What Are Miracles...

[phil77]

I liked you until you let out that you read 'The Manchester Guardian' Magneto is a good choice though. Nothing wrong with the East End and Brum! Stratford is almost Birmingham! I'd be Hobgoblin!

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I liked you until you let out that you read 'The Manchester Guardian' Magneto is a good choice though. Nothing wrong with the East End and Brum! Stratford is almost Birmingham! I'd be Hobgoblin!

I like Stratford, I recently went there with my fiancé to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. Was sunny as well! I'd even go so far as to say I'd prefer it to Birmingham, although where I live at the moment is alright.

I am also pleased with your choice of hobgoblin.

Allow me to ask, what did you mean when you said "limited minds" earlier on?

[Minimalist]

I have seen people in utter despair being fixed up by faith.

Their delusions do not change reality.

[phil77]

I liked you until you let out that you read 'The Manchester Guardian' Magneto is a good choice though. Nothing wrong with the East End and Brum! Stratford is almost Birmingham! I'd be Hobgoblin!

I like Stratford, I recently went there with my fiancé to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. Was sunny as well! I'd even go so far as to say I'd prefer it to Birmingham, although where I live at the moment is alright.

I am also pleased with your choice of hobgoblin.

Allow me to ask, what did you mean when you said "limited minds" earlier on?

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Just by not accepting that the human mind is limited. Love Stratford, glad you had a nice time there with fiance 'Magneto'

[Faith No More]

Life. The fact that we even can TELL between good and evil, let alone that we can actually experience it in our lives, points to an ultimate, unchanging good. That is evidence.

That is not evidence. That is a couple of examples of things you have ascribed importance to peppered with appeals to emotion. Do you have any actual evidence?

[ronedee]

Why yes, miracles occur all the time! Just about 10 days ago, many miracles happened in Moore, Oklahoma! When a fierce tornado struck the town, it killed or maimed many people, including a number of children in a school! But, while in one classroom some children had their brains smashed out on the floor, in another classroom, the children were miraculously spared! I bet the Christian parents of the children who were killed feel so blessed that God had a special plan for their son or daughter! Many miracles!

Asinine questions deserve asinine answers.

Slice it, dice it, chew it up and spit it out.......

Where all gonna die bubby! Does it really matter when, where or how?

Here's what happened: Free-will = Sin = Death

Here's your ticket out: Jesus = Faith = Eternal Life

[Godscreated]

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I'm sure this has been kicked around here before...

Has anyone had any experiences with Miracles (or as my Atheist friends & relatives call them: spontaneous, unexplained niceties) happening in their lives? Or, if not you, in the lives of people close to you?

This could be anything that seemed extraordinary, unexplained, or a supernatural event. If you can explain it...it's NOT a miracle!

What, if anything do you attribute them to, and why?

I have a few to share...but would like some perspective of how this is gonna proceed first!

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Sorry - but the word "miracle" has too many definitions to answer your question in the manner you want.

Sorry you are wrong, a miracle is an unexplainable act by a supernatural being.

I can use the word "miracle" in this sentence - If I live to see my youngest son actually clean out, wash, and wax his car - it will be a miracle.

Obviously - if it does happen - the "miracle" will have been performed by a human.

A failed use of the word, humans are not supernatural beings they have not the ability to perform a miracle.

Today - humans perform LOTS of "miracles". WE have cured cancer for some - eliminated some diseases - established government to take the place of religious nonsense - and men have actually traveled to - and walked on the moon - as well as having sent other satellites around the solar system. We have modes of transportation that do not require feeding an animal - and even have ways of communicating with people 10,000 miles away from us almost instantaneously.

Once again a failed use of the word, all of that is explainable, and humans can not preform acts considered supernatural. The bolded can be taken to mean nothing, however the rest are good things accomplished by humans, not miracles though.

All of the above and many more of the things in our daily lives - refrigeration - canning - cooking - housing - construction - and lots of others would have been looked on as miracles to people only a few hundred years ago.

