A miracle takes place when natural healing happens at an unexpected pace or when the patient is deemed incurable by medical diagnosis. New science research is tapping into procedures to restore what once was disabled functions of previous years. They are now performing miracles that once only happened occasionally by deep desire in prayer

Dear Josephus,

You have succeeded in trivialising miracle.

Your definition "A miracle takes place when natural healing happens at an unexpected pace or when the patient is deemed incurable by medical diagnosis."

According to the New Testament Jesus did not heal at an unexpected pace or just produce a cure of someone who was supposedly incurable. He raised people from the dead. I don't believe it happened, but, if it happened, that was a miracle.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/miracles/ contains a discussion of miracle.

The term, miracle, is used casually in ordinary language. That fits your definition. That is not the religious concept of miracle.

At the battle of Jericho the sun stood still. That was a miracle. Your common sense tells you that Jesus never raised anybody from the dead, and the sun didn't stand still. To satisfy your common sense you make a definition of miracle which merely means an unusual happening. I agree with you. The miracles described in the Bible never happened. There are no miracles in the religious sense of miracle, but there are many unusual happenings.

Josephus: If natural healing happens at an unexpected pace or when the patient is deemed incurable by medical diagnosis, and the patient is an atheist and neither they nor anyone else on their behalf expresses a deep desire in prayer...does it count as a miracle? (or teasing by god)?

Or is it just natural but the the current medical knowledge doesn't know why?

I am happy to accept that prayer has a placebo effect - if you believe prayer works, then you may get better. But this is not due to the actions of god, just the brain releasing the relevant chemicals. (if you argue that god works through the placebo effect, then you're back to my first question, why does the placebo effect work for godless people, and without needing to pray?)

Re the power of prayer, I think it was J.B.S.Haldane who studied this. In England, the children of royalty and of the clergy were specifically prayed for in every Anglican church every Sunday. Haldane looked at relative death rates and found that these categories of children had higher death rates than the rest of the population.

Haldane is also famous for his ode to cancer (he died of it) - note the placebo effect mentioned:

"Cancer’s a Funny Thing:
I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
This kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked..."

The poem ends:

"... I know that cancer often kills,
But so do cars and sleeping pills;
And it can hurt one till one sweats,
So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.
A spot of laughter, I am sure,
Often accelerates one’s cure;
So let us patients do our bit
To help the surgeons make us fit."

Dear Cossomby,

What you describe is tragic indeed. People should not fight each other because they have different beliefs - it is wrong and unnecessary. If a certain belief is making you violent towards others, would you not agree with me that that belief is not good for you?

Yes, the world has a problem there, but it is not the problem to which I responded, regarding the issue that you had at the age of 7-8 and the conclusion you derived from it.

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Dear Joe,

Let me make a distinction between 'true' and 'truth'. It is true that the sun rises in the east and not in the west: it is true in the sense that if someone claimed that the sun rises in the west, then they would be lying, dishonest or at least deluded and reckless in their observation and logic.

In other words, we call something "true" when it authentically corresponds to our sensory perception and mental interpretation (including social agreements as part of our mentality), so it is true only relative to the correctness and accuracy of our sensory apparatus (including instruments) and our brain/mind that analyses their input (including through the social agreements therein). A Martian with different senses, a different brain-equivalent and from a different type of society might well conclude something different or even contradictory.

Truth itself is not relative, it does not depend on a point of view, but is about what actually is, the thing in itself rather than how we perceive it.

Perhaps the confusion arises from the English language where "she said the truth" roughly means "she was honest". Otherwise it is not possible to say the truth, it is only possible to say words.

So gravity is true, but is not the truth.

Yuyutsu wrote on Tuesday, 16 February 2016 6:42:46 PM: "I have withdrawn from this discussion because its initiator, Shadow Minister, expressed their wish to keep it about science, especially physics.

That was neither true nor the truth. Yuyutsu, why do you post after you have withdrawn?

The Bible uses the word, truth, in a way different from ordinary usage.

Bible: Ye shall know the truth.

Translation: Ye shall buy the snake oil I'm selling.