From Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?
A simple experiment
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.
What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once — he says it many times in many ways in the Bible.
- If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21]
- If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:14]
- Ask, and it will be given you. [Matthew 7:7]
- Nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20]
- Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24]
And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen.
No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written — there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day.
Isn’t that odd? The situation becomes even more peculiar when you look at who God is. According to the Standard Model of God:
- God is all-powerful. Therefore, God can do anything, and regenerating a leg is trivial.
- God is perfect, and he created the Bible, which is his perfect book. In the Bible, Jesus makes very specific statements about the power of prayer. Since Jesus is God, and God and the Bible are perfect, those statements should be true and accurate.
- God is all-knowing and all-loving. He certainly knows about the plight of the amputee, and he loves this amputee very much.
- God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small. All that you have to do is believe. He says it in multiple places in the Bible. Surely, with millions of people in the prayer circle, at least one of them will believe and the prayer will be answered.
- 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.
Nonetheless, the amputated legs are not going to regenerate.
What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them.
it seems to me that god is just unfair. if we look back into genesis, god accepted the offering made by able, but rejected the offering of cain. cain was the first one to bring an ofering of that which he had. he had the harder job while able had the easier task of tending the flock. i just never got the signifigance of this event until i step out side of christianity an saw it for what it was, total unfairness. that’s why he wont heal amputees
in rebuttal to the last statement from the other Rendrean, the myth told of Abel and Cain in the bible is not the same thing as the Rendrean version. Kain was angry because Abel had the easier task of tending the sheep while he had the burdonsome, brutal labor of tilling the soil. Later, he asked Adam, not God, if they could trade for just a day. Adam said not! because you are the one most fit for your task. So, Kane in his resentment, rose up and slew Abel . Kaliz (God) played no part in it.
Snort. This is hardly a real question, but a coherent response can be found here:
weblog.xanga.com/Beloved_Spear/619619240/why-doesnt-god-heal-amputees.html
Hmm, coherent perhaps. I didn’t find it very persuasive.
There’s no reason to think those stories in the Bible are about actual events that took place on planet earth, in fact there’s quite a lot of reason to think they are just stories, like comic books today. For instance, Jesus was only one of about 20 or so messiah-characters from that time in history. Here’s some things they all had in common: being born on Dec 25, announced by 3 kings/wise men from the west bearing gifts, born the son of god, performed miracles, healed the sick, had 12 disciples, was crucified and rose from the dead on the third day. So what’s supposed to convince me that the ones about the character Jesus are actually true, while all the others are not? That’s like saying Spiderman and Batman are obviously fake but Superman, now we all know that really happened. So quoting things about what this fictitious character supposedly said and did is hardly persuasive of more than people’s gullibility.
So God gives amputees mechanical legs? Can’t he give them real ones? Why doesn’t he? How is that different than if Man gave them new legs? It looks kinda like men made new legs for them and attached there where the legs that “god” gave them used to be. Good legs, don’t get me wrong. Just don’t look much like the ones “god” makes.
Our rationality evolved, and that is truly amazing. No invisible deity required to poof us into existence and don us with “his” reason. And I wonder why he didn’t give reason to everyone? The world would be a much better place if he had. I guess he knew that and didn’t want us to live together peacefully? The fact that we do not all share identical logic and reason is evidence that it evolved and was not applied onto us by some invisible deity.
The validity of comparing the reality of batman and superman vs jesus and other “messiahs+ is very sound. The only difference between batman/superman and jesus/other messiahs is the fact that batman/supermam stories is more coherent and than the jesus/messiah stories.In other words the events in the first follow a logical non contradictory patttern ,while the later hold numerous inconsistencies created by a writer or writers that did not proofread their work.