While this subject borders on the macabre, I believe that taking an unflinching look at natural extremes can provide us with important insights into how God, or nature, works.
Such unique traits are fascinating because, on the one hand, we see the miracle of creation, but on the other hand, we see that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Something unexpected has happened, and nature seems unprepared to handle it. And this leads us to ask some interesting questions about the existence of the individual soul, and questions about who, or what, is behind the formation of these bodies.
Dicephalic Parapagus Twins
Let’s start with the inspirational twins Abby and Brittany Helsen. While in the womb, God or nature knitted them together in an amazing patchwork of organs and bones. The way these twins are joined, it smacks of design, almost as if someone carefully crafted their two bodies so that they could continue to operate in this way.
But on the other hand, 75% of conjoined twins fail to survive. So if there is such a craftsman, he’s certainly not very good at designing viable conjoined twins.
From a spiritual standpoint, we look at Abby and Brittany and see two separate spirits, as they clearly both have unique thoughts and personalities. So, as strange as it is to say this, if the spirit exists, it seems to reside inside one’s head. But if this is true… can two spirits share one brain?
Craniofacial Duplication (Diprosopus)
- Figure 1
According to a 2002 article in the medical journal Radiology, “The rarest type of conjoined twins… is diprosopus, where a child is born with two faces on one head.”
Diprosopus (which kinda sounds like a dinosaur) may not actually be a conjoined twin at all, but a duplication of the face caused by an excess of the (I kid you not) Sonic Hedgehog protein.
In the case of Figure 1, it was found that some of the brain’s frontal lobes were also duplicated. But having these extra brain bits didn’t seem to translate to having an extra soul or dual personalities.
Figure 2
Indian-born baby Lali (Figure 2) has an even more pronounced second face. She too likely has the same (if not more) duplication of brain matter. But how much brain matter can be duplicated before we’re asking “Is this one person with two faces, or two people sharing one brain?” or “Did God insert one soul or two?”
My guess is that any extra brain matter would become integrated into one singular sense of self. This is hinted at by the fact that baby Lali blinks all four of her eyes simultaneously.
Figure 3
More disturbing is when there is a lack of the Sonic Hedgehog protein, which can cause facial features to lack separation, sometimes resulting in a cyclops (Figure 3).
If there is a designer, why his he allowing such things to happen? Is it necessary to have a certain number of two-headed, two-faced, cyclops babies? Are evil forces at play? Or does nature just sometimes make mistakes?
Synecephalus
Figure 4
Synecephalus (Figure 4) is a very rare type of conjoined twin where the twins share a head and face, but have four ears and two bodies. In other words, there’s little question that these are twins and not one person with duplicate features.
Again, how would God handle the soul in this case? Would He insert one soul knowing that the two minds would become one? Or does He insert two souls, which might result in a two senses of self? Or does He not even bother, knowing that this project is doomed to fail? (And if it is doomed, why didn’t He end it sooner? Or not create it at all?)
What I find particularly interesting about Figure 4 is how both rib cages come together. These cells continued to assemble themselves, assuming they were in the correct location. While nature may not have noticed that something had gone wrong, an intelligent designer should have, and should’ve terminated the project much earlier.
Craniopagus
Between these extremes are varying levels of craniopagus, where two twins are conjoined at the head. This type of conjoined twin is especially noteworthy because it can result in a partially shared brain.
Take the case of Canadian twins Tatiana and Krista Hogan (Figure 5). These adorable twins, born in 2006, have been the subject of several news stories and documentaries. As they learn to speak, they’re teaching us more about what it means to share part of a brain.
Figure 5
It’s said that Tatiana and Krista share a thalamus, which connects their brain stems, and it appears this allows them to share some brain signals. They have shown many signs of being able to pick up on the other’s sensory input, and they often do things in unison. But each also has her own independent personality.
If these two girls share overlapping brains, do they also share a percentage of a soul? If they each shared half a brain, would they have 1 soul, 1.5 souls or two?
Parasitic Twins
Lastly, and perhaps most disturbing, are parasitic twins.
Unlike conjoined twins, a parasitic twin ceases development during gestation and becomes a partially developed vestigial formation upon the body of the other twin.
Parasitic twins come in random shapes and sizes, and some even become completely entombed inside their twin. The cells of these parasitic twins find a way to survive, even where they were never intended.
One type of parasitic twin is craniopagus parasiticus, where a parasitic head of a twin is attached to the head of another twin.
In craniopagus parasiticus, God or nature doesn’t even bother to give a body to the poor parasitic head, so it has no chance of surviving on its own. Even if the head is conscious, doctors must remove it in order to give the more developed twin any chance at a normal life.
From a spiritual perspective, one wonders if God gives parasitic heads a soul, and why He would allow such a cruel thing to happen to these children and their parents. Why would God force us to kill an infant, so that its twin may survive?
From a naturalist perspective, I can see how a developing parasitical twin might think its needs are already being met, and fail to produce a second body.
The other 75%
But most of the above photos are of survivors. Few of us ever see pictures of the majority of conjoined twin that don’t survive.
Figure 6
Take, for example, the conjoined twins in Figure 6. In this case, the one twin died because its brother was growing directly out of his face, in the form of a garbled mess.
How could a good God knit together something like this in a mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13)? Can God even put a soul into a mangled mess without a head? Why allow it if He can’t possibly use it? Or are we just looking at a tragic mistake of unguided nature?
Who, or what, forms our bodies?
There’s no question that life is complex. I find it miraculous that a few cells can multiply and grow into such complex organisms, replete with close-knit bones, organs, muscles, nerves, etc. How does each cell know where to go and what to become? There seems to be some central command orchestrating the entire project. But where is this oversight when it comes to conjoined twins?
These bizarre mergers do not appear to be intentionally malicious. If Satan is behind them, why not just kill them instead of conjoining them? Why combine them in random ways? With random amounts of success and failure?
Nor do these mergers speak to the work of a benevolent God, who is creating something new and magnificent. If God forms them in the womb, why does He fail so badly (Jeremiah 1:5)?
Rather, these mergers appear undirected and unintentional, with each cell going about its own business, trying to integrate itself within the whole. When a cell runs up against something unexpected, like a twin, it latches on and says “Eh, close enough.”
What might we expect if God forms our bodies?
If we are being intelligently designed, we might expect the designer to look upon twins about to conjoin and say “No, no, no, that’s all wrong!” Or at least provide adequate programming so that “Cell A” knows never to merge with “Cell B.”
If God exists, it appears as if He not interfering with the natural world He created. But if God is still in charge of creating new souls and inserting them into babies, He must remain somewhat involved. How can He command the soul-creation process, yet not dictate that twins should always remain separate?
It’s difficult to imagine that God is currently up in Heaven bemoaning this situation to Jesus…
“What’s wrong, God?” asks Jesus. “Oh, nothing, I just had to insert some new souls into a freakish parasitic twin.” “Did you make it appear completely random?” “Yes, of course, we can’t have everyone down there thinking these mistakes are intentional. Still… it makes me so very sad because I love them so much.” “Well… you are an all-powerful God, can’t you just stop?” SMACK! God slaps Jesus to the ground. “See what you made me do!? Stop questioning my judgement! Why must everything I love force me to punish it so badly? My hands are tied, Jesus
. My ‘perfect’ creation has listened to the talking snake, leaving me no choice but to conjoin the occasional twin.” “Yes, I suppose,” says Jesus, “But must you also conjoin animals as well?” SMACK! “Yes!” says God, “It’s all part of my plan to save mankind! It’s all necessary.”
What might we expect if nature forms our bodies?
If only nature is in control, then…
- The cells are calling all the shots, for better or for worse.
- We might expect a high failure rate.
- We might expect oddities like conjoined twins, because nature was never programmed to forbid them.
- When cells do make mistakes, we might expect them to continue forging ahead, because they don’t understand that what they’re making is doomed to fail.
The naturalist in me sees conjoined twins as nature’s unfortunate experiments. She may fail 75% of the time, but 25% of the time she gets lucky, and actually makes something fit enough to survive.
This is similar to the evolutionary process, though these mistakes are on a genetic level. When mistakes turn out to be advantageous, the organism survives and replicates. If the mutation is a disadvantage, the organism is wiped from existence. It’s just a matter of probability — create enough random mutations, and eventually you stumble upon something that works.
What nature really has going in her favor is that she only keeps her winners. As the winners continue to interbreed, they all share in all their new-found strengths.
Conclusion
If we say the soul is evidenced by one’s sense of self, then how can two twins share a sense of self? Are they sharing a soul, or are they simply sharing part of an organ that is responsible for forming the sense of self?
As for how we are formed, I would assume that any benevolent OR malevolent creator would show signs of intent, not randomness and failure. If God intends to insert a soul into a creature He loves, He should take measures to ensure it doesn’t succumb to stupid mistakes, and He certainly shouldn’t continue building something that’s destined to fail.
But nature has no intentions, she reacts only to physical and chemical reactions, which sometimes results in randomness and failure. She doesn’t create our bodies because she cares for us, and she doesn’t take measures to make sure we won’t succumb to stupid mistakes. She plods along in ignorance, oblivious to her failures. What works, works, and what doesn’t, doesn’t.
While God may have made us perfect, what we observe today is nature making random mistakes and experimenting. We do not observe God creating new lifeforms from scratch, or showing other clear signs of intent. Conjoined twins appear to be the result of such natural and random mistakes, and not an intentional design choice.
Once again you hit the spot. It is too hard to klick the “like” button on a post, that makes one feel so uneasy. Yet, your point is sound and far too rarely asked. There is nothing to add, but I would really like to hear a believer try to answer thisone. It is not a matter of “gotcha”, but more like a clear indicator on how much faith is based on what people would want to believe, in retrospect to what actually is and happens.
If there after all is a god, this post just goes to show that for a responsible entity said god has given far too much power to the evil counterpart. Wich, by-the-way, leads to a nother interresting question, you might have thought or not to ask later. If there is just one god, what is the devil? It has all the atributes of many gods in many religions. It seems to have Jesus by the balls in this world, so it actually is allowed by the supreme creator to weild power second only to god, and sometimes even set the rules of the game for the creator to play in. It is a god in all respects exept that it is not the supreme creator. Why was the Devil necessary, or does the existance and the obvious amount of power it weilds prove, that even though god shows some form of benevolence towards man, humanity in general is seen by these entities simply as playthings?
Ya, it’s certainly sometimes difficult to distinguish where God ends and Satan begins. For example, does God design all the helpful and neutral bacterial, and allow Satan to design all the bad bacteria? And how much is God or Satan in charge of fetal development? In some places in the Bible, God even says He creates all good and evil, so maybe it’s just all God’s doing. But if so, why do we need Satan?
Satan’s a scapegoat in the Christian religion. “God” couldn’t be considered ‘just’ and ‘kind’ if he did this stuff, himself. It’s one of the reasons religion doesn’t make sense.
as an atheist I never even stopped to think about how these things impact on religious thinking. And usually I don’t read articles like this because in the end they often don’t actually look at the facts and just go on about “mysterious ways” and “faith” or something.
but no, you really go at it. In fact I had a hard time believing you’re christian since your thinking is so analytical and you actually bemoan believing in something that means accepting an ancient hypothesis without evidence.. which.. to me is kinda the whole deal with religion in the first place.
So *then* I looked up your info page
It remind me of Julia Sweeneys “Letting go of God” as she also started doubting her faith via reading the bible. (it’s also very funny, I recommend it if you haven’t heard it, I think you can find bits of it on youtube) It seems some people are just so deeply thoughtful and logical that once they start analyzing the facts available to them there’s no stopping.
Of course.. there is no way to disprove the existence of a god who created evolution but then didn’t touch the process further.. and usually that’s the argument that’s hard to out-do; “hey you can’t disprove it!” But I never thought of the problem of shared brain matter and soul insertion and what that would say about a god who created that process or refused to intervene to stop it even when it goes wrong.
also, I loved the conversation between God and Jesus
Thanks, it’s always nice to know what people think who read this stuff.
I try not to take sides, but it’s difficult. While I’d love to examine these questions and find that God is there lurking behind everything, I’m doubtful that it will ever happen. If God is real, He certainly keeps Himself well hidden. But there’s always a part of me that hopes to turn over a rock somewhere and find God was there the whole time.
I don’t think it’s possible to ever disprove God, I think most ex-Christians just come to the conclusion that the hypothesis is so ridiculous as to be absurd and highly unlikely.
I HAVE seen Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God.” At first, I thought her acting style was a little odd, but by the end she had me laughing and crying. I thought “Here’s someone who REALLY gets what this journey is like.” The movie God on Trial is also a good one.
You don’t have the full story on these things, you don’t know how everyone in these situations were effected to decide the necessity, if you will, of their existence. If you’d ever told me that two brothers connected in Siam would become rich & famous while educating the entire world through a mutation…I might’ve been a tad skeptical, yet it’s history. It is God who would know the sorting of their souls, it would not be for me to willy-nilly decide wether there are 1, 2, or 1.5 souls (although I see no problem with any option). Even the worst mutation up there, has caused you to ponder, and has caused me to reply — that’s just two tiny reactions; the ripples in the pond are great.
And no, that is not the conclusion most of us come to, including those of us with a great interest in science and who’ve spent an equal amount of pondering on faith. We do however, spent a lot of time rubbing our temples, while watching a metaphoric conjoined twin fight itself.
To me, the problem of number of “souls” is a moral, ethical problem more than a religious one. Take Ismaal Maged, the saddest story I have ever heard. A sentient head and little more, attached to her twin. Was removing Ismaal murder? How not? Was murder justified? How so? Etc.
On one hand you use the nature of God and the Bible to make your arguments, but then you say this…
“As a Christian, I would say that God originally created us with perfect bodies, but since we disobeyed Him, He had no choice but to delete the reproductive code that prevents the occasional conjoined twin. Unfortunately, believing this means accepting an ancient hypothesis without evidence, as there is no proof that we were once perfect.”
Which then automatically excludes someone from using the Bible to refute your points. You can’t have it both ways. You cannot use the Bible and God to create an argument, and then say that there’s no proof of God, or the Bible so therefore you can’t use it to refute my argument.
That’s circular reasoning, and makes no sense. Good luck with that.
That is not circular reasoning. Circular reasoning would be to say something like:
There is a god and we know this because some guys in the antiquity said so. The scriptures say god is a good guy and we know this because some guys in the antiquity said so. We know the guys in the antiquity were not just making this all up, because it says so in the scriptures they wrote. You see a god that is a good guy would have not lied to them.
The question here is that, if that actual circular reasoning, however unreasonable, is true, why did such a good guy as god alledgedly is, allow the gene that causes conjoined twins to exist? You see that is not circular reasoning, it is a straight forward question.
Thanks Chris and rautakyy.
Ya, I was having a little difficulty seeing where I was being circular, too. I’d like to correct that logical fallacy if I’ve committed it.
One is certainly welcome to use the Bible to refute any points, but the Bible by itself cannot be allowed to be an exclusive source of evidence, which would be circular reasoning. If we believed that ALL holy books were true because they ALL said they were true, then we’d quickly realize the problem with our circular reasoning. Instead, we are forced to look outside these books to try and confirm their claims. (And, of course, they all claim to have evidence, but that’s another story.)
