Literal miracles in the Bible?

[TLK Valentine]

Revelation speaks of Evil performing miracles...signs and wonders. What will you think if/when you see it?

How is this relevant to our discussion?

 

[TLK Valentine]

Problem is....the authors of the bible were often very harsh on the prophets.

How so?

 

[Silmarien]

Was Jesus’ miracle work unique? - Centre for Public Christianity

"Turning to the Jewish world of the time, two names stand out as potential candidates for Jesus-like miracle workers. The first is Honi the Circle-drawer, active early in the 1st-century BC (he died around 65 BC), and the second is Hanina ben Dosa, who probably died sometime before AD 70. Interestingly, both men were from Galilee, Jesus’ home district, leading the great Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes of Oxford University, to make much of the connection between Jesus, Honi and Hanina. All three, he says, were part of a tradition of Galilean Hasidim or Devout ones who were known for their nearness to God and spiritual powers."


And these were just two of the famous ones -- the ancient world was a very superstitious place.

Maybe I've read too much Neil Gaiman, but my favorite crazy theory is that the ancient world actually was full of miracles and deities, and that the birth of Christianity really did spell the twilight of the gods. Wild, for sure, but there's fun stuff out there like Plutarch commenting at the end of the first century that the oracles had fallen silent.

 

[Radagast]

Maybe I've read too much Neil Gaiman, but my favorite crazy theory is that the ancient world actually was full of miracles and deities

Interesting theory.

I must admit, I can't see how that could be disproved.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Now, for this thread, I want to define "miracle" as "The overt suspension of natural laws by the divine or agent of the divine in order to achieve a divine purpose."

That said, are the miracle stories as they are described in the Old and New Testaments meant to be interpreted as depictions of actual events?

And if so, do those depictions bring people closer to an understanding of God, or further away?

Because it seems to me that stories of a God who can miraculously bend/break the natural laws of the universe at will raise a lot of awkward questions about the countless times He chooses not to.

Consider:

• God rains manna from the heavens to feed the Israelites.... today, millions are starving.
• God -- either personally or through His prophets -- heals the sick and infirm and even raises the dead... today, millions suffer and die.
• God -- again either personally or through His prophets -- commands the forces of nature... today, drought, storms, earthquakes, etc... kill millions.

Now, I'm not asking "why do bad things happen?" But rather, "would we even have to ask these questions if we didn't assume that miracles were actual historic acts?"

Thoughts?

Yes, we would have to ask anyway, because whether we assume or we don't assume that the miracles depicted in the Bible were actual historic acts, we'd still have to try to understand what meaning and purpose the writers intended to convey with their writings overall.

Hermeneutics is kind of strange like that--we're darned if we do and darned even if we don't ... [I.E. ... we're darned in the sense that regardless of our preconceived, pre-wholistically oriented presuppositions, we still have intensive work ahead of each one of us to grapple with the biblical texts in attempting to ascertain the whole of its referential extensions in meaning.]

 

[JIMINZ]

And only fools can't see that the Emperor's robes are made of the finest silks... sorry indeed, because it goes nowhere but in circles.

In your finite mind, sure.

 

[JIMINZ]

You can use a lesser instrument to get the general idea across... you can play the Ninth on a kazoo, but would it really be the same?

If I only played Da Da Da Dum on my Kazoo for anyone, they would know exactly what I was playing. no Orchestra needed.

Da Da Da dum on any instrument is still Da Da da Dum.

Similarly, to speak the "divine" language, one would need a divine instrument... and we who are mere mortals and not gods simply do not have one... even if we accept some small measure of the divine by virtue of being made in God's image, that just gives us the kazoo; we still don't have the orchestra.

The point you don't understand is that God is the Orchestra, and you don't posses the ability to read the music.

Therefore your misunderstanding.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Maybe I've read too much Neil Gaiman, but my favorite crazy theory is that the ancient world actually was full of miracles and deities, and that the birth of Christianity really did spell the twilight of the gods. Wild, for sure, but there's fun stuff out there like Plutarch commenting at the end of the first century that the oracles had fallen silent.

In a pre-scientific world where anything unknown must be the work of either the divine or the demonic, I'm sure it felt that way...

 

[TLK Valentine]

In your finite mind, sure.

As well as your own finite mind.

 

[TLK Valentine]

If I only played Da Da Da Dum on my Kazoo for anyone, they would know exactly what I was playing. no Orchestra needed.

Da Da Da dum on any instrument is still Da Da da Dum.

being able to recognize the tune is not the same as experiencing the music that Beethoven created in all its beauty -- if you don't perceive any difference between da da da dum on a kazoo, and hearing the Ninth on a full orchestra, then you've got a tin ear.

The point you don't understand is that God is the Orchestra, and you don't posses the ability to read the music.

If that is true, your descriptions of that music are going to be worse than useless than trying to describe the Ninth.

