Fwd: Observations

It is me again. I write little blurbs when I am thinking or trying to come to a conclusion. I just put them together for emails such as this one. Yu might want to read this in sections 

 

Statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings tell us that somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. He will rape, torture and kill her. If it is not occurring at this moment it will in hours or days at the most.

 

The same statistics also suggest the girl’s parents believe, as you say, that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family.  

 

The city of New Orleans was destroyed by a hurricane. More than a thousand people died; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to believe that almost every person living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck shared a belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled to safety only to be drowned.  These were men and women of faith who prayed throughout their lives.  

 

There had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. It was inept in response to the information provided by science. God told no one his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans relied only on the goodness of God, they would not have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down on their city until they felt the wind on their faces. And interestingly the Washington Post found that 80 percent of Katrina’s survivors claim the event has only strengthened their faith.

 

As New Orleans was being battered by Hurricane Katrina, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. These pilgrims believed in the God of the Koran. Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before Him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It is doubtful a single survivor lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagined that they were spared through God’s grace.

 

I find it insulting to God for the survivors of a catastrophe to believe they were spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs.

 

Remember "Kitty" Genovese, the New York City woman who was stabbed to death near her home? At the time her neighbors were criticized for failing to respond to her aid. People who believe God answers prayers include God on the list of those being unresponsive though he had the ability to help he chose to not intervene. Belief that God answers prayers makes God responsible for willingly permitting evil in the world. I do not believe that. God does not intervene because if he did it would require that he suspend natural laws and take away free will.

 

Now to the point: You have said and wrote “Please pray that God will shower His grace on Dan and Sheryle and grant healing to her.” He lets children be raped, tortured and murdered, he lets children starve to death every day, and he lets horrible evil occur in the natural world, lets Wilma, as well as thousands of others with cancer die and heals Sheryle? I do not believe that but it describes a God I do not like and would not trust.

 

I find it odd that what Christians say indicates they believe God will only help if asked nicely in the right way i.e. when they pray hard or fervently by a large group of people. Ever wonder who prayed for the Ethiopian Eunuch when he became sick?

 

Many Christians are convinced that prayer can heal a wide variety of illnesses, it is curious that prayer is only ever believed to work for illnesses and injuries that can be self-limiting. No one ever seriously expects that prayer will cause an amputee to regrow a missing limb. Why not? Salamanders do it routinely as do starfish and squirrels. If God answers prayers, ever, why wouldn’t He occasionally heal a deserving amputee? And why wouldn’t Christians expect God to answer prayers to work in such cases?  How about Downs Syndrome as well as other conditions?

 

Why won't God heal amputees? It may seem like an odd question but it just might be one of the most important questions that we can ask about God. It probes into a fundamental aspect of prayer having to do with ambiguity and coincidence.

 

Imagine that you visit your doctor one day, and he tells you that you have cancer. Your doctor is optimistic, and he schedules surgery and chemotherapy to treat your disease. Meanwhile, you are terrified. You don't want to die, so you pray to God day and night for a cure. The surgery is successful, and when your doctor examines you again six months later the cancer is gone. You praise God for answering your prayers. You believe with all your heart that God has worked a miracle in your life. You tell your friends that prayer works.

 

The obvious question to ask is: What cured you? Was it the surgery/chemotherapy or was it God? Is there any way to know whether God is playing a role or not when we pray?

 

Unless you take the time to analyze this situation, it looks ambiguous. God might have miraculously cured your disease, as many Christians believe. But it might have been the chemotherapy drugs and surgeries are the things that cured you. Or your body's immune system might have cured the cancer itself.

 

When your tumor disappeared, in other words, it might simply have been a complete coincidence that you happened to pray. Your prayer may have had zero effect.

 

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. Think about it this way. The Bible clearly promises that God answers prayers: Mark 11:24

 

Jesus says, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." And billions of Christians believe these promises. You can find thousands of books and magazine articles on the power of prayer. According to believers, God is answering millions of their prayers every day.

 

So what should happen if we pray to God to restore amputated limbs? Clearly, if God is real, limbs should regenerate through prayer. In reality, they do not.

 

Why not? Notice that there is zero ambiguity in this situation. There is only one way for a limb to regenerate through prayer: God must answer prayers, at least occasionally. What we find is that whenever we create an unambiguous situation like this and look at the results of prayer, prayer never works. God never "answers prayers" if there is no possibility of coincidence.

 

Tomorrow when the prayor thanks God for letting the folks be present know that God decided he prefers I be at Dollywood where I will see hundreds of children and adults not blessed with good health as the people the prayor is praying about are blessed and I will wonder why?

 

There is no purpose in responding. I already know what you say you believe. I listen to what you say and so I finally let you know there is at least one who does not concur.  For years I have asked various folks including you and generally received no responses what specifically does one expect when they pray and do they find bible support for such expectations? One Christian man told me he doesn’t expect anything. I asked him why he prayed, He said the bible says he should. I believe James says he is unstable and I do concur.

 

I doubt you are still reading this but if you are you get credit for good old fashioned doggedness.

