Man raised back to life in Jesus' name

hey randman-A quick question: This whole "supernatural gold dentistry" angle seems more than strange to me. Is there some significance to the gold or the teeth?Here's why, on face value, I have trouble accepting gold-filling miracles:
1. Gold-fillings are routinely created by humans in very non-miraculous ways.
2. The preoccupation with gold seems far too materialistic to be divine.I mean, if someone suggested that they woke up one day with their hair supernaturally dyed blond, or that a twenty-dollar bill supernaturally appeared in their coat pocket, wouldn't you be far more skeptical than if the miracle was, say, blood flowing from a statue?Just asking for your thoughts here - not trying to be argumentative.

Thanks for your thoughts - I wasn't asking to be convinced, by the way.I think miracles are interesting things, especially when they are rather ordinary things. These things may simply be improbable or misunderstood events - maybe the engine always had oil in it, but an odd airpocket made it seem as though none was in it on previous inspection (don't feel the need to defend your miracle - I'm just throwing out a quick skeptic's viewpoint). It would be interesting to see how some religious leaderships investigate miracles (the Catholic Church does so, no?)From a skeptic's point of view, a miracle should be an impossible event, not an improbable one.I find defining things as miraculous events particularly odd when they are miraculous for some but not for others. In the recent mine tragedy in West Virginia, the fact that one person of thirteen survived has been repeatedly referred to as a miracle. Okay, but what about the other twelve guys? Similar statements were made after the 9/11 attacks, as in, "God saved me when I missed my train and didn't get to work in time at the WTC." Okay, what about the other several thousand people?I fear this is going off-topic, and I believe there is a "miracles" thread around here if there is any further interest.

I agree that such could be checked, but a negative result (i.e. no indication of bone regrowth) wouldn't necessarily be definitive, because there is no way to predict how a supernatural force would replace lost limbs.This is one reason science doesn't examine the supernatural - no predictions can be made about it, and therefore no hypotheses can be tested.I have never heard of an alleged miracle that could not be explained by science to have been the result of naturalistic causes; similarly, every naturalistic cause could be explained by the faithful as being the result of divine intervention.

There is a fallacy in there. Let me rewrite your line a bit to point it out:Based on the natural information we have today, I think that a lack of any indication of natural bone restructuring/growth would strongly indicate a lack of a supernatural miracle.You are trying to use a naturalistic hypothesis to make predictions about a supernatural force. Simply not possible. You don't even know what the supernatural force is, let alone how it would act, or what evidence it would leave behind.

Masturbation and jogging.

Me? Yeah, I'm getting there, anyway...There are always evidence-based naturalistic explanations for supernatural claims.

​

There are always faith-based supernatural explanations for naturalistic claims.To some extent, why bother? (Except perhaps for fun and profit...) Yep. Because something impossible would break the cycle I note in bold just above. First, since noone has ever analyzed a regenerated human limb before, it would be difficult to know what the data meant. (Though if there was an opportunity to analyze several of these alleged regeneration cases it would get more interesting.)Second, better documentation would need to exist that the limbs were gone at some point than "I know this person who know this really smart person who totally believes that this village is convinced this guy's legs regrew!"

Reference, please.

oh geeze yourself.There is a huge difference between a digit regenerating (as you claimed) and the utmost tip of the finger regenerating.There is an even bigger difference between regeneration of entire legs and feet and that of the tip of a finger.

Yep. My summary was pretty spot-on, if you ask me. Correct. Don't confuse my apathy with biased scientific assumption.My only "assumption" is that any miracle will have both a natural and a supernatural explanation, and individuals will choose which one to believe based on their own worldview. It doesn't take a medical expert to meet a man who claimed to once have no legs, and see that he does indeed now have legs.In fact, I have no interest at all in continuing to discuss this hypothetical situation. I think it was just in 2004(?) that a review was done of the intercessory prayer studies, and several of them were shown to used fabricated / unethically manipulated data to demonstrate the "power of prayer."However, it has been accepted that patient condition improves when the patient knows they are being prayed for.