Question for the Theists on the forum: Why does God never do miraculous healing for amputees? Why does God never cause people who don't have kidneys and have to be on dialysis to miraculously regrow their kidneys? Why has God never restored the sight of a person who has totally lost their eyes?
It applies in how you're likely to get answers to your question. Why doesn't God do...[blank] when he's all powerful, all knowing, and all loving? Theodicy is the answer that every one seeks to explain how God can have all these qualities...but still allows for bad things to happen to us. Things that an all powerful/knowing/loving God should (in theory) prevent. If you put qualifications on all knowing...then you're talking "free will" and how God left it to us to sort some of these things for ourselves, if you put them on all powerful...then you're talking "God has larger concerns than the problems of a (relatively) few humans, and if you put them on all loving...then you're talking about "God works in mysterious (and often dickish) ways. Changing any of the three gives you the answer, but it takes away from the perfect image of God.
But my point is that Theists, especially Christians, claim God does miraculously heal people. However the conditions he heals always seem to those that the human body has the theoretical ability to heal on its own. God never seems to heal things that the human body can't already do.
And I'm fully aware of that. My point is that I'm betting that most if not all answers will try to use one of the three points I made. That either... They'll argue that we have free will and should sort this out ourselves and thus excusing the bit about the all knowing, omniscient God They'll argue that God can't be bothered to answer every prayer out there since he has larger concerns regarding the smooth operation of the universe...thus excusing the Omnipotent or all powerful God Or that they'll argue that God works in strange and mysterious ways...excusing the omni-benevolence of God. What you're asking the theists is for them to find their own concept of theodicy.
Yeah, sorry. I'm likely at fault for that. I sorta took the fun out of it when I revealed the three ways they're likely to answer your question.
Has anyone ever prayed for it to happen? If not why not? God won't act if you don't and sometimes for reasons of his own he does not act. The first problem sir with the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is the assumption that there are good people. Sorry but God isn't a genie in a bottle. You cannot command him to dance to your tune. If you could he wouldn't be God you would. One of my friends at church was told sometime back that one of his kidneys had ceased to function entirely and the other was only operating at about 20%. He went back a week later to set up dialysis treatments and surgery and suddenly both kidneys were fine. Miracle or equipment malfunction? Or both?
Then why do the Priests tell us to pray to God for intercession? If he's not going to answer, why bother? Kidneys are self-regenerating and can repair themselves over time. I see that happening a lot on Venom ER and other such shows. The kidneys shut down as a result of the damage done by the venom and the dying cells in the body...only for the patient to make a full recovery. Kidneys included. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/06/adult-kidneys-constantly-grow.html
I guarantee you there are amputees that have prayed for their amputation to be healed, yet we don't see any examples of this supposed God miraculously causing limbs to regrow. The only time miracles seem to occur are in occasions when the body has the theoretical ability to heal itself.
And in most cases they are getting medical care if you have cancer and are getting treatment and pray also I would say the miracle is our modern medicine and medical science advanced to the point it allowed the person to live, if life is just extended then its not a miracle the person still died. And the human body can heal even very serious medical issues on very rare occasions without care that doesn't equal - god did it - its just the miracle of evolutionary biology.
I suppose you could argue that god made us intelligent enough to solve many of these problems. Amputees can get prosthetics, some cancers are treatable, life expectancy is increasing due to medicine, diet etc.
yet spontaneous remission happens occasionally even after doctors have said treatment is no longer worthwhile. There is as much or more that we do not understand than there is that we do. Human beings will at some point in time exit stage right as it were. you either believe God and be accounted as righteous or you declare God a liar and deal with the consequences down the road.
So do you think Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews and the God of the armies, is the only God in existence?
Yep. He is the only unique one certainly. All though to be frank by the time of Christ the Hebrews had ceased to worship the God who gave them the law and started to worship the law itself along with assorted human traditions that had become associated with it.
"There is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours.” (Psalms 86: "For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. (Psalms 96:4) "Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols. Worship Him, all ye gods!" (Psalms 97:7) And that's just the tip of the iceberg. And again I point you to... http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2292 Saying that we can sort it out for ourselves...is an answer in theodicy that cuts one of the three legs.
But that conclusion isn't logical God letting us gain info he already had does not imply that he didn't know it. And let's not forget that salvation in Christianity is by grace and grace alone in order to keep the braggarts out of heaven. ergo He isn't going to make himself too obvious these days.
God is often treated like a father figure. A Father to all humankind. As a father I'e had to keep my knowledge to myself and let my children sort things out for themselves. So when my son was old enough to understand how to treat a small scratch, I didn't apply one for him, I simply reminded him where the bandaids and the antibiotic ointment were located. He was old enough, he was a cub scout, he had a basic first aid merit badge...it was time to stop treating him like a toddler and to start treating him appropriately for his age. To a child, a parent is their world. They have belief in the abilities of the parents. They can fix boo boos, repair a broken toy, get the TV working when they've pushed the wrong buttons, provide food when they're hungry, shelter when it rains, clothes on their back. So when that day came when it was time for him to fix his own boo boo, like God in your example, it's not that I didn't know how to bandage a scrape either. I knew (like God on your example) that it was time for him to take the knowledge that he had acquired...and apply it for himself. Free Will. However, this was a minor betrayal in his eyes. Yes he now had the confidence in his ability in doing it for himself...but the perfect image of the parent was marred. One of the legs of Knowing, Powerful and Loving was shortened. Some psychologists say that as we prepare them for being on their own, they get a little resentful and can be one of the many reasons that teenagers lash out. That they're scared of what's to come and the parental image is battered and torn from all the times we had to stop holding their hand and let them to for themselves. So back to God and letting us sort it out for ourselves...God may be all knowing, all powerful and all loving...but as we learn to do more and more for ourselves... Theodicy.
