Well, it’s that time of year again. Regular church attendees are going to have to share their pews with people who have finally decided to make it out for their second service of the year. Their belief that Jesus bled and died so they can gain eternal salvation might be unshakable, but it apparently isn’t all that motivating, considering how little these believers seem to do in response. Nevertheless, they can at least be counted on to show up for a retelling of Jesus’s miraculous birth.
But what version will they hear? More than likely, they’ll hear a “Hollywood” version of the tale that incorporates the most exciting elements of the two versions that we read about in Matthew and Luke. A quick Google search turned up this one, which illustrates my point perfectly. But what if someone tried to tell the full version? A version that included every detail that both Matthew and Luke provide?
Honestly, it just can’t be done. I had wanted to attempt it here, but there’s just no practical way to do it. For example, the version I linked to above goes like this:
The Standard Tale
- Mary’s visited by an angel who tells her about the pregnancy (Luke)
- She and Joseph live in Nazareth of Galilee, but are forced to travel to Bethlehem in Judea for a census commanded by the Roman authorities (Luke)
- They’re unable to find normal accommodations and are forced to room in an area intended for livestock. Mary gives birth there and is visited by local shepherds (Luke)
- Wise men far to the east see a star that somehow signifies the birth of the Jewish Messiah (Matthew)
- They travel for an unspecified period until they reach Jerusalem, where they inquire about the child (Matthew)
- These inquiries reach Herod, the ruler of the region, and he asks the wise men to send back word to him once they find the child, so Herod himself can also pay his respects (Matthew)
- The wise men make their way to Bethlehem, find the family, bestow their gifts, and return home via a different route (Matthew)
- An angel tells Joseph to hightail it out of Bethlehem, because Herod’s sending a posse to wipe out all the children 2 years old and under in an effort to stamp out Jesus (Matthew)
- Joseph and his family flee to Egypt and remain there until an angel tells him it’s safe to return, because Herod has died (Matthew)
- Joseph intends to go back toward Bethlehem, but after finding out that Herod’s son is in charge, he takes the family to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew)
So what’s wrong with this story? I mean, it’s very cohesive, and it makes for a compelling tale. What’s not to like? Its only real problem is that the very books of the Bible that provide its details, contradict its overall narrative.
Two Very Different Stories
Let’s go back to Luke’s version. After Jesus’s birth and the visit from the shepherds, we don’t read about wise men or Herod’s animosity. Instead, Luke 2:22 says that after the days of Mary’s purification were over, the family went to Jerusalem. The “days of purification” are referring to Leviticus 12:1-4, where the Law of Moses stated that a woman was to be considered “unclean” for 40 days after giving birth to a male child. So when Jesus was about 40 days old, Luke claims that they all traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices as thanks for his birth. While there, two elderly people see Jesus and begin proclaiming praise and prophecies concerning Jesus. And there’s no indication that an effort was made to keep any of this quiet, which is very different in tone to what we read in Matthew. Finally, in Luke 2:39, we read “And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
The synopsis we looked at earlier incorporated most of Matthew’s version of the story. As we just read, his story ends very differently from Luke’s. However, it’s also significant to note that Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth. Matt 1:18 through the end of the chapter talks about Mary’s pregnancy, even though she and Joseph had never slept together, but it never specifies where they’re living. Chapter 2 begins with the sentence “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?'” Of course, it’s possible that Matthew still knew they were originally from Nazareth and just doesn’t bother to tell us that or divulge how they got to Bethlehem in the first place. But there are three context clues that point against such a possibility. First of all, regardless of how far the wise men had to journey, it likely took them quite a while to make the trip. When Matthew says “the east” he certainly doesn’t mean “east Jersualem,” and travel being what it was back then, any journey would have taken considerable time. The second clue is that Herod supposedly kills all the male children of Bethlehem who are 2 and under. So it’s unlikely that we’re supposed to still be thinking of Jesus as a newborn. Finally, Matthew says that when the family was able to leave Egypt, Joseph wanted to go back to Judea (where Bethlehem is). But after finding out Herod’s son was ruling, he became afraid and “went and lived in a city called Nazareth” (Matt 2:23). This is a very strange way to refer to Nazareth, if it’s where Joseph and Mary were already living.
So Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary were just visiting Bethlehem. He never mentions a manger; instead, he references a house that they were staying in. He never talks about the shepherds from the fields, but has wise men who visit the child. He includes a story about Herod slaughtering a town’s children, though no other historical or biblical source ever mentions this. He claims that the family flees to Egypt until Herod’s death, that they want to return to Bethlehem, but finally settle in “a city called Nazareth.”
Luke, on the other hand, says that Nazareth is their home town, and they’re only visiting Bethlehem. He has no story about wise men, but does talk about shepherds from the fields that visit the newborn Jesus. Instead of Herod attempting to hunt them down and a subsequent flight to Egypt, the family travels straight to Jerusalem, where Herod lives. And there’s no effort to keep Jesus’s identity secret while they’re there, as two elderly prophets begin proclaiming who he is. And after making their sacrifices, the family simply goes back home to Nazareth, far from Herod’s reach (not that Luke indicates Herod’s even interested).
Can These Stories Be Put Together?
The main sticking points between the stories are the flight to Egypt and the trip to Jerusalem. On the one hand, Luke is very clear about his timeline: Jesus was only about 40 days old when they went to Jerusalem and then went home to Nazareth. Matthew doesn’t give specifics on how old Jesus was when the family was forced to flee to Egypt, except that it must have occurred before he was 2 years old.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened before the trip to Jerusalem?
No. First of all, considering all the details Luke provides, why would he have left out such an important event? Secondly, this means Herod would have needed to die within the 40 day purification period, but Matthew tells us that this still wouldn’t have been good enough, because Joseph was determined to avoid all of Judea while Herod’s son was reigning. There’s simply no way he would have felt safe enough to travel directly into Jerusalem. That just makes no sense.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened after the trip to Jerusalem?
No. Luke 2:39 is clear that the family went straight back to Nazareth after their trip to Jerusalem. And considering Luke claimed that Nazareth was already their home, why would they have needed to go back to Bethlehem anyway?
In fact, Luke’s claim that the family was from Nazareth creates a lot of problems for Matthew’s account. Nazareth was far outside of Herod’s reach. So if Herod really had hunted Jesus in Bethlehem, the family could have simply gone back to Nazareth rather than flee to Egypt. But this isn’t a consideration in Matthew’s account, because for him, the family has never been to Nazareth until they simply can’t go back to Bethlehem anymore, even after Herod’s death (Matt 2:23).
Additional Problems
I don’t want to spend too much time here, but for completeness sake, I need to mention a couple of historical issues. Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus is born during the reign of Herod the Great. Historians usually place his death in 4 BCE, which means Jesus would have been born sometime before that. However, Luke says that Mary and Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem, because Quirinius, the governor of Syria, had commanded a census. However, Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE — 10 years after Herod’s death. You can find additional resources about these two issues here.
Finally, Luke’s claim is that this census required Joseph to travel back to his ancestral home of Bethlehem, since he was of King David’s lineage. But David would have lived some 1000 years before Joseph. It’s ludicrous to think that the Romans would have cared about such a thing, or that they would have wanted their empire to be so disrupted by having people move around like that for a census. It would have been an impossible feat and would have made for a highly inaccurate, and therefore useless, census.
What Do We Make of All This?
The easiest way to understand why these accounts have such major differences in detail is to understand why either writer bothered with a story about Jesus’s birth at all. You have to remember that the writers of Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another and didn’t know that they were both working on the same material. They certainly didn’t know that their books would one day show up in the same collection. Both of them were working with two basic facts: Micah 5:2 seemed to prophesy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem; Jesus came from Nazareth (John 1:45-46).