Therefore your misunderstanding.

Or God is the music... and you've never experienced the orchestra. You've trained yourself to worship the kazoo.

 

[bling]

Not exactly -- "enjoyment" isn't the point; the point is to convey a divine idea using a tool (human language) that simply isn't equipped to express it.

Consider the example I used earlier with Beethoven... to speak the "language" of music, you need a musical instrument... preferably the right one for the piece... You can't "speak" the Ninth Symphony, you can only play it -- preferably with a full orchestra.

You can use a lesser instrument to get the general idea across... you can play the Ninth on a kazoo, but would it really be the same?

Similarly, to speak the "divine" language, one would need a divine instrument... and we who are mere mortals and not gods simply do not have one... even if we accept some small measure of the divine by virtue of being made in God's image, that just gives us the kazoo; we still don't have the orchestra.



This assumes that any such story is "just a fictional story" -- I make no such assumption. The Bible is not limited to being "complete truth" or "complete fiction"; there's an entire spectrum in between. The same can be true of any ancient (and not-so-ancient) writings; it's just a question of where it falls on the spectrum.



Not quite -- I actually said I didn't want one of those discussions. The bigger picture is this: The more we learn of history, science, medicine, etc., etc.... the less it all supports a literal and historically accurate Bible... unless we start shoehorning a lot more miracles in there, and assume that God's had His thumb on the cosmic scales all along.

I saw this all the time back when I debated over in the creation/evolution forum... so I thought it interesting to explore the concept of "miracle" as it already exists in the Bible... personally, I prefer a world with fewer miracles... less headaches.

OK

One way to look at it -- not quite the Biblical way, since Death is specifically "the last enemy that shall be destroyed," and such a worldview raises some equally awkward questions regarding who's "good" and who's "bad." But let's continue.

I do not agree with your quote, because the sting of death has been removed for Christians.

Yes, I do leave it very general by saying just “good and bad” which are relative terms in this world and we can leave that for another time.

Many of us already realize this, belief in God or not.
In the words of James Douglas Morrison, "the future's uncertain and the end is always near."

I understand what you are trying to say, but I am talking about a commitment which can and should grow when challenged. If those hypocrites were really thinking about the brevity of life, they might not have gone to the strip show and listened harder to the preacher. I very much agree with you that this is more the norm in the West than the exception. I see the Church needing severe persecution in the West to weed out the hypocrites, strengthen our commitment and allow people to see what Christ is really like

On the flip side, you might turn too early... and too often.
In the words of Anton Szandor LaVey, “On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence."

The notion of God "allowing" sinning is a strange one, since I define "sin" as an act in disobedience to God... but is it really disobedience if He says "it's okay, I'll allow it"?

But sin is a topic for another time; this thread is about miracles.

.
Yes, it is still disobedience and wrong to sin, but sin itself is not the problem, since it is only unforgiven sins which are the problem. All mature adults’ sin, which is sad and God does not like it, but it is needed for the unbeliever to fulfill his/her earthly objective. Briefly: The only way for humans to obtain Godly type Love and thus become like God Himself, who is Love, and be happy in heaven is by what Jesus taught us in (Luke 7 “…he who is forgiven much Loves much…”), so if we understand and accept forgiveness for an unbelievable huge debt created by sin, we will automatically obtain an unbelievable huge Love (Godly type Love). But, as you can see this requires the unbeliever to sin.

That would be a God-of-the-gaps theology, and it's a theologically shaky position to take. Anything we can't explain scientifically today we might figure out tomorrow... and where does God go then?

In fact, our world is full of things we couldn't explain yesterday that make perfect sense today... what has that done to God?

Answer: Nothing... to God, but it's put His followers in a tizzy. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Darwin, Freud... every time someone has opened the door to the unknown, there have always been those desperate to slam it shut "in the name of God." So let's not worship the gaps in our knowledge on the assumption that God's in there... somewhere.

As a chemist myself: All I have heard and seen is the fact, “The more we know the more we realize we do not know”. It is always a lot more complex than we thought it was, so how can you put your faith in science? As a chemist, I cannot even imagine how chemicals on their own would come together to form life, even under very controlled conditions in a lab, let along naturally. That is just not the way chemicals work.

That can happen, but my observations have been quite the opposite. Again, I'm drawing on my experience over in the Creation/Evolution forums...

On the one hand, There is a Creator who spent six painstaking days on this one little planet, and *POOF*ed the rest of the cosmos into being with little more than an idle thought... all for you to have dominion over... because you are the most important thing in His creation.

On the other, the more we learn, the more we know, the more we see that each answer raises a dozen new questions, and as we try to wrap our heads around creation, we see, in the words of Douglas Noel Adams, "you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says 'You are here.'”

One of those experiences is far more humbling than the other, IMO.

