Miracle

[Harris]

In layman's terms: anything considered a miracle is done so by ignorant twats with their escapism from reality through gaps of knowledge which lead to pretty fantasies that are appealing to their simple minds; a miracle is nothing more than a misguided concept of that which has not yet been naturally explained.

True, Miracle cannot be explained by natural means.  No one can explicate logically how modern scientific information appeared in Quran, which revealed in 7th Century AD and for that reason, Quran is a Miracle.

"And it is WE who post a response in this thread." -myself
Look another miracle, myself wrote something that is quite possible for any human to write.

Can that “MYSELF” reveal a scientific fact, which science has not yet explored? Well, that is exactly what Prophet Mohammad did about 1,500 years back.

You know, observation is not the same as "prediction". And writing vague observations without any attempt of reaching a plausible explanation is not a miracle.

Vague Observations! People in 7th century even had no sense of these scientific facts and you are talking about Observations. In my post, I had given a special emphasis on this fact:

“All these facts were inconceivable for anyone who was living in the 7th century Arabia. In that era no one could have known such details due to lack of knowhow and proper tools …”

There's a shit load of iron in the earth. Why the need for meteorites? Special effects?

That is the point; all that shit load of Iron came down to earth in form of meteorites from cosmos.

“Extrapolating from observations of the cooling of the inner core, it is estimated that the current solid inner core formed approximately 2 to 4 billion years ago from what was originally an entirely molten core. If true, this would mean that the Earth's solid inner core is not a primordial feature that was present during the planet's formation, but a feature younger than the Earth (the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old).”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_core

“Meteoric iron was highly regarded due to its origin in the heavens and was often used to forge weapons and tools …”

Under the heading “Wrought iron”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron

“…WE SENT DOWN IRON, in which is (material for) mighty war, as well as many benefits for mankind…” (Quran 57:25)

These scientific insights don't provide "absolute certainty". But anyway, I don't understand what you are trying to tell us with this text. First, you cite the somewhat antiquated and scientifically naive writings of *some guy*, and then you cite all kinds of passages from the holy book that vaguely resemble things from science. In the middle you wave your arms around and say something about precise logical proof and obviously true principles and absolute certainty which makes no sense and only seems to serve the purpose to impress the reader with big words. I have no idea how these things are connected and what the point of this is.

Consider the following two statements:

1. “Water Cleanse the Body”
2. “Water removes waste products including toxins that the organs’ cells reject, and removes them through urines and faeces.”

The concept “Water cleanse the body” is same in both these statements.

However, to know the function of water, first, a preliminary understanding on how body is working is crucial. Without having such knowledge, it is almost impossible to state true role of water in the body.

This is the idea that I have accentuated when I quoted verses from Quran, which are incredibly accurate in mentioning principal scientific concepts without giving intricate details.

Harris, you are conflating many different definitions of "miracle." Specifically, you are confusing "miracle" with "brute fact." But a miracle isn't just something which is unexplained, or which follows rules we do not understand. It is something which goes AGAINST the rules of the universe.

For example, it is a rule that people cannot jump 100 meters up into the air. We have lots of experience jumping, and we've never jumped that high. We also understand various physical rules, and can explain WHY people can't jump that high. If someone jumped 100 meters up in the air unassisted, we would therefore call it a miracle. Someone is doing something that goes against everything we know about people and about physics.

But we don't HAVE rules about the Big Bang drawn from our experience of Big Bangs. We don't HAVE reliable rules for ways in which universes can/can't come into existence. The Big Bang doesn't violate our understanding-- it just reveals that there are things we don't understand. Unless ignorance is a miracle, then discovering our ignorance confirms our experiences about gaining and lacking knowledge, and it also conforms to our further understanding of how the brain, light, etc. work. The mystery of many things CONFORMS to our view of the universe, and so the things you have called miracles are in fact nothing of ‘the sort.

I agree with your meaning of miracle. Miracle is impossible in the physical sciences because physics require a complete enumeration of all possible theories to explain a phenomenon – something that cannot be achieved in case of Miracle.

The presence of scientific information in Quran is simply an impossibility and cannot be explained by any natural means. People living in 7th century were not even conscious of these scientific concepts. This is a perfect violation of natural laws and for this reason; I say Quran is a miracle.

Wait a minute...... when you burn your skin it causes pain?  That's a pretty bold scientific discovery.  How did they figure that one out?  I normally feel quite relaxed when I hold my hand over a candle and watch the skin blister and burn.
Sorry I just don't believe that it's true that burning your skin causes pain, but if it is true then that's a huge scientific miracle that the quran had it figured out, definitely converting to Islam.