 

Fini…..

 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
         http://alumcave.blogspot.com/

 

“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you a broken dryer, you make wet socks, lots of them."

AHS

Scientific knowledge is by its very nature is never definitive or forever valid.

Scientific knowledge is by its very nature is never definitive or forever valid. Referring to science, proponents say that evolution is “only” a theory. But “theory” is a term used by scientist to refer to well-established knowledge, such as the molecular theory of matter, the heliocentric theory of planet revolutions, or relativity theory. Each of these scientific theories, like the theory of evolution, is not a guess or hunch as might be the case when “theory” is used in ordinary language. Scientists refer to conjectures as “hypotheses.”

 

Intelligent Design is bad science or not science at all. It is not supported by experiments, observations, or results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Intelligent Design is bad religion, bad theology, because it implies that the designer has undesirable attributes that we don’t want to predicate about God. Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the theory of evolution is incompatible with religious beliefs. They share this conviction with materialistic scientists. Science and religion are compatible because they concern different realms of knowledge.

Only a "Theory" is not "Only a Theory"

Scientific knowledge is by its very nature is never definitive or forever valid. Referring to science, proponents say that evolution is “only” a theory. But “theory” is a term used by scientist to refer to well-established knowledge, such as the molecular theory of matter, the heliocentric theory of planet revolutions, or relativity theory. Each of these scientific theories, like the theory of evolution, is not a guess or hunch as might be the case when “theory” is used in ordinary language. Scientists refer to conjectures as “hypotheses.”

 

Intelligent Design is bad science or not science at all. It is not supported by experiments, observations, or results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Intelligent Design is bad religion, bad theology, because it implies that the designer has undesirable attributes that we don’t want to predicate about God. Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the theory of evolution is incompatible with religious beliefs. They share this conviction with materialistic scientists. Science and religion are compatible because they concern different realms of knowledge.

Do Organisms Change by Natural Processes?

The notion that organisms may change by natural processes were not investigated as a biological subject by Christian theologians of the Middle Ages, but it was, usually incidentally, considered as a possibility by many, including Albertus Magnus,(1200-1280) and his student Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). Aquinas concluded, after consideration of the arguments that the development of living creatures, such as maggots and flies, from nonliving matter, such as decaying meat, was not incompatible with Christian faith or philosophy, but he left it to others (scientists) to determine whether this actually happened.  

 

The issue whether living organisms could spontaneously arise from dead matter was not settled until four centuries later by the Italian Francesco Redi (1626-1697), one of the first scientists to conduct biological experiments with proper controls.  Redi set up flasks with various kinds of fresh meat; some were sealed, others covered with gauze so that air but not flies could enter, and others left uncovered.  The meat putrefied in all flasks, but maggots appeared only in the uncovered flasks with flies had entered freely.

 

Origin of the World

All human cultures have advanced explanations for the origin of the world and of human beings and other creatures. Traditional Judaism and Christianity explain the origin of living beings and their adaptations to life in their environments---wings, gills, hands, flowers---as the handiwork of an omniscient God. Among the early Fathers of the Church, Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) and Augustine (354-430) maintained that not all of creation, all species of plants and animals, were initially created by God; rather, some had evolved in historical times from God’s creations.

 

According to Gregory of Nyssa, the world has come about in two successive stages. The first stage, the creative step, is instantaneous; the second stage, the formative stage, is gradual and develops through time. According to Augustine, many plant and animal species were not directly created by God, but only indirectly, in their potentiality so that they would come about by natural processes, later in the world. Gregory’s and Augustine’s motivation was not scientific but theological. For example, Augustine was concerned that it would have been impossible to hold representatives of all animal species in a single vessel, such as Noah’s ark; some species must have come into existence only after the flood.  

Homosexual 19th Century

Since the term “homosexual” did not appear until the late 19^th century I wonder what the original word was that was written by “Moses?” before translators began their work where they applied their personal biases and prejudices. I am told there are words in other languages that have no one-to-one relationship to an English word.

 

Leviticus 18:22 clearly states homosexuality is an abomination right up there with alumeating shellfish Leviticus 11:10 which is also an abomination.

One Can Only Wonder

Throughout most of history women, being considered intellectually inferior to men, generally have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men.

 

Early Christian theology perpetuated these views. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church, said: "Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object." Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Christian theologian, said that woman was "created to be man's helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception . . . since for other purposes men would be better assisted by other men."

 

Traditionally a middle-class girl in Western culture tended to learn from her mother's example that cooking, cleaning, and caring for children was the behavior expected of her when she grew up. Tests made in the 1960s showed that the scholastic achievement of girls was higher in the early grades than in high school. The major reason being the girls' own expectations declined because neither their families nor their teachers expected them to prepare for a future other than that of marriage and motherhood.

 

Formal education for girls historically has been secondary to that for boys. In colonial America girls learned to read and write at dame schools. They could attend the master's schools for boys when there was room, usually during the summer when most of the boys were working.

