Ah, darn. You beat me to it. However…
Do we see a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here?
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc is the fallacy of reasoning solely from a correlation of events or conditions to the conclusion that those events or conditions are causally related when actually those events or conditions are only accidentally correlated.
I raised four children. They would be so sick that they couldn’t stand up and, voila, the next day they were fine, running and playing around. Have you ever had a bad gut ache? Down for the count one day, fine the next.
No prayer or miracle required.
It seems more likely a natural recovery given he wasn’t well for a few days.
@justsomeoneouthere, are you an adult? Have you been raised in a particular religion? Do you believe that any gods exist?
Well, with more details it sounds like just a natural recovery. Why would immediate recovery be more impressive? Because it seems really unlikely due to a natural healing process.
If someone JUST broke their arm, and it was instantly healed in a few seconds, I would be very impressed by that. I was bike riding with a friend and he fell off and broke his arm. It was visibly broken as it sagged in the mid forearm. I ran to call an ambulance, and he was taken away to the hospital.
Unfortunately, this was not an instance of supernatural healing. But if he got up, and someone prayed and it immediately healed I would have been impressed, and probably would attribute something supernatural to that. I don’t claim that, as it didn’t happen that way.
I’ve gotten sick, then got better without anyone praying for me, more times than I can count. Why is this event with the cat special?
That would be completely dependent upon the condition from which one is healing.
That is true, as of yet we don’t have a diagnosis for why the cat was not doing well. But apparently to the OP it had not been feeling or acting well for several days. For whatever reason, the prayer as the reason for healing is not impressive. But I suppose there is a possibility that it could continue to not feel well, due to a condition which is permanent. But without a diagnosis, I don’t know that.
In my example, I would be impressed with a freshly broken bone healing instantly after prayer. I don’t know if that has ever been confirmed and attested to by a team of scientists however.
@justsomeoneouthere did you understand Mr Dawn’s joke? Not only is it funny, it is pertinent as well imo. Cats are well known to spontaneously bounce back from seemingly terrible injuries. It is why there is the idiom about cats having 9 lives. So using a cat for an example of supernatural healing, is a particularly bad example. That being said, I wouldn’t be impressed if it was an elderly sick cow that bounced back; it happens all the time without miracles, so assuming this one instance is a miracle is kind of silly, at best. Using a cat for an example is ludicrous.
Sounds more like the cat was poisoned (no necessarily deliberately) but many things cats come across can produce exactly the symptoms you describe. It got better, your sister was lucky.
That is all.
My beloved Captain Cat died from Lily poisoning…like onions and garlic they can be lethal to cats, and produce the same symptoms…as I said your cat got lucky. No god or gods necessary.
Given the following scenarios happening simultaneously:
Why would #1 hold as an example of a miracle or that prayer works, and a god exists, while #2 is written off, or held as an example of “god works in mysterious ways”? Why wouldn’t this rather be an example of fallacious and irrational thinking? Or taken as an example of a situation which demonstrates that there is no reason to believe there is a just god? Or any god, for that matter? If we for the sake of argument assume that this god actually exists, and prioritizes the cat of rich (in a global scale) keepers before the poor child, wouldn’t this god be a total inconsiderate asshole? Would this god be a god worth following or worship? Or would this rather be an example of the rich person being able to tell their story, while the story of the dirt-poor child never reaches the attention of anyone outside the immediate family? I.e. a form for survivor’s bias?
My point was that he unlikelihood of an event, does not in any way evidence a supernatural explanation. As this is of course fallacious.
Indeed, but it would call for a re-examining of our understanding of that natural process, not to abandon natural explanations for supernatural ones, which we have no evidence for. Parenthetically, we only have an anecdotal claim that anything happened at all of course, and so don’t have enough information to form any explanation. All this story justifies is withholding belief from the claim it is a supernatural miracle.
Why? This is again fallacious reasoning, since in logic nothing can be asserted as true, because we lack a contrary explanation, as I explained this is called an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
[1] Cat picks up viral infection …
[2] Cat exhibits symptoms thereof for a period of time …
[3] Cat’s immune system wins the battle against the infection …
[4] Cat exhibits signs of recovery.
Meanwhile, some mythology addled person recites some mantra from his religion, at just the right time for the transition from [3] to [4] to take place, and thinks something magic has happened.
I think this covers the bases.
It didn’t happen! my friends arm didn’t heal instantly, it took the usual expected course of healing.
There are people who think ‘miracles’ aren’t violations of physical or natural laws, we just don’t understand what looks like violations of those laws. Yet, its still attributed to god, or something supernatural. I have problems with that idea however.
In the theoretical case of a fracture healing in seconds, I would ask why doesn’t it heal that quickly on a regular basis? If it really is a natural process? Why does it usually take weeks and months, even years to completely heal in most cases. Sometimes fractures don’t completely heal.
So, let me get this straight.
The god you believe in, saves a sick cat, yet 25,000 people die a day from starving to death EVERY DAY. 10.000 of them are babies and children.
Parents pray constantly to save their children from dying of cancer, and they still die. Yet god saved this cat.
Tsunamis, earthquakes, weather, floods, kill 10’s of thousands, and a brain damaged cat is saved,
Sounds like you are advocating for a god that’s an asshole.
If the sky daddy believers would like to use someone being healed as some sort of evidence for the efficacy of prayer and/or as evidence for the existence of their sky daddy, why don’t they fucking choose conditions that are known to be impossible to heal naturally, not just cases where the immune system does its job, or conditions that are known to heal over time, or conditions that heal due to modern medicine? Invariably, what you see as “proof” for the healing powers of their sky daddy/Jebus fetish figure/etc are diffuse conditions where there is no way to actually measure an objective improvement of the condition, nor to separate the effect of modern medicine from prayer shit. You never see e.g. amputees being healed by that Jesus wanker. If the prayer circle jerks are so effective, why don’t they try to make amputated legs or arms grow back?
Or let their Jebus hero heal victims of thalidomide:
I’m not holding my breath while waiting.
There is actually an online forum called Why Won’t God Heal Amputees. Unfortunately, the forum in question is currently not responding.
Well at least the site itself is up and it does a pretty good job of describing a very inconvenient scenario for believers.
I always tell them, go empty out a children’s cancer ward and get back to me.
Coincidence? He just got better. Who knows.
UK Atheist
yeah, it seems conditions that don’t go into remission by themselves can’t be healed by god…
it is no accident they can’t cure a condition that:
in other words, when we can be sure the only way to heal it is through magic; that is exactly when the magic fails.
