(May 31, 2013 at 4:49 pm)Consilius Wrote: I think I covered that in the snippet you took out. These miracles were probably no easier to identify for those people than it is for us with mothers who survive cancer.
If you lived in BC: (a) you could attribute the miracle to demons due to the lack of science to explain it (b) just forget about it, considering that the world only had polytheistic priests who would tell you that the gods lived in idols and ate bread.
When Israel was a nomadic tribe in the desert, it wasn't exactly easy to believe that there was a single invisible god who was everywhere and then found a nation based of that belief. It was a pioneering concept. So these people needed very strong proof of who this God was to be convinced to keep incredibly specific commandments meant to preserve perfect monotheistic faith. Besides, crossing rivers didn't stop them from rebelling against Moses.
Miracles systematically decreased in splendor from crossing rivers to shaking vipers of your hand (St. Paul). When monotheism became more popular, it was a lot easier to join the Christians or the Jews. The problem became became actually believing whether or not the Judeo-Christian god did it. It was easy to believe in a god then.
Then, miracles become harder to prove and harder to attribute to a deity at all.
God doesn't make it easy on anybody. The problem with believing in him went from being the odd one out to trying to figure out which god did it to trying to figure out if a god did it at all. God does his part, and he requires being met halfway so he can carry you to where you need to go.
This has to be the worst excuse I've ever heard for why miracles don't occur anymore. People in the biblical times were credulous, and they believed that a deity directed lightning and that comets were omens of times to come. We have developed the scientific method, which is the greatest tool humanity has ever created to distinguish fact from fiction, and all of a sudden god thinks his miracles need to be less miraculous? If anything, the miracles should have to be even more incredible than burning bushes and the parting of seas due to our greater understanding of natural processes.
Does it bother you that our ability to understand nature around us has been accompanied by lesser and lesser miracles that have shrunk in such stature to the point that they are unverifiable, i.e. cancer being cured?
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
