Evidence of miracles.

[Subduction Zone]

God's eyes tell me that EVERYTHING is a miracle. We're not just here on this planet because of some 'random' act of "nature". Life is too 'perfect' for that. A miniscule closer to the sun, we'd burn up. A miniscule farther away, we'd freeze. If gravity changed one direction or another, we wouldn't exist...

It's all just too complicated...and 'perfect' for *me* to dismiss a 'Creator' of some sort...

You are using an argument from ignorance fallacy. "I don't understand therefore God" is not very convincing and should not be.

 

[Mink61]

If God had a plan a billion years ago, why does he have to intervene over and over in modern times? Why couldn't he anticipate everything and get it right the first time?

Who said he DIDN'T anticipate? If God made us with a free will, He'd already know WHO is going to submit to His will, and who wouldn't...and WHY.

If you were omniscient, you wouldn't have to step in, because you could have given them perfect instructions and prevented any possible mishap.

Nope. Because IF I was omniscient, AS GOD IS, I seriously doubt that I would have done what God has done...simply because, I don't have HIS knowledge.

...and neither does anyone else.

You haven't answered my question. When and where does God break the laws of nature in the 'new job' or 'financial windfall' examples?

Why does God have to "break the laws of nature" in order for something to be a miracle?

Is there any evidence of God nudging the guy to look again for the car keys? Why not just prevent them from being lost in the first place?

Why should God do that?

Meanwhile women were being raped, children being murdered, kittens being abused, etc and God took no action because the car keys were more important?

Mysterious ways, indeed.

You're right. Women ARE being raped...children ARE being murdered....and kittens ARE being abused. But how is ANY of this God's 'fault', if he gave ALL of us free will?

You can use your free will to harm...OR to love. That is, love your neighbor. So, why did He give us free will in the first place? To enable US to have a choice. God doesn't want a bunch of robots. Heck, it would be easy for Him to command the universe to beckon to His call. He already KNOWS what's going to happen.

But WE don't. So it's not just about HIM. It's about US, too.



If the Holocaust was necessary, while car keys need to be found thru divine intervention, I await your insight. I'm serious, no flippancy here.[/QUOTE]

 

[Subduction Zone]

Who said he DIDN'T anticipate? If God made us with a free will, He'd already know WHO is going to submit to His will, and who wouldn't...and WHY.


Nope. Because IF I was omniscient, AS GOD IS, I seriously doubt that I would have done what God has done...simply because, I don't have HIS knowledge.

You just denied that God gave us free will.

 

[Mink61]

You are using an argument from ignorance fallacy. "I don't understand therefore God" is not very convincing and should not be.

It's really funny that so many atheists don't want to argue and/or debate...they only want to insult...belittle...criticize...and condescend...and THEN some. Referring to what I wrote as "ignorant" only tells me that you're not in the mood for decent conversation.

That's just not cool...

 

[Mink61]

You just denied that God gave us free will.

No, I didn't'. If that's what you think I wrote, then you didn't read it the right way.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Er...um...Sorry, not even a hint of grape. How about levitating that dead tree stump and tossing it on the burn pile?

Oh it's wine alright... spiritually, of course.

 

[jayem]