But just to clarify, what I was implying here was that the assertion that we were all once perfect is an unfalsifiable claim. It MAY actually be true, but we’ll never know, because unfalsifiable claims get us nowhere. Even if we were to examine all the DNA from past hominids and find no clues of once-perfect DNA, the Christian could STILL claim “Adam and Eve had perfect DNA until they left the garden, so there is no evidence.” And frankly, a great many religious defenses end up relying on unfalsifiable claims. Such claims are safe for religion because they cannot be easily disproved, but they also don’t provide any positive evidence.
Interestingly, many animals are born conjoined. So we’re left to reason that either: 1) God is a poor designer, 2) God is a good designer, but cursed all people and animals in the exact same way, or 3) we are all flawed because we all evolved from the same genetically flawed common ancestor.
How about this… Instead of arguing about the random individual questions that could be dreamt up for an eternity about things we don’t understand, why don’t you think about some of the questions pertaining to what YOU believe, and DEFEND them, as opposed to attacking the beliefs of others.
For instance, let’s start with this one…
Take Evolution for instance… IF “evolution” is true, just what did dinosaurs eat?
One way researchers are finding out is by studying coprolites, or fossilized dinosaur dung. And as it turns out, some dinosaurs ate rice plants. But if flowering plants like rice did not evolve until millions of years after dinosaurs lived—as evolution maintains—how could dinosaurs have eaten them?
Some coprolites contain phytoliths, which are uniquely shaped microscopic crystals manufactured by various plant tissues. Most phytoliths are made of silicon dioxide, the same chemical that comprises sand. Scientists examining these tiny grains can often discern from which plant they came.
For example, in 2005, researchers found phytoliths from grass, palm trees, conifers, and other flowering plants in (probably sauropod) dinosaur coprolites from India.1 “It was very unexpected….We will have to rewrite our understanding of its evolution….We may have to add grass to the dioramas of dinosaurs we see in museums,” palaeobotanist Caroline Strömberg told Nature News at the time.2
Recently, Strömberg and two of her co-authors from the 2005 study described coprolite-encased phytoliths that are so similar to those made by certain modern rice plants that those found in dinosaur rocks “can be assigned to the rice tribe, Oryzeae, of grass subfamily Ehrhartoideae.”3 They collected these samples from the same Indian rock layers, the Lameta Formation, that contained their 2005 finds.
This find joins others that have shown that rice, grass, palm trees, and conifers from dinosaur rocks were essentially the same as their living counterparts. It’s as though millions of years of plant evolution never occurred.
The Lameta formation includes sedimentary layers interbedded with volcanic rock layers. It is huge, covering a large area of India.4 The Flood described in the book of Genesis is the best explanation for this scale of upheaval, showing that the fossils found there resulted from the Flood.
Thus, these coprolites show that rice plants existed before the Flood. Either rice had diversified from an originally created grass that was common to many other grasses, like wheat and bamboo, or God created rice grasses separately from other grass kinds. Studies show that rice grasses do not hybridize with other grasses.5 These dinosaur-eaten phytoliths add weight to the idea that rice was a distinct creation from the beginning.
According to Scripture, God created all the grasses, plants, and grazing mammals, along with any grazing dinosaurs like sauropods, by the sixth day of the creation week. As far as what the fossils have shown, Scripture is right.
Or this for instance…
The world’s population will reach seven billion on October 31, 2011, according to the United Nations, and media outlets are heralding the issue of overcrowding on the planet. How long did it take for this many humans to be born?
The evolutionary version of human population growth presents a fantastic scenario to answer that question. In this imaginary long-ages history, the population did not grow at all for millions of years before suddenly taking off only a few thousand years ago. In the July 29, 2011, issue of Science, demographic anthropology expert Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel wrote:
After the members of the genus Homo had been living as foragers for at least 2.4 million years, agriculture began to emerge in seven or eight regions across the world, almost simultaneously at the beginning of the Holocene.1
Supposedly, the advent of agriculture enabled population growth at that time. But according to the Bible and historical records, there was never a time when humans weren’t engaged in agriculture.
The problem is that in this projected timeline, people (“genus Homo”) must have had virtually no population growth “for at least 2.4 million years.” Bocquet-Appel wrote, “The world’s population on the eve of the emergence of agriculture is estimated to have been 6 million individuals.”1 Thus, the first human couple that supposedly evolved from ape-like ancestors would have had only 6 million descendants after 2.4 million years. This requires a population growth rate of about 0.000000009—essentially zero. Virtually no growth for 2.4 million years?
In contrast, the average historically observed growth rate has been at least 0.4 percent, at times spiking to above two percent. Even a “pre-industrial farming population” growth rate of 0.1 percent per year—Bocquet-Appel’s number—would have yielded today’s seven billion people in only 7,062 years.1 As the late Dr. Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research, asked, “How could it be that the planet only now is experiencing a population crisis—why not several hundred thousand years ago, soon after man first appeared on earth?”2
To try and explain this slow growth, Bocquet-Appel stated, “An increase in the birth rate was closely followed in time by an increase in mortality.” And the cause of all this death was “infectious diseases” such as “Rotavirus and Coronavirus.”1
But this only invokes more unlikely events. How could such diseases maintain a near zero balance of birth and death rates for so long without randomly killing the whole population at some point? And why would these diseases suddenly lose their population-reducing effect after so many supposed eons? Plainly, the infectious disease idea, along with unrealistically slow growth rates, are ad hoc add-ons that prop up long-age thinking.
But the current world population aligns completely with biblical history, with no added stories. Using census records from the last 400 years and a bit of algebra, and assuming a natural logarithmic growth, eight Flood survivors 4,500 years ago produce 7 billion people almost exactly.3 This is powerful evidence that biblical history is accurate, and man-made evolutionary history is not.
Or this…
There is less available energy today then there was yesterday.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system, such as the universe, that is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. The Third Law of Thermodynamics states that as the temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant.
Fortunately for us, the temperature of the universe is not zero. It is moving that way each moment, but it is not there yet.
At some prior time, all the energy in the universe was available. Energy must have been created at some finite time in the past; otherwise we would have died long ago.
The logical conclusion is that an infinite Creator, or an intelligent being made the universe a finite time ago.
And yet more… Oh, there’s a LOT more.. I could go well over 500 questions regarding your beliefs, trust me. If an intelligent being didn’t create the universe, then the only alternative is “evolution”. It takes as much faith, if not more, then it does to believe the “God created the earth” story.
Here’s more…
The Holy Land is a region where earthquakes occur frequently. By one means or another, big earthquakes have been documented in the Holy Land for a period exceeding 4,000 years.1 Many are known from history and literature, especially the Bible. Holy Land earthquakes are also evidenced from archaeological excavations. No other region of the earth has such a long and well-documented chronology of big earthquakes.
Recently, geologists have investigated the 4,000-year chronology of earthquake disturbances within the uppermost 19 feet of laminated sediment of the Dead Sea.2 Hypersaline waters preserve seasonally laminated sediment because organisms cannot live or burrow in the bed of the lake. As a result, only a nearby earthquake (or very large distant earthquake) can homogenize the lake’s uppermost sediment layers, producing a “mixed layer” devoid of laminations.3 A sketch of a sediment core from the west side of the Dead Sea appears in Figure 1. The sketch shows the depth of the “mixed layers” within the laminated sediment sequence.4 Two deeper mixed layers in the Dead Sea are datable from historical, archaeological, and geological associations with faulting—the earthquakes of 31 B.C. (the Qumran earthquake) and 750 B.C. (Amos’ earthquake). Other earthquakes are represented in the Dead Sea sediment core with dates approximated by assuming a steady rate of sedimentation.
Consider 17 of the most important earthquakes that relate to the Bible. The earthquakes are listed in chronological order. We begin with creation and go through to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. Day Three of Creation Week
On the third day of the creation week, the waters of the earth were collected into the oceanic basins as continents appeared (Genesis 1:9-10). Before Day Three, the waters had been over the whole earth. Continents seem to have been uplifted and the ocean floor was depressed during a great faulting process that established the “foundations of the earth.” We are told that angels saw and praised the omnipotent God as the earth-shaking process occurred (Job 38:4-7; Psalm 148:1-6; possibly Psalm 104:5-6). Today, the earth’s continental crust (41 percent of the earth’s surface, including the continental shelves) has an average elevation of 2,000 feet above sea level, whereas the oceanic crust (59 percent of the earth’s surface, excluding the continental shelves) has an average elevation of 13,000 feet below sea level. Can anyone properly comprehend the colossal upheaval that formed continental crust on Day Three? Angels must have watched in awe!
2. Noah’s Flood
The year-long, global Flood in the days of Noah was the greatest sedimentary and tectonic event in the history of our planet since creation (see Genesis 6-9). One of the primary physical causes of this great judgment was the “fountains of the great deep,” all of which were “broken up” on a single day (Genesis 7:11). The verb for “broken up” (Hebrew baqa) means to split or cleave and indicates the faulting process (Numbers 16:31; Psalm 78:15; Isaiah 48:21; Micah 1:4; Zechariah 14:4). The enormous upheaval (probably associated with faulting of seafloor springs) unleashed a year-long global flood. God’s purpose was to begin the human race again from the family of Noah.
3. Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
A disaster called an “overthrow” was delivered in about 2050 B.C. on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-28). That event was so spectacular, swift, and complete that it became proverbial for the severity of judgment that God’s righteous anger could deliver.5 Jesus spoke “woes” exceeding those spoken against Sodom and Gomorrah on Galilean cities that rejected His teaching (Matthew 10:15; 11:23-24; Luke 10:12). The swiftness of Sodom’s judgment was used by Jesus to illustrate how sudden His return will be (Luke 17:28-30).
Of the five “cities of the plain” (Genesis 13:12; 14:8), only Zoar is described as surviving the catastrophe. Zoar is the site to which Lot and his family fled with the approval of the angels (Genesis 19:20-23). As a city, it flourished through the time of Moses and the kings of Israel, even being described as a city of the region of Moab by the prophets.6 Arab historians in the Middle Ages refer to Zoar and identify the city as modern Safi southeast of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Because Lot and his family made the journey by foot in just a few hours (Genesis 19:15, 23), Sodom must be less than about 20 miles from Zoar (modern Safi). Two Early Bronze Age archaeological sites southeast of the Dead Sea (Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira) reveal evidence of catastrophic collapse and burning along the eastern border fault of the Dead Sea Transform Fault. These two sites are likely the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah.7 A thick disturbed zone within the Dead Sea sediment core, assignable to the Sodom and Gomorrah event, occurs at a depth of about 18.5 feet.
4. Moses on Sinai
Before God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and gave the Ten Commandments, a great shaking of the mountain occurred (Exodus 19:18). No doubt the earthquake prepared both Moses and Israel for the important truths the Lord was going to communicate. This awesome shaking event continues to be remembered in the New Testament as the context for God’s delivery of His Law (Hebrews 12:18-21).
5. Korah’s Rebellion in the Wilderness
A crisis of leadership developed among the children of Israel in the wilderness (Numbers 16:1-40). Korah and all his men were killed and their possessions taken, as the land on which they were camped split apart and closed back upon them (Numbers 16:31-33). God destroyed them because they rebelled against Him.
6. The Fall of Jericho
The wall of the fortified city of Jericho collapsed suddenly after the Israelites marched around the city seven times (Joshua 6). The biblical account does not specifically mention an earthquake, but the earth would have been shaken by the wall’s collapse. Archaeological excavations at Jericho confirm that the massive wall made of mud bricks did collapse at the time of the conquest, about 1400 B.C. The site of the ancient city of Jericho sits directly on top of a very large fault associated with the Jordan Rift Valley. Surprisingly, the Dead Sea sediment core has a distinctive mixed sediment layer at a depth of 15.1 feet that is evidence of a big earthquake at about 1400 B.C.
7. Philistine Camp near Geba
Israel conquered the Philistines near Geba after an earthquake occurred in their camp (1 Samuel 14:15). Jonathan and his armor bearer were separated from their army and would otherwise have been killed by the Philistines. Is this event at 1010 B.C. seen in the thinner “mixed layer” within the Dead Sea sediment core at a depth of 13.5 feet?
8. Elijah on Mount Horeb
God spoke to Elijah at Mount Sinai (Horeb) as He did before to Moses after the occurrence of an earthquake (1 Kings 19:11). Elijah, who had been hiding in a cave, realized that the Lord does not need to use a mighty earthquake to speak, but can, in His meekness, reveal Himself simply in a “still, small voice.”
9. Amos’ Earthquake of 750 B.C.
The prophet Amos predicted the “Day of the Lord” (Amos 5:18-20) and a great earthquake (1:1; 2:13; 3:14-15; 6:11; 8:8; 9:1, 5). When the magnitude 8.2 earthquake occurred two years later in 750 B.C., Amos was propelled to notoriety as the earliest writing prophet at the time of the explosive emergence in Israel of writing prophets. Other prophets that lived through the big earthquake wrote about “the Day of the Lord” and earthquakes (Isaiah 2:10-21; 5:25; Micah 1:3-6). Archaeological excavations at numerous Iron Age cities show earthquake destruction debris at layers assigned to the middle of the eighth century B.C.8 Dead Sea sediment cores indicate a persistent, two-inch-thick earthquake-disturbed layer at a depth of about 12 feet in the floor of the lake. Analysis of the damage regionally indicates Richter magnitude 8.2 with the epicenter in Lebanon. That makes Amos’ earthquake the largest yet documented in the Holy Land in the last 4,000 years.
10. Qumran Earthquake of 31 B.C.
About sixty years before the ministry of Christ, a small group of Levites copied Scripture onto scrolls at the small village of Qumran in the desert northwest of the Dead Sea. In 31 B.C., a large earthquake occurred along the Jericho Fault on the western side of the Dead Sea. The earthquake dried up Qumran’s main spring and severely cracked the architecture. Spectacular evidence of the earthquake is seen at recent excavations at Qumran in cracked stair steps within the ritual baths. Grooved fault surfaces (what geologists call “slickensides”) and ground rupture within lake sediment can be observed just south of Qumran. Josephus wrote of the regional devastation from the earthquake, and he said 30,000 men perished.9 The survivors buried the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran lay abandoned after the earthquake. The Bible, of course, is completely silent concerning this earthquake and other events during the intertestamental period. No doubt, everyone in New Testament times knew of ancestors killed in that event.
11. The Crucifixion in Jerusalem, April 3, 33 A.D.
After three hours of darkness at midday on April 3, 33 A.D., the Lord Jesus exclaimed the words “It is finished!” as He died on the cross. Immediately, the curtain of the sanctuary of the temple was torn, a great earthquake occurred, rocks were broken, and many dead saints were resurrected from their tombs (Matthew 27:51-54). The earthquake upon the death of Christ called attention to the great salvation that had been accomplished that day on the cross. The barrier between God and man was not removed by the earthquake tearing the Temple’s veil, but by His Son being offered as “the Lamb of God” for the sin of the world. The centurion and his soldiers, who were given the task of crucifying the Lord Jesus, saw the sky grow dark at noon, followed by the earthquake as Christ died at 3:00 p.m. They recognized that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.
An outcrop of laminated Dead Sea sediment can be seen at Wadi Ze’elim above the southwestern shore of the modern Dead Sea near the fortress of Masada. In this sediment outcrop is a distinctive one-foot thick “mixed layer” of sediment that is tied strongly to the Qumran earthquake’s onshore ground ruptures of 31 B.C. (see Figure 2).10 Thirteen inches above the 31 B.C. event bed is another distinctive “mixed layer” less than one inch thick. The sedimentation rate puts this second earthquake about 65 years after the 31 B.C. earthquake. It seems that the crucifixion earthquake of 33 A.D. was magnitude 5.5, leaving direct physical evidence in a thin layer of disturbed sediment from the Dead Sea.
