My hypothesis on miracles

[Petros2015]

I don't think you actually understand what a miracle is. A miracle is an event that is only possible outside of the laws of nature.

I'm not sure the laws of nature are possible within the laws of nature. In a sense, everything is miraculous - it's just that parts of it (the laws of nature) are so consistent from our births through our deaths that we do not recognize them as such.

My experience with God is that He is a pool player - He calls shots ahead of time. I was trying to get a heroin addict into rehab, she was going to have to fly on a plane for the first time in her life and was freaking out. The person who was with her was allowed to accompany her all the way to the gate, the person who let her through had just lost her own child to opiod addiction. The plane was delayed and then swapped. The person sitting next to her after the plane swap turned out to be in recovery AA, and stayed with her through her layover, helped her get onto the next plane sober to her rehab.

Was it against the laws of nature? No - but it was absolutely the miracle that we all needed and were praying for and had been praying for for weeks. That whole day was full of miracles. Miracles are all around us but we don't see them. Fire from heaven, raising the dead (actually, come to think of it she DID die at one point from overdose about a week or two prior and was brought back in a wallmart parking lot by paramedics, had a vision she was sent back by a grinning angel)...

My point is, there ARE miracles. We just don't see most of them. And the ones I've seen have been mostly personal to me, no Red Seas parting. But, I didn't *need* a Red Sea to part. Fire from Heaven? Wouldn't have done me any good at all. I just needed her safe on that plane. And that took a fricking miracle. I did my part as did some others. And there was only so much we could do. God took care of the rest.

 

[Petros2015]

My point is, there ARE miracles. We just don't see most of them.

I would add to this, that if I had not been in recovery myself, sober for some years and walked the path I did through my life and into recovery, I never would have met her, we never would have crossed paths. So, if it was a miracle, when did the miracle start? It's funny how many miracles you can trace 2000 years back to the Cross.

 

[cloudyday2]

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.

Harran was the center for moon worship of the god Sin. That's the origin of Mt. Sinai. It's fine though. I don't have the energy to make the case for the moon and sun.

The storm god association for Yahweh probably comes from Yahweh supplanting Baal Hadad. I think there isn't a single answer for Yahweh's origins, because there were several tributaries coming together. IDK

An interesting fact I learned from a lecture last night: The taboo against eating pork seems to have existed among the Hebrews at least as early as 3000 BCE. Of course, that is before the supposed time of Abraham.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Harran was the center for moon worship of the god Sin. That's the origin of Mt. Sinai. It's fine though. I don't have the energy to make the case for the moon and sun.

Harran was a center thereof and in fact continued to host moon worshippers into the 10th century AD, the last middle eastern Pagans - they were called Sabians in an attempt to appropriate a reference in the Koran to themselves as a defensive measure. This has little to do with YHWH though, who explicitly is recorded in the Bible to come from the South and this fits our archaeological references better as well. YHWH first appears in Midian and references tend to cluster in Judah and the southern Levant. Sinai may refer to the moon, but this has nothing to do with Harran.

The storm god association for Yahweh probably comes from Yahweh supplanting Baal Hadad. I think there isn't a single answer for Yahweh's origins, because there were several tributaries coming together. IDK

There are definitely multiple strains of symbolism coming together, but as I have told you before, Ugaritic and northwestern Semitic influence isn't pre-eminent. Baal Hadad is a hard sell, which is why it isn't a major hypothesis in this regard.

An interesting fact I learned from a lecture last night: The taboo against eating pork seems to have existed among the Hebrews at least as early as 3000 BCE. Of course, that is before the supposed time of Abraham.

From what source? How did they determine they were Hebrews, or do they simply mean Semites? Our earliest source for the Israelites is the Israel Stelae which is literally 2000 years after this. Or do they mean that they lack pork in rubbish tips from this period? This would be no proof that these were Hebrews, as anyway other Semitic peoples are recorded as eschewing pork historically too - hence it wasn't a big problem for the Arabs when converting to Islam.

