This week we take another step forward in our journey to the cross with Mark. In this next part of the story, things begin really heating up. The plot to arrest Jesus and put Him to death is beginning to take shape. Yet in the midst of all of these things, Jesus is patiently, steadily moving forward to bring God’s plans to completion. There’s a lesson there for us. Let’s dig in together and see what it is.
Faithfulness in the Face of Unfairness
I want you to think about a time when something happened to you that you knew in your bones wasn’t right. Whatever this was completely justified every thought you’ve ever had that the world really is out to get you. You were just minding your own business, not bothering anybody, and from out of nowhere, your whole world blew up. What did you say in that moment? My guess is that it was some version of, “That’s not fair!”
Now, when you were growing up and said that, your parents probably reacted in one of two ways. (And parents, you can go ahead and decide which category you fit in here, your kids certainly will.) Either they expressed some version of, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Honey. What we can we do to make it better?” Or else they hit you with a robust, “Suck it up, Buttercup. Life’s hard and then you die. If you’re going to let a little thing like this throw you off course, you’re in for some rough sailing in the days ahead of you.” I’ll confess, I tend to be the latter kind of parent. I lean in that way, though, because sometimes the world is hard and unfair. That’s just how life works in a world that is broken by sin. The real question is not whether that brokenness is going to land right in your lap at some point, but how you are going to respond when it does.
This morning we are in the fourth part of our journey to the cross with Mark. All this month we have been experiencing the story of Jesus’ final week on Earth before He was arrested, tried, and nailed to a Roman cross. Each week has taken us another step closer to that history-shifting event. Along the way, we have discovered some important things about Jesus and what motivated Him. These, in turn, have pointed us to some important understandings for how we should be living our own lives.
As we got started on this journey in Mark 11, we saw in Jesus’ interactions with the temple system that He has both the authority and the passion to make a way for us to get to God. If we want to get to God, Jesus is the way that is going to happen. We can’t do it on our own. The next week, in Mark 12, as we saw Jesus’ interacting with the religious leaders of the Jews and observing the actions of a poor widow, we came to better appreciate the fact that Jesus values godly humility over worldly greatness. All of our efforts to puff ourselves up and make ourselves look better as if to impress God don’t accomplish much of anything. Humbly trusting in Him and acting on that trust in intentional and practical ways, however, very much gets His attention. Then, just last week, Nate walked us through the challenging chapter of Mark 13. Jesus sketches out a pretty wild vision of the future there that pointed forward both to the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem as well as the still future consummation of all humanity when He returns for judgment. The apocalyptic language Jesus uses is hard to understand and scholars often aren’t totally sure which event Jesus has in mind in a given verse. But Nate brought us squarely face-to-face with the bigger truth of the matter. Jesus came to remove the old and bring in the new. Be on guard and stay awake for it.
Well, Jesus certainly endured some conflict in the first three parts of the story, but as we move into the next phase of this journey today, things are going to start getting a great deal more intense. The plot, as they say, is about to thicken. If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, join me in Mark 14. We’re not going to tackle the whole chapter today like we have for the past few weeks. We’re going to break this one down into two parts. Today, though, we’ll start right at the beginning of the chapter.
“It was two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a cunning way to arrest Jesus and kill him. ‘Not during the festival,’ they said, ‘so that there won’t be a riot among the people.’” Now, we’ll come back to these verses in a little while, but for now, they help us to get our bearings. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey on Sunday. Monday he cleansed the temple. Tuesday featured the various debates with the religious leaders and was capped off by what we now call the Olivet Discourse (which, for our disc golf fans, is not the name of a local Jerusalem course). We don’t know much about what all Jesus did on Wednesday, but we do know about a conversation that happened among the chief priests and scribes. Somehow Mark found out about this, probably by way of the conversion of one of the guys in the room who later gave guys like Peter a behind-the-scenes look from their side of the story. In any event, they had finally had enough of Jesus. The only way to end His poisonous influence on the people was to see Him put to death. They had all the motivation they needed. They only needed the means. Well, much to their delight, they would have what they needed there before the end of the day.
As we have talked about before, Jesus spent this final week in Jerusalem staying in Bethany. This would have been a little like staying in Matthews when visiting Charlotte. The city itself would have been so packed with people there wouldn’t have been any room for Jesus’ group to stay there. Besides, Jesus’ good friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus had a place in Bethany, and they were more than happy to put up the whole group there.
Now, the next part of the story we see here in the text probably took place earlier in the week than on Wednesday. John tells us it happened on Sunday or possibly Monday evening. Because the events of this story were the direct precursor to Judas’ decision to betray Jesus which he actually carried out on Wednesday, Matthew and Mark both put the story here to help their readers connect the dots. This doesn’t mean they were wrong or being dishonest in their presentation, by the way. Notice as we read that Mark doesn’t try to claim it happened on Wednesday. Rather this is like a flashback scene in a movie that helps explain what’s happening.
In any event, check this out with me in v. 3 now. “While he was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured it on his head. But some were expressing indignation to one another: ‘Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.’ And they began to scold her.”
This encounter has been analyzed endlessly in other places, and we don’t have time to unpack it all this morning. For now, this was a wildly extravagant gesture of devotion whose over the top opulence was sufficiently jarring to some of the disciples—especially Judas—that they couldn’t stop themselves from reacting to it. Jesus quickly put a stop to all of this as He came to her defense. “Jesus replied, ‘Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for me. You always have the poor with you, and you can do what is good for them whenever you want, but you do not always have me. She has done what she could, she has anointed my body in advance for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.’” Look at us fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy.
Well, this was finally the last straw for Judas. Scholars have debated back and forth why he did what he did and we’ll ultimately have to leave the answer to that question to wait until we get to ask God face to face. Whether it was because he got disillusioned or felt like he was going to have to try to force Jesus to step up and be the Messiah he wanted Him to be or something else entirely, Judas decided in that moment to betray Jesus. As a result, sometime on Wednesday when things were quiet, “Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. And when they heard this, they were glad and promised to give him money. So he started looking for a good opportunity to betray him.” He wouldn’t have to look very hard. Jesus Himself would give that to him.
That brings us to Thursday morning. The Passover meal would be celebrated that evening. If you’ve ever heard the Passover is celebrated on Friday, that’s correct. Jews then counted days from evening to evening instead of morning to morning like we do. Because of that, they considered Thursday evening to be part of Friday. The Passover meal itself was a pretty involved affair that required some advanced preparation so that everyone could be in the moment enjoying it rather than stuck serving from the outside looking in. As a result, on Thursday morning Jesus sent a couple of the group in to Jerusalem to get things ready. Kind of like with His instructions in preparation for His ride into the city on Sunday, Jesus demonstrated His knowledge of some prior planning we aren’t told about. “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water [who would have stuck out like a sore thumb as this was considered a woman’s work] will meet you. Follow him. Wherever he enters, tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.”
What happened that evening at dinner would have been pretty intensely disorienting for the group. That night as they were all gathered to celebrate what was for them a little like a Thanksgiving and Christmas meal combined but packed with way more spiritual significance than either of those typically have for us, Jesus dropped a bomb on them. Verse 18 now: “While they were reclining and eating, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me–one who is eating with me.’” Well, they were all eating with Him. This went beyond what they had a category for understanding. None of them—or at least eleven of them—could have even imagined doing such a thing themselves, and they didn’t suspect each other of being capable of such a thing either. John tells us that Jesus basically told him it was going to be Judas but he still didn’t understand. It just didn’t compute.
Well, as you might expect, this announcement put a bit of a damper on the whole evening. They were so bothered by it that they really didn’t react when Jesus took the symbolism of the meal they all knew well and had been rehearsing their entire lives and completely reoriented it in such a way as to make it all about Him. What Jesus did in telling them they were to eat and drink in remembrance of Him would have been a little like my saying that we are going to make Easter here in a couple of weeks all about my waking up and getting out of bed that morning. This should have offended their sensibilities to the point that they were ready to throw in the towel on Jesus, but it didn’t because they were so distracted by Jesus’ announcement of His impending betrayal.
Seeming to understand how upset they were by the whole thing, Jesus looked at them all worrying themselves silly over which one of them was going to do the terrible deed and said, “All of you will fall away, because it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” In other words, you guys are all going to blow it. But it’s going to be okay, because I’m going to rise from the dead and meet back up with you in Galilee. Of course, given their state of mind, the disciples were not buying this at all. They weren’t going to abandon Jesus! Peter couldn’t contain himself. “Even if everyone falls away, I will not.” Yet even Peter would join the pack. In fact, his betrayal, Jesus said, would be the most stinging. He was going to deny even knowing Jesus before the rooster crowed twice the following morning. None of them could even imagine what was going to transpire in the next few hours such that Jesus could possibly be right, but Jesus knew.
Because He knew, the next thing He did (and we’re going to stop here in the story for this morning) was to go and prepare Himself mentally and spiritually for what was about to happen. John tells us a whole lot more about the conversation He had with them as they made their way from dinner to the Garden of Gethsemane out on the Mount of Olives, but Mark doesn’t include any of that for us. He tells us what happened when they got there. Jesus went to pray. He went to pray and asked the disciples to remain vigilant in prayer themselves. Specifically, He asked Peter, James, and John to pray with and for Him in light of the events about to unfold around them. Given those events, His prayer is really interesting. He doesn’t ask for the strength to do what He has to do, He tells His Father that He doesn’t want to do it. Yet if this is what His Father wants, He’ll trust Him and go forward with it. Listen to this in v. 36: “And he said, ‘Abba, Father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.’”
