Recently, a reader posted this question:

Hey Tim.

This doesn't have a lot to do with the topic I don't think, but this entry was the closet I could find to what I'm wanting to link.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?
http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/

I've seen this site thrown around alot on the forums I read on various "Is God Real?" threads. I was wondering if you've done any reading on this site (or if you've even heard of it) and if you have, have you tryed to refute any of the things the author of the information on the site is saying? I'm sure some of it is the same old arguement against Scripture ("Moses said children should be killed for disobeying their parents! It's evidence against God!"), but some of it st may be stuff neither of us have seen before.

Just curious.

I also get asked about this quite a bit, so I thought I'd do a post on the topic in response.

The gist of this site is that God doesn't actually do any scientifically-verifiable healings -- nothing impressive, really. Just little subjective things like "God helped me do better on my test", or other things which can easily be attributed to non-miraculous sources.

From the "Executive Summary"...

As described in section 1, we simply pray and watch what happens. What we find is that nothing happens.... If we pray for anything that is impossible -- for example, regenerating an amputated limb or moving Mt. Everest to Newark, NJ -- it never happens. We all know that. If we pray for anything that is possible, the results of the prayer will unfold in exact accord with the normal laws of probability.

Most the time, when people -- especially those who don't know him well -- ask God to do something ("God, I want to win the lottery!") nothing apparently happens. It's also true that it seems rather rare that God does big, verifiable "miracles." This is all true, as best I can tell.

But the site is also wrong when it suggests God never does such things, and that there is never documented of evidence of such.

First, it doesn't seem most reported miracles are truly "impossible". Most miracles -- even most biblical miracles -- are simply highly improbable. Walking on water, for example, is not physically impossible (if you know your physics well enough) -- it's just terribly unlikely. And even this website calls "regenerating an amputated limb" impossible -- though I suspect it's also merely highly improbable, and could be accomplished, perhaps, at some point in the future.

So highly unlikely occurences happen?

In my experience, yes, definitely. I'll tell you a few such stories. I don't expect them to convince anyone (for reasons I'll get to in a moment), but you're asking what I think, and I'm giving you my own observations.

What I've Seen

First, and least impressively, I had an ingrown toenail which bled for several years. (A classmate had a dropped his entire weight, and a rather sharp desk-edge onto it in high school.) By college, it bled rather frequently into my socks (and/or released lympathic fluid), and I would come home from classes, many days, with a large, wet, bloody stain in my sock. I had had it operated on several times, but the operations provided no relief.

I was going to a church which taught that miracles didn't happen anymore. And so I'd been praying, and wondering, if they were right about that. Like most people, I'd prayed the usual prayers ("God, please help me find my keys!"), which seem to be of little avail. But one morning before attending this church, I had an unusual impression I was being told to ask for my foot to be healed.

So I did. It didn't bleed that day, which was not completely unusual. But it didn't bleed the next day either, nor the next. In fact, from that day forward, it never gave me trouble again.

Is that just a co-incidence? Perhaps, but given that it had been a problem for quite a long time, I found it interesting that its healing co-incided with that particular prayer, and the unusual feeling I was supposed to pray about it.

A second story is somewhat more impressive. I was at an older woman's house, a woman known for having a deep love of God. I only understood it, at the time, as a social get-together. She served brownies and refreshments, and we spoke with each other. Then, near the end, we all bowed our heads for a simple prayer, consisting only of her reciting Psalm 51 from memory.

When she said "purge me with hyssop and I will be clean", I felt an incredibly powerful feeling wash though my chest -- completely unexpected. I felt like I'd been cleaned out inside somehow. My girlfriend and roomate were also present; when I spoke with them afterwards, they reported having the exact same experience, at the exact same moment. (I asked them independently, and was careful not to prompt them with details.) None of us had ever encountered anything like that before.

There was a woman at the meeting whose name was Nan. She had breast cancer and was, if memory serves, going in for a radical mastectomy the next morning -- many large tumors, low chances of survival. Yet a day or so afterwards, a mutual friend reported to me that when she'd gone in for the surgey, they'd done a pre-op X-ray, and was unable to find anything, repeated the X-rays (to the same effect), and, considerably perplexed, had to cancel the surgery and send her home.

This was, by the way, Washington University Medical Center -- one of the premier facilities in the country.

Given what I'd felt personally, and what others had reported, I had little doubt that her tumors had been healed -- well, removed or even replaced apparently -- at that moment.

There are many smaller things I could cite (such as a spontaneous remission of Lupus in a woman many prayed for), but the cases above are the ones that I think would sound most impressive -- and most like the sort of things this website says simply don't occur.

What Others Have Seen

Although I've said that miracles are rare, I think they're probably a bit less rare than we think -- I don't think when Nan's doctors saw the "before" and "after" X-rays that they rushed out to notify the media. (I didn't either.) So there's no New York Times article about that case. Nor probably many others.

