"Why won't God heal amputees?"
- Thread starter lkh
- Start date
Once again, it's the numbers. Simple math.
If 99% of Christians are weak in the faith, that implies 1% are strong.
1% of 14,000 is 140 people. 140 strong in the faith.
It only took one child to point out the Emperor has no clothes. Out of the 140 strong-faith believers--the cream of the 14,000 crop--not one was given spiritual insight into the hidden demons of Pastor Ted?
That is the noble ideal; but what happens when honest inquiry erodes the foundations of faith to the point it slips away?
That is one aspect of objectivity religion does not support. There is lip service, but no genuine allowance for the possibility "What if my faith is wrong." To genuinely contemplate the possibility that Christianity might be wrong is a different kettle of fish than secretly hoping God will triumph. To be rational one must vie for truth to triumph, regardless of what happens to faith.
If the bible is a false path, then true inquiry will eventually bring that knowledge to light. If the bible is a false path, then relentless rational inqiury is downright dangerous for faith.
And of course, the church automatically castigates and maligns anyone who comes to such logic-based conclusions. It is as if they recognize the danger.
And they do recognize it... on a natural selection level, if not a conscious level. Over the centuries, the church has self-selected the most effective strategies for proliferation and growth, just as animal development is shaped by habitat. One of the most important strategies the church has adopted is that of quelling and expelling intellectual dissent. You hear about Christian philosophers and thinkers here and there, but they are on the fringes--and shall always remain so, for reasons of Darwinian origin. God may not be afraid of honest questions, but the popular church is... and with good reason.
like ships in the night
(Though as I've said repeatedly, I'm technically not an atheist.)
I remeber watching a documentary about 5 years ago or more. It was made by National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. A couple of anthropologists went to the SE Asia to view shaman rituals and film them. They watched in horror as the tribesmen, under the influence of ritual and drugs, attacked the shaman and stabbed him multiple times in the chest. But the shaman didn't bleed and didn't die. The anthropologists were scared sh*tless and you could tell it in their voices, and they didn't know what the hell to do. They were not Christians, nor were they advocating religion of any sort, and they were not trying to be ghostbusters, and they were not making a Blair Witch project. There were just stunned and didn't know what to make of it and you could tell it in their comments. I suppose the video is available somewhere.
Exodus' report of Moses' encounters with Pharaoh's magicians recount some kind of similar phenomenon. The difference between Pharaoh and Moses is the source of the power and not the reality of it. It is said that people's in Africa and SE Asia, who experience the supernatural in their normal environment [aka above] are more open to the possibility of the supernatural and miracles occur more regularly there. However, I did not compare my thousands of reports that I have heard of indirectly or more immediately to the millions you cite because I don't have the experience of the millions overseas to be able to evaluate these claims. Nor does your assumption that what is true in the Western world is a universal experience of millions. I am being more circumspect, and because I know of the gullibility of those who want to believe and conform, I don't accept all the reports I hear at face value. However, there are enoughh reports and experiences I've had to consider valid and unexplained SOME of them.
Now, I've pointed to the strict Catholic procedures for verifying and documenting miracles at Lourdes, and they restrict their confirmations to 66 out of the thousands reported because those are the only ones that have sufficient medical documentation; and I've reported a <A href="http://www.geocities.com/meta_crock/other/miracles5.htm">book</A>
of documentations <A href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088270950X/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/002-1709065-3635268">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088270950X/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/002-1709065-3635268</A>. If the theory of God's inactivity does not fit, it is easier just to dismiss the documentation to make the data fit the conclusion one wishes to draw. The idea of open inquiry should work both ways, no? However, if one is so convinced of his faith that nothing ever happens, then we can just dismiss whatever doesn't fit our paradigm:
I think that is a fair question. I don't suppose this is a help :-(
arch, i think you ask legitimate questions of theodicy, and are the same as those asked throughout the ages. But I don't think any number of stats can satisfy the sense of betrayal or feelings of injustice. If faith is as powerful as Jesus contends, there may a legitimate reason for some restraint. You don't give a loaded gun to a six year old and tell him to fire at anything he so chooses; nor would God want everyone to have Cadillacs in their front yards. So I expect some maturity is required for a regular operation of faith.
