|
Chapter 5 - Why won't God heal amputees?
For example, at any Christian bookstore you can find hundreds of books about the power of prayer. On the Internet you can find thousands of testimonials to the many ways that God works in our lives today. Even large city newspapers and national magazines run stories about answered prayers. God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day. God's power often can be quite dramatic. Take, for example, this story from Marilyn Hickey Ministries:
How Prayer Works For believers, it is obvious why so many prayers are answered. In the Bible, Jesus promises many times that he will answer our prayers. For example, in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:
In Matthew 17:20 Jesus reiterates that same message:
Jesus says something similar in Matthew 21:21:
The miracle of Jeanna Giese There are so many examples of the power of prayer, but one in particular deserves special consideration because it is so well documented. In December of 2004 a girl named Jeanna Giese survived a bite from a rabid bat through prayer. Hundreds of newspapers (including the Raleigh News and Observer in my home town) ran stories about the miracle of her recovery with headlines such as "Rabies girl in miracle recovery." In Raleigh, the headline was "Web weaves global prayer circle - Petitions circle the world as girl beats rare case of rabies." [Source: by Sharon Roznik, Raleigh News and Observer, December 17, 2004] The summary of the story goes like this. Jeanna was in a church service in Wisconsin when a brown bat fell into the aisle. She picked the bat up and carried it outside. No one gave it a second thought. A month later it was obvious that something was wrong. Soon Jeanna had a full case of rabies. No human has ever survived this disease without being vaccinated. Up until 2004, full-blown rabies had been 100% fatal. According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna's father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna's plight and they said prayers for her. And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine. Dr. Charles Rupprecht of the CDC in Atlanta called Jeanna's case a miracle. The family and everyone in Jeanna's huge, global prayer circle know that God heard their prayers and answered them. This is amazing stuff. The dictionary defines a miracle as "An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God." [ref] So we must ask a fundamental question: Did an all-loving, all-powerful God hear the prayers from Jeanna's worldwide prayer circle and then reach down from heaven to help Jeanna? Did God actually interact with Jeanna's body, making the impossible happen and curing her case of rabies through a divine miracle? Or did something else happen? We can actually answer this question with a simple experiment....
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. 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:
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. Understanding amputees You can see that the amputee experiment reframes our conversation. No longer are we talking about "religion" or "faith". What we are talking about here is more fundamental. At the beginning of the chapter we highlighted a number of promises that Jesus makes about prayer in the Bible. Summarizing, here is what Jesus promised:
For example, in John 3:16 Jesus says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." People take that at face value: if you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life. So when Jesus says, "Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours," isn't it the same thing? Can't we take that statement at face value as well? By looking at amputees, we can see that something is wrong. Jesus is not telling the truth. God never answers prayers to spontaneously restore lost limbs, despite Jesus' statements in the Bible. Accepting this piece of factual information, rather than denying it, is the first step in understanding something extremely important about how prayer really works. Even if you take a liberal rather than literal stance on the Bible, this feels strange, doesn't it? You may not literally believe that "nothing will be impossible for you" nor that "faith can move mountains," but I think we can agree that there is something very odd about the way that God treats amputees. 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 happens when we pray for amputated limbs. God never regenerates lost limbs through prayer, even though Christians believe that God is answering millions of other prayers on earth every day. Does God answer prayers? If so, then how do we explain this disconnection between God and amputees? What should we do with the piece of empirical data that amputees represent? We need to somehow explain why God would answer millions of prayers on earth, yet completely ignore prayers for amputated limbs. Let's examine the possible explanations one by one.