12. The Resurrection in Jerusalem, April 5, 33 A.D.
No human agency rolled away the stone blocking the opening of our Lord’s tomb (Matthew 28:2). It was the earthquake in the presence of the angel. God’s sovereign action was obvious in both the earthquake and in our Lord’s resurrection. The purpose of the stone being rolled away was not to permit the resurrected body of Jesus to exit. The purpose was to allow people to see that the tomb was empty!
13. Jerusalem Prayer Meeting, Summer 33 A.D.
Following the day of Pentecost, the assembled church in Jerusalem received the report of threats and persecution from the Jewish leaders. That compelled them to pray that the outreach of His servants and the spread of the Gospel would continue. After the prayer, the place where they were gathered was shaken by an earthquake as believers spoke boldly (Acts 4:31).
14. The Prison at Philippi
An earthquake not only released Paul and Silas from the Philippi prison (Acts 16:26), but it authenticated their testimony. The jailer who witnessed the event recognized the Lord’s hand and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. That earthquake draws our attention to how God was using His apostles to minister in the early days of the church.
15. Today’s Earthquakes
When Jesus was asked by His disciples what the sign of His coming would be, He talked of wars, famine, epidemic disease, and earthquakes. Jesus said, “These are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8; Mark 13:8; cf. Luke 21:10-11). The word “sorrows” is the Greek word meaning “birth pangs.”11 Seismograph analysis reveals that the frequency and energy of large earthquakes was not constant throughout the twentieth century. According to a popular urban legend, big earthquakes have been increasing in both frequency and energy. This legend is not supported by the seismograph data.12 There appears to be about a 30-year cycle of increasing and decreasing earthquake frequency, suggesting the “beginning of birth pangs” theme. Furthermore, seismographs demonstrate that earthquakes are indeed distributed throughout the globe (the “divers places” as described by Jesus in Matthew 24:7 and Mark 13:8).
16. Gog’s Future Earthquake in Israel
Ezekiel 38 and 39 describe a northern confederacy of nations, commanded by a leader called Gog, that invades the land of Israel. A supernaturally directed natural disaster of colossal scale will occur (earthquake, slope failure, mountains overturned, dwellings collapse, rain of hailstones, rain of burning sulfur, and plague). This colossal disaster will result in the destruction of the invading armies (38:18-23), in God’s greatness and holiness being seen in the sight of the nations (38:23), and in the national conversion of Israel back to her sovereign Lord (39:25-29). Gog’s earthquake occurs after Israel has been dwelling in the land in perceived “safety” (38:8; 39:26) upon the northern confederacy’s unexpected invasion, whereas “Messiah’s earthquake” (Revelation 16:16-20) occurs after Israel has been afflicted with judgments at the site where “the kings of the earth and of the whole world” are gathered for battle (Revelation 16:14, 16).
17. Messiah’s Earthquake in the Future
The apostle John wrote of a “great earthquake” in the future associated with the opening of the “sixth seal” (Revelation 6:12). This earthquake will be the precursor to the greatest earthquake since men have been on the earth. This greatest earthquake will occur in association with the “seventh bowl” at a place called Armageddon (Revelation 16:16-20). This future “Armageddon earthquake” or “Messiah’s earthquake” will be associated with the return of Christ to Jerusalem (Acts 1:9-11; Zechariah 14:1-11) and is described as inflicting severe topographic and geologic changes on a global scale. Scripture appears to look forward to the monumental changes associated with this future earthquake (e.g., Psalm 46). After God’s voice shakes the earth mightily (Haggai 2:6, 7, 21, 22; Hebrews 12:26) and fully accomplishes these extraordinary geologic changes, His saints will receive a “kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:27-29).
Conclusion
A review of the 17 earthquakes listed above shows that virtually the entire story of the Bible can be summarized by its association with earthquakes. Biblical events emphasized by earthquakes are creation, Noah’s Flood, separation of Abraham and Lot from judgment of the wicked cities, the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, authentication of the leadership of Moses, God’s provision in the conquest of Canaan, vindication of the messages of Hebrew prophets, the crucifixion of our Lord in Jerusalem, the resurrection of our Lord, the ministry of the apostles and the church, the modern “birth pangs” sign of the end times, the national conversion of Israel, and the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. History, archaeology, and geology appear to confirm independently many earthquakes mentioned in the Bible.
Earthquakes have been used distinctively by God to highlight some of the most important events of the Bible. The three main purposes for biblical earthquakes are judgment, deliverance, and communication. The lesson is obvious—God does not do anything really big without emphasizing it with an earthquake! In our fast-paced, man-centered, technology-based society of the twenty-first century, God would have us pause and consider His sovereign nature and the program He has been accomplishing in the world.
Wow Chris,
I do intend to examine some of these in later questions (especially the flood questions) but it would be disorderly for me to address them all there. However, if you have some creationist insights on when and why God started allowing conjoined twins, or how He deals with the souls of merged brains, I’d love to hear them.
But I do get where you’re coming from. As a Creationist, I felt I had many legs to stand on. What I later realized is that EVERY religion believes they have many legs to stand on. We’ve all built up these foundations of evidence that give us the illusion of a firm foundation.
Even something as ridiculous as Mormonism has a laundry list of evidences for their ridiculous claims that Jews sailed to America, founded great cities, and fought in epic battles (http://www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml). I look at this now and think “Wow, this is what we ALL do, only with different books!” If these Mormons REALLY want to know truth, they have to be willing to abandon their bias and seek what ex-Mormons and others have to say about this same evidence.
The problem is that religion is such a core piece of who we are, it’s uncomfortable to threaten ourselves by reading opposing material. But likewise, if you REALLY want to know truth, you have to be willing to abandon your bias and seek what ex-Christians and others have to say about this same evidence. If your views hold up, great, you’re on a firmer foundation. If not, your new views are better qualified.
Hahaha! Chris is making a wide attempt to avert the conversation from the topic, but if our host does not mind me taking that detour, I try to answer his questions in short.
1. If there indeed is coprolithic evidence that the dinosaurs ate plants that have previously been surmised only to have evolved after the dinosaurs were extinct, does that not lead to the natural assumption that the plants had evolved such types earlierly than previously assumed? It is far more easier to date geological fossil remains of massive animals than the mechanics of plant progenitation. By no means does this in any way jump us to the conclusion that there is any evidence for the Biblical mythology. It does not even point into that direction.
2. Hunter-gathrer socities were indeed very small in numbers as can be observed where those have been encountered in rather modern times, such as many nations of the Native Americans or indigenous people of Australia, the Aboriginals. It is typical to that form of economy, that human groups are quite small and that there are many reasons why that is so. Disease is one reason, the obvious hazards of such life are a nother, but it is also known that they employed birth controll and were quite aware how much people a given area can provide for. Agricultural societes on the other hand are ever growing in exess of population, and value the human life in a completely different terms to any hunter-gatherer societies. So, since we know from pollen analysis that agriculture and sedentarism started of in grand scale around 8000 years ago, it is no wonder that the population exploded from that point on. In fact it is natural that the oldest histories are only found from after that developement, because agriculture and civilization provides both the need for writing and the specialization of professions, wich in turn makes it possible that some people are scribes and not just hunters or gatherers. Only civilzations with agriculture do we find any forms of scriptures.
3. How do the laws of thermodynamics jump into a conclusion of originator being? Even if the laws of physics somehow needed as an explanation a supreme creator type of entity, it is such a jump from the idea of a demiurgi, to the Bible as just one religious scripture explaining the will of the originator god among all the others like it, being true at all, that they do not very much support each other. The fact that we do not for sure know where did energy come from, is quite far away from the assumption that there had to be a self conscious being with power to produce it into nothingness. That is a very andorpocentric (and therefore quite biased) model of explaining it.
4. The fact that the Bible records a number of earthquakes is natural as it is a compillation of the history of the people who lived in an area where earhtquakes do happen. It is also natural that since the people in those days had very little information or understanding of natural phenomenons, they added divine explanations to those events. So have the earthquakes in other areas been explained by their local divinities. For example the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah, was explained by the people of those days to have happened because people in the destroyed cities were evil. When people faced such incontrollable forces of nature that entire cities could be destroyed, the way they saw it, was because the people there were bad. They had to be, because otherwise the havoc a god unleashed upon them had no purpose and could any day fall upon them selves. That is how human mind works. The evil that happens to other people is often rather thought to be their own fault. Because, if it is random, how can I protect myself from it? By asking god not to do it to me? But evil things and natural catastrophies may happen to anyone. Many people seem to be quite sure that the extreme powerty some suffer is their own fault, even if those other people were born to it. However, if god had just destroyed those people in the aforementioned two cities without warning, he would not seem like a fair player, therefore the myth also incorporates a warning to the people there, that if they do not turn from their evil ways, there is the devil to pay. But, if a god as the “benevolent” entity really wanted those people to turn from the path of evil, why did said god not convince them? One would expect that the creator of entire universe could do better than to send some guys to talk to the people. It is a ridiculous notion, that the supreme creator being was unable to convince some people from their evil ways, but could convince some “chosen people” to exterminate the other people in a genosidal frenzy like so many chosen people have done to so many other nations by the order of so many gods. Of course, one has to consider about the material benefits of having all the posessions and land the exterminated nation had, in comparrison to not really getting anything but threats from turning from the evil path to righteousness.
Predicted earthquakes that have not yet happened are a proof for absolutely nothing. It is easy to predict future earthquakes will happen in an area where they have happened before, but they really do not need a god to appear. We know earthquakes are a result of tectonic movement in the crust of Earth. If earthquakes are (a rather lame) attempt of a god to send a message to humans, what did the earthquake near Japan this year tell us? That we should abandon nuclear technology, perhaps? Or that nuclear technology can take even the wrath of god with only some minor injuries?
I really have nothing to add to the conversation of conjoined twins, but what Chris demonstrated here as proof for the absolute “truth” in the Bible was so far out, it cried for a reply. Even in short terms as such. I will not go into the great flood mythology, but I wait with great interrest what kind of question among the 500 there will be of it. My apologies, for not staying on topic.
God may not be in it’e element here. As one who has looked into many religions and nde’s I come from this belief. Simply put, this is not a perfect reality. These things come with the experience of life. I pray for these children. I pray that their deformities do not cause them much pain or angst.
God knows us from the moment of conception, and He most certainly knows the moment of our death as well. He’s not confused about the tangle of limbs or joining of organs of conjoined or parasitic twins. We all have souls, whether we have tangled bodies or not.
As to the question of why God would create conjoined twins, you rather flippantly dismissed the role of sin as the root cause, but I’m afraid that is the very reason for such tragic occurrences. Though these children are innocent, sin is an insidious cancer that seeks to harm the most vulnerable among us. And though we rejoice that those children receive new glorified bodies in Heaven, we are told in the Bible that life on this earth is one of suffering. If it weren’t so, we wouldn’t feel a need for God’s redemption, and we would revel in the very sin that causes the suffering in the first place.
Howdy April, thanks for taking the time to read the post, and for your response. Even though we disagree, I really do appreciate it.
You seem like a pretty intelligent person, so let me ask you, in all sincerity, do you honestly believe that bad things happen today because the first woman God created (from a man’s rib) was convinced by a talking snake to eat the no-no fruit? Do you know who wrote this story? I don’t. I know people say it’s supposed to be inspired by God, but aren’t all mythical-sounding creation stories supposed to be inspired by one god or another? If the story contained some amazing facts about how the universe or life function, it might be far more compelling. But it contains little more substance than all the other man-made creation stories.
I once believed in this story, I suppose because I was raised with it. But if I heard it for the first time today, I’d probably say it was an absurd and obvious myth. Likewise, I could tell you that God just inspired me to write an odd creation tale about how a talking sponge brought evil into the world, but would you believe me? A complete stranger? No? Then why believe another stranger’s strange tale? Let me guess – because you were raised with it, too?
More to the point, if this story IS myth, then sin never entered the world. In fact, I’d say “sin” doesn’t even exist, it’s just a made up word that we use to describe all the crappy things that we wish didn’t happen. Like these poor conjoined twins. They’re not conjoined because our great, great, great, not-so-great grandparents listened to a snake, they’re conjoined because cells never figured out how to handle unusual situations. At least that’s my best guess.
Hope you keep reading!
Thank you for the response. To answer your question, no, I was not raised a believer, though I suppose you could call my family fair-weather Christians. We attended church on the obligatory holidays–Easter and Christmas–but we certainly didn’t discuss religion at any other time. That was due mostly to my father being the son of a traveling fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist preacher, and the grandson of a Mennonite minister. His brushes with the Church growing up left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn’t about to inflict religion on his own kids. As a result, I was actually rather skeptical for most of my early 20′s about the existence of God–if He existed, I wondered, why wouldn’t He make Himself known? It wasn’t until I was in my 30′s that I actually heard Him for the first time. There was no reason on earth why I should have suddenly imagined that God spoke to me considering I doubted His very existence, but I was left with no doubt in my mind whatsoever that He is real.
I’ve tried to put the experience into words in the past, but I’m usually met with instant rejection by non-believers. When someone says they’ve heard the voice of God, they’re written off as a lunatic, a stoner, a boozer, or an imbecile. Let me assure you, I have no history of mental illness, I have never imbibed in either drugs or alcohol, and my intelligence is in the above average range. I was not a fanatic, meditating for hours on end about the meaning of life and fasting for weeks to attain spiritual enlightenment. I was a normal suburban dweller with a husband and 1.5 kids who heard the voice of God out of the blue ask, “April, why are you hiding from me?”
I too have been both a non-believer and a believer in my life, and I can attest that it is much easier to be a non-believer in this world. As much as I would have loved to sweep the whole incident under the rug and forget it ever happened, God wouldn’t let me. Once my eyes had been opened, I couldn’t deny the hand of God in nearly every detail in my life. I have a severe endocrine disorder that left me unable to have children. God orchestrated every little thing perfectly and blessed me with a child that science told me I would never have. My son is living proof that God isn’t bound by our earthly limitations.
You asked if I believe the story of Eve, but I get that what you are really asking is why someone with two functioning brain cells to rub together would believe what you consider far-fetched myth. Well, I don’t consider myself the repository of all knowledge, but I know that the earth was created, that all life on earth was created, that all life on earth was created to provide a symbiotic system to sustain that life, and that the odds of all of that happening coincidentally are far too remote to even entertain plausibility. That belief, to my mind, is the far more grievous offense perpetuated by scientists in their quest to eradicate God from the realm of possibility than believing the Biblical creation account (written by Moses, the author of the Pentateuch, FWIW).
Sin is real. There is no denying its existence. Why else hasn’t science found a way to negate its effects? Where is the cure for AIDS? Cancer? infertility? Even the common cold? Why are people still sad, lonely, and depressed with all the anti-depressants out on the market? Why do people still murder, maim, cheat on, and rob other people in our “civilized” society? If not for sin, why aren’t we all happy? If not for God, why aren’t we content to merely survive? Isn’t that all life is without Him–survival? Why ponder anything if there’s nothing to be gained from our understanding but an eternity of nothingness? That makes no sense to me.
