A couple of days ago a local newspaper featured a story about a case of spontaneous remission. Some guy who was terminally ill recovered inexplicably from his cancer. Though not said explicitly, there was a subtle religious undertone to the article: without the help of God no such miracle cure could have occurred. Many such incidents are known and well documented. They are rare, but not unheard of.
On the surface this does indeed appear to be a valid argument in favor of religion, particularly to the people involved. But when you think about it you will quickly realize that
this sort of reasoning evokes more questions than it answers. Why couldn’t it have just been a lucky coincidence? Why doesn’t God ever let someone’s limb grow back? Why has no serious study ever shown a correlation between convalescence and being prayed for?
Yesterday then another thought dawned on me. Even if we assumed that spontaneous self-healing was indeed the result of divine intervention we would still end up in hell’s kitchen – no pun intended. Such cases have been recorded all over the world, in Christian, Muslim, Jewish and secular societies, it has happened to devout believers as well as to agnostics and die-hard atheists. Given some God A, this leaves us with the following three possibilities:
- There are multiple Gods, each taking care of his own people (and a few heathens)
- Followers of A receive miracles, for everyone else it’s just plain luck
- A works wonders regardless of the beneficiary’s faith (or lack thereof)
The monotheistic nature of all major religions rule out #1 instantly. Number two is no good either because whatever caused the other healings might just as well account for all of them, so you haven’t explained anything. So we’re left with option three.
But since spontaneous remission are not branded they would naturally be attributed to whatever particular deity that person happens to believe in. But what reason could A possibly have to let another God take credit for what is rightfully his miracle? And more importantly, now you can’t even be sure that your recovery was caused by your own God and not, say, Zeus. Unless you weasel out with the good old “He works in mysterious ways”-card you’re in some serious logical shit.
No matter which way you slice it, you simply can’t turn this into a sound argument for the existence of a personal God.
