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Monday, March 31, 2008

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

In keeping with Gene’s recent theme about reasons why we’re not Arminians, I’m going to add another one. I was looking at YouTube today (it was Saint & Sinner’s fault for providing the link to the Machine Video) and happened to stumble upon Ten Questions That Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer. It was put forth by http://whywontgodhealamputees.com. After the philosophical naivety that led off the video wherein we are told how wonderful our college education is and how it enables us all to think wonderfully (I really must wonder what this guy would do if he ran into a nihilist, let alone an empirical skeptic), we finally get to the questions which are, indeed, rather devastating.

If you’re an Arminian.

But for Calvinists there’s not a single problem with any of the questions posed by the video. In fact, the basic gist of the argument can be defused by one simple point: sin is real.

Arminians do understand this to some extent (thankfully), but it does take a Calvinist to understand just how bad sin is. We have this built in with the doctrine of Total Depravity. Sin is serious, and as a result a sinful world gets what a sinful world deserves.

Despite the fact that atheists will use it as an excuse that I’m avoiding the other “hard” questions, I’m only going to look at the main question, as found here. Why won’t God heal amputees?

The claim is made:

Does God answer prayers? According to believers, the answer is certainly yes.

For example, at any Christian bookstore you can find hundreds of books about the power of prayer. On the Internet you can find thousands of testimonials to the many ways that God works in our lives today. Even large city newspapers and national magazines run stories about answered prayers. God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.

It is indeed true that God answers prayers. However, I must point out from the start that most of the claims of answered prayers in the world are not true. That’s right, all those Internet testimonials and national news magazines…Christians shouldn’t put any more stock in them than atheists do.

In fact, God most certainly does not seem to be “interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.” And logically no Christian should assume this is the case. After all, God has never promised to answer the prayers of the non-believer.

And this brings up another point. In the video, the last question asked was “Why do Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians?” The answer to this question is relevant here: they don’t. Instead, what you have is professed Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-professing Christians. If you instead correlate the divorce rate to how mature a Christian is in his or her faith (as evidenced by Church attendance, reading of the Bible, etc.) the divorce rate is far less. But given the fact that every American is de facto a Christian, this will automatically skew the data since everyone is a “Christian” even when they only attended Church once in 6th grade.

So already we see the question is posited on a false understanding of why God would answer prayers in the first place. The site continues, giving the example of Jeanna Giese, the first (known) person ever to recover from rabies without a vaccine. We’re told:

According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna's father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna's plight and they said prayers for her.

And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine.


Of course, the “global prayer circle” didn’t work. Whether God was active in healing Jeanna or not is irrelevant to the number of people who were praying for her. God either did or did not heal Jeanna for His own purposes, which He is under no obligation to inform us about.

Now I do not blame the atheists for thinking that Christians believe the above. If I went by the tripe that was published in the Christian book stores and by those same articles on the Internet I’d come to the same conclusion that this is what Christians believe. Thankfully, however, I get my prayer theology from the Bible and not from Family Christian Bookstore. As a result, the proposed experiment that Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? proposes doesn’t phase me. The experiment is this:

For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident.

Now create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier's legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey's mother.

If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.


Now the first problem with this experiment is of course the fact that it is a logical fallacy to assume that because God does one thing one time that means that He must do the same thing another time. This is the same problem that we find in The Prayer of Jabez (just because God answered Jabez doesn’t mean He’ll answer you in the same way), so again the atheists can be excused for their misunderstanding. The experiment is flawed because it doesn’t treat God as an agent, but instead as a scientific law. That is, the experiment is predicated on the belief that God must be mechanistic and must respond to all prayers in the same way at the same time.

But think about people instead of laws. Suppose that you were told, “I e-mailed Bill Gates and asked for $100 and he gave it to me.” You say: “I don’t believe you. And I’ll prove you’re wrong by e-mailing Bill Gates and asking for $100 and showing he won’t give it to me.” You then e-mail Bill Gates and he does not give you $100. Does that prove Bill Gates did not give the other person $100?