Ya, I can certainly understand people’s skepticism over stories of personal revelation. I once had devout young Mormon on my doorstep tell me about how he sincerely prayed to God about the Book of Mormon, and how God’s holy spirit confirmed to him that it was true. Soooo… until God starts revealing the same thing to everyone, it’s hard not to be skeptical of such claims.
As a life-long Pentecostal, I was always supposed to be in communication with that still, small voice. It seemed my Pentecostal friends were always being told by God where to go and what to do. And while it was tempting to say that those voices in my head were God, I always remained vigilant about not lying to myself. Of the hundreds of times I cleared my mind and faithfully listened… no one spoke. (Perhaps God was too busy speaking to the Mormons?)
So I while do think you’re a tiny bit crazy, I think we all are. But I don’t blame you, I blame your brain. The brain is a very bizarre thing. Even smart people swear by strange experiences (e.g. alien abductions, ghosts, seeing Bigfoot, hearing from God, etc.) I just think it’s more likely that these events are caused by the peculiarities of our brain, rather than all being true (and all religions being true).
When my faith first began to stumble, it was renewed by the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. Like you, I believed that life was too complex to come about by coincidence. But eventually, I had to reason that ID contradicted itself (see my post here). ID commits the logical fallacy of special pleading: we cannot simultaneously insist that complexity MUST have a creator, and that God’s complexity DOES NOT require a creator. If God can exist without a complex designer, why can’t we? In fact, it’s more likely! Not only are we far less complex, but we are, in fact, known to exist!
The symbiosis of life is just nature taking advantage of every opportunity to survive. The things that exist now were able to survive, the things that don’t exist now were not. This makes more sense to me than believing that God chose to create hundreds of millions of species just to kill them all off, or purposefulness designed life to survive only by eating other life. What a cruel designer that would be.
As for sin, it’s certainly not something that’s been proven to exist. Yes, life sucks but it’s not proof of sin, it’s only proof that our environment is harsh, but we’ve managed to make it better. For example, the FDA has just approved human trials for an AIDS vaccine. What does God say to do about diseases like AIDS and polio? Pray! But prayer never helped with polio, science did. Science is a great tool for getting to the truth.
While I’m not sad and depressed (often), I think many people are because of their big brains. We are the only species to know we’re going to die, which is pretty depressing. But we’re lucky enough to have this opportunity to look around and ponder the universe. If this is all there is, we should make every effort to enjoy life for what it is, and make it enjoyable for others.
“Why ponder anything if there’s nothing to be gained from our understanding but an eternity of nothingness?” Great question. I think Carl Sagan put it best, “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Personally, I still have doubts about my doubt, and I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Thanks again!
God? Bullshit! The conjoined twins are born by mistake during the separation (the identical twins are from the same egg and sperm) where normally one becomes two! If there was God who does wonders, He’ll not let die little kids and people done injustices…
for me believing in God is a matter of faith and of spirit,its not about physical or material things, surely he made the body which is seen.but you can’t conclude that the spirit functions just the same..
these twins are born like this because of abnormalities or may also be caused by chemicals ingested by the parents..(e.i. excessive smoking..drugs) which is made or caused by man, blaming God for this for me is unjust..God created nature and nature dictates that if you eat poison you will die,so as these..if somehow parents have genetic abnormalities or is taking high risks medicine while pregnant.. then rest assured that there will be an effect..you just can’t do all shits of things and expect God to do some magic and give u a healthy child..
but then again God is a spirit so what he sees is different from what we see..in the bible God says he looks in the heart of a person not in the body…so even though they have overlapping brains..it’s clearly not going to be affecting the spirit because again a spirit is a spirit…
i also think its God’s will to not let these kids (most of them) live because it would be very hard for the parents and to the child as well…try to understand God
i guess it all comes down to faith…i believe that if a person has one then there’s no need for explanation,and if he doesn’t, then no explanation will be enough for him..
i know i haven’t answered clearly just stating my point..peace guys..
try this link if your interested
http://esoriano.wordpress.com/
> “you just can’t do all shits of things and expect God to do some magic and give u a healthy child”
I sorta see your point, but a healthy child is not a commodity, where if you’re good you get a healthy one and if you’re bad you get a deformed one to punish you. You could argue God gave you a healthy fetus to start with but you did something (drugs, whatever) to mess it up so it’s your fault. But conjoined twins don’t happen that way, it’s not the parents fault. But what kind of God would design the world so that your bad behavior affects an innocent baby?
Why let alcohol affect the unborn in the first place? Why let some diseases be transferrable to the unborn in the first place? If God created everything, that means he set it up to happen that way. And if he chose to go the punishing-parents-via-their-children way, why didn’t he make other sins create disabled children- like adultery or murder or whatever else?
Is it right that you get born with a disability because of something your parents did? Or not even something they did, but something that was done to them (like say being exposed to radiation or poison through no fault of their own) or even just a genetic incompatibility? Doesn’t seem right to me.
So, if there is a God, he is incredibly unjust and responsible for the horrendous suffering of many conjoined twins and many other innocent children, just for starters. I personally think God is unlikely for many other reasons, but even if he existed, this would make me think he is not worthy of my worship. When you say “for me believing in God is a matter of faith and of spirit,its not about physical or material things” to me that just sounds like you prefer to close your eyes and believe in what sounds good, and ignore any material evidence to the contrary that is right under your nose. If everybody only believed in God/the bible and never examined the real, material world, we would still believe the world to be flat and the sun to revolve around us.
just sayin’
Howdy Rorran and L, thank you for your great comments.
“But then again God is a spirit…”
People keep saying that, but what IS spirit? Isn’t it just a word our ancestors made-up? What is spirit made of? Where did it come from? And if spirit is made of nothing, then isn’t it… nothing?
I could say I have an invisible dog made of bobblefluff. “What is bobblefluff?” It’s the invisible stuff my dog is made of! There’s no positive evidence that spirit OR bobblefulff exist. And we could spend all day making up stuff that doesn’t exist.
“believing in God is a matter of faith and of spirit”
And what is faith? Isn’t this too just a made-up word? A word that somehow magically lends credence to believing without evidence? I could say “I have faith in bobblefluff,” but that doesn’t suddenly make it real. How do we know that “faith” and “spirit” were not made up in the same way I just made up bobblefluff?
“you can’t do all shits of things and expect God to do some magic and give u a healthy child.”
That does make sense, but it also makes sense to say “You can’t do all shits of things and expect NATURE to do some magic and give u a healthy child.” Unlike God, nature has no conscience, no ethics, no morality… God does. If God exists, He could prevent such defects if He wanted to. But if God is no more real than bobblefluff — if He is just an idea from the heads of our ancestors — then these defects must be the result of unguided causes.
Like L was saying, not EVERY unhealthy baby is the result of poor decisions made by the parents. In fact, I just found out today that our friend’s baby has Type 1 diabetes. The parents are both devout Christians, while and I am not. My kids turned out fine… hers is cursed. WTF?
I would LOVE to see God ONLY punish the unrighteous, it would be proof that He really does care about what we do. But this is not what we (usually) see, so God is said to store up all His “sensible” wrath for the afterlife. Meanwhile, His punishments down here are all over the map. Unless… of course… God is imaginary.
thanks for the replies guys..
regarding your statements
“People keep saying that, but what IS spirit? Isn’t it just a word our ancestors made-up? What is spirit made of? Where did it come from? And if spirit is made of nothing, then isn’t it… nothing”
“And what is faith? Isn’t this too just a made-up word? A word that somehow magically lends credence to believing without evidence?”
it would seem that you are only focused on things that you see..you said that faith is just a made up word?but faith is something that everyone has..its innate of every human to have faith whether its faith in your loved-ones or God it is faith..how about love?trust? and also other emotions that you feel?can you see them?the way you explain it..it would appear that those emotions that we feel are also imaginary but in reality these unseen things are what drives humans to live..the feeling of responsibility for your family and self drives you to work,motivations and inspiration drives us to be our best..yes they are related to our hormones..but you still can’t explain the feeling what is it made off?how about your mind?what it made off?sure you have a brain but your mind is different..
..how about air?can you see it?but its there you feel it its a fact..you just cant see it, the knowledge that we have.
we must accept that as developed and as advance our science and knowledge is..we still know little about all the knowledge and in life..and i believe a spirit is made of something but its yet to be proven by science..
“I sorta see your point, but a healthy child is not a commodity, where if you’re good you get a healthy one and if you’re bad you get a deformed one to punish you”
“I just found out today that our friend’s baby has Type 1 diabetes. The parents are both devout Christians, while and I am not. My kids turned out fine… hers is cursed. WTF?”
these things are natural causes doctors says that Type I diabetes are mainly caused by genetic disorder or environmental factors so are the conjoined twins (conjoined twins happens when a fertilize egg splits into two but then stops before they completely separate)..whether your a christian or not as long as you have these traits then you are prone to pass the disorder when you procreate it’s not whether you are good or bad why do people say that its a punishment from God??…they are responsible for the baby since they are the ones who mate to conceive it..you should be thankful sir that your kids are fine..not unless you don’t believe in being thankful as well since there’s no proof that it exist you just feel it..
“Why let alcohol affect the unborn in the first place? Why let some diseases be transferable to the unborn in the first place?”
a lot more other chemicals are transferable to the unborn child..its because biologically humans are not meant to consume those…having a baby is a responsibility so people shouldn’t be drinking or smoking or taking drugs if they care..
regarding diseases they are natural causes as well…if you caught a certain disease your immune system will weaken and your body will need more nutrients in order to preserve itself..the body will also be under stressful condition..and these are things not good for the fetus.
“I would LOVE to see God ONLY punish the unrighteous, it would be proof that He really does care about what we do”
if that would be the case then no people will ever live..we would all be suffering right now..because surely every one of us must have done something wrong we all have commit mistakes..it is also mentioned in the bible that God satisfies all desires..so even if what you want is bad..you still get it..i wouldn’t say that im righteous..i guess no one..
“If everybody only believed in God/the bible and never examined the real, material world, we would still believe the world to be flat and the sun to revolve around us”
i apologize but i have to disagree on this..for me the knowledge in the bible is as real and as scientific as it could be..the belief that the world is flat is not biblical at all..these are beliefs of early people who do not know the bible..
in fact in Isaiah 40:22
“God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them”
i just want to state my point..coz this verse was written a thousand years ago before the catholic church. even some couple of hundred years ago before Christ..
It says circle of the earth..its a fact that the bible knows that the world is round long before..
i tried not to be too biblical in my answers..no one can really deny this astounding fact from the bible.
i also have a question..because im really puzzled why some people who do not believe in God..tends to hate him?i mean why put the blame?you don’t believe in a genie but you dont hate it right?i think if ill put myself as an atheist i would probably be apathetic to the idea.i wouldn’t care at all..and as a curious mind i would rather be amazed at the idea that there is a God…but i certainly would not hate him..
I don’t have faith. I mean sure I have faith that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, or that my family loves me, or even that apple stocks will keep rising. Basically, these are things that I think are likely based on past experience. But I’m not sure that’s your definition of faith.
I would agree with you that faith is innate in everyone though. Even faith in something higher. I cannot deny that cultures all over the world come up with religion- each different in the details but similar overall. Just google for “cargo cults” for instance. May seem like a “joke religion” to us but to them it is real.
It just goes to show that humans tend to look for the cause of things. What makes us so successful is that we build tools and create things. So when we see something and we don’t know how it’s made, we assume that a much bigger, better version of a man must’ve made it.
“whether your a christian or not as long as you have these traits then you are prone to pass the disorder when you procreate it’s not whether you are good or bad why do people say that its a punishment from God?”
because God supposedly created the world including us. Therefore he created cells in a way that they sometimes mess up and cause the suffering of innocent babies. Supposedly he is all knowing and all powerful, so it can’t be that he made a mistake. And “to punish” is the only answer I could think of to explain why God would cause suffering.
“a lot more other chemicals are transferable to the unborn child..its because biologically humans are not meant to consume those…having a baby is a responsibility so people shouldn’t be drinking or smoking or taking drugs if they care..”
so basically:
everything bad in the world = our fault.
everything good in the world = God’s divine creation.
you can’t have it both ways, if God made the world, then all the inherent unfairness in the world is his creation too.
Ok, if you choose to take drugs, that’s your own problem, it’s like if you choose to walk off a cliff. You could argue if a pregnant woman walks off a cliff, the nature of the world is such that the innocent unborn will die in the fall too, and that’s just how the world needs to work. I like gravity, it is useful unless you’re walking off a cliff, and it needs to be there for the world to work so God isn’t just gonna make an exception for you. And cliffs are neat too. Sure, the existence of cliffs and gravity will mean a few people may die that way, but overall the presence of cliffs and gravity are nice.
However, alcohol adversely affecting an unborn, or a cell splitting off but then stopping to develop properly, those things aren’t useful at any time. Those things don’t serve any purpose, all they do is cause suffering of the innocent, yet they are part of the world God created. Why?
——-
You point out that the world being flat isn’t a biblical thing. I don’t know enough about the bible to be sure about that, but I suspect you’re right. However, you’ll have to agree that organized religion, hasn’t exactly.. shall we say… reacted that well to anyone who challenged the status quo, like say Darwin.
“It says circle of the earth..its a fact that the bible knows that the world is round long before..”
this is meaningless cherrypicking. The bible also refers to the world as being set upon pillars.
everything in the bible that makes sense in hindsight = woah look at that, this proves Gods existence!
everything else that didn’t turn out to be right = yeah.. nevermind, that was a metaphor.
If it had turned out that the earth WAS standing on a bunch of space pillars, you would be touting that other bible quote as proof and easily ignoring the whole “circle” thing. Hindsight is 20/20.
in fact, this very blog has a post about that:
http://500questions.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/15-did-god-hang-the-earth-on-nothing-or-set-it-on-pillars/
and also this post:
http://500questions.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/14-why-is-god-ignorant-of-his-own-creation/
“i also have a question..because im really puzzled why some people who do not believe in God..tends to hate him?i mean why put the blame?you don’t believe in a genie but you dont hate it right?i think if ill put myself as an atheist i would probably be apathetic to the idea.i wouldn’t care at all..and as a curious mind i would rather be amazed at the idea that there is a God…but i certainly would not hate him..”
What? I don’t hate God. It’s more like.. imagine you did meet someone who believed in a magical genie. You point out all the inconsistencies in their theory, but they just shrug and say the genie works in mysterious ways. Would you not find it strange? Would you not try to debate? Of course, it is their choice to believe in the genie and you cannot force them not to, but that doesn’t mean you can’t debate with them.
you quoted someone saying: I would LOVE to see God ONLY punish the unrighteous, it would be proof that He really does care about what we do”
and you replied: “if that would be the case then no people will ever live..we would all be suffering right now..because surely every one of us must have done something wrong we all have commit mistakes”
so to sum up, you believe that the only reason we aren’t all suffering right now is because God only punishes some sinners, not all? Does he do it at random? or what?
Lovely chap, God. I’m glad he’s lazy with his punishments. Clearly he hasn’t gotten round to smiting me yet.
Hi again,
I think L pretty summed it up nicely, so I’ll only hit on a couple points I found interesting.
On Isaiah 40:22, you said that “no one can really deny this astounding fact from the Bible.” But let’s just assume for a moment that the Bible said the world was a square, would you then agree that the Bible was wrong? Or would you just ignore it and go in search of another proof?