However, I still think faith is a corporate work rather than an individual gift. For the light to work, the lamp has to be plugged into the socket and the switch turned on. I think that a lot of what passes for "church" in the U.S., esp. in the mainline denominations and mega-churches, are organizations run like business or political organizations. I don't see them very faithful to the relational model of an organism, which Jesus was establishing between people. If the church is supposed to be an outpost of the place where God has dominion [Kingdom of God] on earth, then for the lamp to work, there are other elements of church governance that are missing. Paul talks about an egalitarian hierarchy of function, where apostles and prophets work with the people to encourage them in participation in the ministries of the Holy Spirit. Most churches function on an unbibilcal hierarchy of differentiation between clergy [the priviledged] and laity [the sponges in the pew]. Perhaps that may be why I have seen more evidence of what you have not in the circles in which I walk. There are plenty of problems among us, but there is some attempt to enable the people to be equal participants in the service of God and one another. Like I said, it is still spotty as far as I'm concerned, but there is enough of the miracles to make me think that the problem posed by this thread is a red herring:
It isn't that there are no miracles; it is that there aren't enough of them.
Have a good weekend. I don't know how much time I'll have next week to stay on the thread. I've got to get back to work. I do web design for a living. There, people ask me for miracles all the time, but these kind are much easier to perform
Quote from jefferis:
Have a good weekend. I don't know how much time I'll have next week to stay on the thread. I've got to get back to work. I do web design for a living. There, people ask me for miracles all the time, but these kind are much easier to perform
That's cool. I haven't been in the biz for years, but worked a little code magic myself back in the day. Coming up with pure CSS layouts when people were still saying "cascading what?"
Have a good one
Another good deconversion story as we study the premis that"once you believe you cannot not believe again" postulated by Maverick:
Lee Salisbury
A book recommendation...
Like you, I too was once a devoted Christian fundamentalist. My Christian conversion in 1970 led me to forsake a very successful business career, become an ordained minister, found and pastor a prosperous evangelical, Pentecostal church, plus preaching at pastor seminars in Africa, and ministering in churches in Yugoslavia, England, Sweden, Canada, and the U.S.
When I resigned from the pastoral duties of my church in 1986, I had no intention of ever leaving the faith. However, in about 1990 I came across a book that got me thinking. This book was called Bible of Bibles by Kelsey Graves. This book challenged my confidence in the so-called infallibility of the Bible. Later I read Losing Faith in Faith by Dan Barker. This book by a former Pentecostal minister mirrored my personal experiences and made me confront myself with the fact that I was no longer a believer. Then somehow I became a subscriber to The Skeptical Review. Little by little over the years, the light has broken through and the shackles of religion have finally fallen off. I want to thank you for your contribution to my deliverance as well as, I'm sure, to many others'.
If I may, I'd like to recommend a book to you and your readers that I discovered in late 1997. This book is The True Origins of Christianity and the Bible by Andrew Benson. This book is not specifically about atheism nor does it tell the reader what to believe. The author very tactfully lays out the facts for the reader to judge. This book is so thorough that when completed the reader is faced with the fact that there is no rational basis for believing in the god of Judaism/Christianity. It is refreshingly "reader friendly" and is the perfect book to recommend to our Jewish/Christian friends.
Here is the comment of the Rev. Dr. Culver H. Nelson, Senior Editor of The Fourth R, publication of the Westar Institute and the Jesus Seminar: "Mr. Benson has produced a wide-ranging and exciting search into what he calls The True Origins of Christianity and the Bible. It is historically honest, astonishingly thorough, and gives evidence of the towering gifts of a non-academic in a field usually enthralled to the credentialed. Benson is devoted to the truth. This book deserves wide distribution."
Lee Salisbury
A book recommendation...
Like you, I too was once a devoted Christian fundamentalist. My Christian conversion in 1970 led me to forsake a very successful business career, become an ordained minister, found and pastor a prosperous evangelical, Pentecostal church, plus preaching at pastor seminars in Africa, and ministering in churches in Yugoslavia, England, Sweden, Canada, and the U.S.
