I'm neutral. 

Why would it be good?

Are you? How are you neutral then?

I'm being open by granting the possibility that the cause for the state of affairs concerning my grandmother is by natural means.

That does not answer the question. Have you not read the thread yet? I've already stated my position in responses. Reply to those threads with something meaningful other than "F" this and "BS" that.

 

You people are completely without any integrity.

It's astounding...

"Given a set of competing truth claims, they can all be false, but only one can be true." 

Logically, if only 1 can be true, that 1 must be true.

Do you now want to claim that it needn't be true, if it's the only 1 that can be true????

 

You mean you've answered my question and I missed it?

 

Can't you read?

Are you serious??? 

Same as I am on the claims of aliens, the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot.

It does actually. There's no benefit to assuming it's a miracle.

It would be better to err on the side of caution, and keep testing to see if it will come back.

What will you imagine if it does come back?

That it was another 'divine intervention'?

 

Where did you learn logic?
If they can all be false (you keep missing this for some reason) that is 100% of them, then 0 of them can true. That's not an issue of integrity. You can't see the obvious error in your thinking.

The question was rhetorical, but you'll probably try and make it say something

She goes back for regular visits to the doctor and If it comes back, we'll see what happens then.
In any case even if it was a miracle, it does not prevent her dying.
But answering my question "Why is it bad" with "Why is it good" does not answer the question at all. Suppose I have a fortune in diamonds -- I ask "why is this bad?" and you answer "Why is it good" no new information, it just asks another question. Unless you're assuming something in the question that is not stated, which appears to be the case here in that you say there's "no benefit in assuming it is a miracle". But that does not and argument against--rather it's a red herring...

I think you're making a category mistake...

Hoping for a miracle in the context of Christianity and wanting something to be true when evaluating the truth of a matter are not the same thing. The description of "hope" in the context of Christianity is a desired outcome within the context of Christianity -- that is I hoped God would heal my grandmother. This is one step removed from evaluating an inference to God pertaining to a state of affairs. The latter is a purely epistemic context and does not assume that God acted, but it does allow for this possibility. For the epistemic context, I granted the possibility that natural causes were sufficient causes.

Hoping that my beliefs correspond to reality is purely for epistemic reasons, not religious ones -- I'm not certain (that is 100%, beyond the shadow of a doubt) that what I believe is true. If I "want" anything, it is to believe what is true, and I believe that Christianity is true. For this reason, I "hope" that my beliefs correspond to reality in the same manner that one  that plays the lottery hopes his numbers will be drawn so he can win big. I'd think that you'd "hope" that your disbelief corresponds to reality too. I don't have a bias toward Christianity as if it were a lucky number or something like that but I do have a vested interest in it because I believe it is true. But if you think I'm interpreting things such that they favor Christianity, I could say the same for one 'wanting" the cause to be purely natural if one is an atheist, because if it is supernatural, that would challenge your notion of disbelief.

I'm religious...yes. But I'm also a realist too, so I want to believe that which is real.

I'm not hoping my outlook on religion is correct. I look at the evidence for it and have dismissed it as nonsense. There is no hope or want. If I hoped it was wrong that would mean I had some doubt and or a reason for such hope. What reason would I have? You clearly have a reason to "hope" because you see it as real.

As for your first statement you are very opaque and weirdly trying to defend what is probably clear to everyone else. Hoping a god will heal your grandmother infers that you believe in said god and you hope he will heal your grandmother.

This is all too simple and your dance around it is weak. You are trying I'll give you that but you need to come up with something other than the desire, want and hope for me to even begin to consider this as an actual miracle.

I like your lottery example, I almost used it myself in a slightly different context.

If you don't doubt, then it is reasonable to say that you've already made up your mind on the issue. No amount of evidence to the contrary would change your mind. I don't know if this is the case though.

If what I said was true, then it is the case that you are making a category mistake, but this offers no analysis as to how I'm dancing around the issue. I was showing how you were misrepresenting what I said to shore up your case and telling you how I believe.

I said early on I'm Pascalian in my beliefs.

