Thursday, February 17, 2011

And boy, are my arms tired…

Just flew in from Spokane, and have been offline for several days.  Regular posting, replying to the usual mountain of emails sitting in my inbox, etc., will resume shortly.

10 comments:

  1. Frankie Cowboy BootsFebruary 18, 2011 at 9:00 AM

    When my wife sits around the house......

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  2. Welcome back, Ed. I hope the lectures went well.

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  3. Crude...
    I know you know where Stunney is at these days.
    Spill the beans!!

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  4. Sorry, not a clue. I've wondered that for a long time myself. He was one of the first commenters I remember following years ago. He seemed to simply disappear at one point.

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  5. Classic Stunney over at TT:

    http://telicthoughts.com/there-will-be-repercussions/#comment-140166

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  6. In the linked discussion at TelicThoughts someone mentioned that Jesus never healed amputees in the NT (it's not mentioned in the NT). This however is incorrect if we believe that Jesus healed persons suffering from leprosy. Auto-amputation is a common feature of advanced leprosy (Hansen's Disease). There should be no reason why any of these lesions should not occur in leprosy sufferers in Christs' time.

    Here's a picture:
    http://www.dermatlas.com/derm/IndexDisplay.cfm?ImageID=1083634797

    Thank you.

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  7. Anonymous. Jesus did heal the soldier who had his ear cut off also.

    Ed. I'm wondering if you've ever considered seeing if you could go "Unbelievable" to debate Stephen Law on his "evil God" idea. I've read you excellently tearing it to shreds and Law uses this each time he's been on the program. It'd be an interesting listen definitely.

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  8. Nick, I am pretty sure that TelicThoughts argued with respect to limbs: no healing of limbs lost (or never grown).

    Anonymous, as far as I know, nothing in the Bible indicates either positively or negatively that when Jesus healed the lepers he actually restored lost limbs to them. All that is necessary to believe is that he cured them of leprosy.

    I also don't know that TT's claim is right: he not only makes the claim against Jesus, but against all the miracles by the saints. I am not up on all the details of all the saints, so I simply don't know, but I would not be in the least surprised to find out that the historical evidence points to some cases of restored limbs.

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  9. Dear Tony,

    Since leprosy is a disfiguring illness and loss of limbs (usually digits) is part of the pathological process (it's actually a loss of sensation leading to loss of digits through frequent trauma - and in ancient societies people did more with their hands anyway so were more exposed to trauma) any leper would probably have such lesions. If the leper was healed, noting that people did not perform skin biopsies to diagnose leprosy but did it on pure characteristic physical signs (appearance) those signs would have to disappear (heal, clear up) to say one was cured of leprosy the same way the lame were able to walk and the blind were able to see. This would in my mind involve the regrowth of the digits together with recovery of other skin abnormalities. Nowadays we'd do skin biopsies to monitor healing before the skin lesions resolved over a long period of time. Thank you.

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  10. Oh come on. If you are a Jewish priest, and you see a man who formerly had lesions all over his arms (and lost 4 fingers), now has no lesions whatsoever, you are not going to say "well I dunno, the fingers are missing so maybe you still have the disease." The law provided for the possibility of natural healing (in which the person would show himself to the priest), and such natural healing would not restore the lost digits.

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