GeoTheo

How old are you btw? just curious.

lpetrich

I wouldn't be too sure -- superstition has had great longevity. Consider how astrology is nowadays a big business, while a century ago, it seemed like it was headed for the dustbin of history.

But I think that it may be possible to keep theocracies from happening.

SimplyAtheistic

I am 16.
Jake

GeoTheo

You sound like a smart kid. thanks.

Starboy

There is another way to look at it. Consider all the possible explanations for any set of phenomena. If the explanations are taken at face value one could consider each to be just as likely to reflect reality. However if you take the explanations and test them to see which can be repeated and which cannot, it doesn't prove that the explanations that can't be repeated are not real but it doesn't help them either. The explanations that can be tested that fit the purported facts are the ones that are considered to be the most real. This is how reality is determined in the twenty first century. In the first century all you had to do was call it "truth" or say "god told me."

Starboy

Bible Humper

Hi Theo,

Materialists have no problems with explaining the miracles of today because God apparently makes sure that all of his modern miracles are indistinguishable from blind chance.

What a contrast with his old behavior! The seas used to part for the faithful, and you come to us with stories of sad orphan siblings who were adopted by families who lived close?

His modern miraculous medical interventions leave so much scope for us silly atheists to rationalise naturalistic explanations! Fluke remissions do indeed occur in non-believers, but I guess God doesn't ever allow those to happen to Christians! Nope, Xians instead occasionally enjoy his personal intervention instead, and incredibly, it works out to being roughly as common as the flukes. How many Christian children have died of leukemia, who would have recovered if the deity didnt need to prevent their disease from going into remission so that he could save someone else personally of his own volition?

If Xians enjoyed both flukey remissions and divine intervention when hoping for a recovery from a terminal illness, the statistical anomaly would surely lead to a violation of free will, right? So does the deity tweak the cancers of Xians to not go into remission without his direct subsequent intervention, Geotheo?



Just for shits and giggles, why don't you speculate regarding possible naturalistic explanations a materialist could cough up to explain the old school miracles listed by lpetrich....

Why did God tone it down over time, Theo, wouldn't any free will argument valid for the present have been equally valid before?



No reason to doubt the miracles of the Bible!?!?
What reason is there to actually believe these miracles?

Tell us what convinced you of their authenticity(You aren't agnostic!)!

How can you believe in the biblical miracles if you admit that people can misinterpret such things? Surely you must be agnostic towards them then?

Geotheo, you can see by the very existence of all non-xian religions that people can easily convince themselves of magical events which we can both agree did not in fact occur. This same human proclivity would hold true for Xians as well, whether or not the deity of Christianity actually existed, unless God violates free will and prevents his followers from wrongly concluding a miracle occured, only to turn around and then perform a real one!

Otherwise, you have give as much weight to Hindu miracle claims as the Xian ones, and reject both for the same reasons.

lpetrich

And closer to home, most Protestants have been very skeptical of reports of miracles worked by Catholic saints.

I don't see any here saying "Right. Those medieval saints worked all the miracles they were described as having worked."

Bible Humper

I'm sure that the Protestants would prefer to not have to try and convince themselves that the stories of Genevieve happened as they were recorded, but it seems that if they don't just force themselves to believe that the pre-reformation Catholic church was above embellishing the exploits of their revered figures, then they have to question the alleged feats of Jesus too.

If the medieval priests judged it a pious deed to invent miracle stories to attribute to the saints for the sake of winning converts, then there is no reason at all why modern Protestants should not assume that the figure of Jesus was exploited in the same manner.

Their only choice is to plead with themselves to believe that the Catholic church was honest and forthright up until the reformation, when God tossed it aside like a used condom and blessed the virgin Protestant church alone as His mistress. Amen.

It just seems ridiculous for them to stake their faith on the miracle stories of Jesus when they know full well that the organisation which controlled those stories for almost 500 years was willing and eager to totally invent miracle stories for the sake of conversions.

Conchobar

Miracles have entered the media, especially in America to describe a favourable outcome in a catastrophy.

A plane crashes, 170 people are killed and three survive. They tell the press that it was a "miracle by God" that they survived. It is bollocks but think of how that makes the families of the 170 dead people feel. God didn't care about them? He is capricious and decided to save only three. Rubbish, there was simply a physical reason why three survived. The were in the back and were thrown free into soft vegetation and live while the plane crashed and burned. The soldiers rescued in Iraq had two who called it a miracle. It wasn't a miracle. It was the bravery of some good marines who rescued them. God wasn't seen in the vicinity.

A miracle is a magical event, that is it defies natural or physical laws. This would be Jesus restoring vision to the blind man, or walking on water. Now I personally don't think that Jesus walked on land let alone water. But aside from that we have no proof of any of Jesus' miracles (resurrection, ascension inot heaven like Mohammad).

I reject out of hand, Pentacostal miracles of healing a person of an unproven disease (lumbago, cancer but no Xray evidence, MS) and the miracle is that the patient is an emotional high feels better for a brief time. Some are deliberate frauds, fake plants in the healer's audience. Healthy people are placed in wheel chairs when the WALK in to the arena. Wheeled to the stage, they are saved, and the fundy preacher says, "Get up and walk in the name of jesus. And the confused bugger gets up and walks away.

Now I challenge God to promote an indisuptable miracle. I am a physician. Let them take an above knee amputee up on the stage, and have god restore the leg instantaniously. If he claims that the leg must grow back over a year, sign a contract to let sceptics visit, examine and photograph the patient monthly for the year and publish the results. Take a baby with severe retardation, cerebral palsy with most of the left hemisphere of the brain atrophied. Cure her, then take monthy CAT scans to see the brain regrow. And a the end of the year by contract, publish the results of Reverend Bull$hit's cures.

Conchobar

malookiemaloo

I havr read this thread but I cannot recall actually seeing a definition of 'miracle'.

Here's mine for what it's worth:- God operating in a way He does not normally operate.

Views anyone?


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