Answer to Loren on Arugment from Incredulity

Regular atheist comment maker Loren tells me she doesn't believe the resurrection. She dresses up her incredulity in what she calls "a thought experiment."

:04 AM
Loren said...

I propose this thought experiement.

Imagine that you have a time machine and a video camera, and that you could go back in time and try to watch Jesus Christ rise from the dead. What would you see? And what would your camera record?

Metacrock, according to what you are claiming, you could not only watch JC rise from the dead, but also take some video of him doing so. Is that correct?

However, I've seen one theologian, John Haught, who claims that such a camera would record nothing. Agree or disagree? Why?

My own opinion is that that event never happened, that it was as fictional as the Greek Gods getting involved in the Trojan War or the prophet Mohammed riding a winged horse to Heaven.

I believe that because miracles have a remarkable shyness effect, just like psi phenomena. The better one's observation techniques and the closer one is to the alleged events, the weaker the claimed effects become. Why aren't large numbers of people with video cameras recording big, spectacular miracles on the scale of the parting of the Red Sea?

And I also believe this because of the human capacity for will to believe, and also for fraudulence, including pious fraudulence. Metacrock, do you think that all those medieval relics are genuine?

The problem is this is not a thought experiment, it's merely a statement of incredulity ("I don't believe this"). a thought experiment is not just a way to play out your unbelief in some proposition, there has to be some possibility of actually learning something you didn't know before. There's no way to learn anything about the resurrection in this way so it's not really an experiment. Even though doing this does not teach us anything, the fact that she did it does teach us soemthing. We learn from this that atheists think of history as experiments. They don't understand about evidence or the indications of past events based upon the artifacts left behind. No attempt was made in this regurgitation to actually deal with any of the material prestented in the original Easter booster peice that I did to which she responded.

Metacrock, according to what you are claiming, you could not only watch JC rise from the dead, but also take some video of him doing so. Is that correct?

However, I've seen one theologian, John Haught, who claims that such a camera would record nothing. Agree or disagree? Why?

My own opinion is that that event never happened, that it was as fictional as the Greek Gods getting involved in the Trojan War or the prophet Mohammed riding a winged horse to Heaven.

Why would anyone think that saying this proves something? It proves only that you don't believe so you don't expect the event to pan out. But what exactly does it prove that you don't beileve it? Nothing as far as I can see. My article argued that it is proven that the story of the empty tomb was part of the original Christian message from the very beginning. But you saying nothing about that. Why doesn't that mean anything to you?

I believe that because miracles have a remarkable shyness effect, just like psi phenomena. The better one's observation techniques and the closer one is to the alleged events, the weaker the claimed effects become. Why aren't large numbers of people with video cameras recording big, spectacular miracles on the scale of the parting of the Red Sea?

Now is this really the case? Of course it is the case that most people don't take video cameras around with them all the time. When my father was dying and we called EM guys and then we had the miracle in the living room that caused the Emergency guys to freak out because they weren't suppossed to seem him get healed on their equipment, recording the event was the last thing in the world that I cared about. I had been caring for him at home for three years. I was a nervous worn out wreck I said to myself that day 'I know someday I am going to wish I had gotten those guys names..." but that was so far from anything I cared about, I can't even repeat what I said to myself in response to that idea. Bland that Blank. Get it? That's the real reality of it, people's lives are really on the line and people live their lives for real. They don't live their lives to be test cases for apologetics, get it?

But there is good evdience for miracles. good scientific evidence. The only reason atheists don't acknowledge that is because they are dishonest.

Richard H. Casdroph collected medical evidence, x-rays, aerograms, and other data from 10 cases associated with the Kathryn Kulhman ministry. Now it will of course strike skeptics as laughable to document miracles of a faith healer. Ordinarily I myself tend to be highly skeptical of any televangelists. I am still skeptical of Kulhman because of her highly theatrical manner. But I always had the impression that there was actual documentation of her miracles, and I guess that impression was created by the Casdorph book.


The Casdroph book goes into great detail on every case. Since these were not the acutal patients of Casdroph himself, there are 3 tiers of medical data and opinion; Casdroph himself and his evaluation of the data, several doctors with whom he consulted on every case, and they very from case to case, and the original doctors of the patents themselves. The patients gave their permission and were happy to provide the medical data on their healing since they were all people who had written to the Kulhman ministry with words of their healing. Not all of them were healed immediately in the meeting. Some were healed latter when they got hom.Naturally no one had a x-ray machine standing by at the faith meeting to crank out results like a x-rox copy, so all of them took some period of time to see the results. Not all of them were totally healed immediately. But all the cases were either terminal or incurable and all of them, within a year, returned to full health and pain free existences.

Dr. Richard Steiner, of the American Board of Pathology, head of department of Pathology Long Beach Community Hosptial reviwed several of the slides. William Olson, American Board of Internal Medicine and head of Isatope Department at Long Beach Community Hospital, and several radiologists form that Hospital also consulted on the rest of the cases.


1)Reticulum cell Sarcoma, right pelvic bone.
2)Chronic Rheumatoid Arthritis with Severe Disability
3)Malignat Brain Tumor (Glioma) of the left Temoperal lobe
4)Multiple Sclorosis
5)Arterioscloratic Heart Disease
6)Carcinoma of the Kidney (Hypernephroma)
7) Mixted Rhumatoid Arthritis with Osteoarthritis
8)Probable Brain Tumor vs Infarction of the Brain
9)Massive GI Hemorrhage with GI shock (instantly healed)
10)Ostioprosis of the Etire Spine

All of these people were totally healed of incurrable or terminal states. The one commonality they all have is that they were at some point prayed for by the same person, Kulhman. Let's look at a few examples:

1)Lisa Larios: Cell Sarcoma of the right Pevic bone.

Larios didn't know she had cancer. She had developed a great deal of pain in her pevis and was confined to a wheel chair, but the doctors had not found the evidence of the tumor at the time her mother took her to hear Kulhman. Yet, when Miss Kulhman said "someone over here is being healed of cancer, pelase stand up" she stood up wihtout knowing why. She had already started feeling a strange heat in that area and had ceased to feel pain. She went up onto the stage and walked around without pain. She was than "slain in the spirit" which is that odd thing when the healer palces his/her hand on the forehead and the person falls over in a faint. It took some time to recieve the next set of xrays becasue she only learned after the meeting some days latter that she had cancer. Than the next set of xrays showed vast and daramtic improvement. It would still be some time,almost a year, before her pelivis was completely resorted. But she did return to full health. The Catholics wouldn't except this miracle because it could be confussed with a normal remission. The power of suggestion can be ruled out because the heat started before she was called to the stage, and because she didn't even know she had cancer, but responded to a call for healing of cancer. The first dramatic improvement which was immeidate within a few days, and walking on the stage is not characteristic of remission. Casdroph has the medical evidence from several hospitals to which she had been taken.

And of cousre the ever loving Lourdes miracles. It is as hard to get film of a miracle in progress as it is to get film of a bigfoot, probably not for the same reason. With bigfoot there is a good chance it doesn't exist. But with miracles, they happen on the run while life is being lived and to people who are not research scientists or medical researchers.


Loren says:

And I also believe this because of the human capacity for will to believe, and also for fraudulence, including pious fraudulence. Metacrock, do you think that all those medieval relics are genuine?

Why would she compare medieval reliquary with the formidable historical evidence of textual criticism that I brought out? Because, like many atheists, she doesn't care bout facts or truth, in fact her statement applies as well to her and other atheists as to theists.