... Jesus walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead -- those sorts of things, right?
Frankly I don't much care about those. Those are single one-off stories. If they were true or not there's no way to know. I've read all sorts of miracles from all across the history of Christianity.
I just spent the week in Belgium. No doubt you are familiar with St. Christina of Liege? Christina Mirabilis? I don't necessarily believe she flew up to the rafters in that story either.
No, what I was referring to was more foundational concepts that would rather see scientific understanding unseated totally than random stories of unverified and unverifiable origin or proof.
Or haven't you guys gotten to that, yet?
Is that central to your understanding of how the world works? If you go from that to saying "water can be walked upon" then it might be worth having a go at, but since it's a "miracle" it falls outside of science.
Here's an interesting bit of philosophy you might have run across in your learnings:
Dorothy Coleman proposed the following as an alternative to Hume's original critique of miracles in general:
"...an event that has no ready natural explanation is not necessarily an event that has no natural cause. To be a miracle, an event must be inexplicable not in terms of what appears to us to be the laws of nature but in terms of what laws of nature actually are
. [O]ne must ask if it is always more likely, i.e., conformable to experience, that those claiming the event to be a miracle are mistaken rather than that the event is a genuine violation of a law of nature. Counterinstances of what are taken to be natural laws are not by themselves evidence establishing that no natural law could possibly explain them: at most they provide grounds for revising our formulations of natural laws or seeking an improved understanding of the nature of the phenomena in question. At the very least they provide grounds for suspending judgments about the nature of their cause until more evidence is available. On the other hand, past experience shows that what are at one time considered violations of natural laws are frequently found at some later time not to be so. Proportioning belief to evidence, therefore, it is more reasonable to believe that the claim that an event is a miracle is mistaken than it is that the event is a violation of natural law."
Essentially as I understand it: if it is a miracle then it is impossible to explain by natural laws, but since we don't necessarily know every natural law how can we define a violation of all natural laws?
Step One: Ridicule Christians until they accept scientism.
No, no, no. You miss the point: I don't want you to accept scientism, just be aware that when someone who is religious makes a faith-based claim about the physical world that can be countered by another claim
which contains evidence I wish to present that counter claim with the evidence.
Clearly faith-based claims about the age of the earth
have nothing to do with the reality of what the earth looks like. They are all about supporting a
religious contention. It is
never about following the empirical evidence. It is
always about finding a way to make reality conform to the words or declarations of their faith.
Step Two: Go after the Bible and clear-cut passages that are non-scientific.
If one wishes to bring the Bible to a science discussion then that is precisely what will happen. In fact
if one wishes to bring a SCIENCE book to a science discussion the same thing will happen.
It isn't just your faith people are having a "go" at. You can have your faith! It's just fine! Just don't think your pride in ignorance of science makes your science-related claims compelling or beyond being critiqued scientifically.
You want to believe Jesus walked on water, fine! I see no evidence for it nor do I see evidence against it and in the long run that doesn't matter one whit. UNLESS you want to make some larger claim about nature and science at which point we can discuss many things around this story.
Do you believe that Christina of Liege flew to the rafters at her funeral mass? If not,
why not? Do you believe that Joseph of Cupertino could float around in the air? If not, why not? Do you believe a statue of the Hindu god Ganesha can drink milk? If not why not?
Believe one miracle then you must explain how the others are unbelievable.
The thing is: you really don't have to explain to us why you believe the Jesus miracle stories. It has nothing to do with facts or evidence or science. It has everything to do with faith. What's the point of arguing that?