Of course not. So the logic of the experiment is already flawed. But there is a deeper problem that Calvinists can immediately spot. The experiment is based on finding “a deserving person” for the healing. Now we’re dealing not only with groups of non-Christians whom God has never promised to answer, but we’re also dealing with a non-existent entity in a “deserving person.”

No one deserves healing from God. The fact of the matter is that the wages of sin is death, and part of death is the decay of our bodies in illness. A whole and complete body is not owed to anyone. God does not have to heal anyone at any time. If He does, it’s because of His mercy. But if He does not, He has not done any injustice. In fact, by simply using illnesses to slowly kill us, God is already acting mercifully by not instantly doling out justice. Instead, He is patient and slow, such that no one has an excuse for continuing in evil.

And it is this fact that healing is not owed to anyone wherein the atheist has made his largest mistake:

God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna's every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.


God should be answering the prayers of amputees too? Such language is grating on the nerves of the Calvinist!

So we see yet another reason why it’s a good thing to not be an Arminian.

14 comments:

  1. "it was Saint & Sinner’s fault for providing the link to the Machine Video"

    :P

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  2. This fellow is perhaps misguided in trying to take modern cases of unexplained healings and imply that Christians must take these as miracles, and then refuting Christianity on that basis.

    But there are two related points he touches on by which one can build a sound case against the reliability of the Bible. The first is exegetical - the Bible clearly has passages (ex. Mk 11:24 and others listed in 'Chapter 5') that promise results for prayer to Christians. Yet C.S. Lewis admitted in his essay Petitionary
    prayer: a problem without an answer
    , that what we see in the world of how God responds to prayer doesn't agree with what the Bible says.

    The second point would regard the miracle healings as done by Jesus (since these are put forth as miracles, a Christian cannot deny this, as he can with unexplained healings today). A major reason people came to the Christian faith seems to be the evidence of his miracles. But all of those miracles could have been explained by natural means, since Jesus never did something like healing an amputee (the closest is a reference to a "withered hand") which would of necessity be miraculous. Therefore the faith of the first Christians may have been misguided. You can argue that the resurrection, transfiguration, ascension, multiplication of the loaves, walking on water, etc. was indisputably miraculous, but most early Christians probably wouldn't have seen them. Therefore, Christianity probably would never have gotten off the ground in the first place had people realized that the "healings" could have occurred naturally.

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  3. I realize there was no industrial machinery in those days so that amputations would have been less common, but there must have been at least some cases of amputations due to infection (the concept of amputation clearly existed, as evidenced by "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off...").

    Maybe he could have cured Origen or something.

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  4. Thnuh said:
    ---
    But there are two related points he touches on by which one can build a sound case against the reliability of the Bible. The first is exegetical - the Bible clearly has passages (ex. Mk 11:24 and others listed in 'Chapter 5') that promise results for prayer to Christians. Yet C.S. Lewis admitted in his essay Petitionary
    prayer: a problem without an answer, that what we see in the world of how God responds to prayer doesn't agree with what the Bible says.
    ---

    Of course, C.S. Lewis isn't a Protestant pope or anything. He can be (and often was) mistaken.

    I do agree that the Bible has passages that people assume a certain meaning that then doesn't fit with what we see in the world. But this is demonstrative of the problem of the assumptions going into the text. I addressed one of these in my latest post (and I'll address more of the Scriptural passages in the near future, if demand warrants it).

    Thnuh said:
    ---
    A major reason people came to the Christian faith seems to be the evidence of his miracles.
    ---

    That's a major reason people hung around Jesus, and it's stated in the Scripture. But these people didn't come to "the Christian faith." It was a "wicked and adulterous generation" that sought after those signs (Matt 12:39; 16:4).

    Thnuh said:
    ---
    But all of those miracles could have been explained by natural means, since Jesus never did something like healing an amputee (the closest is a reference to a "withered hand") which would of necessity be miraculous.
    ---

    All of those miracles could be explained by natural means? How, then, did the blind man receive sight? How did Lazarus regain life after death? How did a paralytic begin to walk again?