 

[cloudyday2]

From what source? How did they determine they were Hebrews, or do they simply mean Semites? Our earliest source for the Israelites is the Israel Stelae which is literally 2000 years after this. Or do they mean that they lack pork in rubbish tips from this period? This would be no proof that these were Hebrews, as anyway other Semitic peoples are recorded as eschewing pork historically too - hence it wasn't a big problem for the Arabs when converting to Islam.

Here is the lecturer (below). My understanding is that there really isn't much early archaeological evidence for Hebrew culture except for the absence of pork bones. Apparently that is what the archaeologists have been using to distinguish the Hebrews from the other Canaanite tribes. The fact that this taboo goes back to 3000 BCE is interesting, because Hebrews imagine their origin later.

Professor Bio Page

 

[miamited]

Hi petros,

You responded to my post:

My point is, there ARE miracles. We just don't see most of them. And the ones I've seen have been mostly personal to me, no Red Seas parting.

I understand that often times we look at how people handle personal issues and we consider that it's merely miraculous that some personal behavior turned out as it did. I get that, but I think the OP is referring to physical events that happen regarding the properties of the physical creation. As you referred to the parting of the sea. There's a difference that it might seem miraculous that a person would think or act a certain way, verses the sun shining bright in Goshen and yet it being pitch black in Egypt for 3 days.

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Here is the lecturer (below). My understanding is that there really isn't much early archaeological evidence for Hebrew culture except for the absence of pork bones. Apparently that is what the archaeologists have been using to distinguish the Hebrews from the other Canaanite tribes. The fact that this taboo goes back to 3000 BCE is interesting, because Hebrews imagine their origin later.

Professor Bio Page

On his background he seems a classicist and a mediaevalist; not an Assyriologist though.

The problem here is other peoples also abstained from pork. We know the Ancient Egyptians did so, as reported by Herodotus, and from the dearth of the pig in Egyptology.
Canaan was heavily influenced by Egypt, so this might just represent Egyptian sites or influence.
Similarly Phoenicia and Babylonia largely did not eat pigs. This might be on economic factors though, but this is therefore very poor grounds to label something Hebrew for want of porcine remains. It was a fairly common practice.

I have attached an interesting article on the subject.

 

[Petros2015]

There's a difference that it might seem miraculous that a person would think or act a certain way

I agree. But I still think the biggest miracles are changes of heart, rather than suspending laws of nature or altering reality. Israel experienced some of the grandest miracles... but, did the hearts of the people change? So what's harder or the greater miracle - parting the Red Sea, or changing someone's heart?

 

[Hawkins]

The use of a miracle is for the supporting of a message. In a big picture, they are for the supporting of witnessing.

Human history is a secular human account of witnessing for human deeds.
Christianity is a religious human account of witnessing for God's deeds.

The difference between the two can be told by the miracles.

 

[cloudyday2]

I haven't read the article on pork taboos yet, but I was just thinking of a hypothetical on miracles:

Imagine some saintly person manages an orphanage that is underfunded, so that person feels inspired by the Holy Spirit to bet all his money on Roulette... and wins. Imagine this person repeats the bet every month, and journalists begin to cover the story of this amazingly lucky orphanage manager. Let's say it continues for a year until the person is again inspired by the Holy Spirit to stop.

Nothing supernatural happened except for a very odd pattern of chance that inspired many people to have faith in God. Would that be statistical evidence for God?

 

[cloudyday2]

Another thing I have wondered about. How much could God load the dice to achieve His purpose before it would be a violation of nature? It seems to me that randomness itself is a property of nature at the quantum mechanical level. A lot of weird things could happen if God loaded the dice strategically. If a ex-Catholic physicist is taking measurements and the plot is an uncanny depiction of the Virgin Mary, would that be a violation of nature? We expect randomness to look like nothing.

 

[Cuddles333]

The probability chances and Providence. This is all the world was left with when the last person that was endowed with the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit from the first century had died.

What this tells us is that God is still working with us, just not in overt ways as in the 1st century.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

@cloudyday2, my understanding is a bit different. For you see, God is of course atemporal, an infinite being who created time as it were. So all of time would appear as one eternal instant to God or in scales we cannot fathom. For time is intrinsically connected to space and motion.

