Miracles

[lithium.]

It's not a violation. How do you see it as a violation?

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by seesaw
We know our body can do some amazing things like healings. 

Even that our body can heal itself is a miracle to me. Sometimes the body restrore itself with scar tissue, and I can understand that. But when the body restores itself and it looks like there was never a disease, that is amazing to me.

God put a lot of healing into our body and into nature. Plants have a lot of defense against bacteria, fungus and virus. That is why we are able to distill alcohol from plants. It will kill just about whatever you want to get rid of. Plants are even able to defend themselves from other plants. I put out a lot of seeds last year and watched the different plants fight with each other to see which one would be stronger. If there are a lot of plants, they will grow tall. If they are by themselves they get short and bushy.

Marigold and Morning Glories can take on just about anything and win. There is not much that can stop them. If you try to grow them together, the Morning Glory will climb right up the Marigold and keep on going if it can find something to climb on.

 

[Received]

seesaw,

I can see how it can be made as a view of extreme laziness. But I see no reason why it should be always. Truth is, by definition, exclusive. Muslims (who had miracles worked in view of the Hadith) claiming the miracle was from Allah and Chrisitans (who had miracles worked with Christ and the apostles, until today in the present, and until the regeneration of all things) claiming their miracle was from God is contradiction. One side must be wrong. I also do not see how sudden healings, claimed by doctors and such as impossible, are possible without violation of natural law.

blessings,

John

 

[lithium.]

The logic of one side most be right, and all others are wrong is crazy to me when it comes to this. If one god existed then there could be others. What would be stopping that? If all gods are all powerful then god can they get rid of each other?

It's only impossible because we don't understand right now. Just because we don't understand doesn't mean we won't or can't. But if we just say well it was god then we are giving up, but not trying to figure out what happened. When there is no evidence of god we have to look for other answers so when we say goddidit it's just being lazy and IMO wrong.

 

[Received]

But there is no "we'll soon understand" given the basic law of nature that science lives by. It is simply a miracle, for it went against what we hold as law. Future laws discovered would not nullify the basic laws of nature - an event that should not have happened; that was impossible; but happened anyways.

Also, in regards to the possibility of pluralism, I find no room for this. All world religions are exclusive to a degree that they cannot allow one another. Buddhism is fundamentally atheistic; Hinduism accepts Christianity only if it accepts Hinduism; Islam claims Allah, "the God". The polytheistic pagan religions simply go against science, by claiming that everything was created by gods who were of the same material as their creation. It really is much more exclusive than one would think. This implies only one correct religion.

 

[lithium.]

I understand what you are saying, but people used to say simple things like lighting was a miracle but now we know how it happens. IMO we can understand anything we want, we just have to want too.

You may believe and think that it implies only one is correct but none could be correct, or all could be correct. There is no way to prove it. You may believe that there can be one religion based on your beliefs, but there are two other choices all are correct, or none of then are correct.

 

[Received]

There is no way to prove it scientifically or rationally; just as there is no way to prove that you alone are the ultimate good and everyone else are your servants scientifically or rationally. I agree seesaw. Given the fact that we know that truth exists, it must exist in every instance of investigation, given every different sort of category. It could be Christianity, Buddhism, or atheism. Or anything else in-between. This we must notify in the realm of rationality. I was merely pointing out that there must be one, and given the fact that this "one" is indeed the creator, we may also conclude that truth itself lies within such a power, and honest inquiry is all it takes to find this ultimate good.

And in regards to lighting and people calling such miracles, they were merely misusing the word. Now, there was a time when men actually feared lightning and the possibility of its damage. Now we think we know exactly how it works, but our knowledge of a situation does not lessen its terror if indeed it were to come to pass; not to mention the fact that human beings, with their human inventions, are fallible.

blessings,

John

 

[lithium.]

I guess we both can agree that we disagree on both issues. Or almost disagree.

 

[Received]

Indeed, there's always the agreement of disagreement. Ahhh, we do agree somewhere.

When did Einstein make that quote? Was it before 1929?

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by Havoc
Unfortunatly, faith and miracles is a subject that does not point only to the Christian God. All religions with a Diety/ies also have miracles.