The fact is, the word “circle” in Isaiah 40:22 is the Hebrew word “ḥūḡ,” which actually describes a shape similar to a compass, or a pancake, and not a sphere. Proverbs 8:27 uses the same word and translates it this way (in the KJV): “I [was] there: when he set a compass upon the face.”
Perhaps what’s more interesting is that earlier in Isaiah (22:18), He uses a word that would’ve perfectly described the spherical shape of our earth, “kaddūr.” He says, “He will surely wind thee round and round, and toss thee like A BALL into a large country…”
So, while God could’ve easily described the world as a sphere, He didn’t. So I cannot rightly accept this as an “astounding fact of the Bible.” (In addition, the sun and moon were also obvious circles, so the earth was more likely a circle than any other shape.)
“I also have a question..because im really puzzled why some people who do not believe in God..tends to hate him?”
I wanted to answer this one, too, because as a Christian I had the same question.
Speaking for myself, I don’t hate God, and you’re correct — that would be silly. But if God does exist, I do have about 500 questions for Him. But atheists DO appear more angry than Christians, so let me address that.
For me personally, when I began to doubt, I admit that I become more cynical. I felt like the whole world was lying to me to me, and it was very difficult to tell who was actually telling the truth. So when I seriously started to have doubts, I then resented Christianity, and religion in general, for getting in the way of truth, though I realized the people in religion were good, sincere people (I was one of them, and I can’t exactly hate myself).
Also, it may not be that atheist’s are unhappy, as much as Christians are too happy by comparison. After all, they have a lot to be happy about! They have a protective God who loves them, they know the truth, and they get a mansion when they die. Sweet! Many atheists, on the other hand, have lost all of this. One man called it being a “dead again Christian,” because you lose all the hope that Christianity brings. And heck, even if it turns out the atheist was wrong, he’s still screwed. So, there’s not much optimism there. I think there’s also a little jealousy, over what the atheist sees as “undeserved, irrational happiness.”
George Bernard Shaw used to put it this way:
And Christopher S. Putnam said,
Thanks for the questions!
Couple other thoughts…
I would say that feelings like love are most likely illusions of the brain. People with amnesia, for example, can immediately lose all their love for their children. Not because they damaged their invisible spirit when they fell and hit their head, but because of damage to a very physical part of their brain (see questions #19 and #20).
And I do see air! I see it in bubbles, I use it to fill balloons, I can measure air pressure in my tires, and I can feel it when I blow on my hand. But perhaps more to the point, I don’t need to see God to know He exists, there are countless things a real God could do to show He existed, He could: send fire from heaven (#9), lift a penny (#7), demonstrate a scientific knowledge of His creation (#14 & #25), answer more prayers made to Him than the other gods, or appear in the sky and talk to us, instead of appearing in dogs’ butts…
I was born into an atheist family, so I was never disappointed about the promises made by religions about their gods, or the afterlife. But if the god described in the Bible existed, then I would propably be angry with it. Because the creator of the entire universe should not have any need to punish innocents, yet this Biblical god does that all the time. It is a silly notion to claim we are all sinners and none is innocent, because what is the newborn baby guilty of? Being a decendant of some guy named Adam, who broke some rules. By what logic a person may be punished of what his/her ancestod did? There are repeated such stories of unfairness in the Bible and it is not just nature that this god alledgedly uses, but also people. In the Bible a god sends one nation to do genoside on a nother nation. That is just plain damn wrong. The fascistic apartheid rule that is now active in Israel is a modern example how this very same god is used as a scape goat for violence even now in modern times. And despite all the supernatural power to make billions and billions of worlds this alledged god is too busy to interfere? As we can see from the example of the conjoined twins, such wanton violence a supreme entity would be responsible for, if it actually existed, is all around us. However, I think the earthquakes that have destroyed entire nations and conjoined twins are the work of the random nature, and it is very hard to be angry at the nature, as it is not a self conscious entity.
And yes, if this god existed I would be angry about Hell also. As punishments go, they should be measured by the extent of the crime, but what crime a human being can make that is worth eternal pain? What an unfair system it is to condemn most people in the world to this Hell and alledgedly an eternal pain, even if they have never even heard of the possible salvation promised by the alledged son of this god? If god allows Hell and Heaven to exist and divides people to one or the other based on, if people believe in this god or not, with the alledged power to create galaxies said god is also responsible for every “soul” that ends up in Hell. No, it is not their own doing! With such power, this god would have an ethical responsibility to reveal itself without a doubt to everyone to such extent they do not end up in Hell just because they disbelieved, or did not even know of this god. However, that is such a logical inconsistancy with the claims that this god is “benevolent”, or even willing to save anyone, that I do find the entire story unplausible. Hence, I am not angry at an imaginary character for imaginary deeds. I am not angry at any gods at all, but if they actually existed I would be angry to some of them.
Ethically with power allways comes responsibility, correct? With greater power the responsibility is greater, and with absolute power the responsibility is also absolute.
to “L”
“If it had turned out that the earth WAS standing on a bunch of space pillars, you would be touting that other bible quote as proof and easily ignoring the whole “circle” thing. Hindsight is 20/20.”
it is correct that the earth has pillars..if you will study earths layer you’ll see that it has different parts..one of them is mantle which is the hardest part of the earth and it constitute about 84% of earths volume it holds both the crust and the melted lava on the core…a pillar is a foundation it is meant to hold securely another thing..
the bible is correct when it says that God hanged the earth upon nothing..
and it is also correct that god set the pillars of the earth
to me the explanation on the links looks like a child’s interpretation of the bible,sorry to say…
“everything bad in the world = our fault.
everything good in the world = God’s divine creation”
when God created the whole universe it was Good,in fact people from long ago doesn’t have such diseases…sure people still die its part of nature..but then people started abusing themselves and as nature comes into play off course the child will get its traits from the parents..where else would God get the genes of the baby but from the parents…and if the genes of the parents are already damage….then we’ll know whats next..but still not all parents have deformed babies..
2011 statistics shows about 131.4 million births per year lets say 10,000 of them are conjoined twins…it is not even 1 percent of the total babies born on that year..and people detests God for the .01 or .001 percent…
and mr.500 thanks for your replies again i appreciate it..and it seems that your a person that still looks for the truth…
this might help you out but i think you’ve seen these links:
http://www.elisoriano.com/en/
http://esoriano.wordpress.com/
i don’t know how an atheist feels..but if they denounce God..then do they also accept that there is no Good or evil?do they hope for something else?for me without God there is Just no sense to everything..,
Rorran, good and evil are not concepts dependant in any way in any of the gods. All people evaluate things as both good and evil regardles, if they think moral is magically derived from a super duper entity, or a natural product of biological and cultural evolution.
Every person is capable of making ethical choises. It is just so, that with better knowledge, we can make more educated choises. Best possible knowledge comes from scientific research of world and the universe around us, not from trusting blindly in any old books. Though, sometimes the writers of the old books may have made correct philosophical assumptions according to their natural skill of emphaty called also compassion. Compassion is the base on how we know what is right and what is wrong.
“to me the explanation on the links looks like a child’s interpretation of the bible, sorry to say…” – rorran
Says the guy who just brushed off my awesome rebuttal of his Isaiah 40:22 proof. (Why do I even try.)
“it is correct that the earth has pillars..if you will study earths layer you’ll see that it has different parts..one of them is mantle” – rorran
Ooohhhh, I get it now! Mantle layers = pillars! Well, kinda more like… spherical shaped layers of rock that vary in temperatures and density… but… ya, kinda like pillars! Why not! So, when God says He holds the pillars firm when the earth quakes, what He’s really holding is the… er… the mantle bits and… easing… the subduction by… uh… ya. Is this REALLY the best the Bible has to offer? It says we’re on pillars, and it turns out there’s stuff (any stuff) below us, and so we make THAT into pillars and say “Praise God! This proves the Bible MUST be true!”?
“With greater power the responsibility is greater, and with absolute power the responsibility is also absolute.” – rautakyy
Isn’t there another saying, that with absolute power comes absolute corruption? Maybe God is absolutely corrupt? (Kidding… well… maybe.)
“i don’t know how an atheist feels..but if they denounce God..then do they also accept that there is no Good or evil?do they hope for something else?” – rorran
Of course there is good and evil, but evil is more of a verb than a noun. When good things happen to you, that is good, when really bad things happen to you, or to innocent people, that is evil. But there is no supernatural force behind it from the atheist prospective.
There is no hope for something else. But if there is nothing else, hoping for something won’t change that fact (but it might make you feel better about death).
I shouldn’t say there’s no hope. We hope for peace, joy and love in this life. And in the next, some of us look forward to returning to the non-life we had before we were born. As they say, death is easy, living is hard.
“for me without God there is Just no sense to everything..,” – rorran
I used to think the same way, Christianity had all the answers, until I really took the time to understand what the other side was saying. But if Christianity makes you happy, then keep at it! If you want to understand the other side, you’ll have to do some uncomfortable reading. I’d recommend The God Delusion, or 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, or for a really scholarly work from an ex-pastor, try John Loftus’s work “Why I became an Atheist.”
Honestly, I feel really bad for all the argument going around. Yes it takes faith to begin your walk with God, but once you begin to have a true relationship with you, he begins to really reveal things to you and show up in your life. I had my doubts but when God came and miraculously healed my mother from a disease, even the doctors could not comprehend, I knew God was real, and I began to have my own experiences. I watched as he delivered from depression. I watched as he talked with me. The reality is that God is the most real thing out there. I mean we are first of all just too complex and this universe is to complex just for it to come out of nowhere. I wish that everyone would seek to get a closer relationship with God, and he will show up and give you that testimony. One that can never be argued against. And the fact that God loves us so much and we still reject him, I know must hurt him so much. Honestly he really does love us. Yes things like this happen, but that was not our original. We were made perfect, and before sin entered the world none of this happened. But just because these things happen, does not mean that God will not intervene. I know people who have been healed from cancer, personally. I know people who had strokes and could not walk, and God healed them, personally. God wants to do miraculous things in our lives, but it will only happen if we open up ourselves to him.
Hi AJ, thanks for your concern and taking the time to post.
You’ve given several good reasons to justify your belief in God, and I’d like to respond to them as a former Christian who once believed many of the same things.
1) Personal revelation – “…he begins to really reveal things to you,” “he talked with me,” etc.
There are many other religious groups that claim that god, gods, spirits, or aliens have spoken to them. How do we prove one is any more real than the other? Many Mormons have claimed that when they sincerely prayed to God, His Holy Spirit revealed to them that the Book of Mormon is true. Do you think they will accept that your revelation was true, but theirs was false? Who’s revelation should we believe?
2) Miracles – You have seen god cure “disease,” “depression,” “cancer,” “strokes,” etc.
As a Pentecostal for over 30 years, I saw a lot of what I thought were miracles. But have you ever noticed God never heals amputees? Or people with down syndrome? This is why people like Benny Hinn place the people on stretchers at the back of the audience, and not the front where they should be.
Additionally, when we try to prove the effects of prayer by studying it closely, the results are non-existent. This is why the American Medical Association (AMA) must dismisses prayer as ineffective. If it performed any better than a placebo, you can bet insurance companies would pay for it.
3) Complexity – “we are first of all just too complex and this universe is to complex just for it to come out of nowhere”
I don’t believe the Universe came from nothing, I think it probably always existed in some form. Between God and the Universe, the Universe is less complex, and we also have good evidence that the Universe exists (and no proof that its matter hasn’t always existed). We do not have proof that invisible, thinking, spirit beings exist, or that they can create matter from nothing, or that they’d even want to.
4) Faith – “God wants to do miraculous things in our lives, but it will only happen if we open up ourselves to him.”
Once you have faith in anything, you will see things happen, but this is more likely confirmation bias or a placebo effect.
Many people, including scientists, would love for prayer to be a demonstrated science, but the results are just not there.
In my mind, it’s more likely that “faith” was invented out of necessity because of a lack of evidence, not because God genuinely desires us all to believe without evidence. If He wanted us to believe without evidence, He wouldn’t have claimed to have provided so much of it.
Strangely, we’re taught to believe that God had no problem performing hundreds of great miracles in the past, but now just wants us to go on faith. Miracles like fire from heaven didn’t destroy the faith of those in the past, and it even helped to clarify which God was correct (a clarification we could desperately use today). Either God has changed, or these things never actually happened.
If you have any other proof of God’s existence, please let me know. I’d love to believe again, I just don’t think it’s the most rational position to hold.
Oh you said, you were pentecostal. I’m pentecostal too. Im suprised that you feel this way, because at my church, we see God move in mighty ways.From tongues, to prophecy, to interpretation. I mean a pentecostal church, is where you see God move in a service in a powerful way. I mean I don’t really follow people on tv. But i have been in youth prayer meeting, and have seen God use someone to go up to someone and tell them stuff about them, that they would only know if God had revealed to them, and pertaining to healing. I have not seen personally God heal someone withe down syndrome, or amputes, but that doesn’t mean he cant or has not done. I really dont follow people on tv, because most of them are about show, and not doing the will of god. Also when I say my mother was healed, it wasn’t a mind issue. It all started out with her experiencing intense pain in her leg and back, so much so that she could not walk. The doctors could not figure out the cause of the pain, but tried to give her intense medication. That did not stop the pain, it was only after God healed her, that the pain left, and she came of the medications, no longer needed a walker, or cane and went back to her normal life. Later on she became ill with pnuemonia. At one point she was in the hospital near death’s door, because of how pnuemonia had taken her, but the saints prayed and she was taken from death’s door. When she came home, she was still struggling to breathe, and even when she was laying in bed, she wore an oxygen mask. One day while in bed, she prayed to God, and by faith took of her mask,and immediatly she could breathe on her own. That’s God!! We were going to get a nurse aid person to help her, but that was canceled, since we no longer needed her and the oxygen machine was tucked in a corner. When i say healing I’m talking about instantaneous healing. Like when a people go to pray for persons in the hospitals with cancer, and after a few minutes God heals them ,and they are cancer free. I dont know, I have had so many experiences, that I just know God is real. Especially in the pentecostal realm, you experience’s things in the spiritual world. Visions, dreams, God through the holyghost, showing you someone across the globe , for you to pray for, who you dont even know. I mean the fact that I have the holyghost, and have seen it work in my life, I no longer have any partial doubt, that god is real. I have just seen to much.
Also God still does do miracles. I mean in youth prayer meeting ( mighty things happen) someone had a vision and she was in Indonesia and she saw a huge wave come and cover everybody, and when she got out of the vision,she told us, and said that God wanted us to pray. So prayer was made, people were speaking in tongues, the holy spirit moved, and when everyone went home, they found out that Indonesia was on tsunami watch, but due to the prayer, the tsunami never came. I don’t know i mean i have heard so many stories, of people seeing angels with them protecting them from danger. I mean my uncle was on the street one day, and a guy came up and had him on the ground, robbing him, and my uncle said Jesus three times, and then the ground shook in the immediate area, the guy immediately got off him scared, and my uncle demanded for his stuff back, and the guy gave it back to him,and he ran away.