Jesus prayed that prayer several times, and in between He came back to the guys for support. And do you know what kind of support they gave Him? No support, that’s what kind. Verse 39: “Once again he went away and prayed, saying the same thing. And again he came and found them sleeping, because they could not keep their eyes open. They did not know what to say to him. Then he came a third time and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The time has come. See, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up; let’s go. See, my betrayer is near.’”
What comes next is what we’ll talk about next week. For now, though, let’s take stock of where we are. This was a pretty emotional night for Jesus and the disciples. It was emotional for them for different reasons. The disciples had their commitment and courage brought into question. That’s never a particularly enjoyable experience. Yet their emotional trauma was nothing like what Jesus experienced. One of the things that becomes unavoidably clear throughout this part of the story is that Jesus knew what was coming. He was perfectly aware of the events He was going to be facing in a few hours’ time. He knew that He was going to be betrayed. He knew He was going to suffer. He knew He was going to be abandoned and left alone by His closest followers and friends. He knew He was going to die slowly and painfully. He knew all of that.
Put yourself in Jesus’ sandals for a second. How would you react if you knew all of that? I don’t know about you, but I would be gripped by anxiety and fear and anger and hatred for those who were going to do it to me. I would be looking for any way to get out of it that I could possibly find. I wouldn’t just be praying to ask God to not let me have to do it. I’d have long since thrown in the towel on Him. I would be taking matters into my own hands. I would have gotten out of Jerusalem or at the very least gone into hiding until things had cooled down considerably. I’d be complaining the whole time, too, that the world was out to get me.
Remember how I said we’d come back to the first couple of verses in the chapter later. Here we are. Do you remember what was going on there? I know that was a long time and a lot of verses ago. Let’s go back to it. “It was two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a cunning way to arrest Jesus and kill him.”
Okay, so what does that mean? It means the world really was out to get Jesus! The levers of power in Jerusalem were being pulled in such a way so as to be distinctly at Jesus’ disadvantage. There were machinations happening behind the scenes that were designed and intended to stack the deck against Him. His enemies were coordinating their efforts. They had even managed to get their hooks inside the outermost ring of His inner circle. They were getting information fed to them on where He was going to be and when so that they could pick Him off at a moment of their choosing. (Yes, I know this whole thing was being superintended by God Himself, but you get my point.) The world was out to get Jesus. This was horribly unfair. It was unjust. Nothing about it was right. And yet what did Jesus do? What did Jesus do even though He knew all of this was going on. I mean, His last words to Judas in John’s Gospel were, “What you’re doing, do quickly.” He knew every single thing that was going on around Him. He knew the world was out to get Him. Again then, what did He do in light of that?
Nothing. Nothing, at least, that He wouldn’t have done anyway. He remained faithful to the path He knew His Father was calling Him to walk. He was still patient and kind and generous with His friends. He was gentle and even respectful with His enemies. He was the same Jesus He had always been. His response to the world’s being unfairly out to get Him was to keep walking the path of faithfulness He had spent His entire life walking up to that point.
There’s an invitation here for us, friends. You know as well as I do that sometimes the world isn’t fair. Sometimes the world really is out to get us. Now, sure, most of the time it’s not, but sometimes it really is. And even in the majority of times when it’s not actually, that doesn’t mean it feels any less like it is. And in those moments, our first instinct is to recoil in anger and frustration. The world shouldn’t be this way! (The guys who contributed to the Scriptures rather vociferously agree.) We didn’t do anything to deserve this! (We rarely do anything to deserve the hard times we nonetheless face; that’s part of living in a broken world.) If God were really good, He would put a stop to this! (Whose freedom would you like Him to abrogate, and would you be okay with His taking away yours when you are the cause of somebody else’s trouble?) God doesn’t understand what we’re going through! (Umm…have you been paying attention to the last 20 minutes of this message?)
When Jesus was wading through the muck of the world’s unfairly being out to get Him, He responded with faithfulness and courage. He kept following His Father’s plans anyway. That’s our example, friends. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway.
Now, is this easy? Of course it’s not. We have to actively go against a whole lot of natural instinct if we’re going to be able to do this. It’s kind of like breathing out of your nose when getting measured for braces. Do you remember that experience? I remember the big tray of goop they had to put in my mouth and hold there for what felt like an hour. It filled my mouth to capacity and pretty well totally cut off the airway from my mouth. For a second it felt like I was suffocating. Everything in my brain was screaming out for me to shove that thing out of there and take a deep breath. It took a constant, conscious effort to breathe through my nose.
When life is coming after us in some way and things get really hard, our first reaction is to hit the eject button on faithfulness and take matters into our own hands. When our sense of control is threatened, we start grabbing for it almost frantically. In doing that, though, do we ever actually accomplish very much? Not usually. The really hard stuff of life when the world really is coming after us is outside of our control no matter how much we might want it to be otherwise. Trying to grab control will be like a drowning person trying to help his rescuer swim back to shore. You have to give up and trust or you’ll pull both of you under. Well, rest assured that we’re not going to pull God under, but we can sure make a mess out of His efforts to help us through whatever it is we are facing when we try to take matters into our own hands. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway.
The God we serve is bigger than the trouble we are facing. That’s why Jesus kept going. As much as He knew what the immediate future held, He also knew what the final outcome was going to be. That’s why He told the disciples that “after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” This was right before He prayed to not have to go through it. He knew what was coming and didn’t want to hurt, but He also knew the outcome, and so He stuck faithfully to the path. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway.
If we will let Him, our God can and will work His good plans out through our lives no matter what our present circumstances look like. But what about when things don’t get better? You’re operating from the wrong perspective. If you’re asking that question, you’re only looking at things from the standpoint of this life. That’s not how Jesus looked at them. He knew His life was going to end. But He knew His Father’s plans were bigger than just this life. They still are. Jesus unlocked the doors to God’s eternal kingdom. All of God’s good plans come to full and final fruition there. When we stick with Him even in the face of the world’s worst and most unfair brokenness coming our way, we will experience that harvest along with all those who have similarly placed their trust in Him. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway. That won’t ever be the easiest path, but it will ultimately always be the best one. When we take that path, life will always be our end. Sometimes life is hard and unfair; follow faithfully anyway. And come back next time to catch the next part of the story as we journey to the cross with Mark.
The Nexus 
This is way too lengthy for me to digest. My head was spinning after the first two or three paragraphs.
I leave you to break it down for your flock.
Did you catch my comment about the effectiveness of prayer?
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I’ve broken it down for them before. Read it through a few more times if you need to. I know it was a pretty thorough response, but it was shorter than my average blog post ;~)
I did catch your comment, and I guess I never hit send on the reply I typed up pretty quickly thereafter. No wonder I didn’t hear anything back from you until now. I must not have ever actually sent it. I had said, “I’d like to think so on the first, and yes to the second.”
On your latest post, you almost tempted me to jump into your comment section. That’s an interesting perspective. I don’t agree, obviously, but I’m fascinated by the direction of your logic. I assume you aren’t advocating that children should be taken away from their parents in order to properly secularize them as you understand it like you asked one of the commenters. I’m also curious, are you in favor of a governing system that allows more or less freedom for its people?
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I should add that I touched on the effectiveness of prayer in that longer response. Give it another read or three.
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Point me where you touch on prayer please.
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I assume you mean the effectiveness of prayer, yes? In that case, let me ask a clarification question for my purposes. What do you mean when you say “effective prayer”?
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The study conducted by the Templeton Foundation was one based on intercessory prayer for hospital patients. As far as I can remember it at the time itbwas the largest study at to date. You can Google it. Other studies may have been conducted since. This one I read about a while back.
No possitive results were returned.
A numberdm of patients who became aware they were being prayed for showed a decline in their recovery.
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I’m well aware of both the study and the results. As far as my understanding of prayer goes, that study was meaningless. It came out of a total misunderstanding of the point and nature of prayer in the first place. It treated God like a vending machine who will return our request when we put it in properly. Had I been asked to be a part of it, I would have flatly refused.
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Again, then, when you say “effective prayer,” what do you mean?
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See my reply below
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As you believe in the effectiveness of prayer why do think that there is no organized study has ever returned a positive result, including possibly the largest most comprehensive study set up by the Templeton Foundation?
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Because that’s not how prayer works. Those results didn’t surprise me even in the slightest. They sought to submit to an empirical study something that is inherently not empirical. Of course they didn’t get what they were looking for.
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Are you asserting that the numerous claims that people have been healed/ cured after praying / been prayed for are false?
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Nope. Not at all. And you know better of me than that (at least I would have hoped you did as long as we have been going back and forth). But that’s not something that can be studied in a lab of sorts like the Templeton Foundation sought to do. That’s not how prayer works and that’s not its primary point in the first place.
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I see. So while ( some, many, all?) the numerous individual claims you consider genuine a large scale organized prayer drive by sincere devout Christians you do not consider valid? Why not?
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I already answered that twice. That’s not how prayer works. It’s not something that can be studied like that.
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So any mass prayer drive that did result in a claim of a miracle cure you would dismiss as invalid?