    And why did these things only happen when Jesus commanded them to happen? Talk about your amazing coincidences!

    Now I realize that it's possible you don't even believe Jesus existed, but this argument predicates on His existence. That is, you cannot say His miracles have natural explanations unless you agree that something did indeed happen to those who were healed that requires an explanation.

    Thnuh said:
    ---
    Therefore the faith of the first Christians may have been misguided.
    ---

    Or you could be misguided in your attempt to explain away what they reported.

    Thnuh said:
    ---
    I realize there was no industrial machinery in those days so that amputations would have been less common, but there must have been at least some cases of amputations due to infection (the concept of amputation clearly existed, as evidenced by "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off...").

    Maybe he could have cured Origen or something.
    ---

    Again, this is predicated on the assumption that one needs a cured amputee in order to validate Christ's message. But given the fact that atheists don't believe in the resurrection, what difference would including a healed amputee have? Then the atheist would be complaining: "The Bible never talks about anyone who has a spontaneous spleen regeneration."

    You can always make up whatever excuse you want.

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  5. "And this brings up another point. In the video, the last question asked was “Why do Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians?” The answer to this question is relevant here: they don’t. Instead, what you have is professed Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-professing Christians. If you instead correlate the divorce rate to how mature a Christian is in his or her faith (as evidenced by Church attendance, reading of the Bible, etc.) the divorce rate is far less. But given the fact that every American is de facto a Christian, this will automatically skew the data since everyone is a “Christian” even when they only attended Church once in 6th grade."

    Get ready for the "No true Scotsman" fallacy fallacy.

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  6. Vagabondtoad said:
    ---
    Get ready for the "No true Scotsman" fallacy fallacy.
    ---

    Well, in this case the "No true Scotsman" fallacy obviously doesn't apply. People who are Christian-in-name-only are not going to act like those who actually are Christians. That's why statistical models that take into consideration actual behavior associated with religious claims show different results than those who rely solely on a self-proclaimed designation. This isn't a NTS fallacy because there's an observable difference between those who engage in certain behaviors (i.e. going to church, reading their Bibles regularly) than those who merely claim to be a Christian.

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  7. Peter Pike said..
    If you instead correlate the divorce rate to how mature a Christian is in his or her faith the divorce rate is far less.
    Can you please point us to the study that shows this so that we don't think this is a faith based science?

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  8. Peter Pike said..
    In fact, God most certainly does not seem to be “interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.” And logically no Christian should assume this is the case.
    Assuming there are about 2B Christians, your assumption is that the God answers to a prayer less that once every three years. How would we know when this happens as a pure change has probably better odds?


    Where does the Bible say the person you are praying for must be a “a deserving person”? This might be your incorrect interpolation why the prayer does not work. I think that point of the video was that no amputees will NEVER be healed by aprayer (not that a amputee gets healed).

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  9. Peter (not me) said:
    ---
    Can you please point us to the study that shows this so that we don't think this is a faith based science?
    ---

    Can you please point us to the study used in the video so that we don't think this is an anti-faith screed?

    BTW, I believe Barna has done quite a few surveys that actually break down the demographics based on actual church attendance, etc. instead of just professed faith claims.

    Peter (not me) said:
    ---
    Assuming there are about 2B Christians, your assumption is that the God answers to a prayer less that once every three years.
    ---

    A) I don't assume there are "about 2B Christians."

    B) You're not reading what I wrote very carefully at all. I said, "God most certainly does not seem to be 'interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.'" This makes no statement about how often God actually is answering prayers.

    C) In fact, you've pretty much managed to miss the entire point of my post in trying to assign a numerical value here. God is not obligated to answer any prayer for healing at all. People are not owed healing. Whether He does or not is up to Him. He's a free agent.