So a miracle is only a suspension of the normal rules of Nature or an alteration of it, from our perspectives. Inherently it would have always been there, as much as any normal event. It is therefore of the Nature of the universe itself, not really a 'change' from what should have applied. A miracle could thus have been naturally built into the universe, without it ceasing to be a miracle, but on investigation could appear not to be one, depending on perspectives.

The problem with statistical anomalies is that they will occur, especially with repetitive phenomena. Are we to read something into that then? There is a guy who won the lottery three times. There was a woman who played the lottery in two states, and had the correct numbers for each - unfortunately she had played them in opposite states and won nothing. These things could be construed as miraculous, as signs or omens, or simply as statistical chance. If something occurs readily, to be more than statistical chance, then it is thought ordinary or natural I think. A miracle would thus not be able to ever escape that narrow margin of uncertainty that all statistics has built in, or it simply would not be unusual enough to be considered one.

But as Pratchett said in the Discworld novels: " a million to one chance happens in a 10 to 1 ratio."

 

[cloudyday2]

So a miracle is only a suspension of the normal rules of Nature or an alteration of it, from our perspectives.

The problem is that the laws of nature are mathematical and universal in time and space. Imagine what Newton's equations of classical mechanics would look like if we allowed God to make an exception and stop the Earth's rotation to give Joshua's army more time to slaughter their enemies. The different equations used in classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, etc. mathematically transform from one approximation to another. Psalm 19 begins by describing how astronomy declares the glory of God and then says the "Law of the Lord is perfect". Is that psalm referring merely to the rules in the Torah about pork or is it referring to the mathematical patterns in astronomy? If God makes exceptions to these patterns then the math becomes very, very ugly IMO. ... So much for the glory of God declared in astronomy. That's why I think God's miracles must work within the laws of nature that He established through improbable coincidences and so forth.

EDIT: If God is working within the laws of nature then it explains why science can't seem to find any sign of God. Let's say a person sees Jesus. The inclination is to determine if that person hallucinated or if the vision was "real". Of course the person hallucinated! LOL The real question is whether the experience has meaning and how it affects the person. Etc.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

The problem is that the laws of nature are mathematical and universal in time and space.

Well, we don't actually know that. We assume this to be the case. We have been seriously investigating the natural laws for only about 500 years. A lot of what we found contradicts findings of the previous time this was done, back in Hellenistic days; sometimes it doesn't. We simply assume the ancients got it wrong when our findings differ from theirs.

What if constants or laws changed every 10000 years? We would have no way to tell, since our assumptions on ages and what occurred then, are based on the Laws being immutable somewhat. Could aberrant Hellenistic observations perhaps be accurate as well? They were accurate on so much else, that we agree with.
Maybe electromagnetic forces acted completely contrary to today? Or that radioactive decay rates were different. We simply can't tell because we are retroactively extending physical situations in our own times backward, assuming they apply, and then extrapolating conditions then.

Even our modern laws are fudges. Classical Newtonian physics is wrong. We know this. Relativity theory works well for big things, but breaks down on the small scale, while Quantum theory is the opposite. This is why we are searching for a Unified Theory, for our current physics has to be fundamentally incorrect somewhere, it is just the best explanation we currently have.
On other aspects we are even more fuzzy. How gases act is determined by Perfect Gas Laws which we largely invented from extrapolation of trends in nature. No Gas actually functions exactly as the Laws suggest they should, they just tend in that direction. We try and correct this with other measurements like flow or molecular mass, but our predictive power of a gas' actual effects are poor and need to be observed to be determined, mostly.

So the assumption that Laws applied here today, are universal and have always and will always apply, is a complete guess. We can't even really say with certainty what those laws are, merely our current closest approximations. Sometimes we force it to be the case, such as with light. We determine a metre by the speed of light, so this means if the speed of light ever changed minutely, we would be unable to determine it as it would alter our units in that manner as well.

