do survive cancer, Wows. Not to take anything away from the good fortune your Gran enjoyed in this instance. Her immune system, her particular illness - something natural led to her cure. It was fortuitous and a brilliant result but it was not divine intervention, unless you have some actual proof.

People survive all sorts of things. Some people are completely immune to HIV. Has god intervened in these cases, too?

Some religions do make claims "for which there exists no proof" but this cannot be said for all claims made by religions.

But I don't assume that anything is true or false until I'm given a good reason to do so. Given that I believe that Christianity is the true religion, I hold that other religions are false, particularly in regards to salvation. But this does not mean wholesale, as I tend to think there are elements of truth most every religion.

If you really can comprehend an eternal, all-knowing, all powerful deity who exists outside this space time, who was the motive force pre-bang and holds the dark secrets of supersymmetry then pick up the phone. People at CERN want to talk to you.

wit, Wowzers. Point is, you clearly suggested there is some way to understand a god who is by definition supernatural, who cannot be detected by any physical sense organs we possess. This ability to detect the supernatural is groundbreaking.

Using your skills, perhaps you could prove SUSY and unite the holy trinity, the three fundamental laws of the universe.  Given these possibilities, there are scientists at CERN (working away on the nature of reality through particle collisions using the $US7 Billion Hadron Collider) who will benefit from your detection capabilities.

Apparently they have reached an impasse.

    Bwah ha ha !!!  You don't saaaay ?    

 (  Sorry Wowzers1 my laughter was not directed at you, I was thinking of someone else on this forum.  Please continue. )

"Your estimation" sounds like "your preference" to me.

I certainly didn't want it to be false when I was younger and still don't "want" for anything about it. I have given the whole thing so much thought, read the bible a few times etc and the only conclusion I can draw is that it is man made. There is no "want" in my situation. "oh sure I don't want what 90% of the world seems to want"

There may be some hope for you. I suggest you take a break and give it more thought. Read the bible objectively, at least the fist few books and come back to tell us if you think it was a god or men 2000 years ago who wrote that. This can be done with the quran or any other religion ..even scientology lol.

I was answering in reference to the specific issue concerning signs -- that is you suggested that I "want" it to be true. I don't believe so...I'm trying to remain open about such things and not preclude the possibility of a miracle or the product of pure chance in the given context, that's all.

But as far the whole of Christianity, that's another topic of discussion...really a number of discussions about a number of different things... I'd prefer to focus on the topic at hand, if that's okay? If you want to discuss other matters, start threads accordingly. I'll refrain from doing so because I think there's enough fodder for you atheists to handle with other theists creating threads and posting their trifles.

"Signs": If you had not heard of any religion whatsoever could you take it as a sign?

You try to make it sound as if you are not biased yet you choose to take your grandmothers recovery as a "sign" rather than "I'm not sure". If your grandmother falls over dead tomorrow what will that signify? If you yourself suddenly contract cancer what would that mean?  These "signs" are all over the place when you decide to seek them out.

To say the religion in general has nothing to do with the subject at hand when it clearly steers your ship into miraculous waters seems false btw so I may bring up any aspect of it that I think may have a bearing on the topic at hand as you may bring up and question my core idea's to refute my argument.

I suppose I could, but it would take some education about religion -- that is what is prayer, to whom are they praying to, and for why they believe it would help.

"Sign" is probably a bad word -- I was using it in the same manner that one uses "miracles". Sorry if I caused confusion...

I didn't say that it has nothing to do with religion in general, but it seems that you went from a focus on miracles to all of Christianity. That's too broad for the scope of the thread unless you want to relate it some how. Marcus did relate it talking about "zombie magic".

You're absolutely right here: "It's a belief that depends on the justification of other beliefs. " All religions can be false, but only one can be true -- that's just common sense. Sense I believe Christianity is true, then I, by virtue of what I believe, believe other religions to be false.

But it would only be an assumption if I assumed Christianity was true, which I don't believe is the case, so it is something other than an assumption.

Then we are done, you have made it clear that miracles occur because you prefer that they do based on a wishful belief in a supernatural power that can cause said miracles.

You're insisting that I "want" reality to be a particular way, which is were I believe you're reading your bias into the matter, as evidenced by the fact you initially thought I was projecting myself into a god. You're basing that purely on the perception you have about religion and you're not even considering it as a possibility so it seems, so the matter is closed for you before I even brought the issues to bear. At least I'm open the possibility that it is pure chance... I granted that.

At the same time, the state of affairs concerning miracles (the miracle concerning my grandmother in particular) under my interpretation of the facts is coheres to how I perceive reality and corresponds to all given the facts. I believe I'm being very consistent.

Don't just allege something, and walk away.

Prove it.

But you think Christianity is true because your grandmother became sick and didn't die. That's a horrible reason. What connection could there possibly be between your grandmother's illness and the supreme overlord of the universe revealing itself to a bunch of desert dwelling savages thousands of years ago?

It's like saying you think it's not Tuesday because you believe it's Wednesday.  That's a reason because it cannot be both, but if your justification for believing it is Wednesday is insane then it's really nothing other than an assumption.

We forgot to touch on why his grandmother got sick in the first place. People tend to think these are miraculous happening when someone gets sick and gets better. What about all the grandmothers that died today? They tend to think it's a miracle when many many people die and a few live. What about all the people that did die in that plane crash? Why is living on in this world considered to be a miracle when they could have died and gone to this better place a miracle at all? 

