Atheism and Amputation - (A new obsession of anti-Christian atheism)

Christian Post ^ | 28 Nov 07 | Peter Rosenberg

[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).

________________________________________________

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

[xzins]

Lack of faith is something that Jesus tried to help with.

A refusal to have faith was something He frowned on.

I like the line from Sample about atheists wanting heaven...they just don’t want God in it. I agree that it is the sin of Lucifer.

These people are worshipping themselves. Those who worship the “created thing rather than the creator” have this odd tendency toward homosexuality. Psychologists even tell us that homosexuality is all about narcissism, arrested development and self-love. In short, worshipping themselves, they came to value nothing more than the pleasure they could give themselves.

The heaven they actually have is just a sensualism of sex, food, materialism, etc. That is the only pleasure they can give themselves.

Dig deep into any committed atheist’s life, and I’m betting you’ll be finding a lot of “touching themselves” as one of you so ably said. That would make Lucifer the ultimate homosexual. Perhaps there’s insight here about why the bible calls this sin an abomination.

[GAB-1955]

I know Benito Mussolini used to demand that God would strike him dead if He existed. It took a while, but hanging upside down at a gas station might have been His answer to a perverted prayer.

Atheists don’t want to acknowledge that any action can be based on love and kindness derived from God, the ultimate Source of goodness. They want to think we’re all amoebas with a sense of overweening delusion.

God sometimes uses other people to carry out His will. I know I have been dragged into doing His will even when I wasn’t in the mood for it.

Thy will be done, Lord. And Thy Will will be done. Sam Harris or not willing.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for the ping to this wonderful thread, dear brother in Christ!

This insistence on evidence for physical regrowth of an appendage is every bit as silly as the insistence by an atheist Freeper long ago that she would believe if God would give her a bag of M&Ms. betty boop might remember that thread.

Seems to me that breath entering bones in Ezekiel 37 - and moreover the very breath of God entering Adam and making him a living soul - and most important of all, our being reborn by the will of God - are far more impressive miracles happening to earth-bound men than a regrown eye, finger, foot or arm.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13

Even so, the leper example is a very good one. The eye miracle above is another as is the severed servant's ear.

I'm also inclined to the story in John 9 - how Jesus used clay in restoring the blind man's sight. The clay must have been substantive as compared to other instances where He restored sight to the blind.

To God be the glory!

[betty boop]

Seems to me that breath entering bones in Ezekiel 37 - and moreover the very breath of God entering Adam and making him a living soul - and most important of all, our being reborn by the will of God - are far more impressive miracles happening to earth-bound men than a regrown eye, finger, foot or arm.

While you and I gladly testify to this every day we draw breath, dearest sister in Christ, Sam Harris could never even begin to see the truth of it. Spirit as a dimension of man does not exist for him at all: In his book, he has simply written it out of existence. To him, religious people are fools, for believing in such superstitious claptrap.

Truly the miracle God performs in faithful souls is the "turning around" and drawing of them into His loving Truth and Life. Some religious people have direct experiences of the "movement of the Holy Spirit" in their lives, a felt sense of the Presence of God "with us."

But the bottom line is, as William James observed, the true test of a genuinely religious person is found, not in the root of their belief, but in the fruit that it brings forth in personal, family, and community life.

As Christians, we are called to live in God's truth and to manifest faith, hope, and love in the world. And we recognize only that justice which is rooted in God's Will and Purpose as suitable to the liberty and dignity of human beings.

What has Sam Harris and his other atheist buddies done for us lately that could possibly compare with that? They seek to destroy faith in God (knowing full well they can't destroy God himself); but what can they give us that could possibly replace it, in the sense of securing the goals and purposes of free human life in a just society? To be "anti-God" ultimately is to be anti-man, anti-liberty, anti-life, and anti-truth as well.

Harris and his buds are fools in the classical and Judeo-Christian senses of that word: The fool is "the man who says in his heart, 'there is no God.'"

God is not mocked. And so I pray the people will not be fooled by the fools.

Thank you so much for your beautiful essay-post, dear A-G!

[xzins]

Sam Harris could never even begin to see the truth of it

That is so true, sister. As some have already commented, even if one were to return from the dead, they still would not believe.

So with this thread, we have responded to the challenge presented by Harris. We have spoken of appendages renewed for lepers by Jesus, of eyes that have regrown at the touch of a Christian mystic, of severed limbs miraculously restored.

The challenge has been answered.

And I've no doubt that it simply won't matter to Harris. I won't detail his probable answer to each, but I'm sure I can imagine it.

The Apostle Peter says that we should be prepared to respond to any man who asks us to give a reason for the hope that we have. It is good to use reason when we give answers. Yet in many ways "the hope I have" is not based on apologetics for the Christian faith. The old hymn far better gets to the hope that I have: "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness."