If you look at recorded history, many cultures tell of dramatic changes in the natural world. You could write it off as tall tales or mythology, but we have no absolute proof this is the case. For instance:

Herodotus' Histories, Book II, chapter 142:

"Thus far went the record given by the Egyptians and their priests; and they showed me that the time from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus, who was the last, covered three hundred and forty-one generations, and that in this time this also had been the number of their kings, and of their high priests. Now three hundred generations are ten thousand years, three generations being equal to a hundred. And over and above the three hundred, the remaining forty-one cover thirteen hundred and forty years. Thus the whole period is eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; in all of which time (they said) they had had no king who was a god in human form, nor had there been any such either before or after those years among the rest of the kings of Egypt. Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience; twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up; yet Egypt at these times underwent no change, either in the produce of the river and the land, or in the matter of sickness and death"

In 11000 years that Herodotus said the Egyptians recorded, the sun is supposed to have changed where it came up 4 times. This may be nonsense, but maybe the axis of the earth shifts or there is some larger solar cycle we haven't observed yet that takes aeons, etc.

At the moment our best bet is to assume static or fairly static Natural Laws apply, but there is really no reason to say this has and always will be the case. It has to be taken on faith for much of the materialist case to make sense, though.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

EDIT: If God is working within the laws of nature then it explains why science can't seem to find any sign of God. Let's say a person sees Jesus. The inclination is to determine if that person hallucinated or if the vision was "real". Of course the person hallucinated! LOL The real question is whether the experience has meaning and how it affects the person. Etc.

Yes, you are probably correct here. A Vision is an hallucination, almost by definition. Something is being seen and experienced by the visionary, that simply is not physically there, but is perceived as Real.
So fundamentally Paul on Damascus Road or Isaiah or Revelation are hallucinations medically. Whether they have meaning or intrinsic worth in a metaphysical sense is really the actual question. Whether they are real in an extra-corporal sense. I think many miracles could fall in this category, yes.

 

[cloudyday2]

What if constants or laws changed every 10000 years? We would have no way to tell, since our assumptions on ages and what occurred then, are based on the Laws being immutable somewhat. Could aberrant Hellenistic observations perhaps be accurate as well? They were accurate on so much else, that we agree with.
Maybe electromagnetic forces acted completely contrary to today? Or that radioactive decay rates were different. We simply can't tell because we are retroactively extending physical situations in our own times backward, assuming they apply, and then extrapolating conditions then.

Even our modern laws are fudges. Classical Newtonian physics is wrong. We know this. Relativity theory works well for big things, but breaks down on the small scale, while Quantum theory is the opposite. This is why we are searching for a Unified Theory, for our current physics has to be fundamentally incorrect somewhere, it is just the best explanation we currently have.
On other aspects we are even more fuzzy. How gases act is determined by Perfect Gas Laws which we largely invented from extrapolation of trends in nature. No Gas actually functions exactly as the Laws suggest they should, they just tend in that direction. We try and correct this with other measurements like flow or molecular mass, but our predictive power of a gas' actual effects are poor and need to be observed to be determined, mostly.

So the assumption that Laws applied here today, are universal and have always and will always apply, is a complete guess. We can't even really say with certainty what those laws are, merely our current closest approximations. Sometimes we force it to be the case, such as with light. We determine a metre by the speed of light, so this means if the speed of light ever changed minutely, we would be unable to determine it as it would alter our units in that manner as well.

If you look at recorded history, many cultures tell of dramatic changes in the natural world. You could write it off as tall tales or mythology, but we have no absolute proof this is the case. For instance:

Herodotus' Histories, Book II, chapter 142:

"Thus far went the record given by the Egyptians and their priests; and they showed me that the time from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus, who was the last, covered three hundred and forty-one generations, and that in this time this also had been the number of their kings, and of their high priests. Now three hundred generations are ten thousand years, three generations being equal to a hundred. And over and above the three hundred, the remaining forty-one cover thirteen hundred and forty years. Thus the whole period is eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; in all of which time (they said) they had had no king who was a god in human form, nor had there been any such either before or after those years among the rest of the kings of Egypt. Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience; twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up; yet Egypt at these times underwent no change, either in the produce of the river and the land, or in the matter of sickness and death"

In 11000 years that Herodotus said the Egyptians recorded, the sun is supposed to have changed where it came up 4 times. This may be nonsense, but maybe the axis of the earth shifts or there is some larger solar cycle we haven't observed yet that takes aeons, etc.

At the moment our best bet is to assume static or fairly static Natural Laws apply, but there is really no reason to say this has and always will be the case. It has to be taken on faith for much of the materialist case to make sense, though.