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As the subject of an experiment or something genuine?
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I presume genuine. Are you suggesting those devout Christians involved in the Templeton prayer study were not devout and sincere?
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Nope. I’m saying that trying to quantify prayer that way is silly. Prayer isn’t primarily about getting what we want from God in terms of life outcomes. Prayer is about building a relationship with Him.
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I didn’t say it was about getting what we want, I was along about prayer for healing of people who are sick or ill.
Matthew 21:21?
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That’s what that entire long post is about…
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At least, in the context of when a prayer for a specific healing isn’t answered the way we might want.
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So Matt 21:21? Jesus was what, kidding?
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And in Mark 12 and John 14 and Matthew 18 and a whole variety of other places that seem to give us a blank check for asking whatever we want and God has to do it. Those are tough passages that have been misunderstood and misapplied more times than I would even begin counting.
I once knew of a guy who told his daughter in all seriousness that if she prayed really hard and really believed it, soda would come out of the drinking fountains at school. Nonsense like that has been unfortunately common across church history.
Context matters. No blank checks there or in any of the other passages.
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So Jesus didn’t mean what he was saying in those passages?
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I didn’t say that at all. Of course he did. It just takes a bit of work to understand what he’s saying in context.
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Well, he either meant it or he didn’t?
And what about
Mark 11:24?
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Certainly. In context. And Mark 11 is the one I had in mind, not Mark 12. I preached both passages in subsequent weeks a couple of weeks ago and got the flipped around in my head.
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There doesn’t strike me as any ambiguity in the Mark passage.
Where is there any “context”?
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The whole chapter is the context (as is the case with many passages). You’ve got to read the whole passage to get a full sense of what Jesus was talking about and what was going on. It’s the second part of an enacted parable with the fig tree. Go back and listen to my sermon on the passage sometime. It’s called Redemption Is the Goal.
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If prayer works, as you say it does, and people have been healed and /cured from cancer and tumours for example, ( which you have said were all part and parcel of sin is there a specific passage where Jesus speaks of prayer that would be regarded as unambiguous?
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Unambiguous how? Are you looking for a verse where Jesus says something like, “If you pray X, God will do Y”? You’ve scoured the Gospels enough to know there’s not. What are you looking for here?
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There is little doubt that the verses currently under discussion are believed by millions of Christians as they stand.. Would it be fair to say that you accept the claims that prayer is powerful enough to heal?
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You’re still not thinking about prayer correctly. This isn’t totally the fault of your non-theistic worldview either. Christians (including, regrettably me at times) have contributed to this misunderstanding on the part of folks looking at it from the outside in. We know what we mean (most of the time…) but the lack of clarity in the language leads to broader confusion. That all being said, you are asking a theological question which requires a theological answer. At the very least it requires good and sound theological thinking.
Prayer is not some kind of a talisman that we engage in some capacity to get what we want. Prayer is an engagement with God. It is about our pursuing a relationship with Him for the purposes of better understanding who He is, allowing Him to help us better understand ourselves, and to seek His will and purposes for our lives.
As a part of prayer, we can and should tell God what we want. By being honest about our desires with Him, that gives Him the opportunity to help us better understand our desires and whether or not they fall in line with His character and plans. We can also ask God for things we want. Sometimes He will give us those things, but other times He won’t. And sometimes He helps us understand exactly why He won’t, but other times He invites us to trust in His character and keep on following Him faithfully.
In this sense, no, prayer itself doesn’t heal anyone. Prayer is a way of engaging with the God who is unlimited in power and by that able to heal. Sometimes He does. Sometimes He doesn’t. How to grapple with which and when is what I talked about in that longer post from a few days ago.
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It seems perfectly reasonable to a skeptic such as myself that if the Bible needs to be interpreted to be understood correctly and not understood as read that your god should have ensured he inspired those who wrote his, words down did a better job that what appears to be an almighty cock up!.
That being said, you are asserting that yes, through prayer to YHWH, and at his, discretion, people are healed.
Yes or no?
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Something that was written to be understood by people 2,000 years ago, but also to be understandable to a people over the course of the next 2,000 years is likely going to take a little bit of work to understand properly. That really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. And, as followers of Jesus, we believe that God through His Spirit helps with the understanding part. That’s why in spite of a pretty wide variety in the understanding of some parts, there is nevertheless a majority understanding that has been broadly adopted by most believers over the centuries such that we can talk about an orthodox theology. Jesus also said that people who aren’t really interested in understanding in such a way as to let the text reshape their lives aren’t going to understand it anyway. If this is really God’s word, as we believe, why should we expect it to be able to be understood properly without His help?
And, yes, I do believe that physical healings are sometimes the outcome of prayerful intercession for people with a whole variety of ailments.
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Excellent! I often skip scan long comments as religious interlocuters/believers always seem to want to drive round the town and sight see rather than go straight to the shop.
Heads up…
Presume I Am… oops typo… I am pretty much au fait with the bible unless I ask.
Therefore, in all honesty you could simply have answered yes and saved the apologetic.
So, we agree that God does help out/ respond/ intervene.
Therefore, of the hundreds maybe thousands of accounts/ testimonies of intercessory prayer across the globe and across the decades for a wide variety of medical illness and sickness, including brain tumours, terminal cancers, one notable example of rabies, and other medical issues involving a few individuals to global participation involving thousands of devout Christians there is not a single incident of God regenerating the limbs of any amputee?
Bearing in mind my cautionary note about long drawn out explanations why do you consider this is?
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Not that I’m aware of. And I don’t know why He hasn’t healed in that particularly dramatic way. Why do you ask about that specifically?
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Well. It’s worthing thinking about, surely?
Of the maybe thousands upon thousands of claims of healings, including lepers, cancer sufferers, blindness brain tumors, cripples, spinal injuries, comas, deafness, mutism, and others you can probably name God has not seen fit to heal a single amputee in all of recorded history.
Do you think there might be an alternate reason for all fhose other healings?
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It absolutely is. As I’ve said more than once during this part of our conversation, sometimes we understand why God does what He does, and sometimes we don’t. As I have also said before, there are some healings that are more significant than others.
My cousin lost his leg in a motorcycle accident a couple of years ago. He very nearly bled out on the side of the road, and would have had a doctor trained in trauma medicine not happened to drive by at that exact moment. He’ll tell you today that while he certainly doesn’t love that he’s had to go through all the things he’s been through subsequent to that accident and which are a direct result of it, and while he’d be glad to have his leg back again, that he sees it as a regular reminder of God’s goodness to him in preserving his life so that he can continue being the great husband and father to four young kids that he is.
Could God heal an amputee by regrowing the limb? Of course. But in His wisdom, He has seen it fit to give such folks the opportunity to trust in Him and His ability to care for and provide for them more than in what they could have done if they had that limb back. Go back and watch Joni’s testimony. Why didn’t God heal her paralysis? In her view at least (and as demonstrated by the fruits of her long life’s work), because He had plans for what He wanted to accomplish through her life in spite of or even because of her injury. She is one of the most effective advocates for the disabled in the world. Had God healed her like she wanted, that would have almost certainly never happened.
Of course, God’s non-existence is an alternate explanation – and, no doubt, the one you are trying to guide me toward. But to survey the untold numbers of other kinds of healings that have taken place for reasons that go beyond what medical science are able to explain and which believing observers (not to mention many of the folks who have experienced them) readily call miraculous interventions on God’s part, to find this one particular healing that we don’t have any knowledge of having happened, and conclude based on this one category that there must be an alternative explanation for this manifold of examples of other kinds of healings than the intervention of a miracle-performing God, seems a little…I don’t know…willfully blind. There are explanations other than God’s non-existence that make more and better sense to me.
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If we accept the premise that God, is all powerful, all knowing and he fulfills promises as laid out in the Bible and answers so many of the medical prayers directed at him then he has absolutely no reason whatsoever to discriminate against amputees, many of whom are 100% full on believers who are totally committed to the paradign of healing through prayer.
And yet, as far as we know, no matter how many sincere prayers directed at God by equally sincere and devout Christians, He has not healed a single, solitary amputee. Not a finger, toe, leg or arm. Not one. Ever.
Now, while your brain will initially reject the notion, take a moment and consider.
What if God Is imaginary?
In context, think about that for a few minutes while I for for some dinner.
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So, even though He’s healed all these other people, because He hasn’t healed in a particular way this one other group of people, He must be imaginary. Does that about sum up your argument? Why not assume that this God whose thoughts and ways are higher than our (at least per what He said to Isaiah) has a purpose to His actions that goes beyond what we can understand? If God is infinitely smarter and wiser than you are, then there absolutely could be a reason for this that doesn’t have anything to do with discrimination. It could be just as I said: for reasons we don’t, won’t, or even can’t grasp, He gives these folks the opportunity to trust more in Him and what He can do for and through them than in their missing pieces. In other words, He’s giving them the chance to experience the fact that He is more than enough to make up for their missing parts. Or, as Paul said, “His grace is sufficient.” Your already accepted conclusion is far, far from the only one available here, and not one that even makes the most sense on anything other than a secular worldview.
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That is a point of view, certainly. However, if God is imaginary then he does not answer any prayers. Therefore, the prayers of amputees would go unanswered too. As we know they do.
What’s so elegant and straightforward about this explanation is that there is no hand-waving, no contradictions and it is completely fair.