Again my father had an experience. He was on a bus,in Jamaica. and he heard a voice tell him to take of his glasses, he didn’t really understand it so he just ignored the voice. the second time he took he decided to listen and took them off. Then the bus swerved and fell on its side, and my father was at the bottom with people on top of him. If he had his glasses on they probably would have broke in his eye… When everyone came out the bus. my father went one way and stood with his bag next to him and a girl next to the bag. Again he heard a voice say move away from the bag. so he did, and then a car came around the bend, and not realizing the bus had crashed, swerved and ran over the same spot where the bag and girl was. The girl was killed and the bag was found underneath the car. God saved my father’s life. So when I saw once you get a personal relationship, God does miraculous things in your life, I mean it. I mean at a point I began to have doubts wondering if this whole thing was true, and if this was just all in the head, but now i have seen to much for anyone to ever convince me otherwise. I remember when I was beginning to stray, one of my mom’s friend from Jamaica called us in New York, asking what was happening to me, because God had impressed on their spirit that something was right with me. That told me that God was watching me. I remember in youth prayer meeting, I remember a visitor who was from Nigeria, but lived her now, came and God used someone through tongues, to talk with that woman. The woman being able to speak English, said she understood. God is so real. I don’t know where you live, but if your ever in the New York, you should come visit my church. I have so many stories about the wonders of God, and everyone I know does too.
@
89-28 Parsons Blvd
Jamaica, N.Y, 11413
Our website is http://www.allnationsapostolic.org
P.S. I wrote under Aj, i just used Aj as a username.
Hey AJ,
Yep, born and raised Pentecostal, can even still speak in tongues, too! (Which is a bit odd.)
But yes, Pentecostal churches are known for their tongues, prophecy, interpretation, and great stories, all of which I’d now reject. Why? Well, for starters, I can still speak in tongues, which tells me this has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. As for prophecy, because I’ve heard sooooo many incorrect prophecies in my lifetime (and the Bible says that prophesying falsely in His name is despicable to Him). And interpretation, well, it’s not that hard to think God is telling you something.
You mention things like God giving someone information that they couldn’t otherwise know, but the same is often said of psychics, and there are a large number of reasons for this (fraud, vagueness, careful observation, probability, etc.) More on this in a moment…
“But due to the prayer, the tsunami never came.”
So when a tsunami actually DID come, why didn’t God warn people? Are we really saying He warned someone in a youth group about a tsunami that didn’t come, but kept silent when it did? With all the preachers in this country, not a single one shot off a warning that there would be a tsunami on that day. Nor did anyone shout out a warning that people should evacuate the World Trade Center on 9/11. What a glorious WIN this would’ve been for Christianity, yet God was silent.
There are MANY great stories we tell about miraculous things, and it’s right to question them, especially when we see the same claims coming from non-Christians.
“When i say healing I’m talking about instantaneous healing. Like when a people go to pray for persons in the hospitals with cancer, and after a few minutes God heals them ,and they are cancer free.”
I admit I once bought into all this stuff, and NEVER thought I’d question God, until I took a really hard look.
It started with a book written by a doctor who followed the famous Kathryn Kuhlman around. He was looking for proof, but later concluded that out of all her miracles, there wasn’t a single one he could use to prove a miracle had happened.
Likewise, CBS once tried to investigate a number of miracles claimed by Benny Hinn, and also found no evidence.
The same is true for the many miracle studies I mentioned.
There are many Christians and scientists who would LOVE nothing more than to prove that miracles CAN be brought on by prayer. We Christians are long on stories, but short on actual proof.
If you personally know people who can go into hospitals and cure cancer, or can do other such miracles, then the James Randy Educational Foundation is offering 1 million dollars for anyone who can simply demonstrate a supernatural claim. So far, after many years, no one has ever been able to prove the supernatural exists.
In a world of 7 billion people, many strange things are going to happen, and “the gods” will often get the credit. For example, if the odds of some odd random thing happening are 1 in a billion, then that thing will happen to 7 people today. It will seem so unlikely to them that it must’ve been God or fate, but it’s only probability. And with billions of people praying for trillions of things (and everyone prays for healing), then the odds are that we’re going to see A LOT of answered prayers, but we’re also going to see far more unanswered prayers, and no one bothers to talk about all these non-events.
If God exists, for whatever reason, He’s keeping the actual proof of miracles off the radar. For example, I would LOVE to see someone call down fire from heaven as Elijah once did. Or I would love to see that people who are prayed for in Jesus name have a much higher recovery rate, but such clear demonstrations are non-existent.
Do you really think, if we got every Christian in the world to pray for a single amputee, that God would heal them? Do you really think that He would send down fire from heaven? I don’t. And I think we’d all make excuses for why He didn’t respond, because we don’t really want to acknowledge the truth… that He’s no more real than Zues or Ra.
BUT THOR IS REAL!!!
Sorry, I had to.
Well first of all when someone gets the holyghost, they speak in tongues as evidence,yes but they cant control the tongues they speak, or when they say it. People speak in tongues when they are connecting with God, whether during prayer, singing, or during church. Also I am not saying again that I think people have been healed, i know people who have been healed. I mean in relation to my mother the fact of the matter is before God touched her, she needed a mask, after he touched her she no longer needed or used the mask. The experience with my father. Well first of all I cant tell you why God did not stop other tsunami’s but the fact is that he stopped this one, And yes we are to believe that this happened,because it happened in my church during a youth prayer meeting, which I attended. Also I know someone, the youth vice president at my church, who had sickle cell anemia, and he was healed. I am not telling you random miracles, that people think they got, I am telling you miracles I know people have received, because the fact they are alive is proof. I can tell you many miracles, I know of, but its up to you to believe it or not. All I know that God has been doing miraculous things in my church, and has been taking us to a place full of miracles. Again I dont really follow all the mainstream preachers, and what they say, I just follow what I know. And since you were borne in a pentecostal church, do you still believe there is a spiritual warfare going on. I mean I have experienced it myself, so I know that exists. But again I say it is all up to you to believe, i used to have some doubts, but those were soon gone, after my mother was healed,and I saw God move in my church. I just pray you will believe too.
My sister who had the cancer was healed though she is and has allways been an atheist. Why? Her son died as a baby and the doctors could not explain why. All they could say was, that they are sorry, but these things happen. Why would a god save my sister from cancer, but not save her baby boy? Why does this god act totally randomly, or is it just that there are no gods, and nature has this atribute of being random? Did the unbabtised son of my sister go to Heaven, or Hell? What is his eternity in Heaven, without his parents, who are deemed to eternal torment in the everlasting fires of Hell, because they are atheists? Or was the poor little baby sent to Hell, because of choises made by his parents? It does not make any sense, and it is not even very compelling as a fairy tale.
“Also I am not saying again that I think people have been healed, i know people who have been healed.”
That’s wonderful! Unfortunately, I don’t know these people, but I do know that many people from many different religions have claims of miracles, so I must logically conclude that religion is irrelevant, or these claims are false or misleading.
I believe there are a number of reasons one can seem to recover from certain disorders, such as a placebo effect (which can be very powerful), the power of suggestion, healing by natural causes, healing through proper treatment, misdiagnoses, or even lies and misunderstandings.
You said your mother needed a mask, and after God touched her she no longer needed it. Did she really need it? Or did her faith-placebo just give her the courage to take off a mask she really no longer needed?
“Also I know someone, the youth vice president at my church, who had sickle cell anemia, and he was healed.”
Sickle Cell News and World Report might be interested in studying him, and you may wish to contact them. On this page they discuss a couple claims of healing involving sickle cell. In one case, they investigate a claim that God had changed a woman’s genotype, and cured her of sickle cell! Upon investigating, they discovered that her blood type had not changed, that she was only carrying the sickle cell trait, and her most recent test results were erroneous. In another case, a man stopped taking his medication on the conviction that God had cured him, and he died of complications soon afterwards.
As the article title implies, it’s “Easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to find anyone cured of sickle cell by divine intervention.” If the Vice President of your church was indeed healed, he really needs to be proving his case to the world.
It’s easy to say God performed a miracle, but it’s exceedingly difficult to prove it. This is why many skeptics ask why God doesn’t heal amputees, because this is not something that is easily lied about, and there’s zero chance that it happened due to any other causes.
But if God has healed your friend, then we must ask ourselves why God doesn’t heal all the other people with sickle cell who pray for recovery. If 90%+ are praying for a recovery, why do so few (if any) recover? Why are their numbers so small that prayer doesn’t even show up on the radar as an effective treatment? From what I understand, a bone marrow transplant is far more effective than prayer.
As I hinted at before, I believe prayer is simply a numbers game. If 1,000,000 people have a disease that’s 99.99% deadly, and they all pray for recovery (who wouldn’t?), then when 100 of them recover, they will go and tell everyone how God healed them. The other 999,900 will NOT be telling anyone how God didn’t heal them. But for the .01%, it will seem like God performed a genuine miracle, but in reality, it was just probability.
But I thank you for your prayers, and I wish you the best.
Ok after all this is said and done, do you believe in spiritual warfare?
No sir, I do not. Not anymore.
This has nothing to do with god really, it’s when the egg splits in the womb and sometimes it doesn’t spread far enough or something goes wrong with the fertilization. It isn’t a matter of where “god” puts the souls. If it is twins there will be two souls anyway.
“You are not a body. You are a soul, you have a body”. Just because they share a body, it doesn’t mean they don’t both have souls.
I’d have to respectfully disagree. How can we say that the splitting of an egg or a botched fertilization has nothing to do with God, when Psalms 139:13 says “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Are you saying Psalms 139:13 should be ignored? Or that God is only in control after the botched split or fertilization?
If the Bible says God is in control of forming our bodies, then we have to take God at His word. And if God is forming our bodies, then these malformations need not occur; not only because He is in control, but because they serve no useful purpose (that I can see). Yes, we could try to argue that sin is in the world, but is sin also in the womb? Preventing God from fulfilling His own mandate? If so, then God is weak.
Also, when two humans share one brain, it strongly implies that we are not spiritual creatures, and it is our brain that forms our consciousness and who we are. (Lest we forget, no one ever confirmed a soul actually exists.)
The evidence from botched humans is more consistent with a random natural world than a benevolently guided one. And the evidence from shared brains is more consistent with a natural world than a spiritual one.
There seems to be some confusion/msinformation about the origen of conjoined twins. The confusion does not impact on the theological questions, but I thought I would clarify it for whatever it may add to the discussion. Conjoined twins are not a genetic defect; they are a developmental defect. A fertilized egg may split at an early stage, resulting in identical twins. If this happens in the first 12 days post fertilization, the twins are not conjoined, though the later the split, the more problematic, eg shared placenta and/or amniotic sac may lead to problems with oxygenation etc. But if the split occurs on or after day 13, the split is likely to be incomplete, resulting in conjoined twins.
I just want to first leave a short comment to let you know that I highly enjoyed reading this post and I thought it was very thought provoking. I am bookmarking your blog right now and will go back to read from your first post. Thank you.
Skimmed through this. Coupla questions.
1)Why would the fact that God intelligently designed us require that God be intelligently designed? That’s a non sequitur argument. God doesn’t have to be designed in order to design us.
2)Do you believe that the bible verses about God knitting together a fetus means that God did it directly hands on? If a scientists sets up the conditions in a lab to grow some crystals, walks away, and comes back, he can rightly say “I made these crystals”, when in fact, he set up the conditions. Likewise, God can set up the conditions for human reproduction (create the earth, the people, design and implement the bodies of all the animals, make the plants and related systems, yada), and sit back, and still say he made us, cuz he did. He designed the incubation system and the developmental blueprint that our cells follow as the tissues knit themselves together, and then said be fruitful and multiply. It is not necessary naturally or scripturally for God to directly manipulate the formation of our bodies in the womb, that’s an overreach of logic to require that. It makes sense then, that in an imperfect world, defects such as conjoined twins and physical and mental defects can develop. If we require God to make every physical form perfect, then everything must be perfect. This world is certainly not perfect, nor does the bible describe it as such.
These arguments kinda remind of when Stephen Hawking said that God couldn’t perform miracles that went against natural law because then they would cease to be laws. Stephen didn’t take into account that the “laws” are not laws to God, the phenomenon of Physical Law is a description of how the universe normally functions. They’re laws to us, but why would they cease to be laws if God operated outside of them? They’re not laws to Him.
It seems to me that when people turn from faith, it’s really because they didn’t want to believe in the first place, and simpy talk themselves out of it.
I speak as a former atheist, then agnostic, and finally a bible believing Christian.
Hi Anonymous,
I would agree with you, God does not have to be designed in order to design us. But in order to design us, His “mind” must contain a very high level of specified complexity (to borrow a term from Intelligent Design); the painter is surely more advanced than the painting. But if God is NOT designed, as you’ve suggested, then this begs the question “Where did all His complex information come from?”
We can either reason that:
1) there is an infinite regression of intelligent designers,
2) highly advanced and complex information “just exists” without any cause whatsoever, or
3) no such complex entity exists, and our own intelligence was derived starting with no intelligence whatsoever, and it accumulated as our minds arose over time.
I cannot, in good faith, reason that it is possible for an extremely complex God to exist without cause, while simultaneously arguing that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for much simpler cell, plant, or human to exist without a designer (this would be special pleading). Not only is it more logical that a simple thing would arise than a complex thing, but there is abundant evidence for the existence of material life, and no evidence for life made of supernatural spirit substances.
If you can reason that an extremely complex God made of unknown material can exist without cause, then surely you can reason that a far simpler creation made of known material can exist without cause.
When we emotionally detach ourselves from the question and just look at the raw feasibility of each scenario, we must admit that the latter is the most sensible. It has nothing to do with my not wanting to believe, I would LOVE to believe, but wanting God and eternal life to be real doesn’t make it so.
Well, yes. If God is omnipotent and omnipresent, then by definition He is there and in control (not to mention He says He does this). Your analogy of the scientist does not take into account that the scientist is not omnipotent and omnipresent.
And yet, you probably insist that God is perfect. How is it that a perfect God can create an imperfect world? If God creates something that is imperfect, then He is, by definition, imperfect. This too is a logical contradiction and a paradox. We must either say that this world is perfect, because God does not create imperfect things, or that God is imperfect, because He has created/allowed imperfection to exist.
Hope this answers your questions!
I have a question. Don’t know if you’ve discussed this or not already. Sorry to bring it up if you’ve already debated it. Anyway, how can you refute someone that has had paranormal or “supernatural” contact? People that have “proof” of angellic contact and whatnot. People that have “seen” miracles. People that have had bizarre things happen to them that have no logical explaination.
Because if they were to say there really are higher beings, spiritual beings, that aren’t human, then could that, in fact, seem to prove that there could possibly be gods in another realm with the ability to on occasion interact with the human realm for whatever reason? Agnosticism, paeganism, spiritism are examples of believing in such events.
Howdy Flip-Side,
That’s an interesting question, and one I haven’t delved too far into yet.
It’s a big question to tackle, since spiritual experiences can run the gamut from “a feeling of peace” to vivid life after death experiences.
What we do know is that spiritual experiences can be intentionally induced through a number of methods, including: drugs like DMT, gases, powerful magnets, limiting oxygen to the brain, etc. I believe similar effects can occur naturally for many reasons. I’ve personally seen things I KNOW were not there when I was half asleep (and if they wern’t so ridiculous I may have interpreted them as a spiritual experience). Schizophrenia is a natural example of how the brain can sometimes make thoughts seems as if they’re coming from an outside source, just as dreams usually feel as if they’re coming from somewhere else, but they are produced by our own complex brain.
Point being, there are numerous examples that show our brain is inherently unreliable and can often misinterpret information. It’s difficult to accept that we can’t always trust our own brain, but sometimes we can’t.