Rationalization #1 Here is an explanation that you might have heard or used before:
Keep in mind what Jesus promised:
The five quotes in the previous paragraph are all simple, straightforward statements. Doesn't "nothing will be impossible for you" mean "nothing will be impossible for you"? Jesus is God, and as an all-knowing being God knows how humans interpret sentences. If Jesus did not mean "nothing will be impossible for you," it seems like Jesus would have said something else. He also would not repeat that sentiment so many times. And Jesus is supposedly answering millions of prayers each day, so prayer-answering seems to be his intent (See this short video for a more in-depth discussion). Rationalization #2 In a similar vein, many believers will say, "God always answers prayers, but sometimes his answer is 'no.' If your prayer does not fit with God's will, then God will say 'no' to you." This feels odd because God's answer to every amputee is always "no" when it comes to regenerating lost limbs. Jesus says, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." He does not say, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it, unless you are praying about an amputated limb, in which case I will always reject your prayer." Jesus also says, "Nothing will be impossible to you," and regenerating a limb should therefore be possible. The fact that God refuses to answer every prayer to regenerate a lost limb seems strange, doesn't it? This short video offers a perspective on the "no" response to prayers. To understand how strange it seems, compare God's treatment of amputees to the concept of God described in this article. Rationalization #3 Here is another explanation that you might have heard: "God needs to remain hidden -- restoring an amputated limb would be too obvious." We will discuss this idea in more detail in later chapters, but let's touch on it here. Does God need to remain hidden? That does not seem to be the case. In general, God seems to have no problem doing things that are obvious. Think about the Bible. Writing the Bible and having billions of copies published all over the world is obvious. So is parting the Red Sea. So is carving the Ten Commandments on stone tables. So is sending your son to earth and having him perform dozens of recorded miracles. And so on. It makes no sense for a God in hiding to incarnate himself, or to do these other obvious things. Why send your son to earth, and then write a book that talks all about his exploits, if you are trying to hide? In the same way, any medical miracle that God performs today is obvious. The removal of a cancerous tumor is obvious because it is measurable. One month the tumor is visible to everyone on the X-ray, and the next month it is not. If God eliminated the tumor, then it is openly obvious to everyone who sees the X-ray. There is nothing "hidden" about removing a tumor. So, why not regenerate a leg in an equally open way? If God intervenes with cancer patients to remove cancerous tumors in response to prayers, then why wouldn't God also intervene with amputees to regenerate lost limbs?
Why, then, does God ignore the prayers of amputees? (see Chapter 19 for a complete discussion of the "hidden God" theory) Rationalization #4 Some people might say, "Everyone's life serves God in different ways. Perhaps God uses amputees to teach us something. God must have a higher purpose for amputees." That may be the case -- God may be trying to send a message. But, again, it seems odd that he would single out this one group of people to handle the delivery. To quote Marilyn Hickey once again:
Rationalization #5 Some people ascribe the problems that amputees face to free will. They will say, "Well, if you go into a war zone and get your legs blown off, that is your own free will. God gives us free will. You made a free choice to be a soldier. It is not God's fault, and therefore he has no obligation to repair the damage." This logic is fascinating. What about all the people who are born with missing limbs, or the people who lose limbs to diseases through no fault or choice of their own? How are these people any different from cancer victims, who, supposedly, are constantly being healed by God? We know that God ignores all amputees, regardless of the cause of the missing limb. Why doesn't God heal thalidomide babies, who are by definition completely innocent? Or the innocent children who lose their limbs in mine fields? Why would God heal millions of other diseases, but completely ignore any disease that results in a lost or missing limb? Rationalization #6 Some believers say, "God does help amputees - he inspires scientists and engineers to create artificial limbs for them!" This logic is interesting, especially if we look at other examples. Take the case of smallpox. Millions upon millions of people died of smallpox until the vaccine was invented in the twentieth century. If God is the one who inspired the scientists, why did God wait until the twentieth century to do it? Why would God want to be the source of the massive suffering that smallpox caused prior to the twentieth century? And why do we pay the scientists, given that their work is simply God's inspiration? (we will discuss the question of divine inspiration in more detail in Chapter 7) Rationalization #7 Someone might say, "Thou shalt not test the Lord. It says so in the Bible." This is hard to swallow because every prayer is a test. Either God answers the prayer or he does not. There is no difference between praying for an amputee