When I resigned from the pastoral duties of my church in 1986, I had no intention of ever leaving the faith. However, in about 1990 I came across a book that got me thinking. This book was called Bible of Bibles by Kelsey Graves. This book challenged my confidence in the so-called infallibility of the Bible. Later I read Losing Faith in Faith by Dan Barker. This book by a former Pentecostal minister mirrored my personal experiences and made me confront myself with the fact that I was no longer a believer. Then somehow I became a subscriber to The Skeptical Review. Little by little over the years, the light has broken through and the shackles of religion have finally fallen off. I want to thank you for your contribution to my deliverance as well as, I'm sure, to many others'.
If I may, I'd like to recommend a book to you and your readers that I discovered in late 1997. This book is The True Origins of Christianity and the Bible by Andrew Benson. This book is not specifically about atheism nor does it tell the reader what to believe. The author very tactfully lays out the facts for the reader to judge. This book is so thorough that when completed the reader is faced with the fact that there is no rational basis for believing in the god of Judaism/Christianity. It is refreshingly "reader friendly" and is the perfect book to recommend to our Jewish/Christian friends.
Here is the comment of the Rev. Dr. Culver H. Nelson, Senior Editor of The Fourth R, publication of the Westar Institute and the Jesus Seminar: "Mr. Benson has produced a wide-ranging and exciting search into what he calls The True Origins of Christianity and the Bible. It is historically honest, astonishingly thorough, and gives evidence of the towering gifts of a non-academic in a field usually enthralled to the credentialed. Benson is devoted to the truth. This book deserves wide distribution."
Checked out that Benson book based on the Salisbury rec. Pretty sweet review from Carson Durant on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Chris...ef=sr_1_1/102-5596311-9946542?ie=UTF8&s=books
Ask a typical Christian (whether layman or church leader) to describe the derivative influences of Attis, Mithras, Tammuz, Bacchus, Dionysus, Osiris, Krishna, Orpheus, Adonis, Hercules, Pythagoras, the Book of Enoch and the writings of Philo of Alexandria on the tradition of Christ and you will get a blank stare. Have them consider the roll of the Mystery Religions on the outer- and inner- meaning of the compiled New Testament and they will shrug their shoulders. Query them regarding the influences of earlier Babylonian myths on the construction of the Judeo-Christian Creation and Flood accounts (e.g., the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh ) or the theological importance of the Ugaritic texts, the Armana tablets, the Nag Hammadi library, et al, and you might as well be speaking a foreign language. Such obvious influences are something not readily available or taught in conservative Christian seminaries and colleges, and it is no small wonder. Local heroes and gods, all of who predate Christianity between 100 to 2,500 years, bear more than a striking resemblance to the supposedly unique and factual story of Jesus the Christ. By calling attention to such influences, the seminaries and bible colleges would risk upsetting the status quo, tipping the applecart, and planting seeds of doubt and uncertainty in the church leaders of tomorrow. For the sake of tradition Instructors keep their silence or pretend the long and inflectional histories of these sacrificial god-men do not exist. When confronted with the facts, rarely, occasionally, some fundamentalist Instructors may argue that Satan created these earlier versions of dying-resurrecting saviors as a way to confuse the people, an argument so ludicrous as to be beyond the pale of logic and common sense. Which is more probable? That a diabolical being created religious myths of false Christs hundreds of years before the birth of the `real' Christ knowing what the real Christ would say and do with the sole purpose of confusing rationalists and skeptics, or that the story of Jesus was supplemented and evolved from older myths and stories of emergent god-men? Which is the simpler explanation by-way-of Occam's Razor? A cosmic supernatural drama with human beings at the center of the tale, or human invention and political interference? Assenting to the diabolical argument, how can we ever be sure the Jesus story itself isn't false, constructed by this same Satan to confuse acceptance of the real Christ who is yet to come, perhaps the true-blue Jewish Messiah? If we can't trust the evidence of the past (and, no, compiled books of magical tales do not qualify as uncontestable evidence), then all knowledge in the present is tenuous and suspect.
