Posted on 11/30/2007 7:51:42 AM PST by xzins
A national weekly news magazine recently featured a debate between atheist/author Sam Harris and author/pastor Rick Warren ("The Purpose Driven Life"). As part of his debate, Mr. Harris threw down a challenge to prove God's existence by finding a deserving amputee and having 1 billion people pray for God to grow the leg back. In trying to disprove the existence of God, it's unclear why Mr. Harris chooses to focus on amputees growing limbs back rather than looking for a sea to split open or fish and loaves to multiply, and it's equally unclear why Harris specifically asked that it be a "leg" amputee versus an "arm" amputee. Nevertheless, that was the challenge.
A few weeks ago, C-Span featured a speech given at the annual meeting for American Atheists by a former "Saturday Night Live" actress. This group gave her a standing ovation and even presented her with a special plaque to honor her courage as an "atheist celebrity." The actress joked, "There is evidence for God, just not very good evidence." The audience was shown patting themselves on the back, laughing, applauding and apparently reveling in their ability to declare, "There is no God." Days later, on CBS' "Sunday Morning," the same group was featured, along with the same actress, again celebrating the "joys of atheism." Once more, the interview brought up the "amputee challenge" of Mr. Harris.
My wife of 21 years, Gracie, is a double-amputee (both legs), and our organization, Standing With Hope, is, to our knowledge, the only evangelical prosthetic limb outreach in the world. We travel to West Africa and work with the government of Ghana to train and equip their workers on building high-quality prosthetic legs. Gracie's definition of high quality is summed up in her statement, "I will not place a leg on someone that I am not willing to wear myself." It is hoped that Mr. Harris will agree that Gracie, who has undergone 70 operations and still finds the will and ability to help others struggling with limb loss, is a suitable "deserving" candidate for his challenge.
Atheists seem to insinuate that the ministry and comfort my family depends on, and shares with individuals across the country and overseas, is misguided and only a mirage. It is interesting to note that this group seems to take greater issue with the God of the Bible and Christian faith than with other world religions. They don't seem to put the Muslim faith to the test with the same sarcasm they save for Christianity.
According to this group, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, King David, Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus were deceived at best, or liars at worst. Of Jesus' remaining 11 disciples, 10 of them, and eventually the Apostle Paul, were tortured, beaten and died horrible deaths, without ever renouncing the resurrection. There are Islamic extremists who allow themselves to be killed, but they believe in their cause. The disciples were in a position to know whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead.
His crucifixion is a matter of history (so is His resurrection). One simple question for atheist is: If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then why did the disciples allow themselves to be killed so horribly?
Conspirators at Enron wouldn't even face jail time without turning on each other. Michael Vick is going to jail because his friends turned on him over a dog-fighting ring. I have never heard of anyone willingly enduring torture or execution for a lie they perpetuated. If one of the disciples recanted, maybe history would have a case. But they all went to their deaths (skinned alive, crucifixion, sawn in two, beheaded) praising Jesus Christ. According to American Atheists, all of those disciples were wrong.
These atheists seem to suggest that they are more enlightened than every rabbi, pope, priest, Martin Luther, the Founding Fathers, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Billy Graham, C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Dr. Martin Luther King, Queen Elizabeth and billions of others. One prominent atheist went a step further to suggest that if Mother Teresa had been an atheist, her deeds would have been "more noble," since she wouldn't have been doing them with the thought of an afterlife as a reward. (You can't make this up; this is actually what they are saying.)
It appears atheists can claim an exhaustive investigation into the entire universe that leaves them with the overwhelming evidence that ...we are here by random chance. There are forests and whole stretches of land across the United States that haven't been totally explored, but atheist can lay back the entire cosmos with complete conviction that since a deserving amputee didn't grow a leg back, then, therefore, no deity exists.
To the atheists so concerned about amputees, it is difficult to understand why a good and loving God hasn't made Gracie's legs grow back.
That difficulty in understanding seemed to be part of the platform that led American Atheists to applaud an actress for having the courage to proclaim her conviction that "God doesn't exist." But while atheists applaud mocking comments about people of faith, amputees in Ghana are walking, going to school and taking care of their families – all because Gracie's courage – as an amputee – to proclaim her conviction that, "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28).
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Peter Rosenberger is the president of Standing With Hope Inc., which is the non-profit prosthetic outreach he and his wife, Gracie, founded in 2002. Peter has been a public speaker for many years on such topics as health care, marriage and family issues, and evangelism. Peter and Gracie, along with their two sons, have been the subject of numerous media interviews and features including People magazine, the "Today" show, Headline News, TBN and the Associated Press
Don’t mean to sound childish here but...........if Christians work to help amputees get and use artificial limbs so that they can walk, isn’t that somehow, in some way the same thing as God restoring the ability to walk to the amputee, except that he’s working indirectly through those who love Him?
If it is, then how many people have the Atheists helped to walk again?
It is the same as providing food, clothing, shelter.
As an act based on our natural abilties or abundance, it is an act that’s open to many.
What is unique about such love is the Christian Church’s 2000 year history of the same.
Many credit the idea of hospitals to the Christian Church.
Exactly.
Best not to reject any victory that crosses our path
I saw Jerry Falwell when I was decidedly not a Christian in front of a largely hostile college crowd in the 80’s. Main impression I came away with was that he was a very bright man to handle the questions that were thrown at him in the way he did. At the time, I didn’t understand the power that a fully formed Christian world view gives . . . the ability to put any issue through the lens of faith and Biblical knowledge and arrive at a consistent response and a confident response.