Furthermore, there’s no paradox and if we consider / factor in all the evidence it makes perfect sense.
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Absolutely. If you assume on a skeptical worldview, you have a quick and ready answer for this challenging question. Christianity is harder on this point, no doubt about it. I agree. But when you step back and survey the big picture of life, there are a whole, whole lot more things atheism can’t explain and which the Christian worldview makes so much more sense out of. And, when you take situations like this one and filter them through the lens of the Christian worldview, you can make a whole lot more positive sense out of them than atheism can.
For instance, when the amputee asks you, “Why did this happen to me?” You are not able to offer much more than some version of, “Life’s hard.” There’s no purpose to it. There can’t be. By contrast, while I very well may not know what the purpose is, I can assure her that there is a God who still loves her and is still committed to her in spite of her experience of the brokenness of the world in this way. Furthermore, I can assure her if and as she continues to put her trust in Him, He will demonstrate His goodness through this experience in a way she would not have been able to experience before and which has the potential to be a blessing not only to her, but to everyone around her. And, I can tell her all of this without being even slightly disingenuous because I know it all to be true.
That makes more and better sense out of it to me.
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Ah, Jonathan you are hand waving
Stay focused. We are discussing why God does not heal amputees.
We can discuss atheism another time.
Are you suggesting God is hidden or keeps his cards to his chest as it were regarding amputees?
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Nope, no hand waiving here. I’m simply explaining where I’m coming from. You brought up God’s non-existence (that is, atheism). I simply responded to your prompting.
And, yes, I’m saying that I don’t know why God hasn’t performed this particular kind of healing. I’m also saying that because I trust in His revealed character, I don’t need to understand it.
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When we consider the things, Jesus says regarding prayer he makes no exceptions for amputees.
And if God is showing his hand by curing cancerous tumors why should he remain hidden and not restore the limbs of amputees?
The key might be to remove all ambiguity.
If a prayer to God to cure a cancerous tumor is apparently answered and the tumor goes away it could very well be God that is responsible. However, I’m sure you will acknowkedge there is a degree of ambiguity here as it could be the chemo and the drugs. Or even the body’s own immune system?
Or maybe the drugs fired up the immune system?
However, if we remove any chance of coincidence or ambiguity, when a prayer is made to God to restore the limb of an amputee then only God can restore a limb.
And what does the data show?
When all ambiguity and coincidence is removed prayers are never answered.
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And, if you want to have a world that is perfectly unambiguous at every point, that’s certainly a path you can walk. On this narrow point, atheism can indeed offer at least the semblance of something the Christian worldview cannot. If we live in a world presided over by a supernatural God whose ways and thoughts are higher than ours, that world will necessarily include some things that we don’t understand and can’t explain as thoroughly as we would like. No question about that.
But, not only do I not think the available evidence forces us to such a conclusion, I think the philosophical implications of seeking such a world more broadly are a disaster.
For instance, you love your kids. You are proud of them. Rightly so. You can’t quantify that, though. There’s ambiguity there. Perhaps not in your mind, but how do they know you’ve expressed yourself to them with absolute fullness and haven’t held anything back. No amount of empirical research can prove that beyond all doubt. Beyond reasonable doubt, of course, but that area of beyond reasonable doubt is where Christianity lives. You don’t seem to want to go there.
You are applying data to something that is not data-driven. You aren’t going to get reliable results that way. That’s why the Temple Foundation project was doomed to fail from the start.
What you want to do is assign things people experience personally (answered prayers; that is times when they have prayed for a certain outcome and that’s exactly what happened) to nothing but impersonal chance. Good luck convincing them of that. The Christian worldview offers a better, more compelling, and truer explanation here.
On another note, from the standpoint of the Christian worldview on the subject of whether or not God is responsible for a particular healing, there’s really no ambiguity at all. God is always responsible for a physical healing someone experiences. How He does it is the only question (i.e., by miraculous means or more natural ones that He enabled to work as designed), not whether.
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The intention here is not to convince them at all. This chat is between you and I and all I am doing is trying to find out why your god doesn’t and never has healed a single known amputee.
Impersonal chance?
We already mentioned chemo and drugs and the body’s own powerful immune system.
I don’t really think you could label those things “impersonal chance”.
And a Christian worldview has absolutely no bearing on fact or evidence.
Therefore, thecquestion remains: when we consider everything Jesus stated about prayer in his name as fact, no exception was made for amputees so why does God not heal them?
God apparently cures a myriad of diseases yet what about those diseases that have caused someone to lose a limb? After all, this does seem to contradict what Jesus says in the gospels as mentioned above.
Why does god not intervene in such cases?
In fact God never restores any lost limb no matter the cause.
So while many people believe God does answer prayers – except of course-those of amputees, do such believers assert this has to remain a mystery? Is this what you believe?
But then there are those who consider that God is not part of the picture, he is imaginary. In this case, the situation with amputees makes complete sense.
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So, I’m curious, have you ever known an amputee who prayed for God to regrow her missing limb? Personally, I haven’t. Could it be that this whole objection is really just a hypothetical someone came up with (you? or did you encounter it from another source?) that isn’t rooted in reality at all, but is more of an attempt to find some kind of a reason to justify not believing in God? I’ve got an amputee in my congregation. When I get the chance, I’ll ask if this is something he’s ever even thought to pray about before. And if the thought has never bothered him, are you right to be bothered by a situation you’ve never actually faced? That’s kind of a like the person who walks away from his faith because of seeing someone else go through a really hard experience that actually strengthens her faith.
God heals all kinds of things, yes, but not always and not always on our terms. He’s not limited to what we think and understand. You’re saying there can only be one answer here. I’m saying, there may be more to the story than you and I can know, much less understand.
And this may just be you and me talking, but ideas have consequences. If the ideas you are putting forth here don’t have very good consequences, it could be that they aren’t true ideas. The near total inability to offer meaningful hope or a framework for why making the most out of a hard situation is worthwhile to someone who has experienced the trauma of losing a limb strikes me as a weakness of the position you are staking out.
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While I have never seen, heard or read of a limb regenerating from prayer, it is probably the classic medical prayer fail. As someone in the god business I am surprised you haven’t come across it?
You assert that Yahweh heals all sorts of things.
Does he? Well, such claims are notorious, and we’ve all heard about such claims.
Do you have anything besides a claim?
If so I am truly fascinated to read of any instances you know of. Better still that you have actually witnessed.
I have outlined a number of scenarios but you have yet to offer a meaningful response why Yahweh does not respond to prayers for those who are amputees.
The very best response would be you telling me you have actually experienced an amputated limb regenerate.
So why not share your experiences with medical related prayers.
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Do you have documented evidence of people praying for that? To call that “the classic medical prayer fail” is interesting to me. In nearly 20 years’ worth of seminary and pastoring, I have never once heard of anybody even suggesting such a thing. Have you encountered such a thing from someone other than a skeptic?
Evidence of God’s healing something? You’re once again asking for empirical evidence of something that is inherently not empirical. I can’t help you there. You are limited by your worldview blinders in seeing what I see.
I’ve offered several thoughts on the matter. If none of them struck you as especially meaningful, I guess I don’t know what else to tell you.
As for stories, I could tell you stories like about when one of the officers for whom I’m a chaplain called me the other night after his sister intentionally OD’d. The doctors were doing a procedure that had in their estimation a 50-50 chance of working. Honestly, they had no idea if it would work to save her life or not. They told him that if he is a praying person, then would be a good time to do it. I quickly had a majority of my congregation aware and praying. The next morning, I checked on him and the procedure had worked beautifully. She was out of the woods, and was responding even better to the treatment than the doctors had expected. She’s got a long road to recovery still, but she’s very much alive and will be mostly okay. But, given your worldview perspective, you’d dismiss that as merely medical chance. The drugs worked and that’s all. Can I offer empirical proof that God did that? Of course not. And, if you insist that’s the only way of really knowing something, there’s nothing I could do to convince you otherwise. But you won’t be able to convince my officer or any of my congregation who prayed or least of all me that it was anything other than God’s intervention in allowing the drugs to work as they were intended to work that did the trick. We’re dealing with supernatural claims here. You can’t evaluate those empirically.
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No I have not any evidence of people praying for amputees.
However, if people pray for every other musical condition I see no reason why they wouldn’t pray for the regeneration of limbs?
If an amputee came to you asked you to pray to god for his legs to regenerate would you refuse?
Doesn’t Benny Hinn cure cripples and wnat not
I suppose I could Google it?
If no empirical evidence is available for the healing of a medical issue how do you know your god healed it?
Are you not limited by your own worldview blinkers?
As for your officer tale.. If you are so convinced in the efficacy of intercessory prayer why did you bother with the doctors and the drugs?
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Wait, wait, wait. So, because you have come up with this totally hypothetical situation that as far as you (or I) know has never actually unfolded in the whole history of humanity, there must not be a God. Really?!? That’s a pretty weak case.
You say you don’t see any reason why an amputee wouldn’t pray for this, but have you ever talked to one and asked if that was something that even entered into their thinking on the matter? Shall I send my cousin a text and ask if that’s something he ever considered? I can ask the member of my congregation this Sunday. That’ll be at least two points of evidence. All you are asserting here is a belief without evidence. Why, Ark, that’s the very thing you have insisted makes my whole worldview apparatus a sham. Surely you don’t mean to do that?