Think about this for a moment:

Something has always existed, even if you want to came nothing, “something”. This “something” seems to include at least: time, space and energy (matter coming from energy). We know intelligence exists since we are intelligent beings and intelligence can increase with time. We also know it would be easier for time, space, energy, matter and intelligence to make intelligence, then it would be for just time, space, energy and matter to make intelligence, since adding intelligence is a real benefit in the creation of intelligence, which humans have or seem to be on their way to making intelligence (depending on how you define intelligence).

If there is an infinite amount of time prior to humans coming on the scene and intelligence can come from time, space, energy and matter then we would not be the first intelligence to come about, so is it more likely: we were made from just time, space, energy and matter or are we also the product of a former intelligence?

You might have played simulation games, which are becoming more realistic all the time, but who can proof we are not all part of a simulation? I am not saying space, time, and matter do not exist, but could that all be just a simulation for our “existence”? It would not even take a day for God to throw a turn on switch. How hard would it be to have a miracle happen to your simulated person?

 

[bling]

Problem is....the authors of the bible were often very harsh on the prophets.

It all makes it more likely it actually happened.

 

[Silmarien]

In a pre-scientific world where anything unknown must be the work of either the divine or the demonic, I'm sure it felt that way...

Eh, I don't think that's a fair characterization of the ancient world. You had proto-scientists like Aristotle out there also, so it wasn't as if people weren't exploring ideas like physics before modern science came along. (If they hadn't been, there'd have never been modern science in the first place.)

 

[TLK Valentine]

Eh, I don't think that's a fair characterization of the ancient world. You had proto-scientists like Aristotle out there also, so it wasn't as if people weren't exploring ideas like physics before modern science came along. (If they hadn't been, there'd have never been modern science in the first place.)

An oversimplification, yes, but let's remember that people such as Aristotle were famous precisely because they were few and far between. The average Greek citizen of the time wouldn't be familiar with his work, to say nothing of the average Israelite.

The common folk had almost no exposure to scientific learning -- it was a world where superstition still held sway... here there be dragons.

 

[-57]

It all makes it more likely it actually happened.

Most people write good history about themselves.

 

[bling]

Most people write good history about themselves.

Yes, the Bible tells the truth.

 

[Silmarien]

An oversimplification, yes, but let's remember that people such as Aristotle were famous precisely because they were few and far between. The average Greek citizen of the time wouldn't be familiar with his work, to say nothing of the average Israelite.

The common folk had almost no exposure to scientific learning -- it was a world where superstition still held sway... here there be dragons.

I wouldn't really say that Aristotle was famous because people like him were few and far between, since people like him actually went around founding schools of philosophy (the Lyceum, in Aristotle's case). Athens was such a center for learning specifically because it was a direct democracy, and anyone who had any sort of ambition at all needed to know how to argue effectively, so I would be more surprised if the average citizen (if by that we mean someone who had a voice in the government) had never heard of him than if they had.

On the other hand, all sorts of pseudo-scientific stuff like crystal healing seem to be in vogue today, so I'd be careful making a sharp divide between superstition in the pre-scientific and scientific eras.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I do not agree with your quote, because the sting of death has been removed for Christians.

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." That's not "my" quote; It's 1 Corinthians 15:26

I understand what you are trying to say, but I am talking about a commitment which can and should grow when challenged. If those hypocrites were really thinking about the brevity of life, they might not have gone to the strip show and listened harder to the preacher. I very much agree with you that this is more the norm in the West than the exception. I see the Church needing severe persecution in the West to weed out the hypocrites, strengthen our commitment and allow people to see what Christ is really like

It's not often I hear a Christian saying that the Church needs persecution -- although I tend to agree that it would come out stronger for the experience... although probably in a form unrecognizable to today.

But let's be honest -- Christian persecution in the West simply isn't going to happen. The powers-that-be know it's far more profitable to pander to the Christian base than it would be to persecute them... and the Christian political base is more than happy to gobble up whatever is offered... observe our current political leadership, and you'll see what thirty pieces buys these days...

... but I digress; all that time debating over on the American Politics forums, I suspect.

The point is that if the Church is going to change in any meaningful way, it's going to have to change itself, and not sit around and hope to be whipped into shape someday via persecution.

Yes, it is still disobedience and wrong to sin, but sin itself is not the problem, since it is only unforgiven sins which are the problem.

Which is where LaVey was going with his observation -- Sin, be forgiven, sin again... usually the exact same sin. Lather, rinse, repeat.

All mature adults’ sin, which is sad and God does not like it, but it is needed for the unbeliever to fulfill his/her earthly objective. Briefly: The only way for humans to obtain Godly type Love and thus become like God Himself, who is Love, and be happy in heaven is by what Jesus taught us in (Luke 7 “…he who is forgiven much Loves much…”), so if we understand and accept forgiveness for an unbelievable huge debt created by sin, we will automatically obtain an unbelievable huge Love (Godly type Love). But, as you can see this requires the unbeliever to sin.