But these things do happen, and are indeed documented by some people. The Catholic church, for example, investigates these kinds of reports -- and rejects some and accepts others. GK Chesterton mentioned he'd examined the evidence for several medieval miracles and came to the conclusion that they'd happened. And some doctors admit to noticing these sorts of occurrences, also:

How rare are spontaneous remissions when defined as tumor regression without chemotherapy? The answer depends on who you ask. Physicians who specialize in nondrug, natural cancer therapies will cite a very large number of cases to support their view that cancer remission without chemotherapy or radiotherapy is not uncommon. Most oncologists will dismiss such claims as blatant lies.

Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Sausalito, CA (1993), lists 1,051 case reports published in peer-reviewed medical literature. What percentage of the actual cases does this number represent? It's anybody's guess. Spontaneous remission is not at all an uncommon event in the experience of pathologists, and I know that it is a rare pathologist who prepares a formal report for publication of such cases. That volume includes a graph showing a steep rise in the frequency of medical reports of spontaneous remissions during the last four decades. Notwithstanding, this number represents a very small percentage of the true number.

While I don't know if "Institute of Noetic Sciences" is a mainstream group, I also have no doubt that they'd be able to compile a list of peer-reviewed reports of such remissions. Here's a random example I've pulled from a medical database:

A 72-year-old Caucasian woman suffered from histologically-proven advanced hepatic cancer, for which she received no treatment. She had been a regular drinker for a long time. Serologic markers for hepatitis B and C were negative. In spite of her poor prognosis, she remained in good clinical condition and at 14 months of follow up the hepatocellular carcinoma could not be visualised any more radiologically.

In other words, she wasn't treated in any way for her liver cancer, and yet the advanced (i.e. large) tumor completely disappeared. Was this an answer to prayer? Not recorded, of course, so we'll never know. But such things do indeed happen.

So, to add a few more, here's a woman who was healed of Lou Gehrig's Disease. Here's another woman, apparently documented in the Honolulu Star, who was healed of cancer in both lungs, "a diagnosis established by biopsy and X-rays." And like the Catholic Church, the "700 Club" (not my favorite group, but hey) seems to have a rather long list of testimonials which I'm sure some soul could delve into, including people allegedly healed of Parkinson's, Leukemia (and in an infant), ankylosing spondylistis, Polio, a deformed heart valve, etc. Specific names, locations, hospitals, doctors' names (and often videotaped testimony) are included. I rather doubt they'd all come up false.

These are all macroscopic conditions which can be established by medical tests -- X-rays, biospies, physical examination, etc. And, given what I've seen, I expect these are just the tip of a larger iceberg.

Limits to What God Does?

Of course, none of them, admittedly, were cases where limbs spontaneously regenerated. (Though a deformed heart valve would seem pretty close.) And while I'm at it, I admit that I've never heard of God miraculously healing decapitations, severe birth defects, miscarriage, impact trauma from a high fall, nor miraculously reassembling a body after a gernade or bomb blast (sort of like the metallic robot in Terminator 3).

And why stop there? I've also never heard of God creating piles of money or gold from no-where to help a worthy soul out of debt. Nor has he written "I EXIST. LOVE, GOD" in the sky for all to see -- at least not lately.

So yes, if we accept any of the previously-mentioned cases as possibly being "miraculous", we would be forced to conclude there are some kinds of things God will do, and some kinds of things he won't.

This is allegedly supposed to be some kind of disproof of God. And indeed, it is: it disproves any variety of God who would be eager to do such things, to convince any and all of his existence and goodness. In other words, it disproves the kind of God Richard Dawkins demands -- the kind who would leave no room for atheists like himself. As this site itself suggests, every prayer (or at least a very large number of them) would have to be quickly answered, and in a most convincing manner.

So yes, we can be absolutely sure that kind of God doesn't exist.

But is that the only kind of God possible? We must say "yes" if we're going to make the leap from "that kind of God doesn't exist" to "therefore, no possible God, of any description, can exist". But that's fallacious: it's possible we could simply be wrong about God's attributes.

The Biblical God

Whether real or not, the biblical god is certainly not the god described on this site. Jesus, for example, flatly refused to do miracles, or otherwise perform on demand, for those who weren't really interested in what he had to offer.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. (Luke 23)

Jesus also generally didn't make a show of healing people, but rather, preferred they not let everyone know what had happened.

At this [the reviving of a dead girl] they [her parents] were completely astonished. [Jesus] gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat. (Mark 5)

Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." (Matthew 8)

... Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16)

In fact, even when he spoke to the crowds, Jesus intentionally did so in a manner which limited the number of people who would be swayed by his teaching and follow him:

[Jesus] said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, "'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand..." (Luke 12)

Clearly, if Jesus is the Christian God, incarnate, this isn't a god who is trying to maximize his following and make sure none reject him.

