longweekend58 wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 10:20am:

Debate requires openness to scrutiny. You cannot provide any material for scrutiny and I accept that you will not and should not publish private material for the obvious reasons.

However, that puts your story in the category of a matter of faith. You intend to offer the reader nothing else but your story.

But to react with contempt when you are doubted is dishonest and arrogant.

What is it to insist that I and others accept that it must be true because you have been saying it for 10 years?

How do you rationalise that your readers must necessarily assume you have no reason to lie? I don't know you. I don't know whether or not you have a daughter. I can't know whether or not she even had spina bifida...

This form of testifying is common in many Christian sects... Where the testifier is not expected to provide proof... The congregation is feeding off the same hyperbolic emotions that you are... A spurious need to prove that Jesus saved your daughter via a miracle...

To call me a coward is a modern day version of the 16th century condemnation of apostates for failing to take as a matter of faith, god's existence or presence in the world... It is a ridiculous anachronism, similar to a modern Catholic condemning Galileo .

This is neo-Christianity's greatest flaw... Its insistence that its adherents' return to the 16th century in their crude and belligerent religious chauvinism.

John Smith wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 11:31am:


then you've not been listening. ASk any other poster and they will inform you otherwise.

It is a nice argument and all but all it does is reduce the debate to nothing. Any debate on miracles starts (and ends) with this argument which is ultimately 'prove it'.  I can but clearly that is not possible here and even if I did, you would reject it anyhow.

Miracles are a difficult thing to debate because they are in essence 'impossibilities' which by their very occurrence are therefore not impossible and not a miracle.

But when you have a daughter destined to a life in a wheelchair from an incurable illness and then prayer causes a 100% recovery, you might however find your arguments to be found wanting.

You say this is a debate on faith when it is in fact nothing of the kind.   It is all quite factual, but behind the facts is something or rather Someone you cannot, will not and refuse to acknowledge and so the debate is stymied in all this faux argument.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 12:05pm:

You've spent too many years evangelising to people like yourself who need no evidence to believe your extraordinary claims because they are as caught up in the emotional froth as you are...

This is how televangelists make so much money. The foolish, the lonely, the vulnerable will part with their cash and even pretend to believe the outlandish claims of the 'cured' or their advocates if it furthers their manic state... If you'll easy part with cash, why not a sense of incredulity?

Now, you accept that miracles are not miracles?

It was originally out of respect for what was clearly a matter of faith to you not to debate something that cannot be debated due to the unavailability of evidence... But really, people like you are dangerous fools, whose insistence that his story is true, without the need to prove anything, may lead some distressed, hapless parent to refuse medical assistance for their child because some blind religious zealot claimed the cure lay in prayer.

I am serious when I ask what level of proof you would accept because in this post you claim that no proof is ever provided or needed.  So what is it? do you have an answer?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 1:04pm:


and if I did that, would you then believe it is a miracle?

I think we all know the answer which is kinda my point.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 1:12pm:

Well, now you're drawing a conclusion as to my opinion prior to the debate... Kinda like putting the horse before the cart.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 21^st, 2014 at 1:16pm:


actually it is PRECISELY my point.  Ive dont this debate many many times before and the things that has always struck me is that when pushed, most people declare an impossible standard of proof to avoid ever having to confront the implications of a miracle.  That's why I asked for your standard of proof because I am pretty sure (and you've given me no reason to doubt it) that you would also only accept a level of proof that is impossible to achieve.

So I ask seriously, what evidence would you require for PROOF that a miracle had occurred.