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To: Dayuhan who wrote (1566)	3/6/2002 6:22:22 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Again, I am clearing my inbox before shutting down. I will address this tomorrow, to do it justice.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (1566)	3/7/2002 10:43:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Actually, I don't think there has been much ruling out of supernatural agency, which is why you keep picking on thunder. What there has been is a pushing back of the question of supernatural agency from free- lancing spirits to the universe as a whole. There are still plenty of mysteries in our midst, like the not yet explained facets of evolution; or the remarkable dispersal of human kind throughout almost the entire world, including Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania; or the strange propensity of eels from up and down the Atlantic Coast to travel to the Sargosso Sea to spawn, and then having the offspring leave to repopulate at about the same levels the areas they came from. The wanderlust that is supposed to account for the braving of the oceans and the filling of most continents makes little sense. The human population, in prehistoric times, would not have challenged the carrying capacity of Eurasia. Also, why stay in inhospitable places like Alaska, or enter into danger locations like the Amazon rain forest? No, we don't really understand a lot of it. Indeed, in some respects it becomes more mysterious, which quantum mechanics and charmed quarks and black holes. Remember, I started this whole thing discussing the implications of the Big Bang theory. Virtual vacuums and quantum events that somehow generate time and space are not a big improvement on "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form and void...." You say that the traditional answers are not even remotely satisfactory. But they have worked for millions of people over centuries, and they work for me, so I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one. As for the comparison of Lourdes and non- Lourdes data: there are many more apparent healings than the 60- some that are certified, but the standards are rigorous, and if there were any doubt, they were not certified. I do not know the numbers, either of the percentage of apparent healings at Lourdes, or of remission in other contexts, to make a comparison. However, even most spontaneous remission very likely occur in a context of prayer, so I do not know that they are separable. And, I would say that there is not only encouragement through places like Lourdes, but that there are other places where God's providence might be experienced. I am in favor of technology and modern medicine, but that does not address the question of the masses of people who suffer until progress in these areas are made. I would prefer living in a universe where the individual suffering of all mattered, where there was a final reckoning, and where all will be well in the end, to one where only the big picture mattered. Maybe it is a question of taste.......