Hi Bex

Sorry about how long it took to get back to you on this one but life intrudes. I just got back from three days camping in the bush with my family exploring some really interesting country and some of the history of this area. Was a brilliant time, just magic, and great to spend some time with my family after being interstate working for so much of the last few months.

Yes the bible has shown its fruits around the world, it showed them in the crusades, in the witch trials, in the works of mother Teresa who was far more interested in saving souls than lives despite the fact that she had the resources to prolong and improve many lives. It has also shown itself in the good that christians do that is true but then people of most faiths or none do good, being a christian does not seem to produce people of greater goodness than many other faiths. Did you know that atheists represent just 0.2 percent of the US federal prison population and that they have a far lower divorce rate than Fundamentalist christians.

How about miracles? Can you so easily explain them away when even doctors are often mystified? There have been proofs with xrays, medical examinations/certificates etc.

I have heard these touted often but I’m yet to see a single, well documented, example. The human body can cure itself of well over 99% of the diseases and afflictions that attack it and there is much that medical science doesn’t know so is it any wonder that at times doctors get it wrong and predict that someone will die who doesn’t? Why are these ‘miracles’ never of the really obvious kind, why does an amputee never sprout a new limb? That would be a miracle worthy of god but cures of diseases which the body has long been known to be capable of curing on it’s own is hardly a miracle. Just because a doctor got it wrong when he predicted that someone would die doesn’t constitute a miracle. Did you know that we each develop around 3-5 insipient cancers per day but our bodies immune system easily deals with them. It’s only the rare exceptions that we are even aware off and it’s certainly not unknown that the immune system will kick in later and cure one that is more advanced. We don’t understand the mechanisms behind this in most cases though we are trying to work them out.

But that doesn't even compare with conversions and incredible changes of life. People cripped by drugs, criminal behaviours, abuse etc, trying everything and getting nowhere and finding God and being healed of their addiction or damage readily and completely, rather than suffering long term side effects and the continuation of cravings.

Of course many who did not find god experienced similar recoveries some with and some without modern medical help so what’s your point. Is god just one more treatment option? Is he better than placebo? What is his efficacy when tested against the best that modern medicine has to offer?

No I can’t even begin to explain your ‘public miracle’ as you have not told me anything about it.

The truth is that your standards of ‘proof’ fall far short of those accepted by scientifically minded people. Science is, above all other things, a method of avoiding self deception and delusion. We know that humans are subject to all sorts of misapprehensions. If you want to find the truth you have to rule out these things and that’s what science is about. That’s why the rigor. That’s why the repeat testing. That’s why all the detailed protocols.

Take conversion miracles for instance, if it is true that the god of the bible is the one true god how to you explain that all religions have similar conversion miracles, conversions to gods who do not exist. Isn’t it far more probable that conversions are a feature of religions not a feature of god’s; the truth or otherwise of the god they are converting to being irrelevant to the occurance. IN other words these conversion ‘miracles’ tell us more about the human mind and about believers and belief systems than about any claimed god.

I’ll skip comments on the preachy bits, not my cup of tea really.

All the best Bex

Russell