Please name some that have been throughly documented and researched and found to be unexplainable. The Church has many of this sort, can you provide some of your own?

 

[lithium.]

Originally posted by Received
Indeed, there's always the agreement of disagreement. Ahhh, we do agree somewhere.

When did Einstein make that quote? Was it before 1929?

I will have to check, but I think it was around 1945.

In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1). Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?" Einstein's response is shown in Figure 3.

Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."

 

[Received]

Interesting. It seems that even Einstein, like Nietzsche, had a deal not solely with Christianity, but with the priests and ministries of it.

 

[Brimshack]

Hmm, thanks for pointing this thread out Recieved. I hope I followed everything correctly, but let's see…

1) I would more or less agree with you on the nature of natural laws. As I see it, a natural law is largely a fiction, intended to explain a regularity. They are derived largely by inductive means, and a good deal of michief follows when they are mistaken for known entities/forces.

2) To derive a pre-emptive argument against miracles from the existence of natural laws is not possible. Indeed, it would be something of a misplaced concretism to even suggest that a miracle violates natural law. I would add that such a formulation is often part of the folk-theory advocated by the proponents of miracles themselves. But if a natural law is really not a law, then it cannot really be violated.

3) I agree with Jery Smith (unless I've misreead him) that the principle reason for rejecting such miracles is actually the consequent incoherence. I also understand that this must seem rhetorically un-satisfying: God versus a more efficient science, with no objective basis for deciding. But this illustartes one more respect in which the belief or non-belief seems to precede the question of whether or not miracles do happen.

4) I conclude therefore that the (non-)existence of miracles cannot be ruled out, but neither can it be used to prove the existence of God or any other 'super-natural' force.

5) On the pluralism angle. I agree that taken literally most (all that I can think of) religions are exclusive of one another. But that is part of the problem with miracles, they do not provide us with a means of telling which is right, even if only one is right. I would furthermore add that many spiritual/ceremonial systems are not meant to be taken literally anyay, or at least were not meant to be so prior to the introduction of modernism into these traditions.

I don't know if any of these comments further the conversation at this point, but that is my initial reaction.

 

[Received]

I would agree that supposed miracles made by different faith's can present an extraordinary problem concerning the one correct one (as all exclude one another). I also see where you, and Jerry, are coming from, in regards to miracles and the effect of chaotic epistemology. But I think this would only be a problem in regards to the weaker sort of miracles, not the stronger. Who really knows how often the stronger sort of miracles happen? I can only hypothesize quite rarely. I've heard stories (from my friends; not quacks on T.V.) about prayers for X sickness being healed. But I do not believe it has to be an issue in regards to our knowledge. If it is indeed a miracle, and we are natural beings (natural in regards to our rationality, that is), then I see no reason why we should consider it a problem. I would actually consider it futility for a field to make an attempt to tackle this; the answers can easily be exaggerated (or hushed up).

But I'm not sure that the existence of a miracle would rule out the existence of a supernatural being. As I may have said earlier, a (rather weak, IMO) response a non-theist could take when confronted with a miracle is to claim that it is merely a law not yet discovered. But this would more likely be a bigger mess concerning our understanding than that posed by Jerry Smith concerning the very existence of miracles. Then again, it is inductive, subjective research. But how far might a coincidence go if a book written two thousand years ago contains many direct miracles performed by Christ, not to mention His resurrection and ascension, got the jump on this idea of a miracle being a law not yet discovered if indeed science had not yet gone underway? That itself, in my opinion, would be a counter that one could use to answer the counter statement concerning the existence of miracles and the lack of certain laws being yet discovered.

But you still have the problem of hard-heartedness. It doesn't matter how much evidence you can present to someone who refuses to see God (see my signature). I would perhaps agree with you here, Brim, in saying that miracles will never be an evangelising tool, but rather something that is a by-product of a will to believe. We know that when God spoke from the Heavens, many believed it to be Him, while many were still convinced that it was nothing more than thunder (John 12:28,29).

blessings,

John

 

[Brimshack]

I would obviously narrate the willingness or non-willingness of the believer differently than you do, but nevertheless the main point is an impass.