Steve Weiss

Myths are both invented and evolve with each succeeding generation embelishing upon what preceeded itself. Ten men killed by a hero becomes 100 and later 1000. One miracle gets topped by other miracles. Accuracy and the truth is of little concern to religionists. They want magic and hope with a nice ending like in a Hollywood movie. In the end the bad guys should be severely punished by an overwhelming force that evens the score. It's the feel good factor versus reality.

sotto voce

Or, it starts with a thousand, because it was a miraculous event, and intended to be thought so.

Or, it's allegory, that even the speech of an 'ass' defeats the wisdom of the enemies of Jehovah.

Steve Weiss

Or the so-called event never happened at all since it is fictional, and there is no point debating numbers. A "miraculous event" is an oxymoron. If it happened it wasn't a miracle.

sotto voce

Because?

mountainman

How many temples, Jewish and Pagan stood on planet Earth c.312 CE? The temple based religion that Constantine destroyed, prohibited and corrupted was pagan in its origins and "School based" (e.g. Platonic, Stoic, Pythagorean, etc) in its philosophy. The religion that Constantine fabricated was not just based on the 3rd century Origen's LXX (i.e. a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). If this had been the case you might have a point.

The Constantine Bible has in it as well as the hijacked LXX a New and Strange Testament to a new and strange Jesus character. The Arian controversy is just as likely to be a dispute over the authenticity of Jesus, as it is over the authenticity of "divine Essence".

The true propaganda and the centalised monotheistic Roman state church was just getting kick-started and people were complaining. How inconsiderate were the heretics?

sotto voce

Pagan temples, under the thumb of Pontifex Maximus? No end of them.

Synagogues, yes, plenty of those, still. But no Jewish Temple, not anywhere. Which anomaly was taken by the commonality as evidence that that damned Galilean had been the Jews' messiah. If only Titus had spared it, and not admitted that he had merely served as an instrument of God's wrath. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

No public halls used by Christians any more, of course. Not jolly likely. And yet, that wily Tertullian had warned, "The blood of the martyrs is seed of the church." Things could not go on like this.

And suddenly, there was with the emperor, a multitude of unheavenly temples, all under the thumb of Pontifex Maximus; yet with 'Christ' written on the door. "How strange," said the commonality, saluting the emperor nicely. "Quelle volte face!" they muttered under their breath; in Gaul, anyway. Though they quite soon replaced it with "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Steve Weiss

Miracles are not just very unlikely events like spontaneous remission of illness and sole survivors of accidents. Miracles are contradictions of cause and effect indicating (to the believer) that events are inexplicible in terms of natural forces and are outside of reality. Miracles are unnatural, exceptions to reason and reality, something to be believed in based upon faith.

There can be no evidence for miracles because evidence assumes a natural world and the validity of reason. Miracles negate the real world and replace it with the random and the arbitrary. So, if something does happen it happens within reality and in terms of reality, a reality that miracles theoretically deny. Growing a new arm when one's arm has been cut off would be a miracle, but it hasn't happened and never will.

sotto voce

Whoops! We seem to have totally misunderstood what I wrote elsewhere. It is the natural that permits the possibility of the supernatural. Ok? That's how we get the word super-natural. It's common, but not for repetition, to say that, because things are usually natural, they must always be natural. That's absurd, perhaps doggedly so. The natural makes the contrast— at least as a concept. Perhaps a purpose of a predictable cosmos is to make the miraculous.

This does not mean that miracles have occurred, of course. That is for the individual to decide. It is not for any individual to decide for any other, is it.

That is to speak of what one cannot know, of what one cannot prove.

It's also totally incorrect to say that a miracle is something to be believed in based upon faith. That's reversal of the real situation. If there is faith, there is no need for miracles! Miracles, if they occur, make faith, and, if the Bible be true, made faith. And if miracles were explicable, they would not be miracles! The whole point of a miracle is that it is 'impossible'. It's absurdly circular, this approach, even though one comes across it on the internet with rather tedious regularity. It's time for people to move on.

So a miraculous event is not an oxymoron. It may be that no miracle has ever occurred; but it is highly irrational to state that a miracle is an impossibility.

It cannot therefore be denied that the slaying of a thousand by use of a jawbone could have been a miracle, particularly in the case of the slaying being carried out, as claimed, on the part of the agent of the creator of the natural world, who created the laws by which nature operates, and who may suspend their operation— in order to make his presence and nature known, or for any other reason. And such an agent would not have to give reasons to any mere mortal, of course.

If miraculous, this event may also be of allegorical value, meaning that even the speech of an 'ass' defeats the wisdom of the enemies of Jehovah. This interpretation meets with resonance elsewhere in the Bible, indeed throughout it, the proud being left behind by the humble from Genesis to Revelation.

Steve Weiss

This line of thinking expresses itself in religious faith, and faith is a contradiction of reason. If you side with faith against reason, just be honest and say so. Faith is belief without reason and often in opposition to reason, and the idea that there is a creator (identity unspecified) who willy nilly creates and then suspends natural laws is a prescription for chaos. Natural "laws" make miracles impossible. I suppose that the creator something stopped the earth from spinning on its axis so that Joshua and his tribe could safely cross the Jordan River. That didn't happen; it's a myth, the truth of which cannot possibly be established. In addition, there is no way to restart the earth spinning on its axis, so the claim is nonsensical.

sotto voce

Denying that miracles can happen is expression of religious faith. It's unwilling faith, but it's sincere faith, all the same.

Faith is a result of reason. It is expressed by the statement that miracles cannot occur, as well as many other revealing comments one reads.