It's quite fitting for how I affirm things, and why I make a distinction between the contexts in which I'm operating: that is evaluating my beliefs and acting on my beliefs. If this is the dance you are referring to, then I admit I'm doing this.

No I see a very small case for basic deism in that we simply don't know everything.. ok maybe not a real case but I see why one may want to believe in it.

Explain what category your hope fits into. The way I see it it is based again on "a god exists" and you hope said god will heal your grandmother. The only good option would be that you hope a god exists to heal your grandmother. 

Pascalian, so you are a believer because you fear it could be true, or hope that it is true.

You said that your grandmother's cancer going into remission was evidence that Christianity is true. There's a litany of good reasons to stop believing that.

1. From a common sense standpoint if prayer could solve medical problems then things like hospitals, ambulances, medicaments and defibrillators would be unnecessary, but they are necessary.

2. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Sequences don't establish a probability of causality.

3. It's wrong on empirical grounds. The effects of prayer on illness have been observed and are not statistically significant.

4. Even if it were evidence it would work against you. Muslims and Hindus also have sick grandmothers. People tend to pray when they become ill, that's the nature of things and most people in the world aren't Christians. If it were valid inference it would provide more evidence against Christianity than for it.

Wowzers, I know it is fun to go back and forth with redneF but the actual discussion about how your ideology is bunk is being presented by Gouche and rob101.

 

 

If I am not mistaken this is the reason you keep hearing reference to your "wanting to believe". Whether or not you can be quoted as having said that exact phrase is irrelevant and insisting upon the quote is a distraction. Yes, I referred to your point before as being distraction and this is another one.

The original poster asked for evidence to demonstrate the existence of god(s). 

You used your grandmother's health as your evidence. You wisely clarify that it is only evidence enough to enforce *your* belief, but it doesn't change the fact that the evidence provided merely demonstrates your own wishful thinking. The argument(s) clearly demonstrating this to be true have been presented several times (I have quoted a couple of them above). 

I, for one, would like to hear how you reconcile what looks like a gigantic problem with using your grandmother's speedy recovery as evidence of the validity of your god-belief.  Stop playing footsie with redneF under the table and take a stab at the conversation with Gauche.

I never said that prayer solves everything. I (and my grandmother) still go to the doctor when we are sick.

post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy of invalid cause because of the sequence in which events occur. For my to be a post hoc ergo propter hoc you have to preclude the possibility that there was divine causation such that divine causation is not even possible. Why could I not say the same for natural causes?

But this just bolsters the case for miracles though -- in this case, prayer seems to have been effective in bringing about a cure and would be a statistical outlier, which is generally why things that are miraculous are deemed so because defy normal experience.

I have no problem accepting that Muslims and Hindus pray and receive healing. The Christian God is not the only one who is capable of performing miracles. I don't base my Christianity on miracles alone, as miracles themselves can be deceiving. The Bible warns against following people who perform miracles for this reason. I believe that other religions are false, as I have stated, so within the context of Christianity I would see the miracles in other religions as either a miracles to point others to Jesus (of which I have heard stories) or miracles performed by other supernatural beings. So miracles in other religions are quite consistent with Christianity. If such things happen, the ones who should think otherwise are atheists...

Circumstantial evidence, hell I could find circumstantial evidence for pink unicorns. They are small and leave funny little prints on my car .. no I never saw a cat!

Ok, I want to take a try at this.

God exists as a psychological imperative. Man created God in his image, over and over, all thoughout history since man was able to think and communicate (supposition, no proof, but it seems highly credible, doesn't it?)

So, I'm saying God exists, at the very least in Man's mind. Given substance and life through mass belief.  I'm trying to think of a parallel proof of existence. Hmmm, what comes to mind is government. Democracy maybe? Democratic government was created solely from thought processes and only exists if believed in.

He is even able to be sentient and think in a manner of social interacting of men with the same mindset and convergance of ideations. I think they call it Fellowship?

Each believer is a host for God's existence in my thought experiment. His holy meme is spread from one person to the next convert.

