But why couldn't your statement equally apply to New Age healing techniques?
Consider: you dismiss [or] discount the possibility that these thousands of other [New Agers] might actually have experiences which do corroborate the existence of supernatural effects.
And again, the numbers are strangely off. You used the phrase 'thousands of Christians'... in context of a global body hundreds of millions strong.
Faith ultimately comes from God, no? He is the author and perfecter of faith? If this is so, then why is He so bloody stingy with it? Why is the gift given to so few?
Even given the hypothetical acceptance of miracles--putting aside skepticism for arguments' sake--the relative lack of miracles on the whole still does not make sense.
One must come to some sort of account for the 9,999 believers out of every 10,000 who get no satisfaction when they ask in good faith. If one writes them off as spiritual weaklings, one must then ask where is God, the author and perfecter of faith, in all this. Why is He holding back from His children?
By your own words, and Christ's words regarding faith as small as a mustard seed, it would seem the church has failed to grasp the bounty of miracles promised to it. Preachers routinely seek to rouse their flock by lamenting the lack of spiritual fervor. But then they turn around and make reference to an omnipotent God who is the source of all good things, including faith. Put plainly: if the church sucks, is it not God's fault? How could it be otherwise? Yet both sides of this coin are played over and over every Sunday, with nary a connecting thought.
If miracle-inducing faith is tantamount to spiritual training, then 99.99% of believers have failed in their training.
If miracles are a divine gift, then one must ask why that gift is given to such a relative few. Is there a quota of some kind? Divine favoritism in the extreme?
The simple, occam's razor type answer to this inquiry is to write off the existence of miracles as hallucinations and statistical flukes. This is a useful path because it kills all the mystical birds with one stone. It also has the virtue of consistency, because the same measuring stick applies to Wicca and Voodoo and Zoroastrianism etc. alongside the other mainstream options. Furthermore, there is the simple observation that all the religions can't be right, unless God is a prankster; that increases the odds that all the claims are flukes, coming as they do from a crazy array of faiths. (One could argue that miracles are a pan-faith phenomenon I suppose; but one would hardly be a Christian with that view.)
And again, why is the occam's razor path not ruled out by hard statistical evidence? You know, evidence a guy can take to the bank... evidence that an actuary can't ignore. Why does evidence of such indubitable quality and caliber not exist?
A standard response is that the existence of such hard-edged evidence for miracles might preclude the need for faith... but doesn't the notion that miracles routinely happen already preclude the need for faith?
Does God routinely make himself known through burning bush type events in this day and age... or not? Sometimes the concealment argument is used--God must hide himself for the sake of faith--and sometimes the plain-as-day argument is used, that God's miracles are bright and shining for anyone who cares to look. The propositions contradict each other, and yet routinely appear in the same venues every Sunday, alongside the previous conundrum.
The one last available goto, that God is in control of all this contradiction and just messing with people's heads, makes Him into a devious jerk. What else do you call someone who yanks people's chain on a whim... including His own unprivileged children?
p.s. I might have missed it, but I don't think you answered my question. Do you believe Reinhard Bonnke's claim?