Why aren't there more healings?

[SmallStone]

I was just saying it's not the same, that's all.

Right. The only difference that I can see is that one justifies your belief while the other doesn't really impact it either way. Of course, the one that justfies your belief is 'special'. We understand.

 

I don't think humans can ever be rational. There is no such thing as absolute and universal logic. You gotta know at least two cultures to understand this.

We can discuss cultural relativity until the cows come home if you'd like but I don't think it is particularly germane to anything either of us has said.

[nirrti]

This is a serious question, I am not being sarcastic.

 

Are you joking with us?  Do you really believe this?  I'm serious here.  I can't believe anyone would be this seriously naive.  That site was a joke. 

 

You say millions of people visit every year, and yet not one good video has been made?  With the abundance of media in this world looking for the next big story.  I'm beginning to think that Christians are the most video camera poor people in the world.  Healings, miracles.. they are never caught on video. 

 

And by the way, a dishonest person very well would suggest on a net forum that people go see for themselves, knowing that the odds are that nobody is going to take the time and pay the money involved to travel to a distant country to investigate this phenomena.  Why don't YOU go investigate.  Take a camcorder or two with you, and then get back to us.

 

By the way, why do you think that God would waste time creating non-burning fire miracle?  What good is such a miracle?  Doesn't His own Bible say for us not to seek a sign?  You'd think if He wanted to DO something, He would actually do something of use like grow an abundance of food producing plants or send rain to a country dealing with drought and food shortage.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Now Madame M.,

 

You know that no one has video footage of miracles because we all can conclude God doesn't want himself to be made too ovious by having irrefutable proof. That's why He's invisible, no one has any proof of his existance, there's no evidence Jesus lived and all the written gospels conflict, to throw us mortals off his trail every time we get too close.

 

Oh, and space aliens do the same thing too. That's why out of all those folks who claim to be abducted, you won't see so much as a photograph of an alien. Ghosts don't show up on film except as blobs and ambiguous shadows on the camera footage of highly-paid paranormal investigators. And Bigfoot can't be found because he's hiding in Scotland with the Lochness Monster while the Chubracabra pays them a visit.

[Skankboy]

Thanks Madame M, I was hoping someone would bring up the "seek not signs" argument.

 

It's alot like the Babel fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

 

"According to the Hitchhiker's Guide, the Babel fish was put forth as a fideist example for the non-existence of God:

 

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D.For other meanings of the abbreviation "QED", see QED. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum (literally, "that which was to be demonstrated"). This is a translation of the Greek oper edei deixai which was used by many early mathem"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logicIn ordinary language, logic is the reasoning used to reach a conclusion from a set of assumptions. More formally, logic is the study of inference—the process whereby new assertions are produced from already established ones. As such, of particular concern.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing..."

 

If I had proof of God, I wouldn't need faith...

[Fweethawt]

It is so obvious that the candle with the flame is far away from that woman's face. It looks like the holder of the camera held the candle in front of his lens and took a picture of a lady wiping her forehead directly in front of him

 

One day, hopefully soon, you will catch on to my version of sarcasm, Pandora. When I made that post, I wasn't serious. I was ridiculing.

 

[pandora]

One day, hopefully soon, you will catch on to my version of sarcasm, Pandora. When I made that post, I wasn't serious. I was ridiculing. 

 

   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

LOL And maybe you will catch on to mine... I was agreeing with you! I realized you posted that pic because of that reason, and I was reiterating your sentiments. Honest.

[greygirl]

About the Holy Fire -- you're unbelievable, guys! I didn't even imagine that ex-christian are soo stubborn and soo biased against Christianity so that they can't do a good envastigation. The Holy Fire is NOT a hoax! That would be just ridiculous!

 

Why? There have been countless hoaxes before, many of them with large numbers of people who were more than willing to believe them.

 

I would suggest just go there and see, would I say that if it was a hoax and the high clergy just ticked everybidy?

 

You would if you were gullible enough to believe it yourself, which you've proven you are.

 

Besides, this does not last for long, and you want to see it for yourself, and forget about a good picture. That is why we don't have good videos of it. You're unbelievable! And illogical. Totally

 

That's exactly the argument people use to explain why there are no good pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot, or UFOs. All hoaxes which are wholeheartedly believed by a lot of people.

 

OK, I give up on this one, untill I get a kind of picture requested, with a man/woman with his/her chin in the fire for an unusual time.

 

I guess I will never have enough proof, however valid it would be, to convince you guys. You say that you will believe, if you see the evidence, but you won't because the evidence is never enough, you'll say, "No, this evidence is not valid becasue of this or that." What a pity!

 

You're exactly right about that, as long as you keep showing us this lame shit. We'll continue pointing out hoaxes as long as you keep posting them. Show me some *real* evidence, that's not such an obvious and blatant lie, and I'll be happy to consider it and freely admit it if I have no explanation.

[greygirl]

Greygirl, I'm human too, I just forgot. Is it not acceptable to forget?

 

In this case, no, it is not. You don't get to make claims that you can guarantee that your spell will work, and then backpedal later by claiming that you just "forgot" some important bit of information.

 

You need to make the sign of the cross directly above the pillow right before you put your head on it.

 

Which is exactly what I did. No matter how many times you try to claim that it didn't work because I did something wrong, I didn't. I followed your instructions exactly, and it didn't work.

 

As to why Tarot cards and pictures of that person interfere, is easy. It's not about God's power, but about your choice. If you are sick, go to a doctor, get a medicine, and then drink all night long, will you feel better? I don't think so. Especially if you have liver problems. It's not that doctor can't help you, it's just you messing up the medicine. I can't go into detail here because that will sound crazy to you.

 

And here again, we have the very thing you kept insisting you weren't doing. If it had worked, it's a miracle from god. It didn't work, so it's my fault. Just more of the same. You're no different from every other christian that shows up here thinking they're going to show us "proof", and we've seen it all before.

 

I was into black magic before becoming a Christian, and I can tell you that even I was suspicious of the Tarot cards. They can do a lot of harm, like every time my mom would use them (she was a pretty good fortune teller, famous and pretty rich, too), something very bad would happen to us. Those things are dangerous. I would get rid of them even if I weren't a Christian. I think we threw the deck away before we converted.

 

And with that statement you've just proven yet again that you have no idea what you're talking about. If you refer to what you did as "black magic", then it clearly had nothing to do with anything I do. Tarot cards are pieces of paper with pictures on them. They're not evil, they're not controlled by demons, they're just things. They have no power at all. Your claim that they caused "bad things" to happen to you is no different from your claims about healings and miracles. You believe what you want to believe, regardless of lack of evidence.

[greygirl]

Hell, yes. There's a tree just a few blocks from my apartment which contains what some people claim is an image of the Virgin Mary. I've seen it. It's a smudge of tree sap. It doesn't look like anything *but* a random smudge of tree sap. And yet, people have set up a shrine in front of the tree, and people make pilgrimages to see it. That one tree has had thousands upon thousands of visitors. People believe because they want to, not because the evidence is convincing.

 

Yes people would still go there. There is this house in a nearby suburb to where I live where all these Jesus and Mary statues were put up. They were put there because Jesus appeared sitting on the tree in the front yard. They have daily services and guess what they ask for after each one. Donations. Hundreds of people line up to give their money away.

 

That's totally different! I'm not talking about something that one can see only under certain conditions! The fire really does not burn! What else do you ask? How much more "miraculous" a miracle can be? I mean, if you stik your head into the fire and it feels cool, and you still are able to say that it's only a miracle if you want it to be a miracle, then you're just nuts. Think for yourself. Can you?

 

The Mary Tree is there all the time. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Anyone can walk up to it and look at it any time of the day or night, whenever they feel like it. You don't have to pay money to get to it. You don't need permission from anyone. You just climb the steps that have been built next to the tree and look. No specific conditions required. Except for religious holidays, there's rarely even a line. Thousands of people claim it's an image of The Virgin Mary, but it's a smudge of tree sap. Try again.

 

I am thinking for myself, which is why I have no problem pointing out to you that you've shown us zero evidence of any miracle. No one in that video did anything miraculous with that fire. Nothing. You seem to be the only person who thinks it's a miracle. Notice how none of the other christians here are jumping in to agree with you? That's because it's such an obvious and blatant hoax, and they don't want to look stupid. And before you even try it, it's already been pointed out that there are plenty of gullible people in the world who will believe just because they want to. Other people claiming to have experienced something in the presence of a whole lot of other people claiming to have experienced it and asserting that anyone who doesn't experience it lacks faith is not proof of anything other than how suggestable some people are.

[Alice]

The healing stuff is all so sad isn't it?

 

I can't understand why anyone would think the holy fire stuff - if it was true - had any value whatsoever, seems a pretty useless gift to me.

 

My Dad was 'miraculously' healed of a brain tumour in In 1988. Miraculous in that the Doctors treating him had no explanation for why it disappered. Miraculous in that hundreds of people were praying for him, not that my prayers at the time contributed much - because at that time I belonged to a stream that taught that the time of miraculous healings was over.

 

I was in quite a different place when he got his second tumour seven years later. I was a fully paid up member of a charismatic church that had 'healings' every sunday (although they were generally of the blocked sinuses/sore toe variety) but I really knew how to pray a prayer of faith. My faith was STRONG. I had no doubts. I had seen it happen before. He died six months after the diagnosis.

 

That was ten years ago - I still feel great surges of gratitude that I no longer know where to direct - for the seven extra years I had with him.

 

But I note that during that seven years I never once popped down to the local hospital to pray for a random sick child - although I did join in with 'laying on of hands' and fervrent praying for several cases of (recurrent) sinus trouble when so requested.

[Eponymic]

My Dad was 'miraculously' healed of a brain tumour in In 1988. Miraculous in that the Doctors treating him had no explanation for why it disappered. Miraculous in that hundreds of people were praying for him, not that my prayers at the time contributed much - because at that time I belonged to a stream that taught that the time of miraculous healings was over.

 

I wouldn't discount it entirely, there are many things that I think we don't know about the interconnectedness of how energy flows between people & affects our thoughts, physicality, & feelings. Focus is what makes things happen, and when you have people focusing & believing in something strong enough, things get effected.

 

I think this is another thing that confuses Christians.

It's not praying to God that causes things to happen, but rather the fact that people are focusing their energy on a specific idea & purpose.

[Ouroboros]

I wouldn't discount it entirely, there are many things that I think we don't know about the interconnectedness of how energy flows between people & affects our thoughts, physicality, & feelings. Focus is what makes things happen, and when you have people focusing & believing in something strong enough, things get effected.

 

I think this is another thing that confuses Christians.

It's not praying to God that causes things to happen, but rather the fact that people are focusing their energy on a specific idea & purpose.

 

Yes, I agree. We don't know a fraction of how the univese works, quantum physics or gravity. So there might be things that we today could call supernatural, but eventually, when the understanding has come, it will be natural and explainable.

 

Which, of course, still doesn't prove that God is Christian.

 

I'm convince that there is a physcial, natural explanation to the fire thingy that's been discussed here. We just don't know it yet.

 

And on another note, the medical world agrees to that family support is very important for a family member to survive certain cancers. Medicine is not enough, but support. The emotional powers are important.

[Amethyst]

"According to the Hitchhiker's Guide, the Babel fish was put forth as a fideist example for the non-existence of God..."

 

LOL! I've always loved that.