Atheists have no hope.

Every single one of them is dead and gone within the next 80 years or less. They are dust in the wind. They have withered and faded. They are gone never to be remembered. Their existence is over. Their lives are wiped out. Nothing remains.

No hope. No hope. No hope.

I've just returned from our annual Saturday Christmas VBS. The theme this year is "Room for Jesus."

During the singing class, the children sang Christmas songs sacred and secular. Their faces did glow. Their voices did reach on high. "Away in a manger no crib for a bed....be near me Lord Jesus I ask you to stay close by me forever and love me I pray. Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care and fit us for heaven to live with Thee there."

"Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy for all the people. This day in the city of David is born for you a Savior; He is Christ the Lord."

Room for Jesus.

Hope.

[MHGinTN]

It is becoming more fashionable to dismiss the witness of folks who have seen miracles. Miracles have not ceased to happen, but the acceptance of miracles has definitely taken a turn for the worst. Miracles at Lourdes are documented and reliable, but the wicked respond to those miracles with 'what have you done for someone in my immediate presence.' It is the same spirit of disbelief which dismissed the witness of the Apostles and James and Paul. These men saw the risen Lord. They knew He had died on the cross, the Roman's affirmed it, even going so far as to seal the tomb with the dead body in it and placing a gurad at the tomb.

The Jews believed He was dead, that's why they demanded a seal and the guards, and placed Temple Guards at the tomb with the Romans whom they did not trust. There are recorded witnessings of His resurrection apart from the Romans, the Jews, and the women who went to the tomb on 'Easter' morning. The most impressive has to be James, the brother of Jesus. This man did not believe in Jesus while He was alive, even going so far as to plot to lay hands on Jesus and rescue Him from His 'madness' of His Rabbinical ministry, along with the rest of His family who did not even show up to help entomb Him! BUT, following the resurrection appearance James was converted!

The horrific deaths each of the disciples turned Apostles suffered without recanting their witness of the risen Savior attest to the truth they believed they witnessed and spoke of and a few wrote of. There is no explanation that can dismiss the power of their witnessing of what they saw, no swoon paradigm, no hallucenation explanation, no made up lie that can dismiss the massive witness to the things these people died to keep in remembrance. THEY SUFFERED THESE THINGS FOR US, when you get right down to the nitty gritty of it!

Then of course there is Saul of Tarsus, a man assigned to the task of squelching with malace the growing body of believers in Jesus. And he relished the task due to his Jewish zeal for the truth of the Torah. Yet this man, after seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus is converted and spends the rest of his life suffering a long list of beatings and tortures only to die a martyr for his witnessing of the truth. And the list of martyrs who died during the period from 35 AD to 250 AD for their belief in and trust for Salvation in Jesus Christ is to be ignored also by these wicked minds. As Jesus relayed in the story of Lazarus and the rich man, even WHEN one comes back from the grave, there are wicked minds who will dismiss the truth in order to not only believe a lie but promote the lie for others to stumble over it and suffer the same fate awaiting the wicked doubters and dissemblers.

It is true wickness to reject the ministering of God's Holy Spirit and seek to persuade others to reject Him also, and in rejecting His work there is no other provision left whereby Deliverance from the coming Judgment can be obtained. Men like Christopher Hitchens respond to this message with more wicked assertion, that promoting God is immoral, that warning of the coming wrath upon sin is immoral scare tactics. Men like Hitchens and Harris refuse to believe what God has conveyed of Himself, that He is completely sinless and righteous and that no sin can come into His presence because His righteousness will brun it up instantly. And rejecting God's explaining Whom He is, they construct an alternate scenario which is death just waiting to reach them ... their life and the lives of those they convince to reject God are begun and ended for better or worse in the flesh. Their argument is the hieght of self-righteousness, and is as filth in the sight of God, yet they love it so much they will kill the soul of others to promote their fallen state.

[Zionist Conspirator]

The heaven they actually have is just a sensualism of sex, food, materialism, etc. That is the only pleasure they can give themselves.

Hmmm . . . sounds like some other religion's version of Heaven, doesn't it?

[Zionist Conspirator]

And how true it is that false religions do not bother them at all. In fact, they support them as being examples of culture.

You realize they also celebrate the chr*stianity of the "oppressed," right? (Blacks, Hispanics, Irish Catholics, Armenians, "palestinians," etc.)

[SampleMan]

You realize they also celebrate the chr*stianity of the "oppressed," right? (Blacks, Hispanics, Irish Catholics, Armenians, "palestinians," etc.)

Not really. Only when it is a strange offshoot have I seen them celebrate it.

