I Should Have a Little Faith

I get email:

I WAS READING ON YOUR WEB SITE THAT YOU THINK THAT REV. PETER POPOFF IS A JOKE , WELL I DON’T , WAIT TILL YOU NEED HELP AND WHEN DOCTORS WON’T HELP THEN YOU’LL BE CRYING LIKE A BABY FOR HELP , I AM NOT WISHING YOU AT ALL ANY MISHAPS OR BAD THINGS , NEVER AND I ALWAYS WISH WELL TO OTHERS BUT BELIEVE ME , I NEED MIRACLE TO HAPPEN AND GOD IS THERE BUT HE’S A HARD CREATURE TO GET HELP FROM , PERSONS LIKE PRIESTS AND PASTORS DO HAVE SPIRITUAL POWERS OR SOME KIND OF ANNOINTING STRENGTHS TO HELP PEOPLE , YOU SHOULD HAVE A LITTLE FAITH ,
THANKS
TAKE CARE
TOM
SEPTEMBER 28 TH 2010
FROM EDMONTON ALBERTA CANADA

I’ll tell you what, Tom. If you can show us any scientific evidence that “miracle water” can cure people better than placebos, I’ll be happy to try it out.

Preacher Performs Hip Surgery on Woman

BAM! Proof!

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BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Parting the Waters


Researchers at National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder have been running computer simulations to see if strong wind could create a dry channel in a body of water. The point being to simulate the “parting of the waters” miracle in Genesis. According to CNN’s Belief Blog:

The computer model shows a 63 mph east wind blowing across the area and its 6-feet-deep waters for 12 hours. In the scenario, the wind pushed back the waters into both the lake and the channel of the river, exposing a mud flat 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide for four hours. As the winds died down, the waters quickly flowed back in and in theory would have drowned anyone on the mud flat.

I’m not going to argue about the simulation. Such things are beyond me, and PZ Myers has said what needs to be said. What interests me is the mentality of the people doing it.

If you’re going to argue that there is a divine being beyond the constraints of space and time, does it really make sense to argue that some things are impossible for it? Is it really bound by the laws of physics if it is beyond physics? But then what is the point of the test?

Then there’s things like this:

“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” said Carl Drews of NCAR, the lead author of the study published in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The account in Exodus is loaded with theological language, with talk of the “angel of God” and the “pillar of cloud”. Wind is sometimes a metaphor for the active power of God, as in the breath or spirit of God. Treating the account like a newspaper story misses the point.

And then there’s the sticky issue of translation: Red Sea or Reed Sea?

This kind of looks like a throwback to the old Deists and Rationalists who believed that the Bible was basically accurate journalism, but refused to believe that almighty God would pop down and meddle with his creation. A God who needed to constantly muck about with miracles wasn’t a very good planner.

Instead they saw miracles as things laid out by God at the beginning using the natural laws He had created. For example, Isaac Newton’s and his disciple William Whiston believed that a comet had grazed the earth and caused the Great Flood, all pre-arranged by God.

But I had thought that the Rationalists had died out. Are we witnessing a come back?

Miracle Spring Water?

I regularly receive sad and disturbing emails from people whose mental capacity appears to be slightly less than average. I deduce that since they are on a site called “Unreasonable Faith” and contact me thinking think they are directly emailing some Christian moron who we’ve lampooned on the site.

This one was so sad I thought it was worth highlighting:

to be financially free, I would like the miracle spring water,

i need funds to be all my debts
i need funds to buy 100 homes for Beaver First Nations in the Peace Region

I need funds to pay for my sons traffic ticket fines and also I have 1 traffic ticket fine to be paid in full  in the name of Jesus

I need a financial break threw for myself and also for my son
we need housing for all of our family members
we need to be finances to pay for a lawyer to get our reserve land back, that our ancestors had signed for, the land has been taken over by other people, the influx started in the late 1980s  in the name of jesus we need to be finances, to be debt free and healthy in jesus’s name

Doesn’t that break your heart? They want some “miracle spring water” that some swindler must be selling to take away their financial debts. It makes me want to throttle those crooks who prey on human weakness and fear.

Science Heals a Deaf Baby

It was said that Jesus healed the deaf, but we have no evidence of that. His followers today still claim they have miraculous powers.

But we all know that if you really want a miracle, you have to turn to science.

Here’s a video of a formerly deaf baby hearing for the first time (or shortly thereafter):

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It was done with a Cochlear implant:

cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. The cochlear implant is often referred to as a bionic ear.