My hypothesis on miracles

Halbhh · Dec 2, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
Confirmation bias is an issue when the miracle is in the meaning rather than the method. As the C.S. Lewis essay linked by @Quid est Veritas? explained, the confirmation bias can go in either direction - skepticism or credulousness. (I haven't read the entire essay yet, but that is what I got from it so far.)

I wonder if statistics could detect miracles that are simply improbable rather than impossible?

Yes, confirmation bias happens to all, and works on both sides of any guessing.

So, from your own point of view then, you won't be able to be sure about either conclusion.

Just like me. I only felt I really knew, finally, only after impossible seeming things happened directly to me more than just a couple of times.

But you don't have that (I presume)*.

Therefore, that testing I suggested above is a very rational way to proceed. Experimentally. You can find out, one proposition at a time, if the instructions on how to live life that Jesus said to do work well in life when you do them.

A practical note about "love" though is that it is only the real thing when it's the same love (though less strong at first) you'd also have for a friend. In other words, "love your neighbor" is very much like "include your neighbor as one of your friends" in actual practice. I do though interact with my various friends in somewhat different ways, as some love to discuss ideas, but others don't that much and would rather talk about pets or sports or landscaping, so I do naturally talk about different things with different people as I am being a friend to them.

But it's still that same opening the well of love, sharing that water.

-------
* note -- only because of other instances of impossible outcomes did I finally see it (analogy -- like after buying 8 lottery tickets, it's only later, after having all 8 win, then you finally realize what's happening.)

SkyWriting · Dec 2, 2017

Halbhh said:
It's good to be able to acknowledge that many believers think God allowing us real choices means that He has not fixed that our choices, like praying, are already determined ahead of time. This is good to be able to acknowledge because this issue of predetermination can trip up and destroy faith for some, so it's not trivial.

I was a bit vague.
God heard all your prayers, past, present, and future,
answered them in full detail,
then created the Cosmos to match His intentions,
just for you.

Your task, in prayer, is to discover the prayers God wishes for you
to pray, so that they can be instantly and miraculously answered.

That's what my experience with answered prayer has taught me anyway.

Halbhh · Dec 2, 2017

SkyWriting said:
You'll have to document your claim.

It's probably sometimes using the same verses you might use, I bet. But, when it's a Psalm (in some Psalms there is clear wording about God already knowing what will happen to us) we always need to read the entire Psalm, trying to really get the full meaning. Let's listen, and hear, the full meanings --

1You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17How precious to me are your thoughts,a God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

19If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

----------------
I just love this. I know it's good for you too. It's so wonderful, I fear even reducing it even the slightest with any partial quote.

Do you see how after the interesting verse 13, later comes verse 15, saying....something that adds to our understanding of verse 13, yes?

Consider, after all the above verses, why verse 23?..... Because it's part of the whole intent -- to ask for this from Him, in verse 24, the culmination of this prayer.

This is how the Psalms work we can see, like a song where some verses help set up other verses. But in this wonderful Psalm we must surrender to the entire Psalm, all the verses, together, as a whole, and then the deeper and more true meaning can come across.

SkyWriting · Dec 2, 2017

Halbhh said:
It's probably sometimes using the same verses you might use, I bet. But, when it's a Psalm (in some Psalms there is clear wording about God already knowing what will happen to us) we always need to read the entire Psalm, trying to really get the full meaning. Let's listen, and hear, the full meanings --

1You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17How precious to me are your thoughts,a God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

19If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

----------------
I just love this. I know it's good for you too. It's so wonderful, I fear even reducing it even the slightest with any partial quote.

Do you see how after the interesting verse 13, later comes verse 15, saying....something that adds to our understanding of verse 13, yes?

Consider, after all the above verses, why verse 23?..... Because it's part of the whole intent -- to ask for this from Him, in verse 24, the culmination of this prayer.

This is how the Psalms work we can see, like a song where some verses help set up other verses. But in this wonderful Psalm we must surrender to the entire Psalm, all the verses, together, as a whole, and then the deeper and more true meaning can come across.

I didn't remember where I had learned that
all our days are predestined before we are born.
Thanks for finding it for our discussion.

KWCrazy · Dec 2, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
There are many cases where people seem to be dead and then wake up. The miracle is that this rare event happened for Lazarus and inspired people to listen to Jesus. God didn't break any laws except by loading the dice of chance.

The problem is that you are misquoting Scripture and making up things.
People in that time understood death very well. In fact, after three days in the heat decomposition had already begun and Lazarus was decaying.
Jesus wept because Lazarus was dead.
Lazarus was resurrected after 3 days as a foretelling of Christ rising from the dead after 3 days.

