SimplyAtheistic

Thanks for the laugh. But seriously, as our knowledge increases all notions of god will disappear, just as they have steadily been disappearing for the last few centuries. Not a fast rate by any means, but these days science can explain most everything and we no longer need the bullsh*t of the bible.
Jake

SimplyAtheistic

Really? And how can you be so sure? Common men put together the bible under supposed divine leadership. How the hell are you supposed to know for sure or if these men did it just to get there jollies off? See, most christians read the bible as god's absolute truth, but in all reality it was the works of men, assembled by men. Thats about as far away from god as you can get. I mean, if he could write the ten commandments by himself, why the hell would he need men to write the bible long after the events occured? Maybe god suddenly came down with arthritis.
Jake

GeoTheo

I think to a certian extent miracles are a moot point. They are kind of like a hook. Even if all of the miracles in the Bible are true (and I admit I find some to be implausable, such as the sun standing still) they are still pretty much just a hook. Kind of like a teacher entering a room and wanting all the kids to stop chattering so she switches the lights on and off. "Pay attention the lesson is about to begin!"
The attention getter is of relatively little importance to the message itself.
There could be two explanations for the apparent absence of bonafide miracles in recent history.
1) there never were any to begin with.
2) God has said all he has to say for now and so does not feel the need to get our attention again by performing a miracle.

Also, as I said earlier I don't think miracles would really convince people who have already made up their mind. You always have the matter of interpretation and people always inject their presuppositions and bias into this part. If God came down and talked to most atheists in person, I think many of them would assume they were hallucinating.

Starboy

Interesting choice of words. IIRC it is a term con men use.

Starboy

emotional

Good luck handling the coming paradigm shift in science!

lpetrich

GeoTheo:
I think to a certian extent miracles are a moot point. They are kind of like a hook. Even if all of the miracles in the Bible are true (and I admit I find some to be implausable, such as the sun standing still) they are still pretty much just a hook. Kind of like a teacher entering a room and wanting all the kids to stop chattering so she switches the lights on and off. "Pay attention the lesson is about to begin!"
The attention getter is of relatively little importance to the message itself.

However, most of the miracles of the Bible do not fit this instructional-value mold. I'll try to classify them:

Providing sustenance:

Rains of manna
Jesus Christ turning water into wine and multiplying bread and fish

Cures:

Elisha's bones raising the dead
Jesus Christ's exorcisms, magical spit therapy, and raising the dead
Paul raising from the dead a young man who had fallen asleep during one of his sermons and had fallen out of a window

Physical-Ability Improvement:

Parting the Red Sea to provide a convenient place to walk
Jesus Christ walking on water

Bigger-God Contests:

Aaron vs. Egyptian magicians in turning sticks into snakes
Elijah vs. Baal's prophets in setting fire to an offering

Injury and Destruction of Enemies:

The Ten Plagues of Egypt
Letting the Red Sea's waters drown the pursuing Egyptian army
Joshua telling the Sun and the Moon to stop moving so he can win some of his battles

Punishing wicked people and vegetation:

Elisha/God siccing some bears on some kids who teased him about his baldness
Peter/God zapping Ananias and Sapphira for refusing to turn over all thie property
Jesus Christ cursing a certain fig tree for not bearing fruit

There could be two explanations for the apparent absence of bonafide miracles in recent history.
1) there never were any to begin with.

Which I believe to be the most reasonable possibility. Compare medieval Catholic saints to more recent ones -- the medieval ones reportedly work much bigger miracles than the recent ones.

2) God has said all he has to say for now and so does not feel the need to get our attention again by performing a miracle.

Except that many of the miracles of the Bible are not "attention-getters".

Also, as I said earlier I don't think miracles would really convince people who have already made up their mind. You always have the matter of interpretation and people always inject their presuppositions and bias into this part. If God came down and talked to most atheists in person, I think many of them would assume they were hallucinating.

I think that an omnipotent being would have no trouble getting around that difficulty.

Tercel

I was grinning when I wrote it. But: I completely meant every word.

For all that you guys criticise some theists for subscribing to God-of-the-gaps, you are amusingly subscribed to atheism of the gaps.
What makes you think this? Sure, medieval peasants probably thought of lightening as an act of God, but most Christian theologians throughout the centuries have taught that God has instituted natural laws to govern the workings of the universe. (Some of the early Christian apologists even attacked the pagans for saying that non-understood natural phenomina were acts of God. eg See Arnobius' Against the Pagans) Hence, funnily enough the first modern scientists such as Newton and Boyle not only believed in God but thought that they would be able to discover those natural laws because Man being made in the image of God should be able to comprehend what God has done by "thinking God's thoughts after Him" and that what God had done would be comprehensible since He was a consistent and orderly God.

Tell me (just out of interest) what exactly has science done so far to destroy notions of God? Is there even one example of such? Hmm... I can't think of one.

Certainly our greater knowledge has been incorporated into our notions of God to improve them, but that's hardly "destroyed them". eg Where once we would have said "God created the universe", we now say "God created the universe 15 billion years ago when He initiated the Big Bang which began space-time as we know it". And where we once said "God created humans", we now say "We once thought that God created all things, but behold we now know that He is so great that He makes all things make themselves." Where once we merely asserted the simple truth that God was the ultimate creator of all, we now know the method (mutation and natural selection) that God used to acheive this goal which He foreknew. Such is science.
Eventually our understanding of what reality is will be such that God cannot be left out of the equation. Eventually we will fathom the nature of consciousness and see why it must be that reality itself is conscious. Eventually we will know what happened in the beginning and see that it was God. Such is science. We are close now, our advanced philosophy, computer grammar theory, and quantum physics are almost there. But I have little doubt that within a century they will have advance to the point where this thesis is established undeniably.

lpetrich

I think that Tercel's most recent comments seem like an after-the-fact rewrite of history. That's because most of the Xtian Church had acted just like his view of medieval peasants. Consider medieval saints; they were celebrated not for recognizing impersonal natural laws and using that knowledge to their benefit, but instead for working miracles. And to this day, the Church uses the working of miracles as a criterion for sainthood. And the Bible was not very much different.

There may well have been a few philosophers who thought otherwise, but IMO they were the exception rather than the rule. And I suspect that they got the idea of natural law from various pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. How these gentlemen got an idea of natural law is an interesting question, since there is little in Hellenic pagan religion that supports such a concept, with the possible exception of a concept of an impersonal "Fate" that even the Gods are subject to.

SimplyAtheistic

You couldn't be further from the truth. Back when we didn't have science to explain things, we just assumed god caused things to happen, like moving the sun or what have you. Then we learned more and more and people kept chaning how god operated, making him less and less important. Now we can look at nature and show that we don't need a god at all to explain it. You say how god initiated the big bang, I find that funny because why not just skip the god part? Some christians might say "Well who created that matter, it just cant come out of nowhere". I find that funny because who created god? If you can say that god just always was, then why cant that matter just always have been? What makes you think god would trigger a chain of events instead of direct creation, seems you are jumping hoops to keep god a plausible idea. And you will continue to jump hoops until you run out and realize the truth, that there is no god! It may take you a while because you are probably afraid of having no life after death or whatever, but once you get past that stage you feel enlightened.
Jake

Starboy

Thank you Tercel for that excellent example of god-of-the-gaps.

Starboy