Since those two facts were at odds with one another, it’s easy to see how both writers would have been compelled to explain how Jesus could be from Nazareth but still be from Bethlehem. Unfortunately for them, close comparison shows that both versions simply can’t be true.
How would people react if they showed up for church this weekend and were presented with the full details from both of these stories? I like to think it would spur many of them into deeper study. That it would possibly make them question some of the things they’ve been taking for granted. But 2016 has been pretty demoralizing when it comes to the number of people who seem concerned about what’s true, and I’m not sure how many of them would see this information as a call to action. I know there are people who can be changed by facts. Perhaps there aren’t as many of them as I once thought, but I know they’re out there. And with the way information spreads these days, I’m sure they’ll eventually find the facts they’re looking for.
Finding Truth 
Fair enough … I firmly beleive the best response is probably …
” Wimberwey”
😉
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lol
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I’ve been tempted to say, “Ni!” unto him.
But so far, I’ve been able to restrain myself. But I’m jonesing for shrubbery.
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To put into perspective the difficulty in trying to even level the playing fields with some of these people, I have had conversations with two different individuals, one two years ago and one the other day, who were utterly convinced that there was archaeological evidence of the Exodus and the evidence in question … wait for it …
… chariot wheels on the bottom of the Red Sea.
One of these people – Christopher something or other – claimed he was a fully-ordained minister.
Neither realised (the late) Ron Wyatt was a con artist and both were unaware that the mention of the Red Sea in the bible was a mistranslation.
The one I was chatting to the other day, told me flat out I was wrong, ( as I am atheist, naturally) until I offered a Christian link.
The minister, (from a couple of years back) Christopher, was even proud to tell me had dedicated an entire service to his packed church on the Chariot Wheel discovery.
So, who needs faith when you have such concrete ”evidence”, right?
…. cue Colorstorm…
Hakuna matata?
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“Are you saying that he and I should cut our losses and give up, or do you have a suggestion that either he or I may be able to benefit from?”
Hi William, I don’t really have any definite advice, I was just aiming to give an alternative analysis, and broker a ceasefire (as they say), in the hope that understanding and reflection might lead to a better outcome. My only advice is little short of an aphorism – We need to try to understand before we can communicate, and if we don’t understand it may be better not to try to communicate.
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Hi Jon,
Thanks for your positive response to me recent comments. I am equally positive about your comment, with (like you) a one or two areas of mild disagreement.
“My point is that, while you are right about the power and persuasive impact of spiritual experiences, but (given how universal it is to all faiths) it is difficult to see such experiences as valid sources of knowledge.”
I think we can easily see spiritual experiences on our terms and in a black and white manner. I believe christianity is true in ways that other religions are not. But I don’t believe other religions, or other viewpoints such as atheism, are totally wrong. And I don’t see any reason why God couldn’t answer the prayers of people from another religion; in fact, I think it is highly likely that he does, often. If he waited for me to be thinking right before he answered my prayers, I might still be waiting! So I naturally tend to mention supernatural experiences of christians, but I don’t exclude others.
An interesting thought. I wonder how frequent plausible claimed miracles are in the various religious traditions? I think I will have to research that.
“What irks me is when people make inaccurate arguments about empirical facts (or misuse reason) to justify their beliefs. “
Here I strongly agree. It’s probably true that christians do this more than atheists, but it is often done out of ignorance and an implicit epistemology that rates faith highly, sometimes above reason, and so is understandable. I find it more irksome when it is done by someone who claims to be educated and rational.
Thanks again.
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Ark
Oh man, I’ve had that same discussion with a family member awhile back. Did he cite the semi-recent book, the Exodus Case, by Lennart Moller?
I tried to point out that Moller had no expertise in archaeology or history, that he was a medical scientist (of some sort) who had basically gone traipsing through the Middle East, just happened to find exactly what he was looking for (or, at least, things he could baselessly claim were the things he was looking for), but gosh-shucks-wouldn’t-you-know-it was unable to have them verified due to governments that don’t want the Truth to be known, and (via a Christian publisher) he put out a glossy book about his amazing discoveries instead of having experts review his material. Oh, AND it was largely based on the fraudulent work of Ron Wyatt, who is competitive with L Ron Hubbard for the Most Obvious Religious Charlatan of the 20th Century award.
