(September 18, 2013 at 11:06 am)John V Wrote: Yes. Same for you. Consider scientific explorations of origins. Is the night sky not wondrous and beautiful enough for you? Do you need an estimate of how old it is? Considering the ubiquity of origins explanations in human cultures, that seems to be a need hard-wired into us.
The natural universe science has revealed is more wonderful than the supernatural things revealed in scripture. It reminds of the video game Ascension of the Metatron when one of the fallen angels says to Enoch the main character "Do you not see? Do you not understand? This Tower we have built is better than the world God made!". The reality of the universe is too small to be confined within human concepts, traditions or magical explanations it goes beyond all that. The authors of the Bible had some great imagination but that is all it ever was, like the Book of Mormon, like the Quran, the Vedas and everything else. These are works of fiction. What we now have and what is beginning to emerge is a work of reality which is beyond anything we ever imagined. Whether there is anything like a God or some kind afterlife it's not for us to say we can focus on the world as it is and the issues that really matter instead, and on finding out more about the nature of reality the hard way.
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As I said, over the course of 4,000 years, there aren’t many miracles, and centuries go by without any.
There are no miracles and if they were any we could explain what they are and they would become a part of the known natural world. This is the way for everything we don't need be shackled to ancient myth and folktales about all powerful beings and demons. I'm not saying nothing like that can possibly exist anywhere it just won't be in the Bible.
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Sure.
That's all it is then, keep it simple. There's a real danger of believing in things that aren't true otherwise.
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Could be. When you speculate outside that which we can observe, are you not invoking the supernatural yourself?
The supernatural is like saying "magic did it" it's being content with a non-explanation. We want the real thing and it's within our reach now, but it will be very hard work and many many take many thousands of years. We have only just got started here we're not living in the end times these are the beginning times, religion is part of our infancy and our growing up as a species. I suppose it can still be part of human culture though but that's all it ever was to begin with.
Quote: Heck, consider any biography or history. It seems like there’s always something fascinating going on – but that’s because it’s the fascinating things that are recorded.
From our real working knowledge of the way the world operates "miracles" do not happen and if they did they could just be a part of the natural world we would be able to explain. They are stories of Roman Emperors curing the blind with their own spit but we don't believe those stories because we know the world doesn't work like that.
Quote:As noted, it’s to be expected. There’s nothing special about this generation. If we should be shown miracles, then all generations in all places should be shown them. But, if they’re occurring regularly, they won’t be taken as miraculous anymore.
They would be seen as just the way the world works but thousands of years ago people just believed that the world worked that way because they knew no better. Jesus's miracles wouldn't have been seen as such a big deal because the supernatural world and supernatural powers and beings were all around them and they believed they saw and experienced them everyday. We don't live in their world.
Quote:Regarding the Koran, Muhammed didn’t show miraculous signs to back up his claims. Regarding both of them, if they claim an earlier revelation as a foundation, they need to maintain reasonable consistency with those revelations, and they don’t.
Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse, you can't argue with that if you believe in supernatural miracles. But no you can argue with it, it was all made up. One rule for one one rule for all.
Quote:See, you note an important consideration yourself – motivation. Muhammed and Joseph Smith seemed to gain much more personally from their ministries than Jesus or Paul.
Jesus could have been a failed apocalyptic prophet and a local legend grew up around him after his death. People may well have had experience of Jesus after his death but people had experience of Elvis after his death as well. It doesn't mean Elvis had returned from the dead it just means people thought they saw him. You can see how easy it would be for something like that to get started and to circulate. So certainly it would be a different foundation to Islam and Mormonism.
Quote:God made awesome displays of power. You can believe them or not. As already explained, if he made them all the time, they would be considered natural.
People back in the day DID consider them to be natural because it was the way the world worked. The sun and the moon the stars, all the process of life and birth and disease and death were all governed by supernatural power of some kind. The Jews had one supernatural power for everything and the Pagans had various different gods. There doesn't have to be any supernatural powers at all it can be just one great natural order that always existed in some form, perhaps it runs itself on a natural cycle or rhythm with periods of expansion and contraction.
Quote:If it happened today, that would do nothing for the people in the centuries between, or the centuries following. So, to be fair these things would need to be done all the time, and they would be considered natural.
Back in the day people believed they did happen all the time because they had no other explanation for anything that happened in their world. Though there were some advocates of a purely natural order around in ancient times such as Aristotle who rejected all supernatural claims.