I thought the doctrine of "Original Sin" covered that -- not saying I believe in it, but it seems we've already covered the "sinning" part...

...besides, if Sin is disobedience, then the unbeliever has already sinned via his unbelief... no need to pile it on, is there?

As a chemist myself: All I have heard and seen is the fact, “The more we know the more we realize we do not know”. It is always a lot more complex than we thought it was, so how can you put your faith in science? As a chemist, I cannot even imagine how chemicals on their own would come together to form life, even under very controlled conditions in a lab, let along naturally. That is just not the way chemicals work.

Who said anything about putting faith in science? What do you mean by "faith"?

I opened this thread with a workable definition of "miracle." Let's do the same for "faith" if we're going to be using it here.

Think about this for a moment:

Something has always existed, even if you want to came nothing, “something”.

Actually, no... nothing, by definition, is not "something." "Nothing" is the absence of anything.

But let's continue.

This “something” seems to include at least: time, space and energy (matter coming from energy).

Big Bang cosmology would disagree that it's always been here, but for the moment, we'll continue...

We know intelligence exists since we are intelligent beings and intelligence can increase with time.

Indeed -- intelligence exists because there are intelligent beings... similarly, purpleness exists because there are purple things.

We also know it would be easier for time, space, energy, matter and intelligence to make intelligence, then it would be for just time, space, energy and matter to make intelligence, since adding intelligence is a real benefit in the creation of intelligence, which humans have or seem to be on their way to making intelligence (depending on how you define intelligence).

Granted, it would be more difficult for intelligence to form without existing intelligence... more difficult, but by no means impossible.

I sense we're drifting off topic, btw...

If there is an infinite amount of time prior to humans coming on the scene and intelligence can come from time, space, energy and matter then we would not be the first intelligence to come about,

Well, for starters, Big Bang Cosmology would indicate that there is not an infinite amount of time... the current estimate is that there's been about 13.7 billion years.

Second, It's indeed quite possible, even probable, that we are not the only or even the first intelligence to come about -- the Universe is a pretty big place, and even with our intelligence, we only know the most minuscule fraction of what's out there.

You're a chemist -- if you studied a mole of water molecules, would you know what's in the Pacific Ocean?

Again, we might be drifting off the "miracle" topic.

so is it more likely: we were made from just time, space, energy and matter or are we also the product of a former intelligence?

The later would appear to be more likely... but then the existence of that former intelligence raises many questions... beginning with "where is that former intelligence now?"

You might have played simulation games, which are becoming more realistic all the time, but who can proof we are not all part of a simulation? I am not saying space, time, and matter do not exist, but could that all be just a simulation for our “existence”? It would not even take a day for God to throw a turn on switch. How hard would it be to have a miracle happen to your simulated person?

Indeed -- I can only testify with certainty to my own existence: Cogito Ergo Sum, after all. Everything else -- you, these forums, my entire life, the entire "universe," could be a hallucination, a fever dream, or The Matrix.

In such an environment, "miracles" can indeed happen with alarming regularity. A dreamer gains control of his dream once he realizes he's dreaming. Even the laws of The Matrix are quite malleable... if you're Keanu Reeves.

(Fun fact: Will Smith was originally offered the lead role in The Matrix, but passed on it because he said the script didn't make any sense to him.)

So, for the moment, let's review:

• I know I exist: Cogito Ergo Sum.
• For the moment, I will assume until I see otherwise that the universe I perceive around me also exists.
• I have observed that that universe operates with clockwork precision according to natural laws.
• I know that throughout history, a handful of deep thinkers have studied and categorized those natural laws, making the Universe less seemingly arbitrary, and more predictable, than it was before:
  • Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Darwin, Einstein, to name a few...
• I accept that if an all-powerful "former intelligence" exists with the power to manipulate those laws at will, He/She/It would easily be able to create "miracles" in which those natural laws would be overtly and unquestionably (albeit temporarily) broken.
• I know the Bible contains many such stories of such "miracles" occurring.
• I know that I have not seen such "miracles" happening in my own observation, nor have I heard reliable second-hand reports of such miracles happening elsewhere.
  • I accept that an argument from silence is not a solid argument, but it is circumstantial.

I therefore question the role and purpose of those "miracle" stories in the Bible.

 

[Caliban]

You would need to know the purpose of the miracles. Most of the time they were used to point the people towards Christ. Other times to confirm the truth of who Christ Jesus was.

Not in the Hebrew Bible.

 

[Caliban]

Born Again Believers don't ask these questions, why do you suppose that is?

Maybe it is evidence that Atheists and Agnostics have developed stronger critical thinking skills and do not accept every proposition they encounter regarding religion.