My believing family member totally believed it. I was dumbfounded.
Some time later, he was pitching me on watching that Patterns of Evidence movie about the Exodus. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he would need to pick between the two bullsh** stories he wanted to believe, because they were not compatible with each other.
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Unklee
I think your point here only reinforces my own point that such experiences cannot be seen as valid sources of knowledge. After all, if mutually exclusive religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) all produce the same feeling of spiritual revelation and certainty, they cannot all be right. That said, I understand why they are powerful sources of belief.
That is a very good question. I would be interested to know the answer, if there is one. However, I suspect that it would be difficult to gather comparable data. Miracles have a tendency to be second-hand (at best) stories, so the research may only show which religion(s) are best at producing and spreading stories — or “faith promoting rumors.” For instance, you’ll find a lot more claimed miracles among Charismatic churches than among, say, Lutheran churches.
While I’m not sure it’s really possible to do studies of this sort of thing in a really controlled way, I do think the large-scale prayer studies are instructive.
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Yes, let’s do a large scale study of the effectiveness of praying to ANY god for full recovery from leg amputation. Or better yet, full recovery from decapitation.
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Hi Jon, I feel you are being a little too negative here.
“I think your point here only reinforces my own point that such experiences cannot be seen as valid sources of knowledge. After all, if mutually exclusive religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) all produce the same feeling of spiritual revelation and certainty, they cannot all be right.”
Are you assuming here that the only useful knowledge to come from this is which religion is right? If a study showed that a supernatural explanation (of whatever sort) was more probable than a natural explanation, wouldn’t that be very useful?
“However, I suspect that it would be difficult to gather comparable data. ….. For instance, you’ll find a lot more claimed miracles among Charismatic churches than among, say, Lutheran churches.”
I’m sure you are right, but I think there would be a partial correlation – chicken and egg. Your Lutherans wouldn’t see many miracles because they don’t believe in them much, but their lack of belief is probably also the result of not seeing many. So I think something could be done but it wouldn’t be 100%. Anyway, I’m going to have a try sometime when I have time.
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The miracle/ prayer thing is where the disingenuous nature or rank stupidity of the believer truly comes to the fore, and has been paraded here on this very blog on a number of occasions
It overshadows so many other considerations and arguments that often come across as reasonable yet are, in truth , nothing but paper masks to hide indoctrination.
The Templeton Foundation (for example) has spent considerable sums of money on Prayer research and has returned nothing to bolster any truly verifiable positive claims that can be ascribed to the intervention of a deity … ANY deity, and in fact some studies have shown how prayer can actually have an adverse effect on certain individuals.
No, I am not going to trawl the internet for umpteen links,’ we have wandered down this tedious, worn out path more times than I can recall.
And to the inevitable question; can we rule out all instances of claimed recovery etc that were not because of prayer?
Yes, we damned well can, and as responsible people we should. Because not a single miracle claim can be stated beyond reasonable doubt that such recovery was not simply spontaneous, even if the individual was on death’s door.
That such recoveries may currently fall outside of what might be deemed standard medical knowledge/practice means that and only that.
The miracle nonsense is merely a sideshow and if we were to credit it in any way, it would actually indicate a rather nasty, capricious deity.
As Gary points out; let’s find the recovered amputee.
That seems to be a fair and reasonable benchmark for an omnipotent deity.
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First. The blatantly obvious question here is: How would you identify a supernatural occurrence?
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Ark it is very hard to identify what is a miracle, but what we can say, with certainty, is that there are numerous cases where parents (sadly) have relied on ‘God’ to heal a sick child and refused medical treatment. But rather than honouring this bold trust, ‘God’ has let the child die. Such cases are well attested. So we know that ‘God’ does not automatically come through if people obey the conditions laid down in the Bible. This of itself should be sufficient to prove the Bible promises to be unreliable.