and praying for Jeanna Giese and her rabies. Note also that many believers track their prayers with prayer journals. See, for example, prayer-journal.com. Why not pray to God to heal an amputee, and then track the results of the prayer in a prayer journal? Rationalization #8 Some people might say something like, "Jesus never says when he will answer your prayers. Maybe your prayer will be answered in the afterlife." But that seems uncomfortable. Jesus is answering millions of prayers for everyone else in the here and now. Clearly that is what he means with all his verses in the Bible. Why single out amputees for treatment in the afterlife when Marilyn and Jeanna get their prayers answered almost instantaneously? Rationalization #9 Someone might say, "God will answer your prayers, but not immediately. You must be patient." They will point to a situation like that found in Mark 6:47-51:
Rationalization #10 A believer might say, "You are taking the Bible literally." But how else are we supposed to take it? Jesus clearly says, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." When Jesus says that, what does he mean? Presumably, Jesus means that if you ask for anything, he will do it. What else could he possibly mean? Believers often respond with, "Look, Jesus was using poetic embellishment when he said, 'nothing will be impossible for you,' and 'faith can move mountains.'" Which leads to the following question: What prayers does God answer? It is the response to that question that is fascinating. Because the response inevitably is, "God is omnipotent, so God can do anything." Which leads us right back to the question, "Why won't God heal amputees?" Rationalization #11 Finally, there is this oft-used chestnut: "There is no way to understand the mysteries of our Lord. People have believed in Jesus for 2,000 years, and there must be a very good reason for it." This feels like a sad point in the conversation. On one side of the conversation is a person who is defending the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe. This person's position should be unassailable. Yet, if God exists, and answers prayers as described in the Bible, there is no explanation for what we see in the world around us. The Bible is silent in this case. God is silent. There is not a good, comfortable explanation for the situation faced by amputees except to say, "We cannot understand the mysteries of the Lord. We have no explanation for why God refuses to answer prayers to regenerate lost limbs." Explaining the case of amputees Just for a moment, I would ask you to consider the possibility of another explanation. If you believe in God, then this explanation will initially appear to be complete nonsense. However, it is interesting in light of the conversation we will be having in this book. One explanation for the evidence that we see before us is this:
Now let's look at the situation with amputees from another point of view. This explanation is more straightforward:
Assume that God is imaginary. The beauty of this explanation is that it fits the facts perfectly. In the case of amputees, it is a valid way to explain the reality that we see in our world. The logic goes like this:
The thing that is so appealing about this explanation is that there is no hand waving. There are no contradictions. It is completely fair. There is no paradox. This explanation makes complete sense in light of the evidence we see in our world.
In response to this proposal, a thoughtful person might say, "Just because God never answers the prayers of amputees, it does not mean that he does not answer other prayers. I agree with you that it is unfair to amputees, and I agree with you that it contradicts what Jesus teaches in the Bible, but God has his reasons. For some reason, it is not part of God's plan to help amputees by regenerating their lost limbs. There is no way to understand the mysteries of our Lord, but he does have his reasons and they will become clear to us when we die and go to heaven." That is one possible explanation, but words like "unfair" and "contradicts" feel, somehow, uncomfortable. They do not fit with our mental image of an all-loving and perfect God, nor with the words of Jesus in the Bible. Why would God have such a problem with amputees that he completely ignores their prayers to regenerate lost limbs, while at the same time he is answering all of these other prayers millions of times a day? When it comes to amputees, why would Jesus renege on his promises to answer prayers in the Bible? You can see that what we have here is a paradox:
The thing about amputees is that the evidence is rock solid. This solidity is what makes this example so compelling. A cascade of problems It's not like I am revealing some hidden truth here. The funny thing about amputees is that this evidence is obvious to everyone. We have all seen that God ignores the prayers of amputees. This evidence has been plainly visible for centuries. Amputees are not the only ones either. For example:
Or what about this. What if we get down on our knees and pray to God in this way:
It is also easy to find corroborating evidence outside the medical arena. At the global level, we see the evidence every day in many different ways. For example, we all see the millions of children who die every year from the tragic effects of poverty. Unicef puts it this way:
