Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?

This is an objection which has always fascinated me, as there is more than one argument behind it. For example one line of reasoning would be this; If God answers prayers, why has He never, in recorded history healed an amputee? I mean if you would think that God would find it appropriate to do at least once right?

First of all, how do we know God hasn’t? Second of all if you are going to be consistent in your objection you have to take into account Jesus healing the roman soldier by re-attaching his ear. Thirdly, how could we know that there would be an appropriate time in which God would want to answer such a prayer? Fourthly, the whole premise this argument is based upon is flawed, why should we believe that there would be an appropriate time for God to answer this kind of prayer? There are many different things people have asked for which God has not granted as far as we know. For example; that we may live to be 200 years old, or that our deadly food allergy to peanuts would go away, or that people with dwarfism would become taller. Note that all of these examples are around the same degree of urgency as an amputation, which is not that much.

Ok so as an issue to the effectiveness of prayer this isn’t a useful objection, but what about the problem of evil? Why does God allow amputees to go through all this suffering?

The answer to this relates to my last point above, if you have a peanut allergy, you stay away from peanuts, if you have dwarfism you have to learn to adapt, and if you have an amputated leg or arm, you have to learn to adapt. I mean to expect God to get rid of these issues for you is extremely self-centered and small-minded. Imagine if God did do such things, would we have made the advances in medicine that we have? Doubtful, we would have no reason to. Now of course, I’m not saying that amputees shouldn’t pray to God for strength to get through their predicament, we all need that strength and mercy, but we should ask what we can learn from our mistakes, and from our suffering, how we can gain from it, before we go complaining about it.

I’m sure there are more ways this question is used, but these two cover the main objections drawn from this question. But, what do you think about this issue? Is this question problematic for theists, or is it just simply based upon flawed assumptions?

Interesting vid on evolution;

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm

Talks about the extremely similar chromosomes of humans and chimpanzees, as well as a fusion of two chimp chromosomes in human D.N.A. confirming that we did, in fact, come from apes.

A question of knowledge

According to Justified True Belief or JTB, a proposition is known when someone believes it is true, and it is in fact true. One thing I find odd about this view is that it makes it possible to know something, without actually knowing that you know it. Take the example of someone trying to fix a computer. They believe that the issue is a particular virus, but they aren’t certain. As it turns out, they were correct, and so according to JTB they had knowledge without certainty. Is this possible?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

Opinions?

Its funny how much I hear internet atheists say; opinions are like penises, everyones got one, but we would all appreciate it if you would stop shoving it in our faces. The irony is how many atheists abuse the internet in sharing their opinions, I can understand having your own blogs, websites and forums, but atheist will often comment on Christian videos that have nothing to do with apologetics and mock Christian beliefs. And yes many if not most of said atheists would agree that Christians should stfu about their religious beliefs. This is just one of the major dialectical tensions in the New Atheist movement, they seem to want people to be more cautious about voicing their opinions, but at the same time they call for atheists to ridicule religious beliefs and be more and more outspoken. I’m not sure how these two desires can be reconciled without completely discrediting the N.A. movement. But then again, to a large extent the movement already has been discredited.