lpetrich

One apologetic I've seen a few times recently is that miracles are rare, and cannot normally be expected to happen. Some Muslim apologists go a step further, and brag about how Mohammed had not worked any miracles except for having the Koran revealed to him.

This seems to me like a case of Paul's "all things to all people"; because in centuries past, miracle-working was much emphasized. Consider the miracles allegedly worked by many medieval saints; according to Richard Carrier's "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story":

... In 520 A.D.  an anonymous monk recorded the life of Saint Genevieve, who had died only ten years before that.  In his account of her life, he describes how, when she ordered a cursed tree cut down, monsters sprang from it and breathed a fatal stench on many men for two hours; while she was sailing, eleven ships capsized, but at her prayers they were righted again spontaneously; she cast out demons, calmed storms, miraculously created water and oil from nothing before astonished crowds, healed the blind and lame, and several people who stole things from her actually went blind instead.  No one wrote anything to contradict or challenge these claims, and they were written very near the time the events supposedly happened--by a religious man whom we suppose regarded lying to be a sin. ...

By comparison, simply consider how the Vatican has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in its search for miracles to attribute to recent would-be saints.

It seems to me that rare-miracle apologists are simply taking that position in order to seem convincing to those who tend to reject accounts of miracles.

(some spelling corrected)

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Ojuice5001

To me, it seems like a proof that metaphysical naturalism really is winning over Christianity. (Christianity is superficially a stronger rival of Jupiter's than naturalism, but the true power over modern thought is wielded by naturalism.) Modern apologists' defenses of miracles generally spend effort not only on convincing unbelievers, but also on convincing other Christians that miracles are a true and important teaching of Christianity. To me, this indicates that naturalists have largely won the debate over miracles--even Christians are skeptical of Christian miracles--and they probably would have won completely if it weren't for the inertial tendency of Abrahamic religion. Most Christian supernaturalists could be described as naturalists who make a number of exceptions. And exceptions are rare by definition. I think that's why apologists tend to think miracles are rare.

Naturalists who make exceptions--that's what Christians in general have become. Except the fundamentalists, who are only a counterculture and will only be otherwise if they gain control of the government. I think that's why theists see atheism as an extremist viewpoint. Christians have surrendered much of their worldview--they would much rather not surrender God too.

sir drinks-a-lot

I am not sure how to even determine whether or not an event is a miracle! I see the laws of nature as laws that cannot be violated. The reason they cannot be violated is because they are simply a description of how nature does, in fact, behave.

Rudolph Carnap makes an analogy between the laws of nature and a geographical map. If you are hiking and notice a discrepancy, you don't exclaim "Look! The land has violated the law of the map!" Instead, you just adjust the map accordingly. He says it is the same tamale with the laws of nature. Because of this, he says, he wishes they would have chosen a different word than "laws"of nature.

Shake

I saw someone in their car the other day signal for a turn, and then they turned! It's a miracle for sure!!!