Ambiguity and coincidence The question, "Why won't God heal amputees?" probes into an extremely interesting aspect of prayer and exposes it for observation. This aspect of prayer has to do with ambiguity and coincidence. Imagine that you pray for something -- It does not really matter what it is. Let's imagine that you have cancer, you pray to God to cure the cancer, and the cancer actually does go away. The interesting thing to recognize is that there is ambiguity in your cure. God might have miraculously cured the disease, as many people believe. But God might also be imaginary, and the chemotherapy drugs and surgery are the things that cured your cancer. Or your body might have cured the cancer itself. The human body does have a powerful immune system, and this immune system has the ability to eliminate cancer in many cases. When your tumor dissappeared, it might be a coincidence that you happened to pray. Drugs, an immune response or a combination of the two might have been the thing the cured you. How can we determine whether it is God or coincidence that worked the cure? One way is to eliminate the ambiguity. In a non-ambiguous situation, there is no potential for coincidence. Because there is no ambiguity, we can actually know whether God is answering the prayer or not. That is what we are doing when we look at amputees. When we pray to God to restore an amputated limb, there is only one way for the limb to regenerate. God must exist and God must answer prayers. What we find is that whenever we create a non-ambiguous situation like this and look at the results of prayer, prayer never works. God never answers prayers if there is no possibility of coincidence. We will approach this issue from several different angles in this book, but Chapters 6 and 7 are particularly important. The fact that prayers are never answered when the possibility of coincidence is eliminated meshes with another fact. If we analyse God's responses to prayers using statistical tools, what we find is that there is never any statistical evidence for prayer. In other words, when we statisically compare prayer to coincidence for explaining any situation, they are identical. For example, this article points out:
There are two possible conclusions to draw from these statistical studies and the situation with amputees:
In other words, we reach the same conclusion: God is imaginary. Incredibly Interesting Whether you are religious or not, you have to admit that what we see here is incredibly interesting. Despite the fact that billions of people around the world believe in God, in this chapter we have seen a credible piece of evidence that indicates that God is imaginary. We also have many other pieces of evidence that indicate the same thing. Let's step back and look at several of them. First of all, we have this fact: there is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example, God has never left behind any physical evidence that shows that he is real. None of Jesus' miracles left behind any physical evidence either. God has never taken over all the TV and radio stations and broadcast a message to mankind. There is the Bible, but as we will see in Section 2 the Bible has problems of its own. And so on. So let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists:
Second, we have the fact that there is no statistical evidence that God answers prayers. No non-fradulent scientific study has found any evidence that prayer works. For example, if we have a prayer group pray for certain people in a hospital but not for others, the people who were prayed for don't get better any faster or live any longer. The prayers have zero statistical effect. We will discuss this in much more detail in Chapters 6 and 7. Simply think about the world around you. First, if there were conclusive statistical evidence that God answers prayers, that would provide scientific evidence that God exists. Second, we can see that there are not two laws of probability -- one for Chistians who pray and one for everyone else. There is a single law of probability that applies equally to everyone. Prayers have zero effect in any statistical study.
Fourth, we have the fact that all of the gods of the past truly were imaginary. We all know with certainty that the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods and the Aztec gods were completely fictitious. Otherwise we would not have started to worship Jesus. We would be worshiping Ra or Zeus rather than Jesus if Ra or Zeus were real. Now we can start adding pieces of new evidence showing us that God does not exist. For example, we have the case of amputees as described in this chapter. If God is real, it is apparent that there is something very odd about amputees. God is supposedly answering millions of prayers on earth every day, but he completely ignores amputated limbs and refuses to restore them. That makes no sense according to the Standard Model of God and Jesus' statements in the Bible. God's treatment of amputees is inexplicable if God exists, but makes a lot of sense if God is imaginary. We have all of this evidence to show that God is imaginary. If we were in a court of law looking at this question, the judge would quickly rule that God is imaginary. There is no concrete evidence that God is real and lots of evidence that he is imaginary. If you are a thoughtful, curious person, the case of amputees really makes you wonder: Is God real or is he imaginary? Let's try looking at another example and see if it sheds any light on this situation...
|
|
Important - Home - Table of Contents - Contact - Join us - God is Imaginary - Deciding to Be Better - How God Works
© Copyright 2006-2017, All rights reserved.