In the "True Christian" thread, schrafinator, articulated two concepts: post-hoc reasoning and confirmation bias.
IMO, all theists use these techniques to maintain amd justify belief in a personal God who purportedly interacts in their life. Theists vehemently deny the charge. Nevertheless their attempts to deny that they utilise post-hoc reasoning and confirmation bias, IMO they merely demonstrate that these techniques and their acceptance are institutionalised within religious belief itself.
It can be reduced to the following simple equation:
All good stuff = God's influence.
All bad stuff = Lack of faith/sin/evil/or a test by God.
Nothing ever = evidence that God doesn't interact/exist at all.
That's three equations. You seem to be confusing two rather different things. One is that theists view certain events as evidence for God's activity. The other is that theists interpret all events as God's activity. Each is true of some theists, and both are true of a subset, but neither is true of all theists. One involves purported evidence, and does (or need) not.
I am a theist. I have never suggested that good stuff is evidence for God's influence, and am intensely skeptical about faith healing and miracles. What exactly is your beef with me?
And, most definitely, God can never be subjected to a controlled test.
Well, yeah. Just as a novelist can never be subjected to a controlled test by his characters. You find this surprising?
As for your stories, the first is quite unimpressive. Doctors were a little off on their estimated healing time? Hardly unusual. The second one just sounds fishy. "Cardiac arrest" means no pulse; was that really what you meant? In any case, what's supposed to be miraculous about it?
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. T.E. Lawrence
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