Now you're talking nonsense, these things could not have been possible without the processes of one step at a time by humans, they could have never existed in past history, irrelevant to this discussion.

The problem with religious people is they are UNWILLING to admit that in fact - there are no things that happen that do not have a natural explanation now - it is just that we may not yet have the explanation.

Misleading, those things that do not have an explanation now may never have an explanation, you sir are purposing a miracle to suppose an explanation come to light in the future.

And over the centuries - Lots of things that were once called miracles are things that people have better ways of doing today. (Fire was once a miracle - we have other ways of cooking today)

Now you're bordering on the ridiculous, fire was never seen as a miracle. The first fires were from natural things, lightning, volcanic eruptions and ect. These things were easily explained by ancient man.

In the absence of proof of the existence of a god - and COMPLETE absence of the existence of a god as defined by religion

Now your talking "miracle", God has keep Himself hidden these many thousands of years except to those who truly desire to be a part of grace. Salvation is a miracle of astounding proportion, of coarse it comes from a supernatural being and it can't be explained except upon the day of one's death.

Sorry - but the problem is that - with all of the FAILURES of religion - and the inability to show any act works (Prayer has never been proven to have any statistical significance) - it is more correct to assume that if something happens for which we have NO explanation NOW _ there will be one later.

Why the shouting, did you get excited about all the nonsense you posted. I've seen this prayer thing stated to many times now, doctors, even those who do not believe have said, they've seen prayer bring around patients and give them hope and directly contribute it to help in the healing of people. To assume that a miracle will be able to be explained in the future is all one can do, that is unless you have some supernatural power to look into the future. There is no way you can do a statistical proof on prayer, you can not control who is being prayed for by whoever, prayer for one outside of the study is impossible to discount.

[downbeatplumb]

You recently denied that there will EVER be evidence opposing your belief, because you are prepared to cut God out of every happening you encounter,

How can I cut something out that isn't there?

So you will never find anything that challenges your belief. You are going to make it all nice and evade the contradictory so it all works out for you in the end.

If you think something is miraculous it is probably because you haven't done enough research.

is this a miracle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK-qFmCdBU0

You are certainly right about me not finding anything to challenge what I see as the truth, yet.

[Consilius]

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?

The thing is that no one would be satisfied. Worst case scenario, you would claim that we don't have the science to debunk it yet.
Why would God spend time drying up oceans when there are already Christians everywhere working to spread his message?
It's not about getting you to look at him; Christianity is about God getting people to meet him halfway.

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You recently denied that there will EVER be evidence opposing your belief, because you are prepared to cut God out of every happening you encounter,

How can I cut something out that isn't there?

So you will never find anything that challenges your belief. You are going to make it all nice and evade the contradictory so it all works out for you in the end.

If you think something is miraculous it is probably because you haven't done enough research.

is this a miracle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK-qFmCdBU0

You are certainly right about me not finding anything to challenge what I see as the truth, yet.

If you're going to cross your arms and look for fire in the sky just to say that God is NOT real, then don't expect him to dry up oceans for you.
God works to get people following him through the smaller miracles of everyday life that have greater impacts on people.
He works through the enormous Christian community that is waiting to take people in, and not by parting seas like he did when there were NO Christians available.
Christianity is about meeting God halfway, and NOT him begging you to worship him.

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I think I covered that in the snippet you took out.

Richard Carrier dealt with the whole issue.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/r...kooks.html

Conclusion

From all of this one thing should be apparent: the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by many people, who at the time had little in the way of education or critical thinking skills. They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or public documents to consult to check a story. If they were not a witness, all they had was a man's word. And even if they were a witness, the tales above tell us that even then their skills of critical reflection were lacking. Certainly, this age did not lack keen and educated skeptics--it is not that there were no skilled and skeptical observers. There were. Rather, the shouts of the credulous rabble overpowered their voice and seized the world from them, boldly leading them all into the darkness of a thