(December 7, 2014 at 3:15 pm)Heywood Wrote:(December 6, 2014 at 11:10 pm)Jenny A Wrote: 5. Miracle. --- Repeated clinical tests, minimum.
What we tend to get? Credulous eyewitnesses to things a magician might do on stage usually told third hand four centuries ago.
If a miracle becomes repeatable it ceases to be a miracle but rather an artifact of nature.
If everytime Benny Hinn said "alleluia" an amputee grew a new limb, that wouldn't be a miracle. It would simply be the way the world works. We'd write some law to describe that observation.....maybe call it "The law of conservation of limbs" or something.
I suppose, unless it only worked for believers who said alleluia, or even only particular believers who said alleluia. And that is the point. Miracles are by definition extraordinary events and so accepting a tale of one without considerably better proof than we ordinarily rely is a good idea.
This isn't just a requirement for miracles. The scientific community heard much about the duck-billed platypus, before allowing it's existence, and given the oddity of the animal in comparison to others, rightly so.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.