Another problem with these experiences is that they provide conflicting information to different individuals. For example, Mormon’s might pray and feel God is telling them the Book of Mormon is true, but Christians and Muslims feel no such conviction. Different prophets receive conflicting information. Sometimes it’s from an alien, sometimes it’s angels, sometimes its ghosts, sometimes its fairies, sometimes it’s Jesus, sometimes it’s a god. If unrelated individuals could consistently receive the same complex messages from the same source, it might go a long way towards proving that source exists.
But this can be a tough one to deal with, because people trust their own experiences.
I know this is way late on the timeline of your posts. But I’ve just now found your VERY interesting blog. I noted that “TP” provided the following as proof of a benevolent God performing a miracle:
“Again my father had an experience. He was on a bus,in Jamaica. and he heard a voice tell him to take of his glasses, he didn’t really understand it so he just ignored the voice. the second time he took he decided to listen and took them off. Then the bus swerved and fell on its side, and my father was at the bottom with people on top of him. If he had his glasses on they probably would have broke in his eye… When everyone came out the bus. my father went one way and stood with his bag next to him and a girl next to the bag. Again he heard a voice say move away from the bag. so he did, and then a car came around the bend, and not realizing the bus had crashed, swerved and ran over the same spot where the bag and girl was. The girl was killed and the bag was found underneath the car. God saved my father’s life. ”
I find it a “divine” bit of confirmation bias that this is an example of God performing a miracle for the father. I would look at the exact same example as provided and ask, “Why didn’t God save the girl’s life?” Did God have it in for the girl? Was she a sinner? I’m sure the believer will conclude the girl was a non-believer and didn’t listen when God also told her. But God would’ve known she wouldn’t listen. So when God told the father, “move away”, couldn’t he have added, “… and take the girl with you”?
How is this possibly proof of a loving and benevolent God?
even though i agree with your point, i know what a believer would say, and if he/she says it i don’t know how to answer: “if everything on this planet was perfect, what’s the point of other world (paradise)?”
No point. What’s your point?
Indeed, the question begs that there is (or could be) a point to designing a faulty creation, and I can’t think of one.
A perfect God would create a perfect man in a perfect world where he behaves perfectly. If Adam failed to meet God’s expectations, then it is God who has failed at perfection.
Perhaps it’s better to ask “What’s the point of a perfect God crating an imperfect man who will end up in an imperfect world?” I have no idea why a perfect God would do such a thing. Boredom, maybe?
Really bored or really vicious, to create poor Ismaal Maged…
I think people too often think of God as a being separate from creation. God IS CREATION. It’s terribly mysterious and goes well beyond “good and evil.” In the struggle there is beauty. These twins suffer and die. (psst, so do you)
So… God is a masochist. That would explain a lot.
I think I can clear up one of your questions here. Identical twins or monozygotic twins are formed from one fertilized egg or zygote dividing in half and forming two seperate embryos. Conjoined twins happens when they don’t divide all the way. The cells do not “knit together” and become attatched but rather fail to seperate and remain attatched.
Thanks Ehrman, much appreciated.
As julle nie iets te goed se het oor God nie hou julle monde… Liewe Jesus maak nie failers nie. En wie is jy om te judge. As dit nie vir dai tomic bom was nie wat die mens self laat veroorsaak het nie wie weet dalk was daar nie vandag so iets nie… Onthou wie is die ene wie jou geskape het. Jesus love you
There is no god. Just the cold indifference of nature. Pretending that an imaginary helper in the sky would plan such horrors like those above might comfort some unrealistic thinking people. However the truth is right in front of your eyes. You simply need to accept it.
500 Questions,
I’m very impressed with each one of your replies and love the quality of discussion here. This is a much more constructive discussion than what I encounter on YouTube, to say the least! I’m a person of Faith in Jesus Christ being the Son of God. However, I care about knowing the truth more than holding onto a set of incorrect beliefs and am willing to change my beliefs if they are wrong. However, I have never been able to fully convince myself that God is not real. There are always new reasons why I can’t reject my belief in God. I’ll share some that come to mind.
1. It seems like the increase in scientific knowledge has lead to many Christians falling from faith. My observation is that people rejecting God are basing it solely on there not being any scientific evidence to support it. However, there have always been people who rejected God long before our scientific discoveries. Throughout the history of the world, what reasons do you think people gave for why they didn’t believe in God? They probably thought they had good reason for not believing.
Also, is the average non-believer really so educated in the sciences that they can base their answer to whether or not there’s a God on it? Give me a break… most people are acting as fanatically about Atheism as people do about Religion. Even the smartest people in the world aren’t sure whether or not there is a God.
2. I’ve had a few ex-Christians share their story of when they finally accepted that God was not real. They each said they felt so much better, liberated, and could now focus on living their lives’ to their full potential. To me this is strange because I would have expected them to feel awful (I know I would be devastated). They’re acting like they got rid of a burden but I feel like I would be getting rid of a intensely rewarding relationship I have with the Creator and lose much joy.
Romans 8:7 states, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”
3. Assume, for a moment, that the Bible is true and Satan really does seek to deceives mankind from believing in God. How do you think he would deceive a person? Wouldn’t a person who’s been deceived not know they’ve been deceived and genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing when turning from God?
1 Timothy 4:1 States; “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”
To conclude, I know I don’t have any magical answer or way of convincing anyone that God is real but I genuinely do believe Jesus is the Son of God (for now). I’m regularly struggling with doubts but I am unable to convert to atheism or even to agnosticism. No matter how hard I try, there is always some idea that pops into my mind that keeps me from turning from God. What I hope for you and everyone involved in this discussion is to really look at yourself carefully and don’t take these issues lightly. This is very serious to me and should be to you.
500Q, I have a lot of admiration for the way you’ve conducted yourself and thank you for providing such an outlet for such a meaningful topic. Thank you for putting up with another Christians post to you (that person being me).
Have a good one,
-GJM
John 4:24 ““God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth”
1 Timothy 1:17 “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
Perhaps believers in “God” might define what precisely they mean by “God.” For me, anyway, this would facilitate discussion. My father used to ask, jokingly, “What’s it all about, anyway?” I myself haven’t a clue, and don’t expect I ever will…. I’m OK with accepting that it’s all way beyond me, what with black holes and parallel universes and realized probability functions and Higgs boson particles and conjoined twins and serial killers and Mother Teresa. I had enough difficulty learning Greek. Perhaps we could all just try to be kind to each other, to other living species, and to our beautiful planet, whether or not there is a “God,” whatever that means. OK everybody, new rules: He who dies with the least stuff and the biggest smile wins.
Hi Garrett,
I’m very impressed with your response, you remind me of myself about 5 years ago. I too cared about knowing the truth more than holding onto a set of incorrect beliefs, and was willing to change my beliefs if they were wrong. Only, I found very few reasons to believe that held up to reason, but will take a moment to communicate my thoughts on the possible reasons you’ve given…
1. You say that an increase in scientific knowledge has led many Christians to fall from faith, and that, historically, people came to doubt without science. I agree with this, but I don’t think doubt is limited to any single God. There were surely people in ancient Rome who didn’t believe in Zeus — which was probably difficult if you were raised with the idea and everyone around you believed in Zeus. Why did they doubt? And were they wrong to go against the flow and doubt Zeus, even when everyone else believed? Perhaps these doubters prayed to Zeus and found they got no response from him, or they concluded the stories were just made up by other men.
Science certainly does seem to do a better job at getting us to the truth than, say, special revelations from people who commune with invisible spirits (such as psychics or religious authors). If psychics or religious leaders begin curing diseases and discovering new technologies faster than scientists, then I’d say we should put more faith in them.
2. There is a certain amount of liberation that comes with having reasoned out the truth for yourself. However, there are many ex-christians (myself included) that were devastated by their loss of faith. I found it to be an extremely difficult process. You’re never 100% convinced that God isn’t real, but as you become more convinced, you lose more than you gain: you can lose your church fellowship, your friends, you become disconnected from religious family members, everyone sees you as “turning from God” rather than “realizing the truth,” you lose eternal life, and a heavenly Father who loves you and looks after you, and if you tell your believing friends how crappy you feel, they’ll say it’s because your soul longs for God. And what’s the payoff? You get to think you’re right about something you can’t prove to the believer (who believes by faith,) and you get spent an eternity in hell if you’re wrong.
I think some believers become fanatical and hostile toward religion, not just God, for many reasons: not only do they resent having been fed misinformation, but they resent misinformation being fed to their families and friends. The also resent being labeled as “sinners” when they object, and they believe religion can result in harmful decisions (such as burning innocent people as witches, suicide bombings, or not taking care of the environment because God is going to destroy it soon).
3. Assume, for a moment, that the Zeus is real and Hades really does seek to deceives mankind from believing in Zeus. How do you think he would deceive a person? Wouldn’t a person who’s been deceived not know they’ve been deceived and genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing when turning from Zeus?
Had we been born 2000 years ago, this may have been a very different conversation.
First, we must ask how do we know that such demons even exist. Is it true just because someone said “the Spirit” told them so? If that same spirit also told them you could cure lepers and epileptics by casting out those same “deceitful spirits and demons,” but this doesn’t work in practice, can we trust this spirit? And if science came along and said “Why, it’s not demons at all!”, and gave us more effective cures, should we still trust the spirit?
Of course believers in one religion are going to say that people who depart from it are deceived. What else could they say? That people who depart have discovered the truth?
To conclude, I’m not 100% certain God does not exist. I can only describe my doubt as a war between my emotions and my mind. If I had no emotions — no fear of death or hell-fire — I think there would be little reason to even entertain a God hypothesis. But like everyone else, I want acquire pleasure and avoid pain.
But I haven’t given up asking questions, because I still do take these issues seriously.
Thanks for the great points, I hope you’ll read some of the other questions and add to our other conversations in the future.
those poor people i feel bad for them Q__Q
The problem of evil and suffering as an emotional based is very powerful. The photographs adds to the weight of it. But I believe if we deal with it logical based then I see no problem.
1. If God exist, then He is Omni-X(all powerful, all knowing, all loving)
2. God has good moral reason(s) to permit evil and suffering (cojoined twins)
3. Evil and suffering exist (cojoined twins)
From that I would answer your why-question, by saying if God of the Bible exist, then He is just, if He is just, then He has a just reasons to create(since I believe that everything happens because God allow, permit or cause to be) conjoined twins.
What just reason could God have? I do not know. I need to be either all knowing (Omniscient) or God need to reveal it to me to know God’s just reason to create cojoined twins. Simply because I do not know, this by itself, does not mean that there are no just reasons, but I am epistemologically limited.
Your blog follower and reader,
Prayson
Howdy Prayson,
That logic might work, so long as we’re certain the Bible is true. If it’s not, than that logic fails. Is there any one thing in the Bible you can point to, to prove that it is? If so, I would love to hear it.
If not, then this assumption is just based upon what someone said about their god thousands of years ago. Meanwhile, the observable evidence today suggests either no gods exists, or they appear to be unjust.
The logic works even if the Bible is false. We just need to take it as an ordinary literature source.
Remember you assumed the God of the Bible existed to ask why He created conjoined twins. I argued if that assumed God exist, then He would have just reason to create cojoin twins as to answer your why question.
Your blog reader and follower,
Prayson
Excellent point, Prayson. I think, though, that the point of this blog is to question the existence of God. To question it. The blog seems to me to be asking: How can we believe in an omnipotent, kind, well-meaning being in the face of conjoined twins.
Prayson’s right, I confess, I have committed the logical fallacy of begging the question. The question does appear to presume that God exists, and that I am only asking why God would create such twins. But Penn is also right, the overriding theme of the blog is to question that very assumption.
I totally agree that the overriding theme of the blog is to question that very assumption that God exists. I found many questions challenging and worth pondering.
I believe my aim was to show that the problem of evil and suffering(cojoined twins, suffering and death of children et cetera) are powerful as emotional based but weak intellectual based when it comes to questioning the very assumption that God exists.
Late prominent atheist J. L. Mackie, who use to be a leading defender of the logical problem of evil also concluded in his later works that this case has been solved by Alvin Plantinga ( most clearly in Plantinga’s God Freedom and Evil).
So, unless one succeed in showing that Omni-X God exist, if exists, does not have just reasons to permit evil and suffering, which I believe is hell of a burden of proof, then it is still warranted to believe in a Omni-X God, if exist, who permit evil and suffering. The question of evil and suffering though question emotionally powerfully questions the assumption of existence of God, its intellectually weak.
Your blog reader and follower,
Prayson
Huh? I did not follow your argument at all, Prayson. Calling something intellectually weak is not an argument; it just seems defensive. Point out the problem instead of saying the argument or position is weak. Maybe I could follow what you are trying to say if you said it in plain English and without reference to others I’m not familiar with. State your case.
Penn, I am sorry that you failed to follow my case. I believe I already gave an argument above (1-3) showing that Omni-X God and evil can logically co-exist.
When I say it is intellectually weak, I meant that the the problem of evil and suffering when examined from a logical or evidential point of view is not compelling. It is only strong emotionally as you could see how much the photographs in this article arises.
I am also sorry that you are not familiar with contemporary philosophical discussion on the the problem of evil and suffering.
If you would love to dance with this issue, I believe reading J. L. Mackie, who was a brilliant atheist philosopher, and Alvin Plantinga, a prominent theist philosopher, on God and evil would help you bring you up to speed on the weaknesses and strengths of problem of evil and suffering in academia.
Prayson
Prayson, are you saying that it is not difficult to believe in a God who is “Omni-X” and allows conjoined twins? OK, it seems reasonable to say that if God exists, he has some purpose indecipherable to us humble humans for allowing this sort of thing. But why believe in God in the first place? It seems to me that this blog is questioning the omnipotent, ALL-GOOD etc God of our religions, whatever they may be. Sure, maybe there’s a God and he’s a sadistic SOB. Maybe there’s a God and we just don’t get him. Maybe there isn’t a God. Who knows. You do; I don’t. I don’t want to read Mackie and whosis; I’m studying nutrition right now, something I have at least a snowball’s chance in hell of understanding. Best wishes.
Hej Penn. Thank you for your response. I believe the question was “why God created conjoined twins” and not “what reasons can one have to believe that God exists or does exist”
I studying philosophy and theology right now, something I never thought I would because I were an atheist. I would be a great liar if I say I fully understand. Honestly the more I study the more I have questions. I am a fool is search of wisdom.
The problem of evil and suffering and existence of God was my thesis and I believe I am going to take it further for my candidate’s thesis focus on animal suffering and existence of God.
Thank you for everything Penn.
Prayson
“I’m sorry that you have failed..” oh really? Then I’m genuinely sorry to inform you that your post was filled with frustrated passive aggression.
This is the “mysterious ways” defense. Whatever horrible photos you can find of how the world causes suffering to the innocent, you’re always covered with the mysterious ways defence. Especially if you hold that our lowly human reasoning cannot comprehend Gods ways, then it is entirely pointless to even think about it. Philosophers want to find out deep things about the world simply by sitting there, observing the workings of the world and *thinking*. This begs the question, why do you even read Mackie and Plantinga? After all, they are not omniscient and I bet God has not revealed his knowledge to them, meaning they are as “epistemologically limited” as all of us.
If you believe God has good moral reason(s) to permit evil and suffering that we humans just aren’t capable of understanding, then no amount of observing or thinking will hold an answer. So then why spend so much time considering and debating the “problem” of evil and suffering?
