(October 27, 2017 at 8:53 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote:(October 27, 2017 at 8:40 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: To clarify though, I don't believe God "causes" any of those things you mentioned, Possi. They are caused by human beings using their free will to hurt others, or they are caused by nature. God allows those things to happen by not divinely intervening in our world or in our actions to stop them, but He doesn't cause them.
Sorry if someone has already asked you this (there are a lot of pages in this thread that I haven't gone over), but how do you determine if any specific thing is 'caused' by God or not? If you believe that God intervenes in the world via miracles, is that the only way he intervenes, or does he cause other things to happen as well, and how do you tell the difference between a stroke of unbelievable luck and God intervening?
Well, dont we know through science that natural disasters are caused by winds, temperature fronts, tectonic plate movements, etc? Don't we know that murderers, and other evil acts are caused by people, not some magical force? Perhaps there are some religions that believe God causes all that in some supernatural way, but I can't speak to that because it isn't what I believe.
I do believe there have been instances of miracles, yes. In those cases God is intervening. But i do think these miracles are extremely rare, and they are the exception, not the rule. If God were to intervene every time something bad was about to happen, we'd be puppets living in a very different world I think.
We only determine something is a miracle when there is no other possible explanation for it. Example, a man suffers from severe headaches and seizures. He has a mass in his brain consistent with a stage 4 brain tumor as seen by multiple doctors in various imaging tests, MRI, and CT scans. He goes to a church and prayes his heart out. The next day he has another appointment and more imaging tests are done in preparation for surgery. The mass is completely gone, when it was just there a few days before. He hadnt yet started any sort of treatment yet. The surgery is cancelled. His headache is gone, and he never again suffers another seizure. A case like that would get investigated for the possibility of being a miracle, and may be officially proclaimed as one.
I guess some people are very quick to call every little thing a miracle when it could have just been good luck, but there's nothing official about that, so I can't really comment on it. I'm not one of those people.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
-walsh
