Future of Christianity in US

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Downbeatplumb: The humanists at heart out there will always find a way to explain away any kind of miracle with some kind of natural explanation... Or will assume the natural explanation hasn't been discovered yet, etc. Sometimes they are right... but the possibility of the supernatural is not allowed as a possibility... From transcendent creation miracles to the plagues in Egypt in Moses' time to the resurrection of Jesus to healings documented in the bible or the ones that still occur today to the reality of the (inferior) power of evil. The kinds of occurrences that happened in Jesus' time and as recorded in the book of Acts still happen today, especially in parts of the world not yet saturated in Christianity. And yes when it has to do with science today and hard data in an experiment of any kind, the outlier is often not ignored. I assure you that the supernatural recorded by the mainline Christian Faith is real... But I cannot prove it to anyone or even reason with anyone who will not investigate it for themselves. I suggest that it is difficult to be as open minded as you think you can be.

You see, that's the thing. Your post here, and the preceeding one, boil down to 'you gotta believe it before you'll see it'. That's the antithesis of skeptical inquiry and scientific investigation.

You don't assume the conclusion is right before you've done the investigation.

The reason why the supernatural is bracketed out is because it has never once, ever, explained anything. Does that mean it won't ever? Nope. But is there any reason to rule it into a investigation into whatever subject ahead or on an equal basis to non-supernatural, temporal and material variables? No, there isn't. And I'm yet to see any sort of rational or logical reason as to why automatically dismissal of 'supernatural' is wrong or should be reconsidered. I mean how do you even test for the supernatural anyway? PKE meters?

To paraphrase Tim minchin, everything that was thought of to be magic has so far turned out to be not magic. Despite all your assurances, what rational investigation requires is evidence. If there's evidence that can be found, tested, repeated and verified, then there might, just might, be something to it. If not, then you'll just have to accept that what you've got is a belief, and not evidence.