With relation to danoff, Swift and Pako's discussion earlier, I'd say a couple of things about the examples Swift points to... the fact that illnesses or physical ailments can spontaneously disappear (or appear) doesn't mean that it was an Act of God...
Strangely, if someone claims a spontaneous act of curing, they are usually very quick to attribute it to God. But let's put the boot on the other foot for a second. If someone suddenly dies, or suddenly goes blind, was that also an Act of God? If so, then we start getting into morally questionable terrority, because people start to 'invent' reasons why God might have done what he has - usually with no justification or evidence whatsoever. A good example of this is Pat Robertson - he demonstrated recently with his comments about Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans floods, that putting motives into the mind of God is a bad idea. The fact is, there is no reason to surmise that God deliberately strikes people down in some sort of cycle of divine retribution - and most people would agree with that I'd imagine. People who do think like that find themselves very unpopular, very quickly. Another example, former England footballer and head coach Glenn Hoddle made a very poor comment about his belief that handicapped people were born handicapped because God was punishing them for something that they did in a former life. He was sacked as England manager immediately. His comment illustrated perfectly the sort of 'moral judgement' that he was in absolutely no place to be making - but it was based on his (misguided) belief that illnesses and diseases are used by God to demonstrate approval, disapproval, or just that He can...
So, if like me, you think that illnesses and diseases are not dished out (either vengefully or otherwise) by God, then you should also accept that he doesn't do the reverse i.e. spontaneously cure people. AIDS, cancer, blindness etc. are all physical phenomena pertaining to the animal kingdom that simply do not require any involvement, for good or ill, from a supernatural hand. The first step in proving that someone is cured is proving that they were ill in the first place... that requires firm evidence. In addition, if someone does spontaneously recover, then it should be reported and an attempt to explain the recovery process should be made (i.e. how long did it take, what tests were done to monitor the progression of the recovery process etc.) - this also will require evidence. But, if no explanation can be found, it doesn't necessarily mean there is no other explanation than 'God made it so'... potentially there are a myriad of other, rational explanations - the problem is, the real explanation (i.e. causes) may be so subtle, that in many cases, you will simply never know what caused the reverse of the illness.
But as danoff rightly points out, in a case where a dramatic reverse of illness does occur, then it would be the prerogative of the medical/scientific community to attempt to uncover the reasons behind it, in the hope that it would reveal the process by which other people may be cured of the same illness in the future. To me, it is counter-intuitive to presume that God can and does cure AIDS, but only does so on a whim and to so few people, and usually under evidentially dubious circumstances... It also begs the question, if God can and does indeed cure AIDS when he wants to, then why did he bother creating AIDS in the first place?? Again, we enter an area where we can start second-guessing the motives of God, which (again) is probably a bad idea... and as danoff also seems to be suggesting, if you don't know
how someone recovered, how can you possibly say
who did it??
We should be grateful and thankful that spontaneous recoveries can and do happen, but I'd rather thank/show gratitude to the people who actually did something to help rather than 'anyone' else.
ledhed
Somebody help me out with this expanding universe stuff ....
Any particular aspects specifically? In relation to the issue of Creationism, the factual observation that the universe is expanding (first made in 1929, and now easily verifiable by modern methods) is the foundation stone on which the Big Bang model of cosmology is based upon, which obviously goes contrary to the creationist point of view that the 'Heavens and the Earth' were made simulateously and 'as they are now' just 6,000 years ago. The observation of expanding universe, and even the simple fact that we can see objects further away than 6,000 light years (MUCH further away) is enough to destroy the creationist argument stone dead.
Modern science still cannot explain
the processes behind how the universe is expanding - but it can explain 'how' it is expanding (i.e. we can explain the movement of objects in terms of their relative positions) and the basic fact that the universe is expanding at all... More importantly, although science cannot provide an
exact explanation for the mechanism of expansion, creationist theories on the subject are largely non-existant or so completely barmy as to not warrant any further discussion.
).
No I did not. I said that particular thing happens. Not "just happens". I didn't offer a reason why it might have happened, just that it does occasionally happen (for quite a few reasons). "Just happens" implies that it happens for no reason.