But we can trust the past, if only we are courageous enough to look there. Fundamentalists who deny the full spectrum of the past are in turn painting over the colors of the present with shades black and white. Considering the history of Israel at the time of Jesus without examining the extensive history and religious customs of Assyria, Babylon, Canaan, Phrygia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy would be like writing a dissertation on the American Revolutionary War and only giving a passing reference to the French or British. It could be done, of course, but it would be so lop-sided and revisionist as to be outside the pale of honest inquiry. And yet it is with this very singularity of purpose that Christian fundamentalists use only the bible and a select few documents to reference their supernatural cause (the oft-quoted Josephus comes to mind, never mind the hotly contested interpolations in both the Testimonium Flavianum and The Jewish Antiquities ).
What is most amazing about belief doctrine is that you can approach it in any one of ten thousand ways and find enough information on a single track alone to raise nagging doubts as to its legitimacy. Approach it on a second track, or a third, or a fourth, or any one of the other ten thousand angles and each of these should give reason to pause. When taken together, these ten thousand unique approaches reveal a preponderance of information and cogent evidence so overwhelming as to make the continued embrace of said doctrine impossible to the rational believer (after twenty-five years of honest inquiry, I can no more return to believing in the "legitimacy" of Christian doctrine than I could return to believing in the legitimacy of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny; to do so would be evidence of a denial so ingrained and pathological as to require years of psychological and medicinal treatment).
In light of these available paths of information, how can the believer persist in his or her acceptance of supernatural religious doctrine? It's rather simple:
(1) by persisting in the assumption of the validity of religious text at the offset, through
(2) a complete lack of knowledge of the ten thousand different avenues of inquiry (whether traveled separately or as a whole) that could invalidate religious texts and contradict church teachings.
Why don't most believers know about these ten thousand avenues of inquiry? Because 98% of their church leaders don't know about them, since such things are not typically part of the curriculum or openly discussed in conservative seminaries and bible colleges. Conservative colleges have explicit and unyielding agendas that do not take kindly to deviation outside the "box" (or circle ) of faith of what they consider unquestionable (even infallible ) church doctrine. As such, the plurality of parallels to Jesus in ancient world mythology and the primitive unconscious, astrological speculation, ethical and reform innovations of the time, Jewish scriptural precedent, pagan salvation cults, legendary hero-worship, popular philosophy and literature, creation myths, flood myths, all feed into compiled Christianity-not to mention the fact that alternative interpretations, authorial and textual criticisms, apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, revisionist apologetics, deconstructionist dissection, early church history and politics, et al, are not things conservative bible colleges and seminaries readily offer for consideration, especially since these present the very real risk of an inclusive rejection of church doctrine. No, conservative seminaries and bible colleges cannot allow future church leaders to roam the halls armed like liberal renegades with something as potentially destructive as contrary explanations. And so from generation to generation the conservative religious leaders of tomorrow are taught just enough to maintain the status quo, groomed to analyze and preach and argue only what's been safely nestled inside their "box." In time the world of evidence outside the box is forgotten, ancient myths, primitive customs, pre-existing savior stories, until even conservative professors and deans are no longer acquainted with the sheer bulk and magnitude of what they are not teaching, of what they do not know, having themselves never been taught in a long succession of scheduled silence.
It's not that the churches and seminaries are consciously lying to their wards-it's just that they don't know enough to deliver all the facts or even imagine where and how and what those facts might be. And so it continues from generation to generation in seeming and stultifying perpetuity. The traditions are transmitted safely without second-thought or a care in the world.
What about the 2% of church leaders who have become aware of the ten thousand avenues of inquiry, who are privy to the mostly undisclosed facts (undisclosed at least in organized religious circles)? Some of these are preaching in liberal churches (e.g., Unitarian, Universalist, Free Christian), some are teaching in liberal colleges or universities, some are still ministering in fundamentalist churches and are just now having a crisis of faith, while some have left the church altogether, no longer able to reconcile what they now know with the fuzzy assumptions of supernatural validity.