I worked 40+ years in health care. Here's my one experience with a miraculous cure. My patient was a very nice 60+ year old lady with advanced osteoarthritis of her hip. She was beyond the point where physical therapy, and medication would do much good. She really needed a hip replacement. But she was reluctant to have that kind of major surgery. She and her husband were devout Christians of the Pentecostal/Charismatic variety. They often went to large-scale revival services of several big-name evangelists that they liked. After not seeing her for while, she comes in the office one day looking like she just won the lottery. She was happy, and looked better than I'd ever seen her. She had gone to a healing ministry several days ago. The evangelist laid hands on her, and all the attendees prayed for her. She said she finally felt the power of God come over her. She didn't pass out, but said she would have fallen down if she wasn't being held up by other congregants. And right at that moment, the pain was gone. She could walk normally without her cane, and didn't need any medication for the first time in years. She came in the office to let me know that a miracle had occurred. She was cured. And honestly, she looked great. She was in high spirits, was walking well and had a good range of motion in her hip. We had radiology facilities in the office, so I sent her for a hip x-ray to document her recovery. Of course, there was no change. The joint space was still gone, the bone spurs were still there, and the femoral head was still collapsed. She wasn't cured, but I wasn't going to burst her bubble. I just told her the x-rays hadn't changed much yet, but I was glad that she was feeling better, and I asked her to keep in touch with me. It wasn't more than a week that she was back in the office. This time she needed a wheelchair. The pain and stiffness came back worse than ever. Not only was she suffering physically, but now was also in spiritual distress. Thinking maybe she had somehow displeased God, and he was punishing her by returning her pain and disability.

So much for a miracle cure. If anyone deserves to be in agony, it's these charlatan evangelists.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I once attended a church service in which the speaker talked about how he lost his car keys, and he looked everywhere. Finally, he took a second look in a place he'd checked earlier, and there they were. A miracle!, he pronounced. Am I to believe God transported the keys to that location, or maybe the guy just *thought* he'd checked there earlier? Which is more likely?

This kind of search blindness is extremely common and an example of how much of our everyday behaviour is delegated to automatic routines corralled and parameterised by conscious attention.

It usually happens to me when I'm distracted (in a hurry or thinking about something else) and anticipating the item in question being somewhere unexpected (else why am I searching?), so the search criteria are subconsciously simplified to looking for something out of place. Then, if I happen to see the item in or near its usual place, it doesn't match the 'item out of place criteria' and doesn't attract my attention.

The popular solution to this is to keep repeating the name of the item so as to keep the search criteria specific and to trigger a match response that attracts the attention when the item is seen.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It's really funny that so many atheists don't want to argue and/or debate...they only want to insult...belittle...criticize...and condescend...and THEN some. Referring to what I wrote as "ignorant" only tells me that you're not in the mood for decent conversation.

That's just not cool...

You misunderstand; the 'argument from ignorance' fallacy means that the argument being proposed makes a claim about reality based on some lack of knowledge or understanding. The simplest form is claiming something is true because it hasn't been disproved, or claiming something is false because it hasn't been proved. But it also applies to claims like, "I have no idea how this could happen - (so) it's a miracle".

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, I didn't'. If that's what you think I wrote, then you didn't read it the right way.

Incorrect. It is the other way around. You may not have understood how you did that. It was rather obvious to anyone that can reason rationally.

 

[Mink61]

Incorrect. It is the other way around. You may not have understood how you did that. It was rather obvious to anyone that can reason rationally.

More insults I see...

 

[Astrid]

It's really funny that so many atheists don't want to argue and/or debate...they only want to insult...belittle...criticize...and condescend...and THEN some. Referring to what I wrote as "ignorant" only tells me that you're not in the mood for decent conversation.

That's just not cool...

Notice who is belittling , insulting etc.

 

[NxNW]

Who said he DIDN'T anticipate?

Then he wouldn't need to intervene.

If God made us with a free will, He'd already know WHO is going to submit to His will, and who wouldn't...and WHY.

It's not really free will if our actions are determined in advance. If I can't make a decision that will surprise God, then I'm an automaton.

Because IF I was omniscient, AS GOD IS, I seriously doubt that I would have done what God has done...simply because, I don't have HIS knowledge.

If you were omniscient, you wouldn't need to intervene because you could have planned everything in advance perfectly.

Why does God have to "break the laws of nature" in order for something to be a miracle?

Because that's the definition of a miracle.

Is there any evidence of God nudging the guy to look again for the car keys? Why not just prevent them from being lost in the first place?

Why should God do that?

Letting them get lost and then solving the problem via a miracle isn't very efficient, especially with so many other problems in the world that are not being solved via miracles.

You're right. Women ARE being raped...children ARE being murdered....and kittens ARE being abused. But how is ANY of this God's 'fault', if he gave ALL of us free will?

