Hey FrGamble!

Quote: Evenbob

The best critics of MT are the people
who worked side by side with her

Since you have not obviously read my links nor will you I will quote the pertinent texts for you.

"After hearing from these supporters, I requested interviews with the researchers, and finally obtained one with Dr. Chenard. Her answers to my series of questions were both astonishing and revealing: She confirmed for me that her academic team did not speak to a single patient, medical analyst, associate, or worker of Mother Teresa’s before writing their paper against her; nor did they examine how all her finances were spent; nor did they speak with anyone at the Vatican involved with her sainthood cause, or consult the Vatican’s medical board which certified the miracle attributed to Blessed Teresa.The researchers had not even traveled to Calcutta, whereas even Hitchens, misguided as he was, at least did that.

As it turned out, this “research paper” was nothing but a “review of literature,” a repacking of what others had already written, with the academics putting their own negative spin on it. In other words, an indictment based upon no original research, and the author most frequently cited? Christopher Hitchens. Yet these “findings” made international headlines, and were repeated by many without objection."

Isn't that amazing? These Canadian "researchers" did not interview a single poor person helped by Mother Teresa (actually Christopher Hitchens never did either), but they didn't even interview a medical person, associate, or anyone who worked with Mother Teresa. I guess we can both pretty much discount their findings.

Is a miracle or divine intervention required to survive brain tumors?

If it is, why do we bother trying to advance medicine? If it is, and we DO advance medical science to the point where it doesn't require prayer to solve problems like certain diseases, aren't we encroaching on God's power?

If it isn't, and someone survives a brain tumor, how do you differentiate between the natural healing ability of the body, medical science, and divine intervention?

If you have settled on divine intervention because you could not find a plausible natural explanation, how do you differentiate between people who pray to god specifically for this person, people who pray to saints for divine intervention, people who pray to Mother Theresa or some other person who is not a saint for divine intervention, and people who are praying in general to God for the sick?

A lack of a known natural explanation is not proof of a supernatural one.

There is no way to determine attribution to a supernatural determination if you decide to believe that. How can you possibly separate the prayers of people worldwide praying for the sick, and people who are praying to Mother Theresa specifically for the health of one person, and determine that it was the prayers to Mother Theresa which were effective in producing divine intervention?

Miracles are now "watered down" and attributed after the fact, and often after death.

What I want for a miracle is one where there is NO POSSIBLE medical or natural explanation, not just NO KNOWN natural or medical explanation. Some examples - curing some forms of blindness, regrowing of amputated limbs, resurrection from death. A personal requirement for me for belief is also that these miracles were called for and then granted, just like they were in the bible, rather than how it is now with posthumous attribution of unexplained or odds-defying events.

People defying the odds is not a miracle, that's just nature. If people can defy the odds AND survive due to divine intervention, then there is no way to differentiate the two. If you can't differentiate the two, then you can not attribute one of them as an explanation to any particular event. Even if you could attribute divine intervention to an event, there is no possible way to determine which mode of prayer or target for intervention was responsible for providing the intercession to produce divine intervention.

Quote: Dalex64

If it isn't, and someone survives a brain tumor, how do you differentiate between the natural healing ability of the body, medical science, and divine intervention?

Asimov defined faith as "ignorance and superstition."

A few cancer patients exhibit a phenomenon called spontaneous remission. Regardless of the level of treatment or their condition, they suddenly get better and the cancer disappears. Why this happens is a mystery. There is some reason to believe something triggers a strong response to the cancerous cells by the immune system. But that "something" is proving to be elusive.

One hypothesis is that an unrelated infection triggers a normal immune response, and then the immune system notices the cancerous cells as targets. There are many problems with this idea, not least the fact that the immune system usually does kill cancerous cells.

The point is even mildly, distantly religious people tend to pray when a loved one is sick, more so when it's something terminal like advanced cancer. (and not to mention the patients themselves may also pray) Conservatively say that 80% of all cancer patients receiving some form of care are prayed for. If a proportional fraction of these are Catholic, they'll be prayed for through a "saint." The chances that a few of them will experience spontaneous remission is rather good.

There's a great deal we don't know about cancer (though apparently the Catholic church knows it all), not to mention other terminal conditions.

Bill Moyers interview with Asimov, about his faith in the power of human reason, and his opinions about religion and science.
http://billmoyers.com/content/isaac-asimov-on-his-faith-in-the-power-of-human-reason/

Quote: Dalex64

Bill Moyers interview with Azimov, about his faith in the power of human reason, and his opinions about religion and science.
http://billmoyers.com/content/isaac-asimov-on-his-faith-in-the-power-of-human-reason/

ASimov.

Fixed it.

Quote: Dalex64

Fixed it.

Thank you.

Very interesting interview. I actually was agreeing with what Asimov was saying about religion and its need to be shown to have evidence and reason behind it if it is to be proposed universally to the world. However, when they started asking questions about morality from then on the interview went downhill and I disagreed with most everything else after that.

Quote: FrGamble

However, when they started asking questions about morality from then on the interview went downhill and I disagreed with most everything else after that.

Of course. It's not possible to be moral
or have a conscience without Yahweh
doing your thinking for you. Why
think for yourself when it's all been
done for you. Be a god fearing/loving
robot instead, that's the ticket.

Ick..

Aren't those who believe in God already choosing for themselves what is right and wrong, because of free will?

We know that what people think of as God's instructions have changed over the years, through a process sometimes described as continuing revelation through prayer, and we know that the leaders sometimes decide later that these revelations were wrong and correct them later (see bad popes)

So, if all of the words of god are subject to interpretation and evaluation later as to their meaning, and whether or not they really were revelations from God, (also ref. man determining which books were to be assembled into the bible) combined with free will and whether or not people even want to hear the word of God from God in the first place (what if prayer leads to something that they disagree with? Does it get written down?) then mankind is already deciding for itself what the rules of society are, and what is moral and just.