Despite what some apologists might have you believe, many atheists and agnostics had their beginnings in conservative churches, but their search for truth took them outside the box, beyond the deliberate circle of faith, driven by a dedicated passion for truth that became more important than trying to preserve a system of beliefs based on faith, silence, selective information (or outright misinformation), and the miraculous rescinding of natural law (I myself attended a conservative bible college and on track to become an ordained minister until I could no longer reconcile what I had discovered through private study to what I had been taught, or not taught, in the classroom curriculum). Anyone can talk about modern-day miracles-deaf ears made to hear, blind eyes made to see, crippled limbs made strong and whole, prophecies fulfilled, the dead brought back to life, etc. Talk is cheap after all, and hearsay cheaper. But where are the benefactors of these miracles when the fundamentalists are asked for evidence? Wherein lays verifiable and/or medical proof? One claimant should be enough to silence the rationalists and skeptics. Just one. But one, it seems, may be one too many. Unless an occurrence of miraculous intercession can be verified and confirmed, naturalistic explanations must need prevail.
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Chris...ef=sr_1_1/102-5596311-9946542?ie=UTF8&s=books
Ask a typical Christian (whether layman or church leader) to describe the derivative influences of Attis, Mithras, Tammuz, Bacchus, Dionysus, Osiris, Krishna, Orpheus, Adonis, Hercules, Pythagoras, the Book of Enoch and the writings of Philo of Alexandria on the tradition of Christ and you will get a blank stare. Have them consider the roll of the Mystery Religions on the outer- and inner- meaning of the compiled New Testament and they will shrug their shoulders. Query them regarding the influences of earlier Babylonian myths on the construction of the Judeo-Christian Creation and Flood accounts (e.g., the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh ) or the theological importance of the Ugaritic texts, the Armana tablets, the Nag Hammadi library, et al, and you might as well be speaking a foreign language. Such obvious influences are something not readily available or taught in conservative Christian seminaries and colleges, and it is no small wonder. Local heroes and gods, all of who predate Christianity between 100 to 2,500 years, bear more than a striking resemblance to the supposedly unique and factual story of Jesus the Christ. By calling attention to such influences, the seminaries and bible colleges would risk upsetting the status quo, tipping the applecart, and planting seeds of doubt and uncertainty in the church leaders of tomorrow. For the sake of tradition Instructors keep their silence or pretend the long and inflectional histories of these sacrificial god-men do not exist. When confronted with the facts, rarely, occasionally, some fundamentalist Instructors may argue that Satan created these earlier versions of dying-resurrecting saviors as a way to confuse the people, an argument so ludicrous as to be beyond the pale of logic and common sense. Which is more probable? That a diabolical being created religious myths of false Christs hundreds of years before the birth of the `real' Christ knowing what the real Christ would say and do with the sole purpose of confusing rationalists and skeptics, or that the story of Jesus was supplemented and evolved from older myths and stories of emergent god-men? Which is the simpler explanation by-way-of Occam's Razor? A cosmic supernatural drama with human beings at the center of the tale, or human invention and political interference? Assenting to the diabolical argument, how can we ever be sure the Jesus story itself isn't false, constructed by this same Satan to confuse acceptance of the real Christ who is yet to come, perhaps the true-blue Jewish Messiah? If we can't trust the evidence of the past (and, no, compiled books of magical tales do not qualify as uncontestable evidence), then all knowledge in the present is tenuous and suspect.
But we can trust the past, if only we are courageous enough to look there. Fundamentalists who deny the full spectrum of the past are in turn painting over the colors of the present with shades black and white. Considering the history of Israel at the time of Jesus without examining the extensive history and religious customs of Assyria, Babylon, Canaan, Phrygia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy would be like writing a dissertation on the American Revolutionary War and only giving a passing reference to the French or British. It could be done, of course, but it would be so lop-sided and revisionist as to be outside the pale of honest inquiry. And yet it is with this very singularity of purpose that Christian fundamentalists use only the bible and a select few documents to reference their supernatural cause (the oft-quoted Josephus comes to mind, never mind the hotly contested interpolations in both the Testimonium Flavianum and The Jewish Antiquities ).
