Why won't God heal amputees?

Here's a very interesting video I found on youtube several months ago. It asks 10 questions that every intelligent christian really needs to ask themselves. It comes so close to greatness, then unfortunately falls apart. When I started watching it, I thought "this is great, this is the video the atheist movement's needed" but by the end I was angry and dissapointed.

His voice is a little annoying, so you may get sick of the video. Here's the 10 questions (paraphrased a little), in case you lack the patience or time for the full video:

1. Why won't God heal amputees?
2. Why does God let children starve?
3. Why does God demand the death of innocent people in the bible?
4. Why does the bible contain so much unscientific nonsense?
5. Why is slavery condoned by the bible?
6. Why do bad things happen to good people?
7. Why don't the miracles of the bible leave evidence?
8. Why doesn't Jesus appear before you personally?
9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

The narrator points out (and rightly so) that Christianity lacks a good answer to any of those questions. God claims to love us, yet he tortures us. That's the definition of an abusive relationship. That should be good enough to shake anyone's faith. Get the hell out before that psycho hurts you again!

The narrator than goes two steps further. He logically deduces that God is imaginary, but then states that that means all Christians are delusional.

The first I can handle and agree with. If we assume God is imaginary, that becomes the answer to all those questions. God doesn't heal amputees, because God is imaginary and imaginary characters don't have the ability to heal anyone in the real world. Case solved.

The second part, I can't swallow. I refuse to believe all Christians are delusional. That just doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I think most Christians belief in God is analogous to my "belief" in Tony. For those who haven't read my earlier post, my old co-worker Brian mentioned Tony several times a day, and sometimes even came in to work with "gifts" (a Magic deck, a movie poster, etc) that he claimed Tony had given him. I had no reason to doubt him - why would someone invent a fictional bestfriend and manufacture evidence to support it?

So, yes, there's probably some small percentage of Christians who are either delusional, or greatly misinterpreting data and/or making unfounded leaps of "logic". The other 95% are just "taking Brian at his word". Someone else claims to have had a religious experience, and most of their community subscribes to that religion, so therefore, they go along for the ride. You certainly don't have to be delusional to see a pattern in nature, or to feel a moment of awe. There's a big difference between hallucinating, and simply drawing the wrong conclusion.

That is why I used to get so angry when I heard Richard Dawkins or Bob Maher refer to God as "other people's imaginary friend" or call all Christians crazy. Either Maher and Dawkins are being dishonest, or they have a remarkably pessimistic view of the world. I'll tell you, if I thought that 40 or 60% of this countries population were actually delusionally crazy, I'd be dead-set against democracy. "People make mistakes" is a true fact in the world I live in, but "the majority of people have delusional hallucinations" is not.

What's more, his own questions don't support it. Look at question #8:

• Why doesn't Jesus appear before you personally?

"Because God and Jesus are imaginary" is a viable answer to that.

"Because God and Jesus are imaginary, and you are delusional" is not a generally viable answer to that. If you were really crazy, and you were presented with that question, your unstable mind would construct an elaborate answer, hallucinate a personal Jesus appearance, or possibly just come apart at the seams. He claims most Christians rationalize it away - but most people don't rationalize it, they just never thought about it.

Anyone who says "I've never thought of that - I'll have to ask my pastor," probably isn't crazy, just misled. Those people are clearly the true intended audience for his video. The really crazy people have probably hit stop or started foaming at the mouth by now, only the non-crazy ones are still listening past the first or second question. Calling them crazy a minute later isn't going to open their eyes any further, it's going to just piss them off and make them not want to listen to you (nor any other atheist) any more. That is regretable.