The Problem with Christians

[AJW333]

Was it an online degree? 

Nope. Full time, three year course from UNSW

Dude with a science degree claims wife and sister in law had a prophetic dream. Boys and girls, please identify which part or parts of that sentence are most likely false. 

Not sure why that seems so hard to believe. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Sir Isaac Newton was a big believer in prophecy.

Even if it was true that they has a prophetic dream, what was the purpose? lol! Did it stop the tragedy from happening?

The revelation was given so that my wife and SIL could pray for him, that he might not die. Which is what happened. Isn't God good!!!

Let's say that you do have a science degree, and it wasn't from a biased Christian school. Let's assume that your wife and her sister really did have a prophetic dream and they're not lying, they didn't unintentionally misrepresent any details, their emotions didn't make them believe they had a dream that never happened. gasp! Let's pretend that something "supernatural" actually happened. There will never be a scientific explanation, there is no natural explanation hidden behind the scenes, we are sitting here discussing something that the whole time has actually been a miracle. This actually predicted the future in a way that defies the laws of nature. I say "in a way" because we now do and understand things that hundreds of years ago might have seemed unnatural, but there are explanations now. So, let's be grandiose and go as far as saying that it predicted the future in a way that was miraculous, no natural explanation will ever exist, because the god did it.

Tell me something. Why? What was the fucken purpose?

I like this question. I like it because at least you are prepared to entertain the possibility that what I reported happened the way I said it did. Thankyou for that. You are dead right that you can't provide a scientific explanation for the supernatural. By their very nature, supernatural, miraculous occurrences defy scientific understanding.

In my understanding of the supernatural, not everything is caused by God. The Bible talks about "lying signs and wonders," that have nothing do do with him. They are caused by other malevolent spiritual forces.

As for the purpose? Whilst it may not seem like it to many, God is interested in our lives.

---

It has nothing to do with susceptibility but probabilities. What would be the statistical chances of two individuals having the same dream about the same person concerning a future event that then transpires? fifty fifty? two to one? A million to one? A billion to one?

Let's say, for argument's sake, that the odds of that happening by sheer chance are a billion to one.
Out of every billion people on earth, one has such a dream at the same time as someone else in their close vicinity and it's temporally close to the actual dream "coming true".

How many people are right now on the face of this planet?
7 billion!
That means that, by sheer luck, 6 more people are having the same sort of prophetic dreams as your wife and her sister.
Still way more likely than god-did-it.

How about you learn some statistics?

If we look at the fact that there are multiple factors that have to happen, the numbers would be astronomically high against this occurring by random chance. If you want to ignore the numbers, that is your prerogative but I regard them as significant. Each to his own.

As I see it, you're the one who fails at properly grasping the numbers...

Also, "chance" is a word that describes our ignorance of all the factors that play a role in a particular outcome. Just because we don't know them all, doesn't mean they're unknowable (in theory), just unavailable in practice.

I'm not trained in statistics but I think a common sense approach should suffice. If I asked you to pick the correct statement out of two options, with a) having a 99.99999999% chance of being true, and b) having a 0.00000001% chance of being true, I daresay you'd pick a). So when I ask you to determine whether something is either by deliberate design or random chance, you choose the 0.000000001% option. I don't follow the logic. Could it be that bias/prejudice is at work here?