If you had no idea what lightening was or why the mountain( volcano)just exploded you might well attribute these events to an external force - a god or super powerful agency.

We can call this force ''Ug!'', and before long there's a bunch of 1st century half wits running round telling people their crucified Rabbi came back from the dead and is going walkabout!
It really is amazing the nonsense some people will believe.

an atheist is 100 percent convinced that G-d does not exist.

I have never heard any atheist claim to be 100% certain of God's nonexistence. I have occasionally heard some theists say this, but all atheists I know say that it is still possible, though unlikely, that God exists.

Everyday logic does not apply.

The laws of logic apply to everything, including talk about God. No one can claim a special exemption from the laws of logic for a concept they believe in. Otherwise, you could make any position coherent by asserting that logic doesn't apply to it. The laws of logic are true simply by virtue of the meaning of logical terms, so it doesn't matter what you are talking about - they will always apply. The only valid response to the omnipotence paradox is the response that most theists give - rejecting the notion of absolute omnipotence. Rejecting logic instead would be to admit that the notion of God that you believe in is logically impossible.

Miracles need one criterion: an appeal to personal incredulity. Yesterday’s miracles are tomorrow’s scientific challenges. We could make the same error in reasoning by assigning miracle status to your hypothetical limb regeneration. We already know there are species that can regrow amputated sections of their bodies. The real issue is a problematic religious explanation that is easy-to-vary: science’s successes can be incorporated into God’s greatness.

If the laws of nature do not prohibit more advanced kinds of regeneration technology then the only obstacle is a lack of knowledge.

Personally, I find it very difficult to imagine a possible phenomenon of the future that without a natural explanation must mean it has an unnatural explanation.

Mike, faith free.

And a priest just “found” it, did he? Knowing that it would bring vast amounts of attention and money to himself and his church?

If this is a “miracle,” the inescapable conclusion is that those Christians who believe it either worship a God that would make even HP Lovecraft go “yuck, that’s really disgusting,” are supremely gullible, or both.

You know a miracle that would get this nonreligious guy believing? How about having all the children who’ve lost limbs to cancer growing new arms and legs? That would be a good one, don’t you think?

I don't, you got lucky or unlucky depending on your perspective :).

Yes, in the CA example, computational behaviors emerge from the extremely simple CA rules (not from all CA's but specific patterns engender computation)... just as human behaviors emerge from the relatively complex (but computational) behaviors of neurons (and they in turn operate based on their computational chemistry).

BTW: I've been programming since 1979, I have a fairly decent understanding of computational paradigms from silicone to falling dominoes (yes, falling dominoes can also perform computations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d1R0zr91Ao )

A Turing-Machine (simulation) implemented inside the 'Game of Life' CA rules -- you can download software to run this on your computer also (you'll have to Google for it, I don't have time at the moment):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My8AsV7bA94

Proof that Rule 110 is Universal: http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/15-1-1.pdf

Lots of other simple CA's are also proven: http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/10/24/the-prize-is-won-the-simplest-universal-turing-machine-is-proved/

Correct... and if you think Windows is slow try waiting for a true Turing-Machine to give you an answer to an infinite problem.

Fortunately, finite subsets are reasonably passable for the kinds of finite challenges we put them up to today, until some newbie types:
10 Print "Hello"
20 Goto 10

Sorry, I should have said 'rule 110'. Here is the published proof on Rule 110 http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/15-1-1.pdf

But the argument doesn't depend on the arbitrary mapping of some integer to the CA ruleset. The point is, numerous of even the most trivial CA's fit the bill, here are some other examples with proofs: http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/10/24/the-prize-is-won-the-simplest-universal-turing-machine-is-proved/

And you should check out:

Qian, L., Soloveichik, D., Winfree, E., “Efficient Turing-universal computation with DNA
polymers”, Proceedings of DNA Computing and Molecular Programming 16, Lecture Notes in
Computer Science 6518: 123-140 (2011)