@ExodusMe can you please respond to this portion of my previous response:
So, suppose two lightning strikes occur A and B.
How would you show that A is natural and B is originated from God?
We would have to determine where the energy for the lightning strike came from. I don't propose that I would ever do such a thing or even claim a lightning strike was a miracle, but to answer your question, that is what would need to happen.
Could you pray to Vishnu? Or is it necessary that you pray to Yahweh specifically?
I forgot what the origin of this discussion came from, but if we are talking about the rationality criteria, then yes. A person can come to rationally believe a miracle has occurred if they pray to a supernatural god that they believe has power to exert on the natural world and if they have done their due diligence in determining the event was not naturally caused. That would not make it rational for me to believe it though. A Christian would not be rational in holding the belief a different god did a miracle on the basis of monotheism.
It sounds like you are advocating for gullibility. The vast majority of miracle stories happened long ago and came to us via word of mouth. Should these be believed rationally?
I am not sure what miracles you are referring to, but the only ones I would care to defend would be the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection specifically. There are good reasons to believe God raised Jesus from the dead, but Christian's do not accept the gospels based on scriptural evidence alone. On reformed epistemology, Christian's come to know the truth of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit who provides warrant for our beliefs about God.
It also sounds like you are advocating for the entirety of history to be abolished (keep in mind there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth than any other historical figure we know of when you respond).
Yes, we did go over this in the other thread. And the point is that there is a hypothetical way that I could go verify whether my friend belongs in the category or class "human" and not "robot". Is there even a hypothetical way you could test if something was miraculous or not? (See my above example involving two lightning strikes).
I provided an answer to this.
So, you're telling me that in a church where the express purpose is to worship God, there are a large number of the people in that congregation who just "miss" the sensus divinitatis? And these are the Christians! You know, the ones that claim to have a direct, personal relationship with God. A God who they can personally communicate with.
This is like saying to someone: "Go stand on the street and look for the pink elephant" and then the person somehow, inexplicably, fails to see it as it walks by.
Sin has caused significant damage to humanity and this damage is gradually or suddenly repaired when a person becomes a believer in Christ. Not only that, but a person could just be tired that morning. There are many reasons a person could fail to acknowledge beliefs occasioned by the sensus divinitatis.
An objective test is one which everyone agrees works. For example, the eye test chart. Anyone who can see can easily identify the top lines. There is no disagreement. There is no inconsistency.
Oh and by the way, this whole "sensus divinitatis" thing also kind of fails because we have physical mechanisms which relay information to our other senses. We see because of light hitting our retina. We smell and taste because of chemicals hitting our olfactory nerves and tastebuds. We hear because of acoustic perturbations of the air. We feel because of pressure.
If someone came to you and claimed they had a sixth sense, would you believe them?
Humans have always had more than 5 senses... It depends on what the 6th sense is. As long as we are making appeals to logical fallacies I would also like to propose that because >90% of the world has believed in some supernatural deity since the beginning of time, then the sensus divinitatis is an actual sense.
Because from my perspective, that is what you are claiming. You are claiming that you have a sixth sense which I do not have which allows you to somehow "sense" something else "beyond". But you can provide no test to confirm it. You can provide no consistency in the sensation. You can provide no mechanism for how the sense operates. You can provide no external verification that the sense even exists as anything more than a subjective feeling or emotion.
As I've said before, a blind person can be shown that there is some sense which he is missing because people who can see can readily identify things which the blind person has arranged. They can do this without using the other 4 senses which the blind person has. For example, the blind person could arrange a beach ball, a wooden block and a guitar in some order in a room. The blind person can identify each item using his senses (feeling, hearing, etc). Then, he can invite 1000 strangers into the room to tell him which order he placed the items from left to right. The 1000 strangers will all identify the order correctly without touching, hearing, tasting or smelling the objects. They will all agree. Every time. This is showing to the blind man that all these people have some corroborated sense which is "beyond" the blind man's four senses which allows them to "sense" the order of the items. This is not proof that light exists or that eyesight exists. All it is proving is that some sense exists which allows the seeing people to do something which the blind man cannot do.
Is there any equivalent test which can be performed to show that the sensus divinitatis exists and is not just an emotion or feeling inside one's brain?
And if the blind/mute/deaf/senseless person comes to believe that, because they cannot see/hear/feel/touch the external world, then it must not exist, then what would you say at that point?