Alright, the OP asked for theist evidence, and I'm not theist, just trying to play God Advocate. To summarize; my evidence that he exists is in the number of believers. In the same way that Democracy exists.

Right, but that's supposing they all might die at some point. They're not, they are here, so we have God.

They exist, they have existed, so we must take it on "faith" that they will continue to exist, at least for the purpose of this argument.

(Sorry, I got tired of the theists circular logic and faith based debates. I also got tired of seeing so many debates based on what logic is or what "is" is.)

 

It's evidence that your grannie has the constitution of an M1 tank but it's not evidence of divine intervention unless you can provide some more evidence than your assumption that recovering from life threatening cancer can only be achieved using - well - magic. It doesn't bode well for atheists, does it? We'll be forced to rely on medical science instead of the divine intervention of the lord. 

You know, Wows, that hundreds of millions of people have prayed fervently for help from the lord to no avail whatever. What provably makes this instance any different?

 

 

 

 

There's nothing terribly noteworthy, if you understand what cancer is, which is simply a growth caused by abnormal and rapid cell division, that simply occurs.

Babies can be born with cancer.

Do theists run around claiming it's a miracle then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxCFa8YmbQ

 

Good answer for wow

 

Been so long since I posted a vid I forgot how ><

If prayer solved anything it could be used at some times in some circumstances instead of those other things but it cannot.


Divine causation would be one possible causal connection. It is a post hoc fallacy because you can't provide evidence or reason to establish that or any other causal connection.

To establish a causal connection between two events, controls have to be established to rule out other factors, otherwise it's merely anecdotal. Since there was no control group that was identical to your grandmother in all relevant ways except for the suspected causal agent it's not clear what happened to your grandmother. It could have been divine intervention, or chance, or some other unknown causal factor. I think you might be confused about what makes a post hoc fallacy. It's a fallacy because it's an unjustified causal conclusion. Even if it were a miracle it would still be a post hoc fallacy.

An outlier can be a chance phenomenon. Also I don't know your grandmother's condition or the survival statistics associated with that so I can't really comment on that.  


Miracles in other religions may be consistent with Christianity, what I'm claiming is inconsistent is your rationale. You said - I'm paraphrasing - other religions are false because Christianity is true and the answered prayers of sick Christian grandmothers is evidence for your religion.

If you're not at this point willing to concede that the prayers of Muslim and Hindu grandmothers are evidence for those religions and that's evidence against Christianity then it's just special pleading. You made a rule, then made an exception to the rule based on an irrelevant characteristic because you needed to evade it.

 

That precludes the possibility that it does or can... I have reason to believe otherwise.

If divine causation is possible, and the inference to divine causation fits the facts, then it is not an invalid cause, thereby not a post hoc fallacy. You have to show how the inference to divine causation from the given facts is a bad inference. The only reason you've given is that it does not meet your demand for more evidence or reason, but I think there is sufficient reason, given the facts, to make the inference.

You're trying to treat this as if it were some sort of scientific test. Miracles are neither testable with control groups or reproducible -- two necessary conditions needed to create scientific tests. To attempt to superimpose scientific testing on this and dismissing because it does not fit the criterion is an abuse of science. Miracles on the other hand, are historical. You should approach it with a historical method if you want to ascertain the truth of the matter. I granted that it was circumstantial evidence, but circumstantial evidence is evidence nevertheless. You don't think that divine causation is a valid cause, and for that reason you think it is a post hoc fallacy. You have to show why the inference to divine causation is bad for it to be a post hoc fallacy.

I granted that it could be a chance phenomenon. But this would require rejecting some of the facts as having no significance at all, as you do concerning the nature of prayer. But the healing against all odds then requires some other explanation, of which the doctor could not give.

I was giving a two layered answer: one layer in the context of Christianity, which provides an interpretive framework for the events in other religions and one layer in the context of epistemology. Even if I'm wrong in Christianity about the nature of the miracles in other religions, it still serves as evidence against atheism. In any case, the only one that is denying them as evidence for the supernatural is the atheist. I'm not special pleading because I how I understand miracles in other religions is consistent with Christianity. I'm not claiming any kind of immunity to your allegation, I'm just permuting it to the case of Christianity.

