11/26/09

Fundamentalist Theologian Asks: “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” and “Why Does God Hate Amputees?”

FYI: this post has been moved here.

9 comments:

  1. You just keep getting more brilliant, Mariano. This one made me pee a little.

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  2. Hi Mariano, that comment was not from me, someone is having a game.

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  3. Ah, what an excellent post, no wonder the 'Stuart' imposter had no real response to make.

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  4. Oi vey!

    Pseudo-Stuart,
    Blogs are free, feel free to start your own or come on back and post with the original pseudonym of your choosing.

    May God richly bless you.

    aDios,
    Mariano

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  5. God DID heal an Amputee at Lourdes & there was some other guy in the 16th century. I could look it up but this objection bores me.

    It's not hard people.

    OTOH next the Atheists will complain that prayers didn't bring their Grandmother whose been dead 20 years back to life.

    Worst than morons are the New Atheists.

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  6. Well said. I particularly like how you ended it, in pointing out how the author (Marshall Brain of "HowStuffWorks.com" in case anyone was interested) is merely expressing his own theological opinions.

    I've devoted a great amount of time to refuting each essay on this particular website. I don't know if you have plans to do the same, but this is a good start!

    Patrick
    http://brainisignorant.blogspot.com

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  7. I liked your take on this. I never really thought of the angle of flipping the "theology charge" but in essence that's exactly what atheist who use said strategy do. As far as online discussions go, my approach to "miracle-demanders" has traditionally been to grant them whatever hypothetical miracle they wish, then explain why their pre-commitments are actually special pleading which require them to reject it. Good read though, your post.

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  8. ...is a theologian because he presupposes what God is like before even determining whether God exists.

    How is a nonbeliever supposed to determine whether or not God exists without first figuring out what God is like?

    When someone explains their god to me, based on the properties they describe, I ask, "Ok, if such a thing truly does exist, what should I expect to find when observing the world?"

    This is the way I would evaluate all kinds of claims, even supernatural ones like ESP or astrology. And considering how often I hear from theists that the evidence of god is all around us, it seems like a reasonable way to approach the problem of determining if this god exists or not.

    Now I'll grant you that it would be useless for me to describe a different god than the one proposed, and then knock it down. But I see no problem with attempting to recapitulate the properties of God that have been expressed to me by people who believe in him. It just seems absolutely necessary to pin down what we're talking about before we can have a debate on existence.

    Do you have an alternative method for a nonbeliever to evaluate the evidence for God? How should the nonbeliever go about his investigation without first assigning some properties to God?

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  9. How about a believer conducting this experiment? I don't see a reason why a believer would not run it to make sure that god actually "doesn't like amputees" and "never grants" them miraculous limb regeneration.

    I think god screwed up and gave salamanders the DNA for it - they can grow limbs and digits.

    As for humans? - I think that god was drinking the night before with his fellow Mormon gods on another planet somewhere in a Galaxy far far away.

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