Some people seek to make excuses for ‘God’ in such cases but they are just that excuses.
A lady I know had a the whole company of church elders pray for her sick husband, The husband died, and you know what the elders told the lady? It was her fault because she did not have enough faith.
This is just one reason why I have now concluded that if ‘God’ does exist it is very hard to see that ‘God’ as good or loving. But makes a lot more sense to assume there is no ‘God’.
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Then why, with such evidence available to all, does someone like Unklee, a supposedly highly educated person, continue to defend prayer and the notion of miracles?
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In my recent meeting with my former LCMS pastor we briefly discussed prayer and its effectiveness. I pointed out the issue that it seems that God does not answer the prayers of major amputees as I have never heard of a major amputee re-growing a leg or arm after prayer. His response was:
1. I was presenting anecdotal evidence.
2. Maybe amputations were never meant to be healed.
The purveyors of magic seem to always have an excuse for why their magic doesn’t always work.
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Unklee
In saying “spiritual experiences” (of the kind shown in the video and described by many religious people) are not valid sources of knowledge, my assumption is that the knowledge is what the people say the experience taught them — that their sacred rituals, books or beliefs are correct. If there is some other kind of knowledge that these experiences would be valid sources for, what do you think it would be?
Of course. However, in the proximate case of spiritual experiences, I think we have more than adequate evidence that psychological and social dynamics provide a very satisfactory explanation. That is, if people of every religion — including mutually exclusive religions — share the same spiritual experience, then it’s clear that the experience is less about any particular spiritual claims and more about human psychology.
But I would be interested in evidence or arguments against my proposition, though!
Belief (expectations) would certainly play some role in how often they are seen/believed. But Christians, by definition, believe in the supernatural. And the Bible argues that these gifts will be given to believers. So why is it that some cultures/groups have that experience, while others don’t? It seems to me that expectations and peer dynamics provide a perfectly adequate explanation.
Similarly, it is possible that a street magician could actually be doing some kind of supernatural magic. But given what we know about nature and magicians, I don’t see why “illusion” and expectations are not an adequate explanation.
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Adding: Stephen J Graham (a theologian) has researched and written a lot on the topic of miracles, particularly the kind pretty regularly claimed by charismatics. Rather than link a lot of individual posts, I’ll just link the blog and urge people to read the archives. I enjoy his stuff. His basic position is summarized like this: “God might heal. In fact, he might heal all the time. My point is primarily an epistemological one: we have scant basis for believing that God does heal, and certainly not anywhere near as regularly as Charismatics make out.”
https://stephenjgraham.wordpress.com/
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Jon I was at a Charismatic/Pentecostal service when a good friend of mine was ‘healed’ of numerous long standing injuries associated with arthritis. The Pastor prayed for him, he fell to the floor under the power of the ‘Spirit’. About half an hour later he stood up and found that he could move his shoulder that had been damaged for years, his bad back and dodgy knee was better. It seemed a miracle. I knew the ailments were real this was not a put up job.
…BUT over the next few weeks the ailments started to return. After a few months he was even worse than before the ‘healing’.
Post faith I have found research that certain inflammation type conditions like arthritis can respond powerfully to psychological factors, the placebo effect has been shown to has a strong temporary impact.
The thing is that I told many people about the miraculous ‘healing’, it was a clear miracle at the time, but I told very few that the problems all returned later worse. You see there is a assymetrical reporting by the faithful.
A study of Benny Hinn’s healings showed a very similar pattern, not one person was shown to healed in the long term and some ended up much worse —– yet they still believed.
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Hi Jon,
”If there is some other kind of knowledge that these experiences would be valid sources for, what do you think it would be?”