The Greater Context

So, back to those severed limbs, and God's limits: why?

Let's go back further for just one moment: Why are we even here in the first place?

The Christian answer to this question is essentially that this place, this universe, is like a giant petri dish, in which God allows all varieties of human being to grow, act, and make decisions. God's ultimate purpose is to allow people to freely choose Him, but that also involves letting others express other preferences.

So the goal is not to impress everyone into obedience -- the goal is to woo those who are interested into a loving relationship. This is a bit akin to difference between a man who's looking for a one-night stand, and one who seeks a wife. A cad will flash every bit of cash he has in a bar, and probably land the most correspondingly superficial babe. Conversely, a rich or powerful man who seeks a lifetime lover, a woman of quality, would probably disguise his wealth or influence, in order to attract a woman more interested in his personality than his cash. The Christian God is more like this.

In fact, that's the exact analogy used: a groom seeking a bride.

So I strongly suspect that the limits are there based on a threshhold of obviousness. And need. (Severed limbs aren't, after all, fatal -- cancer is.) I've noticed that it's usually the people who have sincere questions (or need a wake-up call) who seem to experience these kinds of miracles. And even then, only at some cusp or critical turning point -- afterwards (and for older Christians like myself) the apparent miracles mostly stop.

(This is, in fact, something we warn younger Christians about: initially, you go through this phase where really amazing things seem to happen, and you're so high on getting to know God, and then, when you get mature enough -- *sqrrrk*: off goes the spigot. And things get very, very dry for a while.)

And even then, God appears to have a curious selectivity. For example, I know a man who was both a chain smoker and cocaine addict, and when he found God, he was instantly delivered of this addiction to cocaine -- but had to work, very hard, for years to quit smoking.

Conversely, to those not predisposed toward accepting God, I suspect he fails to do miracles out of mercy. Imagine, just for a hypothetical, that God knew someone wasn't really interested in him. If he was to hold us responsible for what we knew, would he be doing us a favor by showing such a person even more evidence? No: he or she would then be guiltier than before.

Tying Up Loose Ends

I'm trying to write this two audiences at once: believers who have sincere questions about why God does what he does, and sceptics who are interested in a response from the other side. Above, I've focused more on the former group. Now for a few words to the latter.

I probably haven't convinced you of God's existence. That's reasonable: as I promised above, I don't expect to. I'm some anonymous guy on a blog, going only by his first name, who has told you he's experienced one or two significant supernatural occurences which accompanied a spontaneous healing. For you, this is just another set of anecdotes -- though I've given you some links which might prove to be non-anecodotal, should you investigate them.

And I myself have no plans to investigate them -- given what I've seen already (including a few things I'm not telling) atheism is no longer an intellectually honest option for me -- any more than an subsaharan African who's been skiing can still honestly disbelieve in snow.

But we believers are in a catch 22: When these things happen, as the physician above noted, most doctors don't wish to admit it. And this certainly isn't a narrative most in the news media (committedly secular as they are) want to push. And it's easy to dismiss groups like the 700 Club and the Roman Catholic Church since, hey, they have a vested interest in all this. (And everyone knows they're fruitcakes anyway!)

And of course, should someone actually be convinced by an encounter with such a miracle, they would become, well, a believer -- and thus not credible, due to their belief.

It comes down to GK Chesterton's old argument:

... looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is -- that they see ghosts.

And of course, one may easily say: "Well, remissions occur. That's proof they're unusual, but not necessarily miraculous. So we should just believe that these are a normal part of the workings of probability, and not attribute them to the supernatural." In fact, James Randi tried this one, once.

But for those who make such arguments, the joke's on them: Imagine we lived in an alternate universe, one where God did exactly what this web site asks, and also spontaneously regenerated severed limbs. What would the response be?

Well, one could simply apply the same argument: "Well, regenerations clealry occur. They're unlikely, but not impossible, so there's no need to assume supernatural intervention. But tell me: Why doesn't God reattach severed heads? We know of no documented accounts of that!" And there'd be a website cleverly entitled "whywontgodreattachheads.com"!

And so on, with the ante upped each time until we're back to God doing sky-writing again. So we can see the "catch 22" is really the other way around: If God does something with any frequency, it's not a miracle because, hey, even though we don't know why, it clearly happens a bit and isn't impossible. And if God doesn't do it -- well, then, it's impossible: Why isn't God doing it?

In fact, the site reveals its stupidity in this one sentence in the executive summary:

If we pray for anything that is impossible ... it never happens.

Right: because if it happened, it wouldn't be "impossible", and therefore wouldn't count. The definition itself excludes any possible answer. Unlike my own situation (where I was open to the possibility of miracles, and had a real threshhold for being convinced) it's an utterly unfalsifiable demand.

But hey, this passes as "rationality" in some circles.

Thanks to Perry for asking the original question. And best to you all!