If he created us all, knowing everything that would happen, and does nothing to stop it, then it's his fault.

You can use your free will to harm...OR to love. That is, love your neighbor. So, why did He give us free will in the first place? To enable US to have a choice. God doesn't want a bunch of robots.

If he knows in advance what we're going to do, we're robots and nothing more.

Heck, it would be easy for Him to command the universe to beckon to His call. He already KNOWS what's going to happen.

If he knows what's going to happen, when he planned it all in advance, then there is no free will. Again, we're robots.

 

[Mink61]

I worked 40+ years in health care. Here's my one experience with a miraculous cure. My patient was a very nice 60+ year old lady with advanced osteoarthritis of her hip. She was beyond the point where physical therapy, and medication would do much good. She really needed a hip replacement. But she was reluctant to have that kind of major surgery. She and her husband were devout Christians of the Pentecostal/Charismatic variety. They often went to large-scale revival services of several big-name evangelists that they liked. After not seeing her for while, she comes in the office one day looking like she just won the lottery. She was happy, and looked better than I'd ever seen her. She had gone to a healing ministry several days ago. The evangelist laid hands on her, and all the attendees prayed for her. She said she finally felt the power of God come over her. She didn't pass out, but said she would have fallen down if she wasn't being held up by other congregants. And right at that moment, the pain was gone. She could walk normally without her cane, and didn't need any medication for the first time in years. She came in the office to let me know that a miracle had occurred. She was cured. And honestly, she looked great. She was in high spirits, was walking well and had a good range of motion in her hip. We had radiology facilities in the office, so I sent her for a hip x-ray to document her recovery. Of course, there was no change. The joint space was still gone, the bone spurs were still there, and the femoral head was still collapsed. She wasn't cured, but I wasn't going to burst her bubble. I just told her the x-rays hadn't changed much yet, but I was glad that she was feeling better, and I asked her to keep in touch with me. It wasn't more than a week that she was back in the office. This time she needed a wheelchair. The pain and stiffness came back worse than ever. Not only was she suffering physically, but now was also in spiritual distress. Thinking maybe she had somehow displeased God, and he was punishing her by returning her pain and disability.

So much for a miracle cure. If anyone deserves to be in agony, it's these charlatan evangelists.

That poor woman.

That "healing" would not have been considered to be a miracle by Catholic Church standards.

In order for the Church to pronounce something as a miracle cure, the cure
must be "complete," "instantaneous," and "durable" — meaning the cured condition doesn’t return — as well as scientifically inexplicable. This is in addition to the other criteria used in making a declaration of a "miracle (cure)". It's a long process that can not only take years, but decades

The Church is not so quick to determine a patient's recovery as "miraculous".

 

[Tinker Grey]

@Mink61,

You posted earlier that we weren't taking this seriously. Well, I am. Various posters want to argue about vague things in the past that are poorly documented events that are unverifiable now if they ever were.

This is what I want. I don't believe in a supernatural. Some say, and I tend to agree, that the very word supernatural is incoherent. I don't believe in spiritual. I don't believe in the suspension of the natural laws of the universe. What I want is proof of the supernatural/spiritual/miraculous here and now. Until it is demonstrated that there is such a thing then any arguments about past miracles are a waste of time. The very substrate of the claim hasn't been established.

For example, suppose someone claimed that Joe MacIntosh drove his 1956 Ford Fairlane 350 mph. We know cars exist. Some modern supercars have approached this speed. So we know a sufficiently powerful engine could perhaps drive the mass of this car, however non-aerodynamic, to some speed approaching this. (Pity the idiot behind the wheel!) We know these things here and now.

For the miraculous, we have no evidence for even the basis of being able to such things. There is a reason why I posted John 14:12 earlier. It says "greater things than these". Jesus raised the dead. Jesus healed people. Jesus fed people with almost no resources.

