START, I know where you’re coming from but you’re just going to get jumped on here. They don’t mean to pile on, it’s just the nature of the forum: you’re going to need evidence, diagrams, cites, big piles of scholarly back-up, etc.
I have been where you are, and I’ve seen such stuff too, and it has meant a great deal to me. But it was all for me. Some things can be tremendously affirming to us but mean nothing to another. When God moves He’s concerned with stuff that we are not. Mystical experiences, for example, don’t translate all that well into scholarly debate. I think the current academic position on them is that my mystical experience is a valid reason for ME to believe, but not for anyone else. Unless it is an account that is already backed up by many different people… well, even if a man were raised from the dead, they would not believe!
I realise that you’re not trying to “convert” anyone, but it’ll probably be argued in here as if you were, because after all, miracles are, among other things, signs for unbelievers. If it’s any help, I see from the answers already given that the different arguments haven’t changed a bit! You may find the Ship of Fools boards a little more useful for slightly gentler discussion of what these things mean. That is, people will probably still question it, but they won’t drag out the old “why doesn’t your cruel god stop world poverty” arguments, it’ll be “why doesn’t OUR cruel god stop world poverty” instead. Believe me, it’s an old debate which has yet to be settled but has grown quite stagnant over the centuries: you’ll probably find it in the Ship’s Dead Horses forum, along with abortion, homosexuality, and divorce!
Although I am actually quite impressed with how nice everyone’s been in here. This has been quite tame.
ps I hope it’s alright to recommend another board, I’ve seen others do it.
Not so much of a pile-on as one of those threads where most people have the same reaction to the OP and want to comment on it despite other people having already said the same thing. It’s not (usually) meant as a personal attack.
I’ve seen and experienced things in my life that could very well have been due to the actions of some supernatural entity, entities, or other forces. While I try to keep an open mind about these things, I also try not to jump to conclusions either (as Aeschines points out, there’s a big step between “something miraculous happened” and “everything in the Bible is true”, absent a signed letter from Jesus or suchlike).
For all we know, it could have been the magic bump faeries that healed the child. The universe is a strange place, and we know so little about even the bits we can see.
Yeah, a swelling from a head bump going back down is normal procedure, not a “miracle.”
A miracle would have been if a frog in a straw boater had jumped out of the kid’s head and started singing, “Hello, mah honey, hello, mah baby, hello, mah ragtime gal . . .”
This is the GD forum, isn’t it? So what did the OP expect?
If the debate is whether or not the OP witnessed a miracle then certain standars have to apply to the discussion. First of all the story is an anecdote by an anonymous MB poster so the board is merely humoring the OP by considering it at all. We have no way of knowing how accurate or truthful the OP’s description is (and I suspect it’s exaggerated, as all these anecdotes tend to be) so basically all we can do is “deabate” whether it’s “miraculous” for a lump to go down. I think we can all agree that it is not. End of of debate.
Just out of curiosity, though, I wonder what the OP would say about those who experience “miraculous” healing when they pray to other Gods besides the Judeo/Christian/Islamic God. There are just as many stories about people getting cured by Rama or Kokopelli or Satan. So the real association (such as it is) is with prayer not with any particular deity. Every God is equally effective.
We also have the logical problems involved with intercessory prayer. Doesn’t prayer involve an assumption that God can change his mind? Does God not already know about some kid’s goose egg? Would God fail to inetervene if he wasn’t prayed at? Why? Why would God tamp down a lump on one kid’s head (in a manner utterly indistinguishable from the way a normal lump subsides without any miraculous intervention) and ignore prayers to save kids from leukemia?
What we have with this kind of story is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy reinforced by religious credulity and subcultural groupthink. Nothing very remarkable about it. It happens all the time.
If an argument is correct, I wouldn’t expect it to change.
If you just want to witness, and don’t want to be bothered by people disagreeing with you, why don’t you just join a church group? That’s what they’re for. In fact, it sounds like the OP already is in a church group, so he can profess his faith to his heart’s content all he wants. If you guys really feel that you must witness on this message board, because you just can’t stand not to have the whole world know about all the miracles you have seen, that’s fine. But you’re gonna just have to suck it up and accept that not everyone is going to agree with you.
Until you got in here with your little martyr act. :rolleyes:
I’m not implying that anyone’s behaved wrongly, I just thought START was a new guy and might have misunderstood the nature of GD. It didn’t read very much like a ready-to-rumble debate OP.
Well, yes and no. There are developments in philosophy of religion, to the point that now (I think) the theists get all excited about the (apparently fairly new) idea of defending their right to believe, rather than feeling everything they produce has to be a compelling argument for theism. However, part of what I was trying to say was that unless you’re very precise and measured, and well-read, on the subject, it invariably becomes the same old clash of tired arguments.
I wasn’t suggesting START didn’t want to be bothered by disagreements. It’s just that on certain subjects where people feel strongly, one particular tendency on the Dope is, as Gyrate says…
Now, I don’t think this is a particularly constructive style of debate, but it seems to be pretty common here. Despite not being a personal attack it can still be overpowering if you’re not expecting it, and deeply wearying if you’re used to it but realise that the subject warrants a little more respect than eight or nine blithe dismissals in a row. I’m not really talking about anything in this thread in particular, but I felt the style of the OP suggested that START might not have been expecting the response he got. It’s entirely possible that in offering my advice right in the middle of the thread I’m doing him a grave disservice, of course, and maybe I should have PM’d him or something instead.
Well then the solution to that problem would be to stop the tired witnessing. I think it’s a tad arrogant to post in a public forum (that is representative of ALL KINDS of beliefs) about how great your God is because He did such and such, and then expect that nobody will disagree with you.