Honestly – and call this a cop out if you wish – I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, so I’m not going to devote any thinking to how I might respond.
Binny Hinn is a fraud and a purveyor of a uniquely American heresy that has been exported around the world called the Prosperity Gospel. I assign zero credibility to anything he does.
As for evidence of God’s healing, how do you know He didn’t? Once again: you are insisting on evaluating something empirically that is inherently non-empirical. You’re making a category mistake here. I already said: All healings come from God. Some of those unfold by way of miraculous means. Others come by way of His allowing the body’s own incredibly self-healing abilities or the medicines and procedures discovered using the scientific means whose foundations were all laid by scientists who were driven by their belief in a God who made an orderly world that could be explored systematically, sparking a whole revolution in discovery and technology to work as designed. I am perfectly able to accept whichever way He happened to have worked. Your view must necessarily exclude one option mine explicitly includes. By my count, that puts my worldview somewhat less limited than yours.
Intercessory prayer is worthwhile not because we think God somehow has to work without all the medical knowledge and technology available to us, but because He can work through it. God’s not limited in what He can do, so we shouldn’t limit ourselves either. We should use all the medical resources available to us, and trust that He’s going to let them work the way they were designed. It’s a both-and, not an either-or.
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You’re entire premise is based on the presupposition they Yahweh exists.
I don’t know that Yahweh didn’t heal. ( cancer victims, etc. etc) The question is why doesn’t he heal amputees?
The initial claim is he does heal, as this is the claim asserted numerous times in the Bible.
Yes, send your cousin a text.
Therefore, based on Jesus’ own words, and we can include Proverbs as well, there is no reason why he wouldn’t heal amputees.
However, it can be tested and as far as we know will always return a negative. Conclusion: Yahweh does not heal amputees.
Re Benny Hinn.
The entire foundational tenets of the Christian religion are based on unsubstantiated claims. Hinn simply took advantage of a gap in the market, as have thousands before him and still do as I type.
People who believe in the supernatural do so based on indoctrination and personal credulity.
Claims that Yahweh heals other illnesses / diseases can also be tested simply by removing all medical care and wait to see if the patient recovers without medical intervention.
Some will.
This would likely be the pattern for most other chronic illness / disease where medical intervention was the norm.
Of course the body’s own immune system will play a part.
On this topic I’ll bet you have medical. Insurance.
Faith not enough?
So, when we consider the probabilities of claims that Yahweh does heal or he doesn’t the answer will inevitably be he doesn’t.
And this makes understanding why there is no known case of any limb regenerating through prayer ever and the simplest, straightforward most elegant answer is:
God does not answer medical prayers.
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And yours is based on the premise that He doesn’t. You’re arguing from out of your worldview beliefs. I’m arguing from out of mine. That will inevitably result in a lot of talking past each other. You’re not going to see this matter the way I do, and I don’t agree with your position on it. Our worldviews are diametrically opposed to one another. Literally everything else you wrote there is all an example of your trying to make sense of a position of faith from the standpoint of skepticism. You might as well join Sisyphus in his rock pushing.
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Wrong. My lack of belief is based on the complete absence of evidence.
Faith. Yes! A point we can agree on.
Faith: Belief where no evidence is present.
And there is no evidence Yahweh heals let alone the fact we do not have a single case of the regeneration of an amputated limb.
You have even failed to provide a single coherent answer why Yahweh would not heal.
As pointed out up front, if Yahweh is imaginary the solution is obvious.
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You just proved my point. We are respectively arguing from the standpoint of our different worldviews. Yours is based upon the rejection of one kind of evidence (scientific) and from what I can tell so far a near total non-engagement with the philosophical dimension of the question. The case for Christianity isn’t rooted in a single strain of evidence. It is far more comprehensive than that.
I’ve offered several responses to what God might not heal someone. You just haven’t liked any of them. But again, I’m arguing from out of my worldview, and you are hearing from out of yours. Thus the talking past each other continues.
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In actual fact YOU proved your point:
To paraphrase:
We have no evidence.
Jesus words about healing are not meant to be understood as written.
God’s ways are a mystery.
In the face of the above, faith is essential in maintaining belief.
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If you see all of that through the lens of skepticism, yes.
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In fact it is through the lens of realism, also a disregard of pithy hand wringing and scrupulous honesty when reviewing the evidence.
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It’s through a lens of worldview, not realism. Until you really start to come to grips with what your worldview is and the full implications of it, we’re going to keep running into walls like this as we go.
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No, it is realism.
Your worldview is no more realistic in this regard than the Navajo or the Hopi dancing for rain.
Until you come to grips with this and seriously question the real reason why you believe what you do your answers have no more basis in reality than a Native American asserting To Neinilli sends rain after he danced around his Teepee.
I suggest you take a few moments to really let that sink in before you snap off another stock in trade dismissive reply.
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I promise I won’t be anymore dismissive of your view than you are of mine.
With respect, you don’t understand the Christian worldview at all. But because you seem to be pretty confident that you do, your criticisms consistently come off sounding uninformed to someone who actually understands it pretty well. But, you aren’t really interested in learning more that I’ve been able to discern. You’re just consistently dismissive of it. That makes it challenging to have ongoing conversations. I’m happily willing to keep right on going, but we’ll just continue to bump heads, not convincing each other of anything. As long as you’re okay with that, I’m good to keep going.
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The Christian worldview is first and foremost based on unsubstantiated supernatural beliefs, so it is not not even based on evidence but faith.
And the fact there are tens of thousands of sects/ denominations, each one with a different take, some small, some large, indicates there isn’t agreement.
Furthermore, this worldview is at times so vague and often at odds with reality an entire industry – Apologetics – came about to create answers for the skepticism that runs riot.
If indoctrination of children was abandoned Christianity, ( all religion) would collapse a lot faster than it already is.
In all seriousness after 2000 years what on earth do you truly think there is to learn that history hasn’t demonstrated in full about the Christian Worldview?
You just demonstrated the point by not even bothering to address the rain dance analogy.
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Because the two don’t go in the same category. It didn’t strike me as worth addressing. All of your comments come out of a skeptical worldview and have to be taken as such. You don’t understand the Christian worldview, so again and with ongoing respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about in analyzing it. Until you are willing to take it on its own terms, you never will.
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I AM taking it on its own terms. That is the whole point
However, as you disagree with my description of the basis of the Christian Worldview feel free to correct me.
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You aren’t. You are taking it through the lens of a secular worldview. That’s different.
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Then best you tell me the definition of what is the Christisn Worldview.
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That’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow.
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Why? I already Googled it. The entire premise is based on a supernatural foundation.
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I AM taking it on its own terms. That is the whole point
However, as you disagree with my description of the basis of the Christian Worldview feel free to correct me.
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Typo: Sorry. medical condition
Oh for an edit facility on WordPress
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What’s on the menu tonight?
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I had a vegetarian casserole and a cold beer. It was pushing 33 degrees here today.
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That’s too warm for my blood. We had a fresh brush with a taste of winter. It was only 12 degrees C here today. Just a shade below zero this morning. Looks like chicken is on the menu tonight.
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I gave up eating other animals after my dog laid her head on my lap one evening. We looked at each other and the unbiden thought came: I could never eat you, so why do I eat pigs, cows and chickens?
And that was it for me. Walked to the kitchen, announced my feelings to my wife, asked if she was okay with it, and I’ve been vegetarian ever since.
Along with quitting cigarettes ten years ago, best decision I made.
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I suspect if I had had that same experience, I might feel the same way. I don’t, but I respect you for it all the same.
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It is said if abbatoirs were made like greenhouses most people would become vegetarian on the spot.
Most humans develop a blind spot for such things.
I don’t know if it is wilfull ignorance or something else?
If you have pets you probably wouldn’t consider eating them any more than you would another human.
But cannibalism has been practiced by quite a number of cultures throughout the ages.
If you want to see how the other half lives, so to speak, and you are up for an eye opener, Google Chinese Dog Festival.
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I’m aware that dogs are a delicacy in several parts of Asia. But while I have loved the pets I have had over the years and would not, of course, dream of eating them, I don’t think people and animals have the same ontological value. Animals should absolutely stewarded wisely and well as they are God’s creations He put in our charge, but I also think that they are for us to eat. That we choose not to eat some and to eat others is a cultural choice. I don’t look down on anyone for being vegetarian or vegan or fully omnivorous. Those are just different preferences, all allowed for – from my worldview standpoint – by the freedom we have in Christ.
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Aah, yes, the theological two-step.
like you I never really gave any serious thought to what was on my plate at meal times or how it arrived there.
However, at least I was never so callous to assert it was simply a different preference that is ostensibly smiled upon and given the blessing of your god!
This excuses you from acknowledging the horrendous cruelty animals bred for food are subject to.
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You assume I haven’t given much in the way of serious thought into what is on my plate. Perhaps I have and have simply come to different conclusions than you have. There’s nothing particularly callous about my thoughts on the matter. And, the creatures God has given for food should absolutely not be treated with cruelty. As I said before, human value is ontologically different (and higher) than animal value. That doesn’t mean we can treat animals however we please and it certainly doesn’t justify cruelty. But they were created differently than we were and for different purposes.
Should I assume that you view the ontological value of humans and animals as being equal?
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Oh, you’ve given thought but justified your decision based on your religious beliefs NOT evidence.
