Friday, May 15, 2009

Give Me Just ONE Certifiable Miracle!


Five million sick, crippled and desperate pilgrims visit Lourdes France each year seeking miraculous healing relief. But, in the past one hundred-fifty years, the Catholic Church has recognized only sixty-seven “miracle” healings. Sixty-seven out of millions upon millions of sick prayerful faithful! Interestingly, NOT ONE of those sixty-seven was an amputee. Why?

There are roughly 360 million amputees on Earth. 33% of the Earth’s population is Christian. Let’s broadly assume that approximately a third of those 360 million amputees are Christians. That’s roughly 120 million Christian amputees.

Out of those 120 million Christians alive today, forgetting the millions of Christian amputees who preceded them, how many of them at anytime in their lives prayed over and over to Jesus to have their amputated limbs miraculously restored? My guess is a lot. But, let’s be conservative in our estimate and say a third of them, 40 million, prayed for full restoration of their missing limb(s).

Yet, of those 40 million living Christian amputees who prayed for God to restore their missing appendages not one ... NOT ONE … has ever had that prayer answered in the affirmative.

How do I know this? Because spontaneous regeneration of a human limb, akin to a starfish sprouting a new arm, would be published in every reputable medical journal, headlined in every print media, be all over the internet, broadcast over every radio, TV, and shortwave frequency on the planet. Every doctor and scientist on the planet would be examining this special event with every known piece of technology at their disposal. The churches would be playing it up, praising the Lord till their crucifixes and prayer beads were rubbed to a nub. But no, not a single occurrence, ever.

So, once again the obvious questions remain:
- Why not a single limb regeneration in spite of Jesus’ promises that all prayers of the faithful will be answered?
- Were the prayers answered, but in the negative … EVERY TIME? If so, is it because God hates amputees?
- Or didn’t anyone of these 60 million prayerful Christians, and their predecessors, have enough faith to gain God’s favor and elicit Jesus’ merciful healing power?

Christians are quick to point to anecdotal instances of miraculous prayer healing of so and so’s hemorrhoids, or so and so’s back pain, or some relative’s cancer going into remission (as so many cancer patients undergoing treatment do). But this amputee thing is problematic for them. They actually get angry when it is posed to them.

The usual dodge is: “God doesn’t just dispense healing like a drink dispenser”; or “God is testing their faith.”; or “It’s God’s will, who are we to question it?”; or “God looks at things in ways we can’t comprehend.”; or “Being an amputee builds character.” (Evidently a raging case of hemorrhoids isn’t a character building infirmity.) Tired old platitudinous denials invoked to avoid confronting that fearful faith shattering reality they dare not confront.

Thus, they will go on making up excuses, referring to their apologetics sites, baaing their devotion, defending the indefensible, blaming atheists for this “ridiculous argument”, and refuse to deal with the problem head on, when all along the ugly truth is staring them in the face.

5 comments:

Semi-sage said...

Great post! The way he dishes out miracles in the bible, an omniscient being should have known we would want at least one certified miracle. He was omniscient right? :)

Valérie said...

DromaderyHump,

I think you are very right.

Barb is starting to annoy me very much on Whynot's blog with her putting me down all the time because I am Christian catholic but don't believe her bible mumbo-jumbo.

Microdot is away at the moment doing grape-picking, and it's a pity because he is very good at making Barb look stupid.

You seem like you would be very good too. I would like it if you could say something to her that would convince her stop harrassing me with her stupid bible.

I don't mind if you make fun of all religion and even mine. I am religious, but half my friends are atheists and I like them just as much.

Dromedary Hump said...

No Guy,
Thanks. I had a fundie tell me just yesterday that once yuou loose a limb, thats it..the end of the road.

Seems Jesus' multiple promises about granting the prayers of the fsaithful, no matter what they ask, doesn't work with amputations.
Oh well. some gods got it, and some gods ain't.

Valerie,
Yes..I saw microdot is doing the wine country thing. lucky him.

Sorry, can't help you with Barb. The reason this blog has delayed comment posting is because she kept posting her nutty rants and couldn't stop. I think she has OCD among many other mental disabilities, not the least of which is hyper religiousity ... symptomatic of schizophrenia.

The problem with engaging fundamentalist Christian whackos is they invent new concpts of scripture when cornered, have little or very rudimentary understanding of science since secular knowledge is not prised, and are typically less intelligent. Given those obsticles, it's virtually impossible to have serious discourse with them.

I had one say to me just the other day the reason there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus' miracles except for those in the scripture is because Pontias Pilate "may have" threatened to kill anyone who witnessed the events. Naturally there is no such evidence of any such thing, no scriptural reference, and of course no way in hell thousands of people EXCEPT for the bible authors could be silenced.

Its just nutty speculation in order to try and explain away the lack of corroborating eyewitness accounts.

silly people.

Regards,
Hump

Anonymous said...

Aw, but not allowing the wackos to make arses of themselves takes all the fun out of reading the comment section ;P

If they want to make a scene, lend them the stage every so often and we'll have us a good laugh. ;)

TMRD's addendum to Poe's Law: Whether or not they're a incredibly well-done parody or they're actually dead serious, they're both equally hilarious.

- ThatMr.RogersDude

Dromedary Hump said...

Mr. Rogers,

Hehehe.. well..perhaps you're right.

Ok, I'll open the comments section without moderating it. May Gawd have mercy on our soles. ;)

Hump