Surely it could be whatever is in common. If several people were killed in a forest area over a period of time, and one witness said they saw a large bear, another said it was bigfoot or a yeti, and another said a gorilla, we wouldn’t conclude we had no evidence, we’d conclude it was a big animal as yet unidentified. So the variety of experiences all (arguably) point to something supernatural, without necessarily being clear as to exactly what.
I read the Stephen Graham article and only half agreed with it. I am not a charismatic, I am generally fairly sceptical of miracle claims (though not as sceptical as you would be no doubt!) and I agree that too much is often claimed. But I thought ”Why not attribute the rain to something else? Maybe an Englishman on the Underground sneezed and caused the rain. Maybe an Australian pulled his bath plug out.” was either a bit silly or quite inapplicable. (Australians don’t have baths! 🙂 )
Causation is quite a complex concept when examined, but we are all fairly familiar with it in practice. If I get sick every time I visit a certain home, I might infer, or at least suspect, that something in the atmosphere and the chemicals they use in that home is causing it. If I pray and good things happen that don’t seem to happen so much if I don’t pray, then I will reasonably infer, or at least suspect, that there is a connection. Verifying and quantifying this is difficult, but can be done approximately, I think. In the end, our conclusions will be affected by our predisposition and by the level of certainty we each want for belief vs the level of certainty we accept for non-belief.
”However, in the proximate case of spiritual experiences, I think we have more than adequate evidence that psychological and social dynamics provide a very satisfactory explanation.”
This is often claimed, but I’ve not seen it argued conclusively. Philip Wiebe in Visions of Jesus examined all supernatural, psychological and neurological explanations of a bunch of case studies and concluded that NONE of them was fully adequate. Joe Hinman was similar in The Trace of God, though he showed his bias, making his conclusions less useful. Where have you seen the case for a natural explanation fully argued rather than assumed?
”if people of every religion — including mutually exclusive religions — share the same spiritual experience, then it’s clear that the experience is less about any particular spiritual claims and more about human psychology.”
So I think this is logically incorrect. I think we are agreed with the principle that the experiences show something they have in common, but that isn’t ONLY human psychology, but could include the supernatural in general or a loving God in particular.
I have only studied this stuff a little, and I intend to research it more, but I think the evidence is way better than sceptics like to think, and possibly the best evidence for theism there is for anyone who is looking for an answer.
Let me explain that, and I hope you don’t misunderstand me. I think very highly of guys like you and Nate and I respect your integrity, but I can’t understand why you disbelieve. I think it is worth considering the frame with which we consider these issues. Let me give an example.
We understand the need to fully test drugs before they are released onto the market – we don’t need more thalidomide babies! But I also remember a few years ago guys with HIV/AIDS pleading to be allowed to use unreleased drugs – they argued, quite reasonably, that they were going to die without the drug, so why not try it? So we can see that the amount of evidence we need may change depending on the question and the circumstances.
Now I think you and I may approach this matter of healing with different frames. So many sceptics argue that we can’t “prove” that healings happen so they are not going to accept it. That’s a reasonable frame of reference if we were in a formal debate, where winning is more important than truth, but I think it is the wrong frame here. It is very difficult to ever “prove” a healing occurred, but it is quite possible to show that a natural explanation is unlikely. Get enough of these events, which followed someone praying for that outcome, and it ought to be enough to make us at least very suspicious. This isn’t a debate, it’s life, and we need to read all the clues.
Uncle Will got it right: there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in most of our philosophies!
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Hi Jon, I had another thought. Yeah I know, two this year and it’s still January!
Suppose we took “supernatural” out of the equation for a moment. Then suppose we investigated plausible cases of healing and asked if there was a natural, medical explanation. Suppose then, as I think is well established, that we found many such cases. We call them spontaneous remissions or some such. Hopefully this study could all be accepted by both sides to this point.
Then suppose we investigated further and found that a number of these remissions occurred after people prayed for healing. We might begin then to have the basis for a Bayesian analysis of whether the hypothesis that God sometimes heals is more probable granted the data. To do the analysis we’d also have to look at questions of how much and how seriously people prayed, how much later the apparent healings occurred and how often people prayed or didn’t pray and didn’t receive healing. Some of those stats are available, some are not, but they could be investigated.