You think animals do not feel pain or anxiety or absolute terror?
On what basis do you consider human life holds more value?
To you, most certainly.
How do you know how a blue whale or a chimpanzee feels?
Surely this is a subjective view?
Farmed animals in general are subject to horrendous cruelty.
You think that just because you don’t eat dogs or cats but choose to eat lamb,veal, beef pork or chicken your ethics are of a higher standard?
🤦
I challenge you to visit / work at an abbatoir or even an intense pig farm.
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Do you know what any of those animals feel? Is there documented evidence to demonstrate as much. I’m not aware of any, but perhaps you are. How do you measure terror? How do you know it’s anything more than mere instinct kicking in? Are animals capable of rational thought? Do they actively have a sense of self?
I assume from your response that you do consider animals and humans to share the same ontological value. If that’s the case, should an animal like a lion be charged with murder when it kills all the rest of the males in the pride in order to establish dominance? After all, if their ontological value is the same as ours, surely they should face the same penalty for killing one another that we do. Should it be charged with murder when it kills and eats a gazelle? How about when it kills and eats a human? Those animals’ systems are not designed for a plant-based diet. Does that mean it’s okay for them, but not for us somehow? What makes the difference?
I don’t ask any of this to somehow justify my views on the matter, but rather to help me better understand and draw out what might be the broader philosophical implications of the view you seem to be holding.
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Seriously?
You are asking whether animals experience terror?
My goodness’, and you a supposed man of God. I truly cannot believe you actually asked that. Off the top of my head that is probably one of the most eye opening example of callousness toward animals I have encountered.
You have Google I presume?
I recommend you go and educate yourself.
Perhaps this us this yet another wilfully ignorant rationalization to justify your bacon sandwich?
Yes, a basic sense of self awareness is present in non human animals.
The same can be said of basic rational thought.
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Is there documented evidence of that, or are you making it as an assumption? Do animals consider the question, “Do I exist?” A sense of self and a fear for one’s very existence is necessary to process terror. That’s an emotion. Animals have instinct, but not emotion. Once again, I’m not trying to justify anything. I’m trying to clarify the philosophical issues at hand.
You didn’t answer any of my questions about the broader philosophical (social?) implications of the position you are staking out. You gave me bluster and hand-waving instead. Should animals be charged with murder when they kill other animals? Does a particular animal’s digestive system justify what kind of diet it is morally authorized to eat?
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” Animals have instinct, but not emotion.”
Wrong.
I did recommend you Google.
One of the benefits of technology. The answers are all there at your fingertips.
Saves me trying to second guess or condense the scientific evidence.
If you have no interest in diing the basic research I will, if asked provide links.
I will address the other questions but this will make each topic rather long winded.
One at a time…
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How do you know this wasn’t human researchers simply reading human emotions into the animals they were studying? And I’ll look forward to your thoughts on the other matters.
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The same way I know why my dog wags it’s tail.
The same way I know that the earth is an oblate spheroid.
The same way I know what conditions are optimum for my potatoes to grow.
Evidence.
You, know the one thing you do not have for a single foundational claim of Christianity.
As for the other part of your question.
That you would ask if a lion should be charged with murder is a rather asinine question and suggests you have no real interest but are once again simply rationalizing eating other animals to satisfy your taste buds with only a feigned interest in their welfare.
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Wrong on multiple counts there. You make guesses as to why your dog wags its tail. They are educated guesses, but dogs (like all other animals) act on instinct not true emotion. We read our emotion into the world around us all the time. Emotion requires an awareness of self. Animals don’t have that. They couldn’t tell us if they did either because they don’t have rational thought like we do. They can learn and certainly have incredible means of communication, but there’s a difference between us and them.
And my question about charging a lion with murder was not flippant at all. I’m taking your position with the seriousness with which I hope you take mine. If humans and animals are possessed of the same ontological value (something I’m assuming you believe still based on the statements you have made since you haven’t actually said whether you believe that or not), then by what rational measure should animals not be held accountable for their actions like we are. If humans and animals have the same value, doesn’t that mean animals are morally culpable for their actions like we are? If not, why not? If your position here is as logical as you claim, apply that logic consistently or else explain why you don’t think it should be.
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Scientific studies assert otherwise.
I’ll take that perspective rather than one expressed by an unqualified person every day of the week.
So based on this you are wrong.
I did not say your question was flippant, I said it was asinine.
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Or it could be that all of those studies involved researchers coming at the question with unexamined or undisclosed presuppositions on the matter and managed to therefore find exactly what they were looking for in the beginning. They did just what I have said. They read human emotions into animals. That’s easy and perfectly understandable to do. In none of those experiments, though, were the animals able to express themselves logically or verbally such that there is no room for doubt as to the findings. The researchers made careful observations, yes, but then made assumptions based on those because they couldn’t get verbally and clearly what they were seeking. So they guessed, and those guesses were invariably influenced by the worldview thinking they brought to the experiment with them. That’s how philosophy works. Hand waving this away by saying I’m unqualified doesn’t actually make the question go away.
As for the lions, flippant or asinine, the question still remains. It was a perfectly legitimate question seeking out the logical implications of the views you have expressed. If humans and animals have the same ontological value, are there any limitations on the philosophical implications of that thinking? If it’s wrong for humans to eat animals, why is it not also wrong for animals to eat other animals? This includes, by the way, humans. What’s the standard by which you are operating here? Do you think humans and animals have the same ontological value?
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Well ‘could be’ strongly implies you
are simply speculating and merely trying to impose your unqualified opinion which would be treated with the respect it deserves.
If this is how you think science is done then it is probably understandable why you reject the science that has established why there was no global flood.
Perhaps you would like to offer the benefit of this speculation and tell us the probable story being the Human Genome Project?
Again, your lion example remains asinine.
But if you can come up with a scenario where we can put a lion in the dock and draw up a formal charge of murder I feel confident the makers of the Lion King might be interested in the script.
🦁🤦
If, as a person who likely considers he has high moral values and yet you consider there are no ethical or moral qualms about eating another animal then nothing I say will change that close mindedness.
But I do recommend you spend the day at an abbatoir.
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Still so much hand waving instead of actually engaging. You still haven’t answered my question about the philosophical implications of your position. Do you think humans and animals have the same ontological value?
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It is marginally gratifying you backed down on your unqualified opinion on the science. While hardly an admission you were simply wrong, I’ll take it.
I consider everything has value, and this includes sentient beings.
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That’s not what I asked. Do you consider humans and animals to have the same ontological value?
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It might be best if you give me a specific case in point.
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I can’t tell if I responded to this. I thought I did, but it looks like it might not have gone through. I’m not sure what you mean by a specific case in point. The question is pretty straightforward. Do humans and animals have the same ontological value? It’s just a yes or no question.
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Sorry, perhaps I am not understandung what you mean by ontological.
Flesh it out
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Ontology: relating to the branch of metaphysics having to do with the nature of being. In the core part of who they are, do you think humans and animals have the same value? If a dog and a kid are both in the road and are both about to get hit by a car, if you only have time to save one of them, which one are you going to try to save?
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Aah, that’s what I thought you were getting at but wanted to be sure.
Is the dog mine?
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Doesn’t matter. Do people and animals have the same value?
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Oh, it matters to me. But if you want to play this game, no problem.
Let me put the question to you.
If Ted Bundy and your dog were about to get run over by a truck and you had the opportunity to save one, which would you choose?
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You still haven’t answered my question.
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I will. Answer mine first. You have my word. Your dog or Bundy?
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I’ll take your word, but I’ve been waiting on your answer for nearly two days now. My game, as you say, so my rules.
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Are you not going to answer?
Bundy or your beloved pooch?
Cine now, Jonathan it can’t be that difficult a choice surely?
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Here’s an interesting scenario for you on the either or theme. Consider. Two rats.
One is the rat my daughter found as a new born, stranded on our driveway (probably escaped the attentions of one of our cats).
She gently lifted it up and carried it inside, nursed it, bottle fed it, and brought it gradually back to health. I’m the early days, many late night feeds I can tell you.
Because of how it was raised it could not be released back into the wild so we have a pet rat, named Rattrick.
Rat two. Former SA President Jacob Zuma. Cited in an official investigation as being involved in in massive corruption which included the intentional destabilizing of the energy provider Escom. One reason we have load shedding.
Imagine these two rats caught in the headlights of an incoming truck. I have two seconds to make a choice and get on to safety.
Which rat do you think I would save?
Does this answer your question about ontological value of life?
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Zuma sounds like a peach. I suspect you’d save the rat. I can’t say I blame the sentiment.
I understand your point. The same goes with Jeffery Dahmer and my childhood dog, Ginger, a beautiful, red, and super sweet golden retriever.
My point is this: if humans and animals have the same ontological value, there are philosophical implications to that idea. If humans can be held morally responsible for their actions toward other humans, and if humans and animals have the same ontological value, then shouldn’t animals be held morally responsible for their actions toward other animals?
You argue that humans eating animals is morally wrong because we are possessed of the same value. But if that’s the case, how can it be morally okay for animals to eat other animals? The value of both creatures is the same.
These are the philosophical questions lying behind the ideas you are espousing and they matter. What it seems is that you don’t like the idea of eating other animals because it feels wrong to you. That’s fine of course, but you can’t put anything objective behind that such that you can legitimately judge someone who feels differently.