Well, any issue related to faith and morals anyway . . .
Good thoughts. We need to put this new atheist obsession through that Christian worldview lens, too.
This thread is doing a good job of that so far.
I guarantee that if the author’s wife were to appear on worldwide TV and her legs were to suddenly become whole the atheists of the world would deny that God had anything to do with it. They would most likely become enraged at such an affront to their “truth”.
Atheists have no knowledge of God. They make no effort to determine if He exists for the simple reason that in their cramped universe there is no God - never has been and never will be. This is a certainty arrived at by no effort to determine its validity. It is an utterly unscientific superstition. They make their ignorance the criterion for truth.
May God bless the author of this piece, his wife and the organization they work with for the sake of others.
You know they’d find another reason besides God for a limb that regrew.
Such arguments are childish, but I am amazed that atheists can seriously advance them. I advance the statement : If God were all good and all powerful, then he would restore Eden. And he will. There will be a new heavens and a new earth, and we shall all be witnesses of it. I shall never forget a scene in a movie, “The Robe,” in which a crippled woman, played by Betta St. John, is heard singing beautifuly by the hero, played by Richard Burton. And they have the most edifying conversation, played with great understatement by both actors. With great serenity she recounts her encounter with Jesus, he notes that she is still crippled. She responds that he had indeed healed her. Before bitterness ate at her heart; she was being devoured by it. But he knew what she needed and he gave it to her. Now she plays her role, singing of God’s mercy to those who would listen. I would invite these “freethinkers” really to open their minds and hearts, upstop their ears and listen. But they have to be still to hear.
Aethists and non-believers are simply decieved by the great deciever. The Bible says The Word is gibberish to them.
They do not understand that we aren’t in the Old Testament times when miracles occured. We are in the period known as the era of Grace. God doesn’t perform obvious miracles, but we don’t have to sacrifice a lamb everyday either, thanks to Jesus the Son!
“And while the crowds were thickly gathered together, He began to say, “This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.”
Luke 11:29
I do not think it is any better today!!
Probably Harris is quite aware of the futility of such an expectation. So he feels "safe" in demanding it as "proof."
You cannot reason with unreasonable people.
“Seek a sign” and “command performance”
BB & TC are on the same page. I agree with them.
However, there also is anecdote/evidence of God restoring non-existing things. I do think we should assume it in the healing of lepers, in particular. Lepers tend to lose appendages as part of the disease.
There is a post above about the regrowth of an eye.
A God who can create fish and loaves out of nothing, and a universe by command, can do anything.
But, as both of you point out, God is not inclined to perform at the behest of the skeptical. In fact, that tended to disinterest Jesus. We’re told He “marveled at their unbelief.”
Wow. Thanks.
God is not mocked.
Exactly.
The wicked shall be cast into hell and all the nations that mock God.
Malcolm Muggeridge once said that atheists are the only people who seem to have no doubts whatsoever about their beliefs (which he dubbed "an absurd certitude"). This seems strange at first, but when you consider that if they are right they'll never get to crow about it you can't blame them for doing their crowing now.
One prominent atheist went a step further to suggest that if Mother Teresa had been an atheist, her deeds would have been "more noble," since she wouldn't have been doing them with the thought of an afterlife as a reward. (You can't make this up; this is actually what they are saying.)
See below.
Such challenges declare a hatred of God, not a disbelief. People that don’t believe in things do not organize and rant, they simply don’t believe.
To me this is the only logical reason for the crusading moralism of people whose beliefs logically do not support any acts of altruism whatsoever (calling Ayn Rand!). They should be out under a warm sun enjoying the breeze and touching themselves until they die of old age. Instead they're trying to save the universe, the earth, "the children," and every single one of us. This psychotic compulsion to be "more moral than G-d" can only come from their pathological hatred of Him.
And I agree that atheists don't attack all religions. Despite their loud and intentionally obnoxious declarations about the non-existence (or injustice) of G-d they have always allied themselves with "religious minorities." The Jewish experience has been most often invoked, to Israel's shame (even while the Jewish Bible was ridiculed, perhaps out of a provincial ignorance that the Bible is a Jewish book), but now head-chopping moslems and chicken slaughtering santeria practitioners "benefit" from atheist "protection". Then of course "Blacks and Hispanics," though Fundamentalist Protestants and Counter-Reformation Catholics in that order, have also been celebrated as "victims" rather than practitioners of religion. Even the "rightwing" Randian atheists here at FR foam at the mouth in defense of other religions even as they attack "religion."
Their is more spite and rebellion than intellectuality in all this.
And it came to pass, when Jesus finished these similes, he removed thence, and having come to his own country, he was teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and were saying, 'Whence to this one this wisdom and the mighty works? is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? and his sisters -- are they not all with us? whence, then, to this one all these?' and they were stumbled at him. And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and in his own house:' and he did not there many mighty works, because of their unbelief. [ Young's literal translation ]
The current tactic to substantiate the fundamentals of Christian morality as being natural and evolutionary (factually rubbish) is interesting in that it is in a way exactly what Lucifer did. Lucifer certainly believed in God, he just didn’t want to be subordinate to God. These “atheists” now lay claim to Heaven, they just don’t want God in it.
And how true it is that false religions do not bother them at all. In fact, they support them as being examples of culture.
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