[metmom]

I know a Christian surgeon who regularly prays for and with his patients. He was regularly coming into church (at least once a month) with testimonies of miraculous healings, verified by scans and tests. At those times, he’d tell the patient that he had to go home because he was healed and there was nothing left to operate on.

Needless to say, it often had a profound impact on the persons spiritual life.

[fatima]

Of all of Padre Pio's healings, one of the most remarkable may have been a blind girl from the Palermo area named Gemma DiGiorgio. (See pictures above, the day of her First Communion.) “I had no pupils in my eyes,” said Gemma in 1971, several years after Padre Pio's death. “I had no sight at all. When I was three months old, my mother took me to a very famous eye doctor in Palermo. He told her that, without pupils, I would never be able to see.” In 1946, when the girl was seven, a nun took it upon herself to write Padre Pio on her behalf, and received a note saying that the girl should be brought to Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotundo. That's exactly what Gemma's grandmother did: brought the girl to see the famous monk, who heard the child's First Confession and gave her her First Communion — then made the Sign of the Cross on her eyes. After the blessing, Gemma was able to see.

[fatima]

> I met Robert:) "His body is reconstructing its anatomy. Is this possible?" It was 1974 and Robert Gutherman was 14 years old. He was sitting in his doctor's office watching as the specialist wrote those words in his chart. The teen-ager didn't quite understand what was happening, but his mother, Beatrice, knew a miracle when she saw one. And the restoration of the three bones in Gutherman's right ear that are necessary for hearing - along with the return of his hearing - are what brought Mother Katharine Drexel one step closer to sainthood. Medical experts called Gutherman's cure medically unexplainable and, in 1988, Pope John Paul II accepted the cure as the first miracle attributed to the intervention of Drexel, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament who died in 1955. http://www.phillyburbs.com/drexel/0827miracles.shtml

[MHGinTN]

Was Gemma’s miraculous healing one of the ones in the appeal for Padre Pio’s sainthood?

[fatima]

I don’t know.

[metmom]

It is becoming more fashionable to dismiss the witness of folks who have seen miracles.

Because it goes back to Abraham's words, that even if the brothers saw someone raised from the dead, they still wouldn't believe.

Belief is never a matter of *can't*; but *won't*.

[metmom]

This psychotic compulsion to be "more moral than G-d" can only come from their pathological hatred of Him.

It is an obsession.

I can't count the number of FReepers I've seen post about how much more moral they are than any number of religious people you can put in one group. As if that's proof that atheism is somehow superior to faith.

What they fail to consider is that they're riding the coattails of a very strong Judeo-Christian ethic and still enjoying the benefits of it.

Some decades down the road when that ceases to be the case, we'll see what atheism without Christian influence can produce. Oh, wait a minute,... something about China just popped into my head, and Pol Pot, and Lenin, and Stalin, and.....

[Billthedrill]

I'm not real sure why the restoration of a severed limb does not qualify, but he insists that a "healing" God would also be able to "grow" a new limb.

LOL! I've never found it particularly constructive to attempt to order God around. "Hey, God! You better do this or that or...or...or I WON'T ADMIT YOU EXIST!" I'm guessing He'd get a chuckle out of that one. Heck, I get a chuckle out of it.

Let's say a billion people pray and somebody's leg does grow back. Does that prove God exists or that a billion people praying can grow a leg back? I'm guessing these folks haven't thought this one through. Moreover, limb regeneration is not that far outside of human technology. When we solve it, does it prove that we're God or that we've managed to use the brains He gave us?

I'm probably asking the wrong people here... ;-)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your beautiful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

Truly the miracle God performs in faithful souls is the "turning around" and drawing of them into His loving Truth and Life. Some religious people have direct experiences of the "movement of the Holy Spirit" in their lives, a felt sense of the Presence of God "with us."

So very true. And it is as God wills it to be:

Where [is] the wise? where [is] the scribe? where [is] the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - I Cor 1:20-25

Truly, the fool is the one who denies that God is. The greater fool is the one who is anti-God. Such a man, as you say, is anti-man, anti-liberty, anti-life, and anti-truth. He is destructive.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights and testimony, dear brother in Christ!

Atheists have no hope.

Indeed. The death of an atheist is a horribly sad occasion because (to paraphrase Will Mummy in "Unforgiven") he loses everything he has or ever might have had.

Maranatha, Jesus!!!

[xzins]

The powerful name of Jesus overcomes all skeptics.

Even though this thread answers the objections, and your posts contribute to that answer, they will reject the answers.

Atheism is not about an objective search for truth.

It is about a subjective rejection of truth no matter what evidence is presented. They would begin with the premise that these must be rejected — faith in their own doctrine, wouldn’t you say...