I know you don’t care much for philosophical thinking, but it really does matter.
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Who ascibes ontological value?
Animals do not live in human society any more than we live in theirs so therefore they cannot be held to the same rules. Lions have yet to learn how to plough a field or use a knife and fork so charging a lion for murder is fatuous.
There is a balance in nature and the only animal that is prone to upset this balance is humans.
Without humans the earth would sort itself out in no time.
Yes, I consider that, as we are inclined to regard ourselves as morally and ethically superior to all other life on this planet – a belief that is questionable – we should at least live by that belief and not kill and eat other sentient life simply to satisfy our taste buds.
You asked how I would react if one of my family turned and became religious ( like you?).
Considering you cite your religion / Bible to justify eating other animals how would you feel / react if your entire immediate family decided to become vegetarian from one day to the next, as I did?
And again, I strongly recommend you visit a modern pig farm and then spend the day at an abbattoir. Oh, and take the kids and the wife. Make it a family outing.
And no, I am not being facetious.
It might give you a different perspective and I would be very interested to read your reaction.
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Let me start with the second question.
If my family decided to go vegetarian (which is pretty unlikely as my kids don’t really eat any vegetables at all beyond what we make them eat), that would be fine. You make it sound like my willingness to eat meat is something I see as an inherent part of my religious beliefs. I’m not sure I’ve said anything that would suggest such a thing…at least, I haven’t intended to. If they all didn’t want to eat meat any more, I guess I’d start trying some more vegetables. Whether someone eats meat or not is a personal choice. I don’t judge anyone for it either way.
You are finally asking a really, really important question there. Who ascribes ontological value indeed? I suspect you can guess what my answer is. What do you think? How do we know who and what has value? Who decides?
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I did not assert eating meat is an inherent part of your religion but rather you use your religious beliefs as part of your justification for eating other animals.
It is worth noting that the use of the term ‘eating meat’ rather than ‘killing and eating other animals’ tends to blind or mask our sensitivities to the reality of what we are actually indulging.
One reason why I recommend you and your family spend time at an abbatoir.
Which, I note you made a point of not addressing.
Would you feel perfectly at ease taking your children, or any children for that matter, on a day trip to visit a modern pig farm or an abbatoir?
Yes, I can guess your answer, which also covers the fact you can provide no evidence for such a claim, and to assert it depends on which lens one views it through is fatuous.
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Well, I just eat meat as I’m not the one to kill the animals, but using the fuller language still doesn’t bother me.
I didn’t feel the need to address making a visit to an abattoir. I’m aware of the process and that it’s not particularly pretty. Slaughtering animals en masse isn’t going to be a very pretty process. I’d be happy for them to see that, however, because knowing where your food comes from is important. If that convinced them they didn’t want to eat meat anymore so be it. That being said, I’m not going to go out of my way to take the field trip because that’s not something that ranks very high on my list of important things to do. I don’t feel the same way about the matter as you do.
You’ve piled a bit more scorn on my answer there at the end, which is what I expected given our history, but you didn’t answer the question. On your understanding of the world, who ascribes value to people and animals? How do you know people and animals are possessed of the same value? How do you know some people or animals aren’t more valuable than others, and some less than others?
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The reason for my rat and dog example was to show you that we establish out own values.
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Then how do you know yours on this matter are better than mine? The truth is, you can’t argue they are from any kind of an object basis. You’re stuck with total subjectivity. From a that kind of a position, you don’t actually have the ability to meaningfully say that I (or anyone else for that matter) am wrong to kill animals and eat the meat beyond the fact that it doesn’t feel right to you.
You have decided animals have a certain value based on some inscrutable criteria rooted in the worldview commitments you have made. Sometimes this value is higher than human value, but sometimes it’s not. You are the only one who decides which is which. And, you dare not press the logical implications of a standard you set in a particular moment because to try and live by that more broadly would land somewhere between silly and dangerous.
My wife and I watch a show about life in Alaska. If you want to survive in that kind of an environment in the winter, you have to kill and eat animals. None of them (that I can tell) justify their actions on any kind of religious grounds, but rather pure survival grounds. Are they wrong to do that?
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Of course it is subjective. But because of evolution we have ethics and morals.
And this reply will cover you Alaska question as well.
I don’ t need to eat other animals and I do not want to.
You don’t need to eat animals, but you want to.
You use your religion to justify eating them.
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Nope. I eat animals because I enjoy eating meat. I would whether I was a Christian or not. I think there are aspects of the Christian worldview that justify such thinking, but I don’t use my religion to justify it. What’s more, I don’t need religion to justify it.
The best evolution can give is subjectivism which doesn’t allow for any kind of meaningful moral judgments (about whether eating meat is right or wrong or anything else) and unavoidably devolves into a might-makes-right nightmare. You’re walking way out into some really bad philosophy here.
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Yes, you enjoy eating other animals. If you didn’t enjoy the taste of animal flesh, and presumably fish as well, you wouldn’t want to eat it.
But you DID use your religious belief as a reason to justify eating other animals. Why else would you have brought Yahweh into the conversation?
You believe morality was bestowed upon you by Yahweh. A belief not supported by any evidence.
Evidence shows us that evolution is responsible for morality and as I view animals differently to you and I respect the science I choose not to eat a fellow sentient creature.
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Yes, there is justification for being an omnivore in the Christian worldview, but no, I don’t justify it solely on those grounds. Eating meat or not is a personal choice.
There is no good evolutionary to be made for the existence of morality. The origin of morality (and the issue is morality on the whole) is necessarily a philosophical and theological question. Science can’t answer that one anymore than it can answer the question of the origin of life.
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I did not say you justified it solely on those grounds, but you did make it a central point of your initial argument.
Yes, it is a CHOICE. As I have been at pains to explain.
Wrong. Evolution is fact therefore it follows that this is where we derive the basis of our morality. And scientific evidence has confirmed this.
You really need to read outside of your Christian worldview.
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Then we’re agreed, I think. It’s a choice. Done.
So…morals came from evolution. How do we know? Because evolution is a fact and so therefore it gave us morals. Don’t get dizzy running around in that circle.
You are confusing science (which branch I’m not exactly sure…evolutionary biology perhaps?) and philosophy. That has been a common and persistent mistake of all of the leading lights of the new atheism of which you are so centrally a part. There have been some decent scientists in the movement, but it has been pretty bereft of good philosophers. Therefore, the movement keeps churning out really bad arguments (like this one) and running way out over their skis without realizing it.
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Why do you sound surprised.
Of course it is choice.
You choose to ignore the fact that you are eating another sentient animal solely to satisfy your taste buds, and have been innured to the horrendous suffering animals are subject to.
Once upon a time I never gave it a moments thought as I tucked into a juicy steak or sausages.
But once you do give it some serious thought then perhaps your conscience will kick in. Unless, of course you decide to use Yahweh to justify eating that roast chicken?
If morals do not derive from evolution from where do scientists consider they derive?
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My point has never been that it’s anything other than a choice. My point has been that you don’t have any objective measure by which to cast meaningful judgment on anybody else for making a different one than you do. That’s all.
The opinion of scientists on the origin of human morality is meaningless. I keep saying the same thing here: that’s a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
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Please explain why you consider there is nothing wrong in agreeing to other sentient animals being put through such horrendous suffering to be slaughtered just to satisfy your taste buds?
Re: morality and evolution. Why do you regard the scientific evidence as meaningless?
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I don’t think they are sentient. And while I know you will simply tell me I’m rejecting the science, the studies you reference aren’t in the least bit convincing on the point.
To repeat the point yet again: those are questions of philosophy, not science. When science leaves its boundaries and starts trying to do philosophy, it usually does it badly unless the philosophical assumptions of the scientist are sound…but if the philosophical assumptions of the scientist are sound, he’s probably not going to be trying to do philosophy but calling it science in the first place.
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“I don’t think….”
Quite!
“Evidence from multiple scientific studies has helped us to understand that a wide range of animals are sentient beings. This means they have the capacity to experience positive and negative feelings such as pleasure, joy, pain and distress that matter to the individual.”
Note the first word. Evidence.
Want the link for this one or are you going to reply with your ignorant refrain yet again?
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I don’t need the link, thanks. Do you think any of the animals in those studies communicated verbally about their emotional state to the researchers?
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And we are back to you behaving like an asine arse.
Koko the gorilla could communicate over 1000 words via sign language and understood over 2000 words of English.
This is more than a great many humans!
Are you still going to assert Koko was not sentient?
Interestingly, cats and dogs can be trained to communicate with human through the use of specialized equipment.
Are you now going to assert Koko was not sentient?
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Animals like Koko are indeed remarkable. They were uniformly trained to reflect human emotions. All animals can communicate with one another. Some are unquestionably able to be taught to communicate in ways that humans can make sense out of. That can’t do that on their own and without extensive training. Animals aren’t capable of the same level of rational and critical thought that humans are. We are ontologically different from one another. Both have great value. But it is a different kind of value. Our job is to steward, manage, and care for them with all the passion and care God has for all of His creation.
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Nobody is asserting they have the same level of rational and critical thought as humans.
That is simply a disingenious hand wave.
Of course the animals require training.
Just as you would require training to communicate with an indiginous South American from some obscure Amazon tribe who may have never before seen a white man.
