song. I heard it, the drummer heard it, and two of the vocalists heard it. Two people in the congregation heard it. The next week the voices started singing with us again but this time from the congregation area and everyone heard it. My church has a healing room ministry where sick people come in to be prayed for. Most of them hear an advertisement on the radio and are not part of our church. One such lady came in with exema (sp), a bad skin condition that looks like a rash. It was quite severe around her mouth and on her hands. She came back about a month later and the condition was completely gone. We have had 3 people with cancer who have come for prayer and been healed. One person had his hearing restored. If it really interests you so much, why not get involved with a church that has a healing ministry. -qwik
If there are 100,000 documented cases in Spokane alone, then miracles must be so abundant they are practically commonplace... or at least more frequent than a statistically uncommon but unremarkable event, like the birth of twins. (Having been in the church for ten or twenty years myself, you'd think I'd have come across one or two. Miracles, not twins.) The only way genuine miracles could occur in such abundance, yet with no compelling evidence available, is if the biggest and most powerful evidence suppression scheme in history was operating full time, around the clock, to keep the documentation of these miracles under wraps. In order to get around this obvious contradiction, those who believe in these miracles suggest that doctors and scientists simply don't want to believe... that their hearts are too hard to accept the evidence presented to them. But this explanation falls apart on multiple levels. For one thing, there is the existence of religious doctors and religious scientists. If they had conclusive proof of miracles occurring--or even just enough proof to elicit a 'holy cow'--one would think these religious physicians and scientists would be falling over themselves to spread the word and have that proof documented. You would also think there would be a lot of spluttering atheists out there, presenting weak explanations for their take on phenomena that can't be explained. Why isn't this happening? For another thing, the idea that a non-religious doctor or scientist would actively seek to suppress evidence of a miracle is ludicrous. In the presence of an incredible phenomenon, any physician or scientist worth his (or her) salt would first exhaust all possibilities of investigation before using the 'M' word, and would call on all his colleagues, journals, professional associations etcetera to help investigate. As a result, news of this strange phenomena would spread throughout all the medical journals and scientific journals. IF miracles were popping off like popcorn, there would be a great deal of excited head scratching going on. But there isn't. At least, not of the "it's a miracle" variety. Lastly, the idea that a true physician or scientist would suppress amazing evidence out of spite is a slight to their character. Physicians care about healing; scientists care about understanding reality and finding new knowledge. If miracles are occurring on a regular basis, there is no way these dedicated professionals would be able to resist their fascination, their desire to investigate, their commitment to truth. Maybe a few bad apples could resist out of spite, but not all of them. Not even a half, or a third, or a quarter. You can share your personal experience of miracles as commonplace, but the real possibility exists that you are deluded. It isn't pleasant to speak that way, but when your claims fly in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, delusion is the more likely prospect. It's either you or the entire medical and scientific establishment which is off the reservation... and if the second, that still would not explain the deafening silence of Christian doctors and scientists. Your testimony is interesting and informative regardless, because it highlights people's capability to say and believe stupendously amazing things. There is something fascinating going on here no matter how you slice it... either your willingness to deceive for some utterly bizarre reason, or your genuine belief in a reality that simply does not exist, or (gulp) the validity of a medical / scientific conspiracy theory bigger and grander than all other conspiracy theories put together.