So show me the supernatural/spiritual/miraculous. Do something greater than Jesus. None of this "I found my keys" stuff. Walk through a cemetery and raised all the dead at once (or even one). Surely, it would make the news. Many would come to know your god as Lord and Savior. Walk through a hospital and heal everyone (or maybe just one amputee). Materialize enough food to feed the starving in refugee camps. Actually, move a mountain.

Something.

Anything.

Nothing?

 

[stevevw]

Another thread had a curious title.

Independently REPEATABLE evidence of miracles. Which is a logical contradiction in the sense that by definition researchers cannot repeat the supernatural, otherwise it wouldn’t be supernatural.

So all that can be done is
1/ to identify evidence of the unexplained.
2/ to confirm it is inexplicable, by breaking a fundamental paradigm of science as it is known
( eg prophecy as a simple example because of time arrow, consciousness outside the brain )
3/ that there is no credible means of faking the evidence.
The only repeat possible is reassessment of evidence, not repeat the event.

But 1-3 deal only with defining something as supernatural, not a miracle which ascribes a cause.

Since God is not in the model of science , nor can science proclaim Him as a verdict, a limitation of science, not God.

So all we can do is is state
4/ it occurs in the theistic context
And
5/ the church adds other conditions too


Reality is there is a lot of such evidence.
Take miracle healings at Lourdes.
The lame walk, the blind see.

The process is massive to declare it so, from a large medical panel any qualified medic can join, most are not religious. They declare inexplicable , not just unexplained. ( Lourdes medical commission do that part )

The second declaration is by the church 4/ 5/ which is just as stringent. Many healings declared supernatural by medics, don’t pass the churches criteria as miracle. .

So what is left?
Take this. A pelvic cancer before cancers were in anyway curable had destroyed all the pelvic bone to a leg bone connected only by small amounts of soft tissue.

Journey to Lourdes healing waters.
Bone reappeared albeit a shorter leg. Pain disappeared. Cancer gone.

Appeared in serious medical journals.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6027009/pdf/10.1179_0024363913Z.00000000015.pdf

A medical doctor Heads up the commission for typically 10 years a time.
A couple have written books.

Another thing to consider is whether what science desribes at the moment is not the result of some supernatural cause. Science can only describe whats happening. It doesn't have any creative power. So the assumption is that everything we see is the result of naturalism. Its more or less circular reasoning in that science sets the criteria and then goes about finding evdience that meets that criteria and discounts any other possibility.

Even if there was a miracle science will find a way of explaining it naturalistically even if that explaination is not what is actually going on. So in that sense there can never by moracles according to methological naturalism.

But when you consider that as science has explored reality down to the tiniest particle twords nothing it becomes counter intuitive and beyond science and the ideas being presented to account for this stepping into the non-verifiable what is the difference. It seems science is limited and we may need to expand beyond science to really understand whats happening.

Like consciousness may be a fundelmental of reality. This seems to open the door for explaining reality better than science but yet is rejected.

 

[Mink61]

Then he wouldn't need to intervene.

It's not really free will if our actions are determined in advance. If I can't make a decision that will surprise God, then I'm an automaton.

Foreknowledge doesn't equal causation. Just because He knows in advance what's going to happen, doesn't mean He's causing it to happen. And even though we can't surprise God, that doesn't make us automatons.

Just as an example...When both of my daughters were born, I knew that my oldest would go to college, and my youngest would not. It was predictable (for me) simply because I knew both of them very well. I knew their personalities...their likes...their dislikes. Now, because I knew them, did I cause them to go to college/not go to college? Nope.

I see God the same way. He knows what I'm going to do/think/say/write before *I* know. He knows all of us better than we know ourselves. He sees our future before it happens. But he's not making it happen.

If you were omniscient, you wouldn't need to intervene because you could have planned everything in advance perfectly.

There was a quote from a priest...I can't remember who, but he said something like, "If I had God's power, I would change the world. If I had God's knowledge, I'd leave everything as it is."

Because that's the definition of a miracle.

It's ONE definition of a miracle. There are others.