But when a cat is trained to press a specific button on a floor pad to alert its owner what it wants, food etc, this is not reflecting the owners emotion.
“Our job is to steward, manage, and care for them with all the passion and care God has for all of His creation.”
And where does this include subjecting them to horrifying torture, terror, pain, simply to satisfy our taste buds?
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That cat isn’t reflecting emotion. It’s reflecting a tool given by humans to express its instinct to eat. That’s training, not sentience.
Subjecting them to horrifying torture and the rest isn’t right. I don’t disagree with that. But there are farms that seek to provide food without terrorizing the animals. Not all farms take the creation mandate seriously. Some do.
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First you assert the animals are trained to reflect human emotion, now you when shown otherwise you claim this is not sentience.
“While there is still debate over which animals are sentient as compared to the standards understood through our human experience, a modern consensus classifying all vertebrates, cephalopods, and arthropods as sentient beings has become the standard in the scientific community [1].”
Want the link to this one!
In the face of all evidence do you also assert the Koko was not sentient?
” Subjecting them to horrifying torture and the rest isn’t right. ”
Yet earlier you questioned / denied animals experienced terror.
If you deny this and the fact of animal sentience then why do you care if they are subject to such horrifying treatment?
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The standard thinking of the scientific community has been wrong many times before. Claiming scientific consensus isn’t a very strong argument.
They are creatures God created and for whom we are responsible. While they are available for us to use as food, we are still to take care of them and not treat them in ways that are abusive.
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But they are abused simply by the fact they are farmed for food just to satisfy our taste buds.
As you reject scientific consensus, which I agree can and should be challenged, do you finally acknowledge at least some animals are sentient and do experience terror?
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Raising some animals for food doesn’t necessarily imply they are abused. In fact, animals in captivity often fare much better under good care than they would in the wild. And, yes, that even includes being ultimately killed and eaten which is likely to happen and be far more brutal in then wild than on a farm.
But, no, I don’t accept that animals are sentient.
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Farmed animals as we generally understand it are all abused.
The demand for meat can not be met without intense farming.
Do you have any idea how many animals are slaughtered each year for the dinner plate?
Over 92 billion, and rising!
That is just land animals and doesn’t even touch on what is taken from the ocean.
Read that again 92 billion.
Take a moment to let that figure sink in…
That you refuse to accept the evidence regarding animal sentience demonstrates a degree of willful ignorance and callous disregard that is so blatently cruel and shameful as to be utterly disgusting.
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“Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself but as a necessary consequence of man’s eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. That is, morality evolved as an exaptation, not as an adaptation.”
. Want the link?
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No thanks. That’s a statement of philosophy masquerading as science. That’s actually a perfect example of what I’m talking about: a scientist who has switched gears from science to philosophy but either doesn’t know it or is being deceptive about it in order to make a philosophical point. People who understand philosophy easily recognize it. People who don’t, don’t. Ethics and morality is a branch of philosophy, not science. You seem to be operating under the assumption that all knowledge is scientific knowledge.
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No. It is a scientific statement based on evidence.
As you are adamant it is not scientific and refuse to accept the link or do the perishing research yourself then, pray tell, from where human morality derived.
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No, it is a philosophical statement masquerading as science that is based on a research project whereby a scientist made a philosophical observation rooted in his philosophical presuppositions which guided the construction of his project in the first place and came to a conclusion that agreed with what he was seeking (whether he could acknowledge this or not) in the first place.
There are some moral norms that have been consistent across all cultures. These can rightly be called objective. Objective moral norms must have an objective source. The best explanation of this objective source is God.
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From one who refuses to engage the scientific data for fear it will render his assertion moot.
But then, you do not accept evolution, so perhaps your emotional reaction is understandable when seen in this light
The best explanation is Yahweh?
Oh, my!
Evidence?
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We’ve already talked about that too. I have no fear of any scientific data. I’m also perfectly content with the idea of evolution. I don’t accept the claim of speciation for which there is no evidence. There have been a handful of sensational claims of having found evidence over the years, but each time they are subsequently discovered to have either been forgeries or else not nearly as conclusive evidence as it was first announced. Those subsequent discoveries tend not to get quite the same amount of media fanfare as the initial, more confident claims.
When you delve into the actual technical literature, the confidence that we have found any kind of meaningful evidence of speciation in spite of a century-and-a-half’s worth of diligent searching begins to ebb quite considerably. Darwin’s doubt, as it turns out, was far more justified than he knew.
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Until you can demonstrate with evidence there is any veracity to your claims your ideas will always be regarded with the contempt they deserve.
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Well, at least the contempt you have for them. And, given your worldview perspective, I wouldn’t expect any less.
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Telling you don’t address the actual reason for the contempt.
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You’ve already told me the reason, or at least some of it. If there’s more, I’d be glad to hear it. That aside, the worldview toward religion you have clearly demonstrated is always going to have contempt for religion.
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And for good reason.
Do you not express even a modicum of contempt for Islamic fundamentalism?
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Contempt? No. It breaks my heart that people have given themselves over to such profoundly false truth claims that give them the self-justification for doing horrible things. Those ideas should be vigorously opposites, but the people are made in the image of God and are deserving of respect and dignity, part of which means holding them to account for the choices they have made that are unjust and willfully destructive of others.
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Such as indoctrinating children, for example?
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If that’s the word you’re going to stick with, then, sure you can use that one. You use “indoctrination” for “teaching someone something I don’t agree with.” If it makes you happier, you can keep using that word. I won’t keep arguing that point any longer.
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I use indoctrinating someone with something for which they are dissuaded from overtly questioning and for which no evidence can he provided to demonstrate the veracity of the claim.
Such as Christianity.
Your definition is incorrect and disingenious.
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Nope again. And your consistently pejorative usage here just reflects your own worldview bias.
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The Nazis indoctrinated their soldiers to regard Jews as sub human.
Or do you think their outrageous garbage was simply their idea of teaching?
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No, they were making claims without evidence and discouraging critical thinking. Christians, by and large, don’t and haven’t done that.
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You have no evidence for the foundational tenets of your faith. None.
Evidence suggest genuine critical thinking among Christians invariably leads to deconversion.
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We’ve already talked about that. No reason to retread the ground here. And there’s also a fair amount of evidence (by which I mean personal testimony, which is the only evidence you have available for your point) that critical thinking is precisely the thing that has led many people to embrace Christianity.
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The #1 foundational tenet of Christianity is the belief Jesus is Yahweh incarnate.
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support this belief.
Personally, in the time I gave been interested in this topic I have never read, encountered or dialogued with a deconvert who asserted critical thinking was the reason they became Christian.
Maybe you could suggest a link or two of those who assert otherwise and can give positive examples?
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Well, I’d point to guys like J. Warner Wallace or Lee Strobel but reference them tends to be triggering for you.
And you were close. The number one foundational tenet is that Jesus rose from the dead. That justifies the belief that He is God.
And I’m sure you haven’t encountered such a person. But, you also haven’t encountered many people who went the other way and became Christians because of it, I suspect. Besides, your frame of reference on the matter will force you to declare their claims of critical thinking was their guide are incorrect. You’ve already made that charge before.
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Wallace and Strobel? Oh, ffs! I nearly spat my coffee all over my phone.
That you reference them and especially a fraudulent arsehat like Strobel illustrates your credukity or your desire simply to take the piss.
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I did give you a trigger warning…
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By the way, are you a coffee all day guy? Or just a morning brew chap?
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By the way, I scoped out your bakery site. You guys have some pretty awesome creations featured there. You guys are really talented. I’m duly impressed. And I love the story of how it all happened. Seen through different set of lenses, one could make a case that God’s fingerprints were all over the thing 😉
My cousin’s husband is a cake maker too. He competed on some Food Network competition show a few years ago. I can’t remember now what it was.
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Glad you like it.
My daughter is the artist/ designer.
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She is exceptionally talented. I’m sure you are immensely proud, and rightly so.
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Indeed we are.
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You still haven’t explained exactly what you mean by effective prayer.
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When someone prays to God to cure an illness or deadly disease and it is claimed a miracle.
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Is that what you mean by “effective prayer”? You still haven’t told me what you mean exactly.
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You want the Google definition?
I can quote you the bible if you prefer?
I get the distinct feeling you are going to hit me with apologetics any moment.
Should I brace myself?
If a devout Christian prays for the healing of a sick child ( terminal cancer for example) and against all medical knowledge and expectations etc the child is restored to good health.
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No, I just want to understand what you mean when you say “effect prayer.”
As per your example, that happens. And it’s not all that rare. As I talked about in my longer post, sometimes that happens and prayer was intentionally involved. Sometimes God does that and no prayer was involved. And sometimes it doesn’t happen in both instances. Why one happens versus another, we don’t know. What you perhaps see as just random chance, I see as the movement of God. That movement doesn’t always make sense to me or unfold the way I want it to, but because I trust that His character is good, I’m comfortable trusting that even when they don’t go the way I want, He’s still got good plans in mind.
Looking at things from the perspective you bring to the matter, it’s silly to draw a direct line from someone praying and a miracle healing or physical restoration’s taking place because there is no one to pray to. From the standpoint of faith, sometimes it’s hard to see how a direct line can’t be drawn.
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Oh no! I didn’t tell you to brace yourself first. Does saying it after the fact matter?
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