You're overstating my position... It's seems to be evidence for Christianity give n the circumstances, but it does not in and of itself prove to me that Christianity is true.

If it is Wednesday, it can't possible be Tuesday (at least in my timezone...it is possible for it to be Tuesday and Wednesday simultaneously if you take into account timezones)

You think it's "insane" that I'm a Christian, and I don't. But that does not add anything to the conversation at hand. Rather, I have provided some evidence for what I believe, even if it is circumstantial. All you've said is it is "insane" without telling me why it is insane.

I am an atheist now but I might as well give my story, this was after me not being sure what I was for several years and studying a lot of different religions and philosophies.

Well, back when I did believe I came to my conversion through a somewhat roundabout way. It was about 6 or 7 years ago, I had been having severe chronic nightmares. I saw myself falling through the blood soaked earth into the maw of hell, I heard screams and saw horrors in my minds eye, I fell for what felt like an eternity staring at leering skulls and twisted skeletons that tore at my body as I tried to grip at them for purchase to stop the fall. I remember the screams, the cries...it was not good. The dreams had been getting worse, I had been avoiding sleep to avoid them, exhaustion usually allowed for dreamless sleep and so I kept pushing back when I slept and functioning on fewer and fewer hours. I was a nervous wreck and started to feel like I was being watched, even thinking I saw shadows moving and twisting when I walked down a hallway alone. I was in a bad way, I had a little pocket bible that those religious groups hand out and I figured that at this point reading it might help, if for no other reason than it might offer an antidote to this. I read, and I saw plenty of things that I agreed with, I saw concepts of social justice, selflessness and self sacrifice (what I had was only new testament) I read through the whole thing that night and I felt good, I saw things that I believed and I felt something wonderful. I prayed and begged God to cast the darkness from me that had been haunting me and literally felt something be pulled out and felt like I was full of living light. I felt wonderful, I wanted to save the world, I wanted to help everyone, I wanted to build a hundred homes, man every soup kitchen, wipe out poverty and do anything I could to make the world better. I heard scripture in my mind, I tried to be more generous, more giving, kinder and more forgiving. I eventually lost that feeling of inner light which depressed me but I had an experience that I had literally never felt before, I mean the sensations were so alien I couldn't imagine my own body producing them, though I do remember feeling that way one other time on reflection, it had been a few years before after I was at my worst I was pleading for anything listening to please help me, help me figure out what I had done wrong and how to fix it, help me avoid trying to kill myself again.

I still believed in logic and reason, science was still accurate, I just assumed that biblical errors were human mistakes but that the God that I knew was more than some piddly book. The book could have mistakes but there were still basic principles that made sense, loving your neighbor and working for social justice. I didn't view the bible as a historical text or a science book and when I saw the Hovinds, Comforts and other creationist liars in the world I was disgusted and frustrated as their initial stuff could be ignorance, with what they did as frequently as they did it they were knowingly lying. What they did though made me wonder, how can they claim to be so pious and faithful and yet lie so much, how can they chastise other christians for not taking the book literally when they don't either.

So I read more, and I studied more of the bible, I also read other philosophy texts and since I was a political science student studied how we form societies and different ways governments and nations can form. More questions came up and I asked others about them, and more often than not they got confused or they told me to just have faith. So, as a bookend, I suppose it might be also important to say that creationism helped me on the road to becoming an atheist.

Like I said, I can't answer these questions because the nature of miracles is that they are circumstantial, so they have to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

How is the inference from my grandmother's bout with cancer a bad inference?

How are the facts concerning my grandmothers health and Christianity unrelated?

Stop throwing around false allegations. You haven't done any rebuking at all.

You're just being obtuse.

I have yet to see any peer reviewed and published scientific papers on which religion is factual.

Please site your sources to back your claim that any 1 of them are not to be regarded as myths.

Claiming 1 myth is 'true', is stupid and deluded.

Epic fail on your part.

Stating that myths and folklore are facts.

In their mythologies that a supernatural deity created the universe.

False.

It's a statement that's a conclusion in context to my earlier points.

Evaluating it out of context is just you being the troll; not me.

'Believing' in such unprecedented claims, without any evidence, and rational reason to do so,  is foolish and inferior to being skeptical.

.

So what you are saying is that in the absence of actual evidence theists posit divine causation wherever there's a lack of knowledge? Would this be an argument from complexity? Where exactly do you see divine cause? The big bang? Abiogenesis? Or is god's loving hand hovering over every particle? Why not just admit lack of knowledge? Surely suggesting an impossible to prove deity outside space time is a bigger leap than suggesting apparent natural cause based on what we can actually know?

I've backed you up against the wall with your equivocations, and your fallacies.

Stop trying to squirm out of it.

What's common sense?

That 'God did it?'.

STFU.

Nice try.

You keep moving the goal posts, but, to no avail.

1- Your original statement was the only 1 'religion' can be true.

2- It's a logical fallacy that among competing 'truth' claims, that 1 is necessarily true. They can all be false.

Stop equivocating.

All religions claim the knowledge of how the universe formed.

Because they're legends and folklores from ancient cultures. There have been thousands and thousands of gods before the Abrahamic god, and it's well understood that they were all myths.

Just because 1 resonates with you, does not make it anymore viable than any other myth.

There's no evidence, or precedent.

Isn't that what what the Abrahamic religions all claim created the universe?

Oh, give me a fricken' break...