Styrofoam

I believe greyline wanted to focus on personal experiences, i.e. those that happened to the poster. I think that's what greyline was pointing out.

seebs

Okay, but... How do we decide whether my personal experience is a miracle or not? Is the elaborate and very unusual set of circumstances through which my wife and I ended up together "a miracle"? If I get something I pray for, can I count that as a miracle?

I guess I want a better standard. I don't think I've seen any overt healings (although there are some things that would be hard to say either way), but... Lots of weird stuff happens around me, and I don't know what to make of it sometimes.

Karalora

Well, when I got Bell's Palsy last summer, I did a daily meditation focusing on my recovery, and was completely healed in three weeks. The websites I visited about the condition all said that most people can expect "significant improvement" within three months, so I think my total turnaround in one-quarter that time is remarkable.

Was it a miracle/magic? Did I manage to boost my body's normal self-healing ability with my mental exercises? Was I just one of the lucky ones? Does it even matter? My face is fine in any case.

JPD

Point taken - I will do my best to couch my points in a manner befitting a situation where the person I am arguing with isn't sure what their God actually is, but wants me to pray to them all the same.
Honestly (but I always am) I will try to take their arguments seriously but what appears to be happening is that an unsubstantiated claim is made (the only evidence being the bible which is full of errors) and then as soon as the point is countered, the person who made the claim gets funny and either suggests that everyone starts praying, or begins a new thread somewhere else.

JPD

Such is the nature of the Universe. Would you ascribe the responsibility for such events to your God? If you would, this just moves the cause to an unverifiable plane. A miracle is an event or action with apparently contradicts known scientific laws.

seebs

Right. The problem is, thanks to quantum physics, the most I can ever say is pretty much "that was incredibly unlikely". Put a pot of water on the stove, turned on the burner, and it froze? Well, it's unlikely, but it doesn't actually contradict the laws of physics; figure it has to happen about once every ten to the eighteenth times, maybe a little less than that, but it's not impossible.

seebs

That sounds weird, but actually, I'm not sure it's alll that strange. I couldn't tell you what people actually are, or how consciousness works, but I will try to convince you to be nice to them, because my fairly approximate theory is that, whatever they are, being nice to them is good.

Heh. That happens sometimes.

JPD

Could you explain why it would not contradict the laws of physics? Why do you 'figure' it has to happen? Also, figuring that it has to happen does not change the likelihood of it happening. Saying that it is not impossible does not automatically mean that it is going to happen.

seebs

Well, law of large numbers. If you try something often enough, you ought to see even very unlikely outcomes. If you randomly shuffle decks of cards often enough, occasionally they come out sorted.

So, if something is possible, however unlikely, it's not impossible, and doesn't contradict the laws of physics.

The pot of water freezing is very unlikely, but heat transfer is dependent on chance quantum-level events. Get less-likely events a couple million times, and pretty soon something weird happens. I can't prove it to be impossible, certainly; quantum events appear to include particles spontaneously jumping from one place to another, energy transferring "the wrong way", and so on. In practice, these just about never happen on a large enough scale to be noticed, but it's not impossible, just very unlikely.

JPD

Do you extrapolate this in any way, in terms of belief in your God?