If miracles are non-random, then they are testable. If one claimed that praying increased someone's chance of being healed, but rejected the possibility of scientific investigation, then they are being inconsistent. Even if God purposely withheld all of his healing powers when a double blind experiment is being conducted, scientists could still attempt to collect information from patients that "appeared" to have been "healed." Not to mention, this implies that God values not revealing himself over saving people, which, like many other supposed attributes of the Christian God, is quite morally repugnant.

Not knowing how a person got better does not provide any evidence for a supernatural cause over a natural cause. This is nothing more than a God of the gaps and a failure of Occam's Razor. All you have is anecdotal correlation: praying >> got better, which certainly doesn't show causation. Pure confirmation bias, you've focused on this single case and ignored praying >> didn't get better and didn't pray >> got better.

God performing a miracles explains it without a problem. What more explanation does it require? Because it violates your assumptions as to what is acceptable as explanation you have to reject, but that's not my problem... it's your's.

The facts have been presented, and I made and inference to the cause from the facts. A post hoc fallacy is only fallacious if the inference to the cause of something is invalid -- you have yet to show how the inference is a bad inference. Demanding more evidence is a red herring if anything... it does not show that the inference is a bad inference.

Plausible under what rubric? I suppose you mean to say that divine causation is not plausible. But if you preclude this as plausible, then miracles are impossible, and testing is not necessary for you to show otherwise because your mind is made up on the matter.

It's only evidence against Christianity if the permutation fails. But in that case, it would be evidence for some other form of theism. In any case, it is evidence against atheism.

Hmmmm.... miracles sounds kind of like chance. Chance does seem to be random. By its very nature, statistics are always full of statistical outliers. Statistical outliers are not rare. 

 

 

Implicit in your assumption is that if something is "against the odds" is that it doesn't happen. Saying something is "against the odds" implies that it IS possible. The odds might be very long. One in a billion, one in a trillion etc. It is still possible, without the need of divine intervention. And in the case of your particular story, I suspect the odds are far better than that. My mother recently went through having cervical cancer.

 

When the doctors made their first diagnosis they were convinced it was stage four and it was too late. They told my mother she was extremely likely to die. Further tests revealed that it was only stage two, giving my mother a very good chance at surviving, and so far she has. I know other people who have been diagnosed with "terminal" cancer and have survived to tell the tale. So what conclusion can we draw? Doctors don't know everything. The human body is extremely complex and medicine is an increasingly complex field. Doctors can make mistakes, or simply not know enough to always be right. If the odds of such a thing happening were say 10,000 to 1, that means that particular doctor may have seen several thousand people in the same situation die. So the doctor draws on their experience and prepares you for the worst because it is what they can reasonably expect. 

 

It is much simpler and far more likely that we don't fully understand the human body. Which we KNOW we don't. We are still trying to find a cure for cancer. No doubt, current techniques will be considered only a slight step up from leeches in another hundred years. So you are NOT being consistent with Occam's Razor. Although, I doubt you actually care about that. 

 

It could also be explained perfectly by the Loch Ness Monster, Chewbacca, The Smurfs, or the ghost of Mary Pickford. Hell, maybe they all did it together. It could have been a conspiracy. There's just as much evidence for that as what you are claiming.

There's no evidence or facts other than that your grandmother got well after praying. A miracle could be possible, comform perfectly with the facts, and even be true but it's still a post hoc fallacy if that's all there is to establish a causal connection.

Under any rubric. The only thing an eye witness narrative could establish is the temporal succession of events and to believe that implies a causal relationship between the events is exactly what a post hoc fallacy is.

What difference does that make to you? You don't care about the weight of evidence. If you did, you'd stop being a Christian because you just admitted that what you consider to be valid inference provides more evidence against your religion than for it.

You claimed that you don't assume anything is true or false until given a good reason. Either that was a lie or you don't consider the weight of evidence to be a good reason.