Quote from archimedes:
Also, what about the dog that didn't bark?
i.e., there are roughly 300 million people in America, and at least three quarters of them profess some affiliation to Christianity.
Not sure what your point is.
The question originally framed is: God doesn't heal amputees [do miracles]; ergo no God.
IF that assumption is challenged even by a small sampling of documented miracles, then you have evidence for God that disproves or calls into question the validity of the first premise.
The second question then is a question of theodicy. Why does God heal some and not others; why are there not more miracles and healing a more regular occurrence?
If you read one of my prior posts on the difference between intellectual assent and absolute trust [the Greek definition of faith], there is a confusion in the western mind between ideas and practice: simply because one understands the principle does not mean one has walked the path. Looking at a map of California doesn't mean you've actually been there. Yet many people treat the scriptures just like that map. Rational understanding of the mechanism isn't the same thing as being able to do it. I may understand the steps to a dance by reading a book and looking at diagrams, but I am totally left footed and cannot dance a lick. I knock down the whole line when I try the Electric Slide. I understand how it ought to work, but I cannot do it. My body doesn't cooperate.
Faith, by all indications of the scriptures, was notable because it was the exception to the rule of life. Not everyone could regularly do the miraculous. Elijah could, and that is what made him so extraordinary and WHY they wrote about him! If everyone did it, there would be no story to tell. Read between the lines! The norm of that day was that NO ONE ELSE was doing miracles. And there are silent centuries recorded in the scripture where God appears to be inactive. We get the scriptures as a highlight of significant events, but they are time compressed. There are often hundreds of years between supernatural events which don't make it into the book. There was about 400 years between Malachi and the birth of Jesus where Hanukkah is the only recorded miracle. So, if you want to disprove God by the record, at least take into account the fact that not every day was crowned with miracles.
Faith in Jesus' day was not common either. Even Jesus' disciples got rebuked by Jesus for their constant failures. And Jesus could not do many miracles in his home town because of their mindset: they didn't believe he was anything special and were not open to his ministry. This apparently wasn't a problem of Jesus' faith but of the receptivity of the people. We have a strong mindset of rationalism in the West which discounts and dismisses out of hand the supernatural or the possibility of miracles. We have the same skepticism towards Jesus as Nazareth did.
Apparently, faith is one of the rarest commodities and hard to come by. What passes for 'faith' is often rationalizations, wishful thinking, desperation, and intellectual assent. It doesn't matter how religious one is; just wanting it badly enough doesn't make it so. Faith does not come from the organ of the mind or through logic, or through reason. Otherwise only the smart people would have faith; however, God does not measure a man's mind, but his heart and makes faith available to all whom he so chooses. Everywhere in the scriptures it says that faith is a gift. It isn't earned or learned by academic study of the idea of faith. Logic and reason and labors of the mind CANNOT produce it. It isn't a formula.
Faith comes by the Spirit of God and out of the depths of one's being. It is an inner confidence or assurance that surpasses knowledge. When it is active, there is no stress or anxiety involved; but a deep peace and assurance.
Faith is not trying to get God to do something you want; it is not trying to convince God that what you want is reasonable or worthy or logical. Faith is knowing what God's will is in a given situation and totally trusting and believing God will do so-and-so in a given situation. It is a total confidence that what you see in your heart will come to pass.
Jesus even said this about faith, "Trust God, I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, âGo, throw yourself into the sea,â and DOES NOT DOUBT IN HIS HEART but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done FOR him."
Now the whole approach to God in this thread starts not with trust but with doubt as the first principle. Empiricism seeks to discover truth about the natural world by the presumption of doubt. Doubt about God's goodness, God's willingness, God's ability, are all prima facie antithetical to very nature of faith's operation. According to Jesus, who was, granting that he was who he says he was, a master of faith's operation, said that where doubt exists, faith does not. In other words, doubt and questioning are the very evidences that faith does not exist and would prevent it from operating. A lot of sincere and well intentioned religious people mistake intellectual conviction for living faith. And some religious people are just sincerely flakey or in denial. Unlike the Disney adage, wishing does not make your dreams come true. To expect someone who has lived all their lives by reason and rationality to suddenly develop faith in a time of panic or desperation it unrealistic; however, it does happen as a unpredictable gift.
I have been through enough of my own trials to know that often when I thought I was acting in faith, I was not. I was being rational, logical based upon an intellectual assent to what the scriptures meant, but I was still hiding and repressing my doubts and anxieties. I had no assurance. However, when I have that assurance, faith just works. It is, however, not under my jurisdiction. Sometimes I have faith over some situation, many times not. I don't control when I do; it is still a gift. I've seen a few miracles, but not enough to satisfy me. I seek for more, but God will not yield to my outstanding arguments and impeccable logic of why there ought to be more. He is not under my control.
And I also consider that Paul said the marks of an apostle are signs and wonders. In other words, while some Christians may operate in gifts of healings or miracles from time to time, the ordinary and predictable operation of miracles by one individual may be associated with a calling. So expecting a new Cadillac to arrive magically in the driveway every morning, just because one has prayed, is not a sign of faith but presumption and greed. Yet this whole thread presumes that you can treat faith like a spoiled child demanding ice cream for breakfast every morning and expecting the dutiful mom to hop to. It is rather insulting actually.
I also don't know how much our western scientific mindset blocks our expectations like it did for those in Nazareth. If we don't actually expect God to act or do miracles, that may have an influence of the social experience. Apparently, it isn't quite so true in poorer countries, where they don't and cannot rely upon medicines because there aren't any.