Letting them get lost and then solving the problem via a miracle isn't very efficient, especially with so many other problems in the world that are not being solved via miracles.

If he created us all, knowing everything that would happen, and does nothing to stop it, then it's his fault.

No, not His fault. Ours.

If he knows in advance what we're going to do, we're robots and nothing more.

If he knows what's going to happen, when he planned it all in advance, then there is no free will. Again, we're robots.

 

[Astrid]

Foreknowledge doesn't equal causation. Just because He knows in advance what's going to happen, doesn't mean He's causing it to happen. And even though we can't surprise God, that doesn't make us automatons.

Just as an example...When both of my daughters were born, I knew that my oldest would go to college, and my youngest would not. It was predictable (for me) simply because I knew both of them very well. I knew their personalities...their likes...their dislikes. Now, because I knew them, did I cause them to go to college/not go to college? Nope.

I see God the same way. He knows what I'm going to do/think/say/write before *I* know. He knows all of us better than we know ourselves. He sees our future before it happens. But he's not making it happen.


There was a quote from a priest...I can't remember who, but he said something like, "If I had God's power, I would change the world. If I had God's knowledge, I'd leave everything as it is."


It's ONE definition of a miracle. There are others.




No, not His fault. Ours.

So He made everything as it is, knowing exactly what will happen
as a result, but refuses any responsibility.

 

[Astrid]

God's eyes tell me that EVERYTHING is a miracle. We're not just here on this planet because of some 'random' act of "nature". Life is too 'perfect' for that. A miniscule closer to the sun, we'd burn up. A miniscule farther away, we'd freeze. If gravity changed one direction or another, we wouldn't exist...

It's all just too complicated...and 'perfect' for *me* to dismiss a 'Creator' of some sort...

I dont suppose you'd have any interest in a different pov.

 

[Hans Blaster]

There's a lot of incoherence here, but I'll see what I can make of it. [Steve -- are you OK?]

Another thing to consider is whether what science desribes at the moment is not the result of some supernatural cause. Science can only describe whats happening. It doesn't have any creative power. So the assumption is that everything we see is the result of naturalism. Its more or less circular reasoning in that science sets the criteria and then goes about finding evdience that meets that criteria and discounts any other possibility.

I don't think that the "methodological naturalism" assumption necessarily leads to circular reasoning. At sciences's fundamental principle of looking for natural explanations that natural phenomena has not only explained a great deal, but many things that seemed beyond that methodology not long before. The things that science can't currently explain could be things that we can't yet explain or they could be things beyond the realm of naturalistic investigation. In the latter case, some of those things could be recognized as inexplicable by natural means. One way to get to that conclusion would be for the supernatural intervention to be arbitrary.

I'm not sure what you mean by science not having any creative power. I'm inclined to think otherwise, so I suspect we're using different understanding of those phrases.

Even if there was a miracle science will find a way of explaining it naturalistically even if that explaination is not what is actually going on. So in that sense there can never by moracles according to methological naturalism.

Now it looks like you've entangled methodological and philosophical naturalism. "Science doesn't have a current explanation." is exactly the sort of response you should expect from science to an actual miracle. (It leaves in the hope of future natural explanation, but doesn't require it.)

But when you consider that as science has explored reality down to the tiniest particle twords nothing it becomes counter intuitive and beyond science and the ideas being presented to account for this stepping into the non-verifiable what is the difference. It seems science is limited and we may need to expand beyond science to really understand whats happening.

I'm sorry you don't find the deepest layers of physics intuitive. It takes years for physicists to develop good intuition about things unseen to the common experience of the world that we all have, but we do develop useful intuitions about things like quantum mechanics, turbulence, and particle physics. (Intuitions that have to be checked by data, but they are very useful in making discoveries.)

Like consciousness may be a fundelmental of reality. This seems to open the door for explaining reality better than science but yet is rejected.

There is no naturalistic evidence that consciousness is anything other than a property of living brains. It is certainly not at the level of the fundamental fields and forces.