When you expose your hand to fire and do not feel the pain then in my opinion:

a. You have some disorder going on in your organ(skin) or
b. You have blocked the sensation of burning by some means or
c. You have trained yourself to resist the burning sensation by developing your patience.

Apart from exceptional cases, every healthy person experiences a hurtful burning sensation if his/her skin exposed to fire.

https://www.boundless.com/psychology/tex...165-12700/

http://www.skin-science.com/_int/_en/top...IN_SURFACE

Well, fuck, that's disappointing. What happened to turning the Nile into blood, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, Elijah calling fire from heaven, and Jesus raising dead people back to life?

And you call those miracles? The bar has lowered a bit, huh?

Do you acknowledge that Quran is a miracle because it contains scientific facts that no one could have developed in 7th century? First, ponder over this miraculous fact, which is in front of your eyes, and then go for how Jesus was raising dead people to life.

Lol... No. It wasn't mere chance that Aristotle confirmed the spherical shape of the Earth by looking at lunar eclipses and that Eratosthenes came damn close to figuring out it's circumference either. I didn't see anything on your list that was very impressive or unlikely for an Arab living 1,000 years after the golden age of Greece to have been able to learn.

Aristotle was a rich and influential person. He had all the facilities of his time for his research activities. If he has said something intriguing then that is not a surprise. Even then, some of his concepts turned out to be false in today’s world of science.

On the other side, Prophet Mohammad raised as orphan among illiterate Bedouins in 7th century AD. He was an illiterate shepherd, and just before receiving prophet hood, he was helping people in their trade of merchandise. Even after becoming prophet, he was unable to read and write. He uttered the words of Quran and his companions memorise/write those passages, and that is how Quran had revealed through him.

I do not think that in such conditions any person can write such an astonishing scripture as Quran.

Even if the Quran was an ahead-of-its-time science textbook with wonderful accuracy, and then some mental supernatural claims, the first does not verify the second. All it shows is that they had some surprising knowledge, that is all. It doesn't demonstrate where the knowledge came from, and it certainly lends no credibility to other stuff in the same book.

Important point is how accurate the knowledge is and at what point in time, it revealed. The significance of the origin of knowledge is contingent to the authenticity of the knowledge itself.

This should be obvious to see. Imagine they had instead written a load of totally different supernatural claims down. Does that make them true instead? Do the people writing the book get to define truth?

You could draw the analogy with a person. They just told you 100 scientifically accurate facts in a row. Does that mean the next scientific thing they say is also true? You may say it's fairly likely, but you don't know for sure. You'd have to verify it. But the moment they start talking about Angels, demons, resurrections, possessions etc then they lose all credibility. No amount of confidence in someone justifies believing stuff like this which has never even been demonstrated to be possible, let alone probable. And you can't verify it like you could all the science he said.

I've said this all before and I'm sure I'll say it again and again. It's like a merry-go-round, there's only so many bodged broken arguments, and eventually they all come round once more.

Today, physicists are trying to convey an idea of 11 dimensions. This idea is very hard to swallow due to our limitations in conceiving those additional dimensions on rational grounds but scientists are giving convincing equations to support their theories.

Just think for a moment that those 11 dimensions really exist. If so, do you think same conventional physical laws, which regulate our three-dimensional material universe, direct those dimensions as well? Just keep in mind that quantum world has different set of physical laws even though it exists in the same three-dimensional material universe in which we reside.

By logic, those additional dimensions should have different set of laws. Time should have different properties and if there are living beings in those additional dimensions then they essentially have different properties and attributes which should be inexplicable by means of any metaphor of our material three-dimensional universe.

If those dimensions really exist then that means we are living in a world parallel to other unseen world but unaware of it, no matter how close we are to it. Perhaps our three-dimensional universe and those additional dimensions are interacting and influencing each other but we do not have the understanding of it, as our perceptions and conceptions are strictly limited to our three-dimensional material universe.

Back in those bad old days where the masses believed all that weird "supernatural" stuff, there was nothing supernatural. It was all natural, just unexplainable.
Therefore it was "obvious" that "god" or some other "blessed" person caused these "miracles".
I find this mental state of being perfectly acceptable for that era. They had no logical reason to assume otherwise.

What I cannot tolerate is why the fuckheads still believe all this bullshit 2000 years later when science has progressed to a point where the god of the gaps argument is negligible.
No miracles or any other supernatural even has happened since. Shouldn't that 100% track record be enough to force people to reason?
There is no-one so gullible and foolish as a person clinging to obsolete myths and fairytales and thinking that the writings of the day can remotely apply to today's world.
Unless of course they don't believe the world has changed in that period.

In my post, I have not given any myths and fairy tales. I have given you quiet reasonable facts, which are inexplicable by science and by natural laws.