But we didn’t all say the same thing. We all agreed that having the swelling go down on a bump does not constitute a miracle, but everyone had his own take on it. I can only conclude that you are just upset because a lot of people don’t happen to agree with your beliefs. What you are suggesting is that we shouldn’t post unless we agree with the OP, or that only one person is allowed to post his disagreement. That’s nonsense.
You want to know what “deeply wearying”? People who just have to tell the whole world how much they love Jesus, and then get pissed off whenever anyone doesn’t agree with them. What do you want? You want us to lie? “Oh, yeah - that’s wonderful how God healed that bump. Praise Jesus! Hallelujah!” is that better?
No, what’s not very nice is to come in here and accuse everyone of “piling on”, criticize us for using cliched arguments, and saying sarcastic things like: “you’re going to need evidence, diagrams, cites, big piles of scholarly back-up, etc.” We all got your jist. You’re just upset because other people don’t happen to share your particular beliefs. Learn to deal with it.
STARTS…can I have the story again. In just a little more detail? Here are some questions that might help.
Did you see the lump coming on after the bump?
Did the skin crack and was there blood on the floor?
How big was the lump - size of fist, a marble, how big?
Did the kid have a shaved head or was there a lot of hair?
If the lump was under the hair, how could you see the lump and how do you know how big it was?
How long did it take for the lump to come on after the accident?
How did you all pray? Did you do it with eyes closed or were you watching the lump while praying?
Did all of you pray together and then all of you opened your eyes together and saw the lump start shrinking?
How long did all of you watch and how long did it take for the lump to disappear completely?
At the end of the episode, was there no sign at all of what had happened or did God leave work half done?
Will appreciate answers. Thanks.
Well first I want to say that I never expected to change anybody’s mind about the existence of God or miracles…that would be nearly impossible especially on a message board. This is something that I saw that I believed to be a miracle and **I’m not ** trying to say that anyone who believes that this event took place but does not believe it was a miracle is going to burn in hell.
I have done debates at my school for Social Studies and I know how these things work and very few times are people going to change what they believe.
Anyway I had wrote this story with a lil’ more detail at first but then I shortened it…guess I should not have done that. Keep in my mind any quote I have is to the best of my knowledge.
This took place at a get together for the youth in my church, and there were some little kids running around and the adults kept telling them to go back into the room where all the little kids were watching a video but these two boys kept running out of the room playing tag. The boy who hit his head was about 5 his friend was about 6.
The house we were at was a really nice sized house so they had some room to play tag it’s just that they were bumping into people.
He got sent away but later he came running from the “kid’s room” being chased by his friend and I think he tripped on his shoelace but anyway he fell forward and banged his head on a coffee table hard enough and loud enough that it made most people in the room turn around and stop what they were doing to see what the heck just happened.
At first believe it or not he did not cry he just had this weird look on his face and he had his hand on his head and it seemed like everyone was frozen trying to see what he was going to do next. Shake it off and keep running or START shaking, atleast that’s what I was thinking.
He took his hand off of his head saw the blood and started crying. I’m not sure if it was the sight of his own blood that made him cry or if he was in pain, most likely both. He had a lump on his head and apparently he also had cut himself because he was bleeding. My friend who is not from the Youth Group said “Oh Sh_t!” but nobody cared of course because this 5 year old was injured.
It was about the size of half a golf ball maybe a little bigger. As soon as people saw the bump he was immediately surrounded. I say “women” because that’s who I remember coming around him the most. So one guy was going to call 911 and somebody said “don’t call 911…I’m going to call Jesus” or something to that effect. The kid was african american so he had a short hairstyle and no bangs or anything like that. From my recollection after he hit his head the lump or bump came on quite quickly. He only had time to fall put his hand on his head take it away and there was the lump.
I got to admit I was not praying I was just trying to get a better look because the kid was sitting on the floor with all these people surrounding him and his mother holding him up.
One of the women from the church was rubbing his forehead where the lump was and after a minute it was smaller and the child was calming down and somebody said “we need to do this all the way keep praying” so they prayed another 4 or 5 minutes and then everyone got real loud and excited and I finally got another good look at the boy and not only was the lump gone but so was the scrape the only evidence of anything was some blood stains on the carpet and a paper towel his mom used as her evidence right then to show us that what we saw just then, actually took place.
Anyway I did not see any evidence that he ever hit his head on the table because his mom was showing people the paper towel and his smooth forehead and kept saying “This is what God can do…”
Some people were concerned and still asking whether an ambulance should or shouldn’t be called and that is why later that day I think they took him to the doctor to show everyone that he was alright and he was.
I hope that helps…now you can tear it to shreds…J/K.
A lump going down is not a miracle. That’s pretty much normal. Cuts on the forehead can bleed a lot from extremely shallow scratches. It looks scary at first but after it clots it can reced to pretty much nothing. You got a kid who bonked his head and got a minor cut. The swelling went down quickly and the scratch was negligible. His head was not completely smooth. You saw what you wanted to see.
I feel sorry for the kid, though, It’s got to be tough to grow up with a religious whacko for a mom. I wonder if she’d call an ambulance for a serious injury, or does God only heal the trivial stuff?
This is one of those you had to be there moments because the way I described it didn’t do it justice but I was truthful so anyone can feel how they want to feel about it.
How is someone a wacko just because they want to pray for their child? I don’t understand that.
We are talking about a woman who happens to make her living as a teacher so she couldn’t be that wacko because she went and got her Bachelors and a teaching credential, so there.
