The power of Christ...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Thanks for the reply

Perhaps you would benefit from science training.  The "natural order" means that a model can predict (either deterministically or statistically) how the state of a system will change with time.  If a model can predict what will happen, there is no room for God.

I don't see what you're saying here. Perhaps you could clarify?

Perhaps you think this makes sense, but it really doesn't.  

If God does miracles according to prayer, then such things would be testable.  We would have proof of God as a verifiable scientific phenomenon.

Perhaps you would benefit from science training.  The "natural order" means that a model can predict (either deterministically or statistically) how the state of a system will change with time.  If a model can predict what will happen, there is no room for God.

There are only two "outs" that I can think of:

1) to a Deist, God designed the natural order in such a way that we exist, and that both good and bad things can occur (though we have agency to find the good things).

2) to a Christian madly trying to justify prayer: God works at the subtle quantum-mechanical level, skewing the "dice rolls" to help believers, but is very careful to never be caught being "tested".

The first is just a reverence for existence, and is not a type of God worth prayer to.  The second is just self-delusion, IMO, that God is subtly playing with nature in a way that He isn't caught.

Again, the M word...
I am using the model for paradoxa, dunameis and thaumasia as used in the NT ('signs' etc). Hopefully this will clarify things a little:

The NT makes it pretty clear that God will not do signs on request to generate faith (e.g. Matt 12:38-40).

Also, the Kingdom of God, promised in the OT and the process for rolling it out described in the NT, is the locus where the problem of evil gets sorted out. It is where nature is truly itself, where this rather unpleasant invasion is removed.

Where God acts in response to prayer, it is to push the boundaries of His Kingdom. As such, He is acting within natural processes, not from outside them, and He can use many methods to do it, which can be ordinary or powerful evidence of His activity.

Why it doesn't happen all the time is known as the problem of evil, but this will end.

So it is entirely consistent that He would avoid being caught, as you put it, but that things would happen which enable nature to align itself with God's plan, which also happen at times to be strong signposts to His reality.

If God answers prayers to ‘push the boundaries of His Kingdom’, how does that differ from doing so to generate faith?

Boru