(June 2, 2016 at 1:50 am)robvalue Wrote: Right. Maybe humans can heal people, and it's just extremely rarely that anyone figures out how to harness the power. If that's the case, is it supernatural?
Maybe in a thousand years everyone will be doing it.
I mean, if you already believe Jesus himself is supernatural, then there's no discussion anyway. But if it's just his acts that are supernatural, supposedly, then you're just guessing. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. We can't even examine any evidence directly, all we have are stories. Even if we believe the stories, it doesn't tell us how he did what he did. He doesn't get to credit himself just because he did something that can't be explained.
The magician doesn't get to say he actually teleported a card because you can't figure out how he moved it from one hand to the other.
Depends on the source of the power. If the power is contingent on the physical universe and its laws, then no, not supernatural.
Do we believe Jesus is supernatural a priori or do we believe he is supernatural from proposed evidence? I think it would be the latter. As I mentioned in the reply to Esquilax, in Jesus' case, a variety of events (and their corresponding context) as well as Jesus' claim as to the source of the power give us enough information to begin to assemble a bigger picture and therefore significance. Hypothetically.
