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and thats why I am ok with metaphorical healing. His faith in a (I think unreal) god gave him real strength ... measurable strength.
My neighbors uncle was in the first wave at Omaha. The front gate drop ... MG 42 ripped through. His war lasted less than less three seconds. They bathed him once or twice a week for the next 50 years.
Yeah. As a DAV, my father visited a lot of old vets who lived out their lives in hospitals. Some of them were healthy in body but forever destroyed in their minds. War sucks.
He got hit near the end, March of 1945. His unit was in Alsace-Lorraine, five miles from the German border when they got into it with Germans holding a small town below their position. He got flown to England, and his unit went on to liberate that French town and then a concentration camp on the other side of the border.
But metaphorical healing is a good thought. He learned to walk on those legs, met my mother a few years later, got his engineering degree, had us seven kids. He was a good dad, and he never felt sorry for himself, at least not that any of us ever knew. I was fortunate to have such a father.
As a child I was told that, as well. I had to pray for my cousin to get better. She had leukemia. She died. We were both six.
I also had to pray for my aunt to "get better". She was deprived of oxygen at birth and had cerebral palsy as well as the mentality of a five-year-old. She was NEVER going to get better, and I probably realized that by the time I was ten. I have since wondered what the point of that was, since obviously my mother knew her sister was the way she was permanently and yet had us say such a nonsensical prayer.
But we never, ever, in a million years were told to pray for my father's feet to grow back. He was an intelligent man, an engineer. The night he was wounded he told them to try to save his knees because he knew he'd have a better shot at walking. He did tell us later in life that he prayed lying out on the side of the hill that night for something to hit him and kill him because he couldn't take having been hit twice already and unable to get out. When he didn't die, he figured he was supposed to live and would just learn to walk on artificial legs.
I will say a prayer for a person who is sick if they ask me, too, but if it takes some great level of faith to believe that a deadly cancer or a debilitating condition will magically disappear, I don't have it.
A good case in point -- in the opposite direction -- was my father. I've forgotten now exactly how old he was, but at around 60 he had a massive heart attack and stroke. We were told he would not recover and that he would spend his remaining months or years in a nursing home. My father was not the praying type, although he was a nominal Catholic. His brothers and sisters were all gone, so no prayers from that corner. I was a Buddhist by that time, so no prayers from me, either. Nevertheless, voila! Within 18 months he was back living totally independently, and did so for another 20 years. Without -- as far as I know -- prayer. I think I know what the miracle was -- the doctors were simply wrong in diagnosing his prognosis.
I have a friend in Thailand. Buddhist. Doesn't believe in god. Almost died from aplastic anemia. Lived through two open heart surgeries. Hepatitis. And more. God didn't do it.
And that's fine. Religion is sometimes useful. But there are lots of lies that are sometimes useful.
That's a good point. Perhaps the usefulness in my mother having us pray for the impossible "healing" of a permanent condition was to shield us from the reality that sometimes really crappy things happen and there isn't a damn thing that can be done about them.
I cut my finger while gardening a couple of days ago. I cleaned it of course, but did nothing else. Voila, three days later and I can't even find the cut. God done it! It's a miracle!
hehe good thing you didn't slice it off completely or no miracle would have saved it.
On the other hand, I've also never heard of an amputee actually praying for a limb to grow back.
I know from reading this forum that the whole praying-about-amputated limbs thing brings a lot of yuks to atheists, but as the daughter of a man who lost both legs in war and who was a quietly devout Christian who walked the walk on his prosthetic feet, I don't find it quite as hilarious as you kids do. I doubt anyone except perhaps a mentally challenged person would ever imagine that prayer could regrow an amputated body part.
I never intended the scenario to be hilarious. The scenario presented is probably the most descriptive way to paint the picture that expecting outside supernatural forces to change your outcomes in this natural world are complete and utter nonsense.
I never intended the scenario to be hilarious. The scenario presented is probably the most descriptive way to paint the picture that expecting outside supernatural forces to change your outcomes in this natural world are complete and utter nonsense.
But using a scenario that no one would ever claim is true kind of makes your argument look weak. No one ever claimed that a limb could grow back, but some people have indeed claimed that a disease or condition was healed through prayer despite medical experts saying it couldn't happen, and those claims aren't always so dismissable as nonsense.
Using a preposterous example doesn't really address those claims in an intelligent way. You're basically just saying, "Oh, it CAN'T happen" without explaining what did happen in those cases.
This thread reminded me of a woman who belonged to our church when I was growing up, though. She would always claim to have these different diseases, and then she would listen to Kathryn Kuhlman, the faith healer, on the radio, and while listening, she would be miraculously healed! Of course, even the church people doubted she'd ever had any of those illnesses in the first place.
I cut my finger while gardening a couple of days ago. I cleaned it of course, but did nothing else. Voila, three days later and I can't even find the cut. God done it! It's a miracle!
Three days? That's quick. I would sometimes get deep swarf cuts on my fingers from working on a lathe. Cleaning with acetone and supergluing the cut it would take four days which I thought was fast. Everyone thought I was crazy of course. But I could carry on working without disturbing the cut and getting dirt and oil in it.
Three days? That's quick. I would sometimes get deep swarf cuts on my fingers from working on a lathe. Cleaning with acetone and supergluing the cut it would take four days which I thought was fast. Everyone thought I was crazy of course. But I could carry on working without disturbing the cut and getting dirt and oil in it.
But using a scenario that no one would ever claim is true kind of makes your argument look weak. No one ever claimed that a limb could grow back, but some people have indeed claimed that a disease or condition was healed through prayer despite medical experts saying it couldn't happen, and those claims aren't always so dismissable as nonsense.
Using a preposterous example doesn't really address those claims in an intelligent way. You're basically just saying, "Oh, it CAN'T happen" without explaining what did happen in those cases.
This thread reminded me of a woman who belonged to our church when I was growing up, though. She would always claim to have these different diseases, and then she would listen to Kathryn Kuhlman, the faith healer, on the radio, and while listening, she would be miraculously healed! Of course, even the church people doubted she'd ever had any of those illnesses in the first place.
Exactly, no one can ever make that claim because they know for a fact it could never happen. In my opinion, it actually makes the argument stronger because no one has ever successfully prayed a limb to grow back. If I can successfully pray a cancer to go away, why does that not apply to the regrowth of limbs? If prayer is that powerful it should have no issues in at least one person in the history of this world to have grown back a limb.
Exactly, no one can ever make that claim because they know for a fact it could never happen. In my opinion, it actually makes the argument stronger because no one has ever successfully prayed a limb to grow back. If I can successfully pray a cancer to go away, why does that not apply to the regrowth of limbs? If prayer is that powerful it should have no issues in at least one person in the history of this world to have grown back a limb.
so it doesn't mean there is no god, it means they have it traits wrong?
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