Anything that conforms to natural law is not a miracle. God's will, not natural law, governs the universe.

cloudyday2 · Dec 2, 2017

KWCrazy said:
In fact, after three days in the heat decomposition had already begun and Lazarus was decaying.

How do we know the weather was hot as opposed to cold?

Halbhh · Dec 2, 2017

SkyWriting said:
I didn't remember where I had learned that
all our days are predestined before we are born.
Thanks for finding it for our discussion.

If you read through, the message is all about: 'God, search me and find what I need to change.'

It's a request. The request is for a change.

Are babies made down in the Earth? See? The figurative wording throughout is all to say God can see into us, know us, and then the request is for Him to search our heart, a request for help.

The request is for the Lord to help us find our wrongs we don't ourselves know, because He can, and then the request is to be led away from our wrong to His way instead.

Quid est Veritas? · Dec 2, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
Supposedly the drug BZ caused a couple of test subjects to hallucinate a tennis game together ( BZ - Wikipedia ). I imagine the mechanism is suggestibility. One person sees the other person's reactions to a hallucination and experiences a compatible hallucination - sort of like hypnotic suggestion?

I don't think the mechanism has been established yet, but that seems a plausible explanation. With drugs, the disturbances they create is often times reproducible and similar in test subjects, so similar hallucinations are produced. High dose ketamine can make people violent for instance, as they induce nightmarish feelings of being persecuted.

cloudyday2 said:
Confirmation bias is an issue when the miracle is in the meaning rather than the method. As the C.S. Lewis essay linked by @Quid est Veritas? explained, the confirmation bias can go in either direction - skepticism or credulousness. (I haven't read the entire essay yet, but that is what I got from it so far.)

There was a case a few years ago. A man went in for a back operation, a spinal fusion if I recall. Now these operations have abysmal success records.
Subsequently he was still in pain thereafter, then prayed to some saint or other, and his pain disappeared. The Catholics then investigated this as a miracle.

People fell into two camps: Those that said the operation failed (or had the usual success rate), and he was cured by a miracle; or that the operation was unusually successful and he merely ascribed the subsequent effect to a saint's intervention.

I think it illustrates well the problems of determining or discounting miracles and our biases, especially those based on prior medical procedures having failed.

I wonder if statistics could detect miracles that are simply improbable rather than impossible?

The numbers would be too small to be statistically significant.

vinsight4u · Dec 3, 2017

deleted

KWCrazy · Dec 3, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
How do we know the weather was hot as opposed to cold?

John 11:
14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead,
15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Jesus said unequivocally that Lazarus was dead. You pretend he was in a coma.

John 11:39 “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Four days of decomposition. The dead body was rotting. He was not sleeping, he was stone cold dead.
Your premise that God's miracles can't overcome natural law is absurd.

cloudyday2 · Dec 3, 2017

KWCrazy said:
Four days of decomposition. The dead body was rotting. He was not sleeping, he was stone cold dead.
Your premise that God's miracles can't overcome natural law is absurd.

There is no reason that I see not to assume that it happened in winter aside from the concern about odor.

Also, I don't think it is absurd to assume that God would obey His own laws of nature.

KWCrazy · Dec 3, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
There is no reason that I see not to assume that it happened in winter aside from the concern about odor.

Also, I don't think it is absurd to assume that God would obey His own laws of nature.

I think it's absurd to try and explain God's miracles within the confines of natural law. It shows a lack of understanding of either. Miracles are contradictions of natural law. Only God could cease the rotation of the earth for a day without any consequence.

cloudyday2 · Dec 3, 2017

KWCrazy said:
I think it's absurd to try and explain God's miracles within the confines of natural law. It shows a lack of understanding of either. Miracles are contradictions of natural law. Only God could cease the rotation of the earth for a day without any consequence.

If you read the first verses of Genesis, God creates order from chaos by dividing day from night, water from land, heavens from Earth, etc. And God saw that it was good. ... Can we honestly believe that God violated this natural order by magically stopping the Earth's rotation so Joshua could kill a few more enemies?

The naturalistic explanation is obvious - daylight savings time - spring forward, fall backward. Obviously Joshua fought this battle during the fall clock change and the Hebrews set their watches backward an hour.

KWCrazy · Dec 3, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
Can we honestly believe that God violated this natural order by magically stopping the Earth's rotation so Joshua could kill a few more enemies?

We can if we believe that the Bible is God's word.

Quid est Veritas? · Dec 4, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
Can we honestly believe that God violated this natural order by magically stopping the Earth's rotation so Joshua could kill a few more enemies?

The naturalistic explanation is obvious - daylight savings time - spring forward, fall backward. Obviously Joshua fought this battle during the fall clock change and the Hebrews set their watches backward an hour.

