'God' and healing

[John Dibble]

Really? Were these people ever documented?

Andrew, you’ve known me and my testimony for a while now.  So, how it is you are asking for documented miraculous cases when you can’t even explain my own testimony, which I have documented in great detail?

You regrew a limb that was cut off?

[John Dibble]

Really? Were these people ever documented?

Andrew, you’ve known me and my testimony for a while now.  So, how it is you are asking for documented miraculous cases when you can’t even explain my own testimony, which I have documented in great detail?

You regrew a limb that was cut off?

You know what I’m referring to

Yeah, I do, which is why I asked a rhetorical question. Afleitch was asking for documentation about a specific claim about amputated limbs growing back. Your testimony involves something happening to you that wasn't a demonstrable physical change, whereas the claim in question was about something that clearly would have been a demonstrable physical change if it indeed happened. Do you not understand why the two things are in different categories, hence why your testimony isn't relevant to the question?

[John Dibble]

Really? Were these people ever documented?

Andrew, you’ve known me and my testimony for a while now.  So, how it is you are asking for documented miraculous cases when you can’t even explain my own testimony, which I have documented in great detail?

You're going wildly off topic. I can summarise; as a rationalist your testimony of your religious 'revelation' is as relevant to me as is the testimony of someone who found Allah in the desert, someone who espouses the benefits of Dienetics or a farmer who has told me about his voyage to Sirius in a spacecraft…

So, when presented with the evidence you seek from Christians, you then require it be proven superior to the evidence of other religions?

Considering the "evidence" for other religions can hardly be called as such, I believe that that was indeed what he was implying.

[John Dibble]

I mean, what’s more impressive, the fact that Moses’ staff physically changed into a snake, or the fact that God’s spiritual provision to Moses granted him victory over Pharaoh to the glory of God?

Which is more impressive is irrelevant if neither of them happened. What source outside of the Bible do we have to confirm that this ever happened?

[John Dibble]

Andrew, your argument seems based upon the faulty premise that if there is a God, he should do whatever we want him to, and he should do it now and he should do it without charge.  (Sort of like how stereotypical left-wingers expect government to work, but I digress.) The problem is, the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament makes it quite clear that Elohim does not work that way.

That wasn’t my argument. Besides, making it clear he ‘doesn’t work that way’ is the eternal cop out.

My argument was that if God ‘heals’ why do his abilities appear so limited?

As I said, your argument is that if God doesn't make use of the abilities you want him to use, He must not be God.  As you point out, we can do things now that would have been considered miracles in ages past.  Perhaps God wasn't interested in keeping us from learning how to do them by doing them for us?  Perhaps that explains why he doesn't do other things your "I want it all and I want it now" philosophy demands he do?

No, his argument is that there's no evidence for the claim that God heals.

If you believe the claim that God miraculously heals people then how would you go about demonstrating that the claim is actually true? How would you go about distinguishing between the healing that occurs by natural process and those that occur by divine intervention?

[John Dibble]

Speaking from personal experience, God can and does heal people. Alfweich, limbs being restored from amputation was common at the Azusua St. revival. I know a girl who much like myself had a condition which needed the use of glasses to correct. I was there when the healing took place.

Really? Were these people ever documented? Were they seen by a doctor? Because the growing of bone, cartilage, muscle, veins and skin from a 'stump' into a brand new leg would be world news. Seriously; it would make the first face transplant seem like childs play.

I'd imagine God made sure to include some convenient reason that this couldn't be documented.

If there weren't documentation, then how did I find out? I've been to the historical site of that revival. There are plenty of books on the miracles that occurred there.

So where is the documentation then? Who had lost a limb previously, what documentation shows that they really had lost it, and what documentation shows that their limb grew back? What specific source makes this claim, and what evidence is given to back it? Come on man, give us some specifics.

[John Dibble]

Dang, Dibble, I waited nearly a week to open this thread because I thought the response to my comment would require my having to write a long post, and I wanted to make sure I had the time to do it properly.  But you proved me wrong – there was no need for me to wait, for you step-sided, once again, my whole point.

You asked a loaded question, so of course I sidestepped your point.

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I see no miracle staring me in the face. I instead see you making claims that can't be distinguished from delusions.

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Your beliefs changed and so your actions changed accordingly. That is not miraculous since beliefs inform actions, regardless of whether or not those beliefs are based on the supernatural. Only whether or not God actually talked to you to change those beliefs is related to the subjects of miracles, and as you outright admit here that claim can't be examined.

[John Dibble]

again, you're ignoring the provisions.  but, that's ok, I'm not really interested in going through it.

And again, the provisions are irrelevant if you aren't actually talking with God.

[John Dibble]

again, you're ignoring the provisions.  but, that's ok, I'm not really interested in going through it.

And again, the provisions are irrelevant if you aren't actually talking with God.

you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.   you're basically saying, "you miraculous healing is irrelevant if you weren't actually healed by God."  On one hand you're asking for proof God has done something miraculous, then on the other, you say, "doesn't matter what happen if God didn't actually do it."

No, I'm saying that I don't buy that your healing was miraculous. If you can't demonstrate something is actually a miracle, then a question about how impressive a particular miracle is really isn't particularly interesting.

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Since I don't have a time machine and a remote brain scanner to see exactly what was going on in your head at the time I can't say anything for certain. However, given at the time you were already studying the Bible I don't particularly find it odd that if you had a religious experience which meshes with the subject matter you were studying. As I've told you before people in other religions have had experiences that match their religions. I find it far more plausible that you and other such people who have experiences such as this entered into some brain state, euphoric or otherwise, that you had not experience with before and used a religious belief to explain it.

It's not all that different from people who claim to have been abducted by UFOs. Quite often their testimony matches that of various media, but do you take them seriously just because they make a claim that matches up with something else that isn't exactly a reliable source of information? No, of course you wouldn't, so why should I do so with your testimony?

[John Dibble]

Since I don't have a time machine and a remote brain scanner to see exactly what was going on in your head at the time I can't say anything for certain. However, given at the time you were already studying the Bible I don't particularly find it odd that if you had a religious experience which meshes with the subject matter you were studying.

I am not talking about testing my conversion experience after read just 3 chapters of Galatians, which you can’t test directly.  Rather I am talking about testing the provision God gave me during that conversion experience.

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It's not all that different from people who claim to have been abducted by UFOs. Quite often their testimony matches that of various media, but do you take them seriously just because they make a claim that matches up with something else that isn't exactly a reliable source of information? No, of course you wouldn't, so why should I do so with your testimony?

This is a perfect example.  If this abducted person claimed to have been given new skills (in an area he was neither acquainted with nor trained in) that fit a specific commission he was given while abducted…and successfully completed that mission, and had demonstrated his skills in your presence time and time again over a period of years…it should give you more than a moments pause.

So it is in my case – you have much more than a life changing experience on your hands, and you even have more than observable results of a completed commission.  You have the demonstrable skill (provision).

Ok, for the sake of refreshing everyone's memory and for the sake of me not arguing with a strawman if you really want to continue this can you give the specifics of your provision - exactly what skills have you been granted? Be succinct if possible, you don't need to go over the whole story again.

[John Dibble]

Ok, for the sake of refreshing everyone's memory and for the sake of me not arguing with a strawman if you really want to continue this can you give the specifics of your provision - exactly what skills have you been granted? Be succinct if possible, you don't need to go over the whole story again.

My testimony has God opening my eyes to the meaning of scripture and anointing me with his Spirit and commissioning me to go preach the truth to my friends in a legalistic church…and the provision he gave me was the ability understanding and teach the scripture and to dissect doctrinal error.

Now, if my testimony is simply a figment of my imagination, then why is it that you, a non-believer with no denominational biases, agree with my interpretation, even though I have had no formal training?

Because you were much more informed of the actual contents of the book at the time, having read them many times after your experience, and once I was informed of those contents appropriately I have this skill called "reading comprehension" that allows me to interpret the contents. I happened to agree with your interpretation on the matters at hand. That's hardly miraculous.

Also, are you saying you didn't have "reading comprehension" in your skill set before your experience?

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Churches collapse and schism. People convert to and from different denominations. This happens in pretty much every religion. It's not evidence for a miracle.

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You seem to have forgotten I have still argued against some of your interpretations on some things in the Bible - slavery for instance. The particular agreement in interpretation you reference is largely in regards to what is considered a sin in the Bible, like homosexuality.

EDIT - also who goes to hell and who doesn't. But honestly, by making me have these interpretations all you did was convince me of was that your god was more monstrous that I had previously imagined. Why are you proud of that?

[John Dibble]

1)   my conversion experience included many doctrinal details (like the fire in my bones) that I was so unaware of at the time, I thought I was the only one on earth who had experienced such a thing.

Various humans have reported "out of body" experiences and attribute it to all kinds of things, and those who later experience them often attribute it to whatever the first similar thing they read says it is. Humans have common strange experiences like that. Why should I treat your "fire in the bones" thing any differently? How do you know that the biblical author who wrote about that didn't just have similar experiences and falsely attributed it to the biblical god, and that upon reading about it you just latched onto the explanation yourself?

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By the time you and I came into contact you'd read the Bible multiple times and had years of practice at evangelizing. To claim otherwise is intellectually dishonest. And as I stated before, you simply informed me of passages in the Bible that I didn't already know. New information that contradicts an interpretation demands old information be reinterpreted in a new light - it's that way for pretty much anything.

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No, I couldn’t understand the bible before that night.  I had attempted to read sections of it before, but reading it back then was like was like being lost in a vast ocean.  It was only that night that everything just began to click and I could spiritually understand what was written.[/quote]

Couldn't, or didn't care to put in the effort? Didn't you only start seriously reading the Bible in the first place so you could get married to the woman you live? Lack of interest in a subject often makes it hard to get into it, especially if the subject is a large book. I certainly didn't care about interpreting the Bible before I started caring about how religion affects the world, so I just went along with the feel good interpretation that my peers did.

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As stated, you simply gave me new information on the Bible's contents to process. Had I actually read those parts beforehand I would likely have already had a different interpretation.

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Why not? Improbable things happen to people all the time. Put together, how many improbable events does it take for someone to be put in a position where they might become a world leader, or a famous artist, or any number of things? Even as improbable as it is that any one person might get maneuvered into such a position, the sheer number of people in the world dictates that it's going to happen to some of us.