{"id":91,"date":"2007-08-30T23:40:40","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T06:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ronpytel.com\/info\/?p=91"},"modified":"2013-09-30T09:17:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T16:17:26","slug":"ok-i-rose-to-the-bait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ronpytel.com\/info\/ok-i-rose-to-the-bait\/","title":{"rendered":"Skeptic #4"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. It turns out that 5 doctors were on the panel and one of them voted against… Things are turning out to be not quite as clear-cut as the article made out.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. In all those people who are suffering from one ailment or another, we have seen two so-called miracles? Meanwhile this exact same sort of ‘miracle’ is seen in hospitals around the world every single day. These two ‘healings’ out of the millions that have been there almost define what a “random event” is.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, I rose to the bait<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently challenged to acknowledge that I had considered that “maybe there is no God” and to provide a single shred of evidence that God existed I feel obliged to respond.<\/p>\n

Firstly lets us agree that if there were proof absolute either that God did or did not exist I would not be writing this post. Secondly, let us agree that evidence should not be limited to scientific laboratory evidence. Science is able to confirm that certain things are testable and repeatable, that is, empirically verifiable in the present. A belief in the intangible is clearly an inappropriate subject for scientific investigation.<\/p>\n

I would say that \u201cmaybe there is no God, on the other hand maybe there is\u201d is the only valid starting point \u2013 note both sides of the coin. Indeed that has been the starting point for my theism. As such it meant I had to acknowledge and consider the existence of God as a possibility. This position is impossible for those who believe that there is no God (i.e. not the \u201cI have no opinion\u201d atheists whose commitment to their position is similar to mine on Barack Obama\u2019s ability to make cheesecake).<\/p>\n

When confronted with the question of miracles for instance, I had to approach with an open mind rather than \u201cthere is no God therefore there are no miracles\u201d. In fact I thought that if one could establish with some confidence that miracles did occur then that would be a measure of evidence that God existed. If there was absolutely no evidence then it seriously questioned any interaction between God (at the time \u201cGod\u201d undefined in my mind) and this world \u2013 a serious blow for the Abrahamic religions\u2019 concept of God.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t bore you with the detail of my research but as you may know, in order to be recognised as a saint in the Catholic Church the person should have at least two miracles attributed to their intercession \u2013 there are special cases such as for martyrs. The miracles are subject to considerable scrutiny with the appointment a \u201cDevil\u2019s Advocate\u201d to challenge the evidence. As an illustration of the miracles try the healing in response to request for intercession by a priest that is one of the miracles attributed to St Faustian\u2019s intercession.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.catholicprogress.com\/livingproof.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

The key point is that a panel of doctors declared the healing could not be explained by medical science (that includes \u2018yeah this sometimes happens and we don\u2019t know why). Included on the panel were two eminent (world renowned?) cardiologists; Dr. Valentin Fuster’s from Mount Sinai’s School of Medicine in New York City and Dr. Nicholas Fortuin, from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

Now this is one of many examples, and I leave it to you to verify that this is not an isolated case. That it is not an isolated case is of course important. If all the doctors had established was that there was isolated unexplained event, no big deal but:<\/p>\n