From my perspective as an atheist though, this whole issue is laughably simply. Everyone is bending over backwards trying to justify the bad in the world. Jumping through hoops to think up elaborate reasons why this might be somehow in Gods plan, or just plain giving up and saying “I don’t know, but I’m sure God has good reasons…” when the answer is just so simple. There is no God. Suffering exists because that is the nature of the world. Cells sometimes just don’t divide right. That’s it.
Hej Hex,
Thank you for joining in this awesome discussion. To group the case I gave as “mysterious way” is, I believe, unfair. Hex the case I gave did not appeal to mysterious ways of God, but a probable defense, that does not have to be believed nor be true, but simply “possibly true”.
If it is possibly true that God(if He exist as presumed in in the way the question is framed), He may have good moral reasons to permit evil and suffering.
I believe you misunderstood why I mentioned Mackie and Plantinga. Mackie was a brilliant atheist who wrote much defending about the problem of evil why Plantinga, according to contemporary philosophy, is said to have solved the logical problem of evil.
If there is no God, as you stated, then I believe there is no problem of evil and suffering. Nature just is. Unlike Hindus who believe suffering and evil is an illusion, a naturalist believe that suffering and evil does not exist. Richard Dawkins’ put it well: “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”(Dawkins 1995: 112)
But if that is the case, then I believe “why would God create cojoin twins” is meaningless question.
Thank you Hex.
Prayson
I followed you there, Prayson, and agree that “why would God create conjoined twins” is a meaningless question. It presupposes the existence of God. And if there is a God, who can know why it would do whatever it does. But it seems to me that the question the blog is asking is better stated as: “Is it reasonable to believe in an omnipotent good God who would create conjoined twins?” Of course our postulated God might be omnipotent but not good, not by our standards. It does seem to me, though, that the existence of God can be neither proved nor disproved by reason. Belief in God requires, ultimately, a leap of faith. Sort of like being in love. A little implausible to anyone who hasn’t been there? I would think that a rational person would be an agnostic. Unless/until he makes that leap of faith, and then grants that he is in love, and that it is not rational. Nothing wrong with being irrational! Just don’t call it rational.
A couple thoughts…
Penn: “It does seem to me, though, that the existence of God can be neither proved nor disproved by reason. Belief in God requires, ultimately, a leap of faith.”
James Randi once said, “I can’t prove there are no unicorns in Ecuador. But even though I don’t know, there’s nothing that warrants belief that there is.” Dawkins used to say something similar about fairies. If there’s no good reason to believe that something exists, we shouldn’t believe in it until their is. Otherwise, there’s is an endless list of things we can believe in that can’t be disproved (such as Zeus, or Russell’s teapot). I think it is possible to disprove many Christian claims (e.g. Noah’s ark) as well as other claims about God, but looking around us and considering whether design or chance is more likely responsible for what we observe, which is the heart of my mission.
Prayson: “Plantinga, according to contemporary philosophy, is said to have solved the logical problem of evil.”
Wikipedia sums up his argument this way…
“It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures.”
I hardly believe that this has solved the problem of evil. Before God created us (assuming he did), there was presumably 0% evil in His universe. If God is unable to create free creatures that don’t turn evil, then a benevolent God should avoid creating them. Problem solved.
Furthermore, there is no need for such excessive suffering. Satan and Adam are both said to have rebelled against God in conditions that were free of any pain and suffering. Animals too are made to needlessly suffer. Why would a benevolent God design them as food for each other? And how do we justify such suffering that is not rewarded?
Hej 500Qs
If it is all about ” human free will” then indeed “animals too are made to needlessly suffer.” and you are very correct to ask “why would a benevolent God design them as food for each other?”
Unlike Plantinga I do not take a step further to provide libertarian freedom as a possible reason that God allow suffering(I think it unnecessary step). Thus a theist A could address your concern as follows:
1. If Omni-X God exist then it is possibly true that Omni-X God have good moral reason(s) to permit evil and suffering(p→q))
2. OmniX- God exist (according to theists)(q)
3. Therefore it is possibly true that Omni-X God have good moral reason(s) to permit evil and suffering(∴ q)
Thus A is warranted to believe an Omni-X God who permits suffering and evil. I believe an atheist B, bearing a hell of a burden of proof, can counter argue A as follows:
4. It is not the case that is possibly true that God have good moral reason(s) to permit evil and suffering(¬q)
5. Therefore it is not the case that Omni-X God exist (¬p)
The burden of proof to which B bears is to show the truthfulness of (4). B need to argue that it’s impossible that God has any reasons to permit evil, which I believe is a hell of a task.
N.B: (Omni-X = omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolence)
Your blog reader and follower,
Prayson
First and foremost, the burden of proof ALWAYS lies with the person making the claim, so it is first up to the believer in God to prove that God exists. The burden should not be placed on the atheist to prove God, or anything else, does not exist, because the list of things that man can imagine that don’t exist is endless. Obviously, the burden of proof has not been met for God, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Secondly, even if we assume God exists, I still have to wonder why an omnibenevolent God would bother creating us at all. He certainly didn’t HAVE to create us, and creating us only resulted in additional suffering in an otherwise perfect universe.
But since believers in God (or gods) have no actual proof, non-believers can only point to this, and to other clues that such a God seems illogical, and is contradicted by the observable evidence, such as unnecessary evil. But theists just always retort, “Oh, He exists, and I’m sure His benevolence calls for this much evil… because He exists… and is benevolent… so it must be… so there.”
The more I learn about Christianity, the more it seems like a fortress built upon thousands of unfalsifiable claims. You question a Christian into a corner, and then He shields himself with an unfalsifiable claim that can never be disproved. Not only is the burden of proof never met, but one must DIE to see the proof. Uggggh! It’s enough to drive one batty! :-/
Sadly 500Qs, in the problem of evil, it is the atheist who made the claim that suffering and evil cannot co-exist, thus he is the one with the burden of proof. I did not claim the burden of proof is on the atheist to prove that God does not exist, but is to show that “if God existed” He would not have good moral reason(s) to permit evil.
One does not have to be a theist, as Mackie was not, to see that the logic does not hold 500Qs.
As I pointed if we assume God exists, and He is omnibenevolent God then it is warranted to hold that He has good moral reasons(s) to bother creating us at all.
Your blog reader and follower,
Prayson
Hoo boy, Prayson, methinks you miss the point, which is why should we assume the existence of God. Why not “assume” it doesn’t exist. It seems to me either assumption is unwarranted.
If your correct Penn that both assumption are unwarranted, then 500Qs question is meaningless
It becomes unwarranted question.
But I believe, Penn, you miss the point of 500Qs’ questions. He is questioning the warrant of believing in a omnibenevolent God who created conjoin twins. His questions assumes omnibenevolent God exist. All I did is use the same assumption to answer 500Qs’ own questions Penn.
So whether both assumption are unwarranted, that is not the what is asked ihere. That could be left for future inquires, but not so in this 500Qs’ question.
Your comment fellow,
Prayson
I give up. I’m just going to accept that everything was created by the invisible pink unicorn (who has always existed). I have no evidence, but apparently none is needed, so long as no one can disprove the claim. ‘Night fellas.
I will follow the invisible pink unicorn red herring, because I am puzzled how do we know the unicorn is pink if the unicorn is invisible? I am curious to know if invisible objects could possess colors!
Good night 500Qs
Prayson
Hej Penn. It is good morning here for it is 8:27 a.m our time. I am in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I think I did not miss the spirit of the blog, which spirit seems to me also to be: it is difficult to believe in a God who would create conjoined twins. I just attempted to show that it is not difficult given the assumption of this particular question Penn.
Good morning, Good night,
Prayson
It’s possible, but you must accept it on faith.
Thank you 500Qs for a brilliant discussion. I am grateful for the work you put. I am always challenged reading your posts.
Thanks Prayson.
But 500, is the pink unicorn benevolent? Does he rest on another pink unicorn? Can he dance on the head of a pin?
He can do whatever cannot be disproved, and nothing more. But I believe he derives pleasure from BOTH good and evil. This makes the observable evidence more consistent with the unicorn, making him the most probable explanation.
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.” ~Douglas Adams
There you go, 500.
Re your last, Prayson, which I don’t see here for some reason: I think you’re right, of course, in saying that the original question, why would God create conjoined twins, assumes the existence of God, and if one assumes the existence of God, then why God does such and so is a meaningless question. God must have a good reason. OK. But in being nitpicky over the wording of the question, I think you miss the spirit of the blog, which spirit seems to me to be: it is difficult to believe in a God who would create conjoined twins. It’s the old old problem of pain, which CS Lewis thought he answered. His answer did not satisfy me, and I’m sure it did not satisfy many others. Go to bed. We shouldn’t be up at this hour.
Hej Penn. It is good morning here for it is 8:27 a.m our time. I am in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I think I did not miss the spirit of the blog, which spirit seems to me also to be: it is difficult to believe in a God who would create conjoined twins. I just attempted to show that it is not difficult given the assumption of this particular question Penn.
Good morning, Good night,
Prayson
Thank you Penn. I believe you are correct in my ways.
You are very right on a better way to frame the question, viz., “Is it reasonable to believe in an Omi-X God who who would created conjoined twins”. Theists have to show that is it reasonable by add a premise, which does not have to be true or believed by anyone, but simply be “possibly true”, that would both entail existence of evil and suffering and existence of God.
Theists could argued as follows modus ponens case (Omni-X = omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolence)
1. It is prima facie not reasonable to believe in an Omni-X God who create conjoined twins.
2. If its possibly true that an Omni-X God has just reasons to created conjoined twins then it is reasonable to believe in an Omni-X God who created conjoined twins.(p→q)
3. It is possibly true that an Omni-X God has just reasons to created conjoined twins.(p)
4. Therefore its reasonable to believe in an Omni-X God who created conjoined twins.(∴ q)
A person who believe it is not reasonable to believe in an Omni-X God who create conjoined twins, I believe, need to refute the truthfulness of (3). He/she need to show that it is not the case that Omni-X God have any just reasons to create conjoined twins(¬p), which I think is a hell of a burden of proof.
I would love to comment the second part of your comment about (non)existence of God, leap of faith and agnosticism but I am scared we will drift away from the question at hand.
Your comment fellow,
Prayson
Prayson
Prayson: Re 3) It is possibly true…etc.
It is also possibly not true. Which is all I am saying. Can’t prove it one way or the other.
Remember Penn probabilities are relative to the background information. When I contend that 3. It is possibly true that an Omni-X God has just reasons to created conjoined twins, one of my background information is that God, if exists, is all loving.
What is(are) background infromation to support the possibility of not-3?
One of your background INFORMATIONS is that God, if exists, is all-loving? Where did you get this information?
From 50Qs framed question
Penn
Haha. Hardly an infallible source, huh?
So, Penn, what could be your background information for not-3?
Yo Prayson. I don’t have any background info. I don’t need any, since my contention is simply that the whole thing is unknowable. Not trying to prove anything, since I don’t think anything on this vast topic is provable. Our intelligence and senses are not up to the task. So let’s get on with something else, like enjoying Emmylou Harris.
I enjoy Adele Laurie Blue Adkins and Norah Jones. Thank you for everything Penn.
I don’t know it for a fact. It’s what I think, because I don’t have good reason to think otherwise.
aw shucks. You leave me nothing to argue with, Prayson.
Out of curiosity Penn, as we enjoy music, your contention is simply that the whole thing is unknowable, you said? How do you,Penn, know that the whole think is unknowable?
There is nothing else I can say to convince you that there is a god. I’ll pray that god will reveal himself to you. Trust in the lord with all your heart and Lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Convincing argument!
Indeed. If there’s nothing you can say that will convince me, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are convinced.
Are you suggesting that the only way one can become convinced is by personal revelation? If so, I’m still waiting for God to respond to my numerous requests to make a simple demonstration of His existence. So far, it’s difficult to tell the difference between God and nothing.
The question was: Why would a god create conjoined twins? Now, even if we claim that a god is benevolent and has some good reason – that we cannot fathom – to allow such evil, it does not answer the question.
In a system where the same alledgedly ominpotent and benevolent god demands us faith and love (by threat of violence) while allows such evil wich, as that god must understand, affects our faith, it begs the questions, if that god really is benevolent, or if that god exists at all.
There are some atheists who reject the question of evil, but I do not. If an alledgedly omnipotent creator god demands us to have faith, but continuously tests our faith through this emotionally and logically strong reality, and by what we evaluate as evil in it, but what really seems to demonstrate the indifference of nature without any gods, the whole sherade is quite unethical. That does not demonstrate any sort of benevolence, but either malevolence, or nonexistance of any gods.
However, instead of inventing excuses for this god, we could come to the conclusion, that it is much more likelier that the indifference manifested in nature is the mere result of nature being indifferent. Rather than that the benevolent god has a mysterious reason for greater good to allow the nature to be indifferent in this manner.
2 Souls Can Become One? If you believe that god grants a soul at conception – read on.
Hey there. I am not sure if this was covered in your article above – but check this out. Many religious believe that the soul is given at conception. BUT – read this description of chimera according to wikipedia – “A chimera or chimaera is a single organism (usually an animal) that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated from different zygotes involved in sexual reproduction”
This means TWO or more fertalized eggs combine to form one individual. Can 2 souls unite to form one soul? This has even been observed in humans: “In 2002, Lydia Fairchild was denied public assistance when DNA evidence showed that she was not related to her children. After hearing of a human chimera in New England, Karen Keegan, it was eventually found that she too was a chimera and thus had two sets of DNA.”
This is not the same as 1 zygote splitting and becoming 2. This is 2 distinct and separate individuals becoming 1 individual while in the womb. TRIPPY!
As much as I belive in the existence of God, I also believe that he does not exist. Yes, there is a God. I believe he created this world, which is almost perfect. But even though the nature is so beautiful and look so perfect, it will still make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It is inevitable. (What we refer to as mistakes is actually the law of nature. For a reaction to happen, it has to be the right conditions, or everything will go wrong). One example is DNA polymerase, which replicate our entire genome. It is the most accurate enzyme known, and only makes one mistake in a billion bases. The human genome has a size of 3,2 billion basepairs. Which leads to 3,2 “mistakes” per replication. But this wasn’t really what I wanted to say.
What I really want to say is that God is the creator. He was here in the beginning, and is still here. But he doesn’t interact. You can’t ask questions like; “Why did God let this happend?” A God who creates creatures like us, humans, with a free will, can’t interact them. What is the meaning of creating humans, with free will, if we aren’t able to use it? Some things have to happen. And I think that we, the humans, doesn’t understand the will of our God. We can’t blame all bad things that happens on God or Satan. It is we who destroys the world, and then there is the law of nature. God has only started a clockwork.
I am one of few christians that believe both in God and in science. The more science I learn, the more my faith in God increases.
Howdy Angelica,
I’ve often heard the argument that we humans must not interact with the Almighty in order to preserve our free will. This idea seems a little too convenient for a God who’s already indistinguishable from nothing (as with all other gods), but the Bible itself contradicts that notion. Adam had free will while living in a perfect environment and communicating with God. I think we should all have been given that same opportunity; the Biblical God would seem much more plausible if the only evil in the world was done by man (and God’s creation was otherwise perfect).
500Q
I believe strongly that god does all these amazing way beyond our imagination stuff e.g conjoined twin etc, to show the people he is the greatest of all and he can do anything because in our society many ppl forget and not believe the almighty god (not all though). My opinion though.
sort of like Hitler, then?