There is actually a period specific explanation for this passage, which is fairly naturalistic. I wrote about it in another thread, which I quoted below:

Quid est Veritas? said:
Another theory I see ommitted in this discussion is the theory that it refers to omens.

In Assyrian texts we see conjunctions of the full moon and the rising sun treated as dark and foreboding or as good depending on their positions. This is related to the use of lunar calenders by most near eastern peoples. Some of these are essentially impossible such as reverse eclipses, but others just rare. It is similar to ideas of Fasti and Nefasti days found in Latin peoples based on calender and celestial bodies. Before our modern calenders, these were poorly correlated, so a lot of significance was often placed in incongruent risings of the moon and such.

The biblical text interestingly mentions the position of both the sun AND the moon. Why mention both? It can be argued that it is referring to Joshua asking for an omen to strike fear in the Amorites. By this logic, it didn't really 'stand still', but referred to a position within a set of astrological considerations. This is supported by the Assyrian texts which also use terms like 'stand', 'rest' or 'lying' when mentioning such omens. This is similar to how modern astrology may say the sun is sitting in aquarius or whatever, not literally assuming a static sun.

Of course the problem here is that we only know of these omens from late assyrian texts, so Joshua would greatly have predated our earliest mention of them, but it is possible this was a common near-eastern belief before they had been written. Still, an alternate explanation to keep in mind, I would think.

cloudyday2 · Dec 4, 2017

Quid est Veritas? said:
There is actually a period specific explanation for this passage, which is fairly naturalistic. I wrote about it in another thread, which I quoted below:

I noticed in the recent eclipse here in the US, that the sun was brighter during it. If an eclipse happened as the sun was near to setting, I wonder if it would effectively make the daylight last a little bit longer. Of course it is possible that the initial effect was as an omen and the idea of an extended period of daylight was added to the story later.

BTW, this story is one reason that some see Yahweh as a solar cult. The place names associated with Joshua are associated with the Sun, and there are some other hints. Of course there is Mt. Sinai (the moon) and Mt. Horeb (the sun). I see Passover as celebrating the birth of the sun (Yahweh) from the moon god (El) mating with the cow constellation (Taurus). (Just my crazy theory LOL). I believe there is an actual myth archaeologists have discovered from Assyria with this symbolism. IDK

Here is the famous potsherd that I suspect might symbolize Passover:
Kuntillet Ajrud - Wikipedia

EDIT: There is also the story of Jacob wrestling with a heavenly being who desperately wants to be released before sunrise. This being must give Jacob its secret/magical name. It seems clear to me that this being is Yahweh the sun.

vinsight4u · Dec 4, 2017

Quid est Veritas? · Dec 4, 2017

cloudyday2 said:
I noticed in the recent eclipse here in the US, that the sun was brighter during it. If an eclipse happened as the sun was near to setting, I wonder if it would effectively make the daylight last a little bit longer. Of course it is possible that the initial effect was as an omen and the idea of an extended period of daylight was added to the story later.

BTW, this story is one reason that some see Yahweh as a solar cult. The place names associated with Joshua are associated with the Sun, and there are some other hints. Of course there is Mt. Sinai (the moon) and Mt. Horeb (the sun). I see Passover as celebrating the birth of the sun (Yahweh) from the moon god (El) mating with the cow constellation (Taurus). (Just my crazy theory LOL). I believe there is an actual myth archaeologists have discovered from Assyria with this symbolism. IDK

Here is the famous potsherd that I suspect might symbolize Passover:
Kuntillet Ajrud - Wikipedia

EDIT: There is also the story of Jacob wrestling with a heavenly being who desperately wants to be released before sunrise. This being must give Jacob its secret/magical name. It seems clear to me that this being is Yahweh the sun.

Well, as I told you before, the solarisation of the YHWH cult seems to be a later 8th century phenomenon. The earliest references, such as with the Shasu of YHW and the oldest parts of the Bible do not support it, nor is it supported Archaeologically until later.
You could certainly interpret things as syncreticism that occurred with other traditions, which the Kuntillet Ajrud site supports with its Egyptian references, resulting in such perceived solar instances. It is unlikely though that YHWH was initially a sun god, nor is El really a moon god. For instance, the Romans associated El with Saturn.
Anyway, the solar placenames are all associated with the area of this battle, so is really not proof of a general association of YHWH or even Joshua with the sun, beyond this specific miracle narrative.

On balance, YHWH definitely developed solar characteristics, but this is a later phenomenon common to monolatric and monotheistic conceptions. The Sun is a strong metaphor for only one God. This is why late Roman iconography sometimes depicted Jesus with a crown of sunrays or driving the Solar Quadriga.

vinsight4u · Dec 4, 2017

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