 

The myth of the natural inferiority of women greatly influenced the status of women in law. Under the common law of England, an unmarried woman could own property, make a contract, or sue and be sued. But a married woman, defined as being one with her husband, gave up her name, and virtually all her property came under her husband's control.  Not quite the Bible’s “a man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.”

 

During the early history of the United States, a man virtually owned his wife and children as he did his material possessions. Some communities modified the common law to allow women to own property in their own names if their husbands agreed.

 

Many retail stores would not issue independent credit cards to married women. Divorced or single women often found it difficult to obtain credit. Laws concerned with welfare, crime, prostitution, and abortion also displayed a bias against women. A mother receiving government welfare payments was subject to frequent investigations in order to verify her welfare claim. A woman who shot and killed her husband would be accused of homicide, but the shooting of a wife by her husband could be termed a "passion shooting." Often women prostitutes were prosecuted although their male customers were allowed to go free

 

Women constituted almost half of employed persons in the United States in 1989, but they had only a small share of the decision-making jobs. Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women in 1970 were paid about 45 percent less than men for the same jobs; in 1988, about 32 percent less.

 

Working women faced discrimination because they were married or would most likely get married, they would not be permanent workers.

 

American women have had the right to vote since 1920, but their political roles have been minimal. It was not considered respectable for women to speak before mixed audiences of men and women.

 

Women and slaves were expected to be passive, cooperative, and obedient to their master-husbands. With the Union victory in the Civil War, women abolitionists hoped their hard work would result in suffrage for women as well as for blacks. But the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, adopted in 1868 and 1870 respectively, granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to women.

 

The struggle to win the vote was slow. A woman-suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution, presented to every Congress since 1878, repeatedly failed to pass.

 

For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control, a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while a husband could enjoy many mistresses.

 

Based on Jesus’ instructions, a husband only needed to prove adultery to obtain a divorce. By contrast the wife had no options. Over the years women learned that brutality, rape, desertion life-threatening cruelty or adultery on the husband’s part did not count. According to Jesus, one would be hard pressed to say what did.

 

One can only wonder if what the Church of Christ teaches concerning women is based on divine guidance or just ordinary prejudice and discrimination.

 

Theodicy

Theodicy is a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotent in view of the existence of evil. In its most common form, is the attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Theodicy attempts to reconcile the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world. Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy provides a framework which claims to make God's existence probable.

In Christian tradition “If God cannot prevent evil, God is not omnipotent; if God can prevent evil but does not, God is not benevolent.”  If the reasoning is valid, it would follow that God is not all-powerful or all-good. Christians theology accepts that evil exists, but denies the validity of the argument.

Traditionally theology distinguishes three kinds of evil: moral evil or sin, the evil originated by human beings; pain and suffering as experienced by human beings; physical evil, such as floods, tornados, earthquakes, and the imperfections of creatures.

Theology has a ready answer for the first two kinds of evil. Sin is a consequence of free will; the flip side of sin is virtue, also a consequence of free will. Christian theology provides a good accounting of human pain and suffering. To the extent that pain and suffering are caused by war, injustice, and other forms of human wrongdoing, they are also a consequence of free will; people choose to inflict harm on one another. On the flip side are good deeds by which people choose to alleviate human suffering.

What about earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts, and other physical catastrophes? Physical events are built into the structure of the world itself.Since the seventeenth century, humans have known that the processes by which galaxies, and stars come into existence, the planet are formed, the continents move, the weather and the change of seasons, and floods and earthquake occur are natural processes, not events specifically designed by God for punishing and rewarding humans. Some are outcomes of the laws of physics, not the design of a fearsome God. If God is the designer of life, whence the lion’s cruelty, the snakes poison, and the parasites that secure their existence only by destroying their hosts?

God Cannot Intervene

Remember "Kitty" Genovese a New York City woman who was stabbed to death near her home? At the time her neighbors were criticised for failing to respond to her aid. People who believe God answers prayers put God on the list of those being unresponsive though he had the ability to help he chose to not intervene. Belief that God answers prayers makes God responsible for willingly permitting evil in the world. God does not intervene because if he did it would require that he suspend natural laws and take away free will.

Christianity vs Reality

What would happen to science if supernatural causes become legitimate scientific explanations? That earthquake might have been caused by the shifting of tectonic plates, but it could also be a punishment for the sinfulness of those now suffering the rubble. Why bother to conduct an exhaustive search to find the source of HIV when clear-thinking ID scholars have concluded that it was sent as a divine warning against deviant lifestyles? Even the rainbow might just be a phenomenon presented to us by a “whimsical” designer. Why worry about the physics of light when the mystery of the rainbow can be solved by easy reference to the personality of the creator?

 

Once the supernatural becomes a valid element in scientific inquiry, science will cease to be an empirical search for the truth of the natural world. Like faith itself, theistic science, will be subjective window on the world that reflects the innermost convictions of its adherents and not the outer reality of nature, the stringent standard by which speculation and hypothesis are forged into scientific theory. A theistic science may be friendly to the tenets of faith, or at least to the faith of some, but it will no longer be science. It will cease to explore, because it already knows the answers. Humankind will remain ignorant of truth.