I reckon it could be done, and I believe it would prove positive. But of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? 🙂 But I don’t say it without some evidence.
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Because inevitably a natural explanation can be found for such nonsense claims, if not immediately then in the future, and has been demonstrated time after time after time.
Furthermore, for people like Jon and Nate and every other non-believer that visits here, miracles are likely the last thing that cause deconversion and all would likely regard them as nothing but spurious, which is why your pedantic attempts to demonstrate some degree of veracity for an intervening deity will always fall on deaf ears on a site such as this.
And if the Templeton Foundation, which has spent millions of dollars on such research, has turned up a blank just what chance do you think you have of providing a single scrap of evidence to demonstrate a direct causal link between (praying to) Yahweh and the recovery of a seriously ill individual?
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It is worth making mention that, unklee always shoves any debate so that it tends to focus on minutiae and thus draws attention away from from his primary belief , which is built upon a foundation of faith and not evidence.
Even if one were to say: ”Okay, maybe prayer does work.” this then opens up a huge can of worms , not least the rather large wriggly worm of him demonstrating that it is any sort of deity that is causing such healing.
Next up would be verifiable evidence of any sort which then has to be provided to demonstrate it is Yahweh that is the god, and then some sort of answer has to be provided why unklee’s omnipotent god sees fit to heal only arbitrarily.
And, as mentioned before, this would then show Yahweh is nothing but a capricious son of a bitch.
As unklee knows full well, he will never be able to demonstrate the any sort of recovery from illness can be directly attributed to any god let alone his, all he needs to show is that you can’t demonstrate his claim to be wrong 100% of the time.
And of course you will note that he avoids like the plague addressing Gary’s challenge of the amputated limb.
This suggests a disingenuous agenda.
And of course, his reply to the charge of a capricious god will likely be along the lines of ”God moves in mysterious ways”, thus he is able to extricate himself once again.
This type of moderate , liberal Christian are as bad if not worse than a full on christian fundamentalist.
They are neither honest with themselves nor with those they interact with, merely trying to point score.
And there are enough ”old hands” on Nate’s blog to recognise him for what he is.
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“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” —Jesus of Nazareth
Anyone who has ever been a Christian knows that not all prayers are answered. And when you bring the above Bible passage to the attention of your pastor or Sunday School teacher you are told, “What Jesus really meant in this passage is that he will answer anything that you ask…IF IT IS HIS WILL.” Isn’t it odd that the omniscient King of the Universe left that important little caveat out?
Praying to Jesus is no better than pulling a lever on a slot machine. Most of the time nothing happens (your prayer is not answered). But if you keep pulling the lever, over and over and over again, eventually you are going to win. And once in a great while, you are going to win really big—Aunt Minnie is going to recover from her end stage cancer.
Christians need to recognize that: If they pray about everything they wish to occur, they shouldn’t be surprised that sometimes their wishes do come true. But that doesn’t mean that their desires/wishes came true due to their prayers to an invisible deity. It was just chance.
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I can see where experiencing miracle or what one would believe as miracle, would be very convincing and persuasive.
I do not want to tell them that they do not really know what they saw or experienced, but their experience is not my experience. A claim is not convincing and at some point, in some situations, they are not enough to convince anyone – even UnkleE (I’d guess) would be skeptical of someone’s claim that they were healed by an Idol, or Allah, or satan or whatever else (correct me if I’m wrong, UnkleE).
So so and so was healed. I don’t buy it. Not because I don’t want to, I just dont; not with all I know and not with all of my experiences. So what now?
It seems to me, that what now is to investigate the religions, and that in part involves investigating their holy texts. And again, for me, the Bible doesnt seem to cut it.
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Prayer and gambling are both games of chance that reward the “player” just often enough to keep them hooked.
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