What is most amazing about belief doctrine is that you can approach it in any one of ten thousand ways and find enough information on a single track alone to raise nagging doubts as to its legitimacy. Approach it on a second track, or a third, or a fourth, or any one of the other ten thousand angles and each of these should give reason to pause. When taken together, these ten thousand unique approaches reveal a preponderance of information and cogent evidence so overwhelming as to make the continued embrace of said doctrine impossible to the rational believer (after twenty-five years of honest inquiry, I can no more return to believing in the "legitimacy" of Christian doctrine than I could return to believing in the legitimacy of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny; to do so would be evidence of a denial so ingrained and pathological as to require years of psychological and medicinal treatment).
In light of these available paths of information, how can the believer persist in his or her acceptance of supernatural religious doctrine? It's rather simple:
(1) by persisting in the assumption of the validity of religious text at the offset, through
(2) a complete lack of knowledge of the ten thousand different avenues of inquiry (whether traveled separately or as a whole) that could invalidate religious texts and contradict church teachings.
Why don't most believers know about these ten thousand avenues of inquiry? Because 98% of their church leaders don't know about them, since such things are not typically part of the curriculum or openly discussed in conservative seminaries and bible colleges. Conservative colleges have explicit and unyielding agendas that do not take kindly to deviation outside the "box" (or circle ) of faith of what they consider unquestionable (even infallible ) church doctrine. As such, the plurality of parallels to Jesus in ancient world mythology and the primitive unconscious, astrological speculation, ethical and reform innovations of the time, Jewish scriptural precedent, pagan salvation cults, legendary hero-worship, popular philosophy and literature, creation myths, flood myths, all feed into compiled Christianity-not to mention the fact that alternative interpretations, authorial and textual criticisms, apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, revisionist apologetics, deconstructionist dissection, early church history and politics, et al, are not things conservative bible colleges and seminaries readily offer for consideration, especially since these present the very real risk of an inclusive rejection of church doctrine. No, conservative seminaries and bible colleges cannot allow future church leaders to roam the halls armed like liberal renegades with something as potentially destructive as contrary explanations. And so from generation to generation the conservative religious leaders of tomorrow are taught just enough to maintain the status quo, groomed to analyze and preach and argue only what's been safely nestled inside their "box." In time the world of evidence outside the box is forgotten, ancient myths, primitive customs, pre-existing savior stories, until even conservative professors and deans are no longer acquainted with the sheer bulk and magnitude of what they are not teaching, of what they do not know, having themselves never been taught in a long succession of scheduled silence.
It's not that the churches and seminaries are consciously lying to their wards-it's just that they don't know enough to deliver all the facts or even imagine where and how and what those facts might be. And so it continues from generation to generation in seeming and stultifying perpetuity. The traditions are transmitted safely without second-thought or a care in the world.
What about the 2% of church leaders who have become aware of the ten thousand avenues of inquiry, who are privy to the mostly undisclosed facts (undisclosed at least in organized religious circles)? Some of these are preaching in liberal churches (e.g., Unitarian, Universalist, Free Christian), some are teaching in liberal colleges or universities, some are still ministering in fundamentalist churches and are just now having a crisis of faith, while some have left the church altogether, no longer able to reconcile what they now know with the fuzzy assumptions of supernatural validity.
Despite what some apologists might have you believe, many atheists and agnostics had their beginnings in conservative churches, but their search for truth took them outside the box, beyond the deliberate circle of faith, driven by a dedicated passion for truth that became more important than trying to preserve a system of beliefs based on faith, silence, selective information (or outright misinformation), and the miraculous rescinding of natural law (I myself attended a conservative bible college and on track to become an ordained minister until I could no longer reconcile what I had discovered through private study to what I had been taught, or not taught, in the classroom curriculum). Anyone can talk about modern-day miracles-deaf ears made to hear, blind eyes made to see, crippled limbs made strong and whole, prophecies fulfilled, the dead brought back to life, etc. Talk is cheap after all, and hearsay cheaper. But where are the benefactors of these miracles when the fundamentalists are asked for evidence? Wherein lays verifiable and/or medical proof? One claimant should be enough to silence the rationalists and skeptics. Just one. But one, it seems, may be one too many. Unless an occurrence of miraculous intercession can be verified and confirmed, naturalistic explanations must need prevail.