Between people like us, this is somewhere between a failure to allow for the looseness of speech and the kind of interesting contradiction we like because it's evidence-rich, and probably closer to the former. To a religious person, this is just a pretty combative trap. There are a large number of such traps you can run on religious people, and they very rarely accomplish anything, because these almost always aren't the kind of people who take logic and rationality seriously enough to change their beliefs due to contradictions, but they normally are the kind of people who fail to Keep Their Identity Small and hence become personally offended when you try to bring up contradictions. Asking the philosophers he's going to see trap questions like this will just annoy them (they'll probably even see the "looseness of speech" explanation for this one), provoke useless stock answers, and waste the potential of the conversations.

Regarding the idea of "changing the future" invoked by the Majere quote:

The concept here relies upon some notion of causality. In order for it to be coherent, we have to think of the past and future as being determined--that if we knew both the state of the universe at a given time, and the laws of physics, we could calculate every other state the universe would ever have, or had ever had previously.

This conception doesn't really seem to jive with what very, very little I know about many worlds and quantum mechanics, so it could be utterly false. That said, to understand the Majere quote, we have to refer to this particular conception, because it's the one Majere's assertion derives from.

The idea that we are "changing the future" comes from a formulation of the idea of free will. The basic idea is that, given the idea of a deterministic universe just established, the future is set, and all we do is watch it unfold from inside our heads. That is, except if we happen to be, as Majere thinks, creatures who possess Majere's idea of free will.

In that case, we have the power to alter ourselves to a degree, and thus, alter the present state of the universe--and thereby, its future states. And further, this power is "free"--it is in no way influenced by causality. This last may seem impossible, and it probably is. But it's the assumption which the idea of free will rests upon--that there is some force, usually asserted to be spiritual in nature, that is "above" the material world; by unspecified means, this force can alter the natural world without being causally determined by it. It's outside of the system, so to speak, and yet able to interact on its own terms.

This idea, as I've said, seems absurd given our knowledge of physics. That said, it is clearly the one Majere assumes. It is by this conception that, given the same physical state of the world, we could not predict exactly what would happen next--for there is no telling what choices beings of free will may make, and indeed, if somehow the same creatures might come to the same state of the same universe a second time, they could theoretically choose something entirely different.

What is the rational response to something like this? Because I still don't know what to think.

http://thedivinemercy.org/message/stfaustina/graces.php

I met Ms. Digan in person, and there's a bit more to the story than is told on the site; the two most important things are that 1) the doctors who examined her were not, as the site implies, Catholic stooges, just normal doctors, most of them atheist; and 2) her son, a very young child at the time, came with her to Poland and stayed behind in the room, and also experienced a healing--he had some sort of degenerative muscular disorder which prevented him from moving unassisted, and when they returned to the hotel he was sitting up, coloring in a coloring book.

Seriously, wtf?

Things that I would like to see coming along with the MoRverse:

Snippets of the world-as-it-is outside of Harry's story, like Alicorn's "Flashes" after Radiance. In particular, I'd really like to see more of Cedric Diggory, Draco and Luna's childhoods, the Weasley twins' first years, and the Marauders adventures as history, as well as redeemed Slytherin house and technical magical research after real engineers get their hands on it.

These could also make the Self-Awareness arc a bit less weird by personifying the bullying infrastructure.

I like the way Eliezer handles dementors as a metaphor for death, but as I consider Rowling's intentions for them as metaphors for depression, I'm realizing that that might be even more beautiful, even if Eliezer doesn't have as much to say about it.