"I can recall two mysterious experiences myself at bushfires many years ago, times when I was exhausted or under extreme stress."

I think it's widely accepted that people are more likely to imagine things or hallucinate when they are exhausted or under extreme stress.

It's widely accepted that those who presuppose disbelief about God and miracles wouldn't even entertain their possibility.

Roger, thanks for another yarn about the bush and our need to be vigilant for bushfires.

History is sometimes forgotten when we look at our forests through the eyes of present day politicians promoting the "environment".

Currently in Tasmania we are going through another forest lock up process, not satified with the reserves created by the Regional Forest Agreement in 1997, meant to last for twenty years, or its 2005 amendment that covered the Tarkine and the Styx and brought reserves of HCV forest up to 1.4 million ha or 47% of forests, there is now another effort to lock up 572,000 ha.

This forest includes regrowth forest at Catamaran at Recherche Bay, subject to industrial scale logging and coal mining, see
http://epress.anu.edu.au/aborig_history/axe/mobile_devices/ch13.html

A booklet written by an ANU academic invited by Senator Bob Brown to be part of a campaign to 'save' the forest of the NE Peninsula of Recherche. This private land was the site of whaling stations and at least one saw mill, but it was also the site of garden dug by French explorers and revealed during a 1930s bush fire and about 5-10 kilometers from an historic first meeting of the French and the Tasmanian aboriginal.

So now the 572,000 ha includes old mine sites, including the tin mine at the Blue Tier in the North East, as well as regrowth forest from both wild fire, 1930s and 1967, and from Clearfell ,burn and sow silvicultural that was once called destruction.

Perhaps we need pioneer tales to remind us that man is part of the ecosystem, and should not be banned from it. Instead we should use past experience and the training of forest scientists to ensure that the forest is sustainably managed regardless of ownership and we act to prevent the disastrous bush fires of the past 200 years.

We need to sustainable manage our native forests to conserve biological diversity and carbon stocks whilst producing a sustained yield of timber, fibre and renewable energy that will more than pay for its management and create jobs and economic activity for regional economies.

Anyone who postulates that God intervened once in one bushfire to save one person has to then accept his responsibility for failing to intervene on Black Saturday, or in any of the other major bushfire disasters which have killed hundreds of Australians. A hundred and seventy-three here, for instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires#Fatalities

If God deserves the credit for one then he also logically deserves the blame for the other. That's fair, isn't it? Anything else is just special pleading.

Don't be silly, Jon J.

>>Anyone who postulates that God intervened once in one bushfire to save one person has to then accept his responsibility for failing to intervene on Black Saturday...<<

He can't be everywhere, you know.

Oh, wait...