As I'm sure you are aware, the Egyptians weren't recording astronomical observations 11,000 years ago. So we can ignore those claims about the sun rising in the west instead of the east.

I read a book by Rupert Sheldrake ( Rupert Sheldrake - Wikipedia ) claiming that measurements of the speed of light never have precisely the expected value. Sheldrake seems to be a bit of a quack, but I could imagine that there might be equations and constants that might control the equations and constants that we know about today and consider fixed. But whatever equations we discover are going to elegant.

I don't know if you watched the original Star Trek series but here is quote that comes to mind. "Fizzbin" is not how nature works.

KIRK: On Beta Antares Four, they play a real game. It's a man's game, but of course it's probably a little beyond you. It requires intelligence.
KALO: Listen, Kirk, I can play anything you can figure out. Take the cards, big man. Show us how it's played.
SPOCK: I'm familiar with the culture on Beta Antares. There aren't games
KIRK: Spock. Spock. (sits) Of course, the cards on Beta Antares Four are different, but not too different. The name of the game is called fizzbin.
KALO: Fizzbin?
KIRK: Fizzbin. It's not too difficult. (begins dealing) Each player gets six cards, except for the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven.
KALO: On the right.
KIRK: Yes. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.
KALO: On Tuesday.
KIRK: Oh, look what you got, two jacks. You got a half fizzbin already.
KALO: I need another jack.
KIRK: No, no. If you got another jack, why, you'd have a sralk.
KALO: A sralk?
KIRK: Yes. You'd be disqualified. You need a king and a deuce, except at night of course, when you'd need a queen and a four.
KALO: Except at night.
KIRK: Right. Oh, look at that. You've got another jack. How lucky you are! How wonderful for you. If you didn't get another jack, if you'd gotten a king, why then you'd get another card, except when it's dark, you'd give it back.
KALO: If it were dark on Tuesday.
KIRK: Yes, but what you're after is a royal fizzbin, but the odds in getting a royal fizzbin are astron. Spock, what are the odds in getting a royal fizzbin?
SPOCK: I have never computed them, Captain.
KIRK: Well, they're astronomical, believe me. Now, for the last card. We'll call it a kronk. You got that?
KALO: What?

The Star Trek Transcripts - A Piece Of The Action

 

[NobleMouse]

I suspect others have already considered this idea, but I just began thinking about it yesterday. I was hoping that somebody might be able to add some additional thoughts to my idea to make it more concrete.

So the idea is that miracles must never contradict the laws of nature. For example, when Jesus walked on water, his disciples actually had a shared hallucination. A shared hallucination is very uncommon, but it does not contradict the laws of nature.

Although all miracles have natural explanations, they are still miraculous. They are uncommon, and they are designed to guide people. God is pulling the strings, but He is not breaking any natural laws.

That's my theory FWIW

My view is that miracles don't have to contradict the laws of nature; however, can contradict the laws of nature.

 

[cloudyday2]

@Quid est Veritas? , I finished the article on the "abominable pig". Very interesting. I always thought the pig-ban could be explained by the intelligence of pigs LOL

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

As I'm sure you are aware, the Egyptians weren't recording astronomical observations 11,000 years ago. So we can ignore those claims about the sun rising in the west instead of the east.

I read a book by Rupert Sheldrake ( Rupert Sheldrake - Wikipedia ) claiming that measurements of the speed of light never have precisely the expected value. Sheldrake seems to be a bit of a quack, but I could imagine that there might be equations and constants that might control the equations and constants that we know about today and consider fixed. But whatever equations we discover are going to elegant.

I don't know if you watched the original Star Trek series but here is quote that comes to mind. "Fizzbin" is not how nature works.

The Star Trek Transcripts - A Piece Of The Action

I don't know, a lot of Quantum Physics sounds very Fizzben-esque. Likewise human physiology: Phenylephrine raises your blood pressure until you give too much, then it drops again; or Ketamine raises blood pressure unless your stress response is prolonged, in which case it drops it; and many effects show diurnal rhythms, being more or less pronounced at night, etc.

The world is complicated and the rules that govern it seem to gain complexity each year.