    Peter (not me) said:
    ---
    How would we know when this happens as a pure change has probably better odds?
    ---

    I assume by "pure change" you meant "pure chance." Chance does not exist. It is not a thing. Nothing happens "by chance." So if God does anything He already by definition does more than what happens by "pure chance."

    Peter (not me) said:
    ---
    Where does the Bible say the person you are praying for must be a “a deserving person”?
    ---

    It doesn't, and this question illustrates you have a reading problem. The "deserving person" language was introduced by the atheist doing Why Won't God Heal Amputees? not by me. I pointed out that no one deserves healing.

    And if no one deserves healing, then God not healing someone is not an injustice.

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  10. Peter Pike,

    Thanks for clarifying that you do not have any data to prove your claim that "true Christians have lower divorce rate" is a fact. I dont't know if the video is based on a study, you need to ask that from the producer of the video who made these claims.

    I understand your position that "God is not obligated to answer any prayer for healing at all", but the video points out how so many Christians (and people of other religions) claim miracle healings happen to them or someone they know. We just never observe a miracle of a healing of an amputee (very strange). Something does not seem to add up here.

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  11. Peter (not me) said:
    ---
    Thanks for clarifying that you do not have any data to prove your claim that "true Christians have lower divorce rate" is a fact.
    ---

    Thanks for clarifying that you cannot read the English language. I referenced Barna's study, which is used by atheists to point out that there were more divorces in the "Bible belt", but which ignored the fact that "Evangelicals who attend church regularly divorce at a rate 35 percent lower than secular couples."

    It also showed that 52% of people who never attend church say their marriage is "very happy" while that number leaps to 73% of those who attend one more times per week.

    But why let facts stand in the way of your spin?

    You said:
    ---
    I understand your position that "God is not obligated to answer any prayer for healing at all", but the video points out how so many Christians (and people of other religions) claim miracle healings happen to them or someone they know.
    ---

    Try this on for size. Assume that every miraculous healing claim is true. Is there a way to prove that they are true instead of a coincidence?

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  12. Please read "The Case for Christ" by Lee Stroble; and try not to be delusional in the face of factual information that any rational person would conclude that God not only exisists but he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for you and to forgive you of your sin and to allow you to live in his presence for ever. I'm sorry you don't believe but try to understand that you are not a god you are a mist of rain that is here and gone and if you have no purpose in life you are destroying the species not the Lord who created you.

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  13. >Please read "The Case for Christ" by Lee Stroble;<

    I just took a look at a youtube talk by Stroble.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSaaSxTaLvY

    I'm not impressed, and I doubt most thinking people would be convinced by his arguments.

    For example, to back up claims that there was a Jesus, he states, "I studied archeology." Oh, really? If so, why then go on only to quote other alleged archeologists, rather than telling us something his "studies" have uncovered?

    The reason is that Stroble hasn't actually studied archeology; at best, he's studied claims of archeologists who agree with his point of view.

    Stroble, in this youtube presentation, also argues that we can believe in the veracity of the Christian bible because those who wrote it included unflattering details about the disciples.

    That's a rather pathetic proof for the existence of Jesus. I might as well argue that unflattering depictions of Huckleberry Finn in books by Mark Twain "prove" Huckleberry was a real person, and that all the places and events in the various books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are real. (Certainly Huckleberry is a nicer character, a more moral character, than the Xian god - he murders no one, and unlike god, is not in favor of slavery, or rape, or murder, and even Tom, with his flaws, is morally superior to the god of any Christian.)

    When it comes to making what seem to be irrational claims, like the existence of a god, rational people want proof.

    Those who want to believe in a god need no proof - they have their faith to sustain their belief. Yet such people persist in trying to demonstrate their rationality, too, by offering up bogus proofs, such as Stroble's ludicrous claim that airing the dirty laundry of the disciples "proves" the bible is an accurate historic document.

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  14. If I may, I think my treatment of this question here, quite handily exposes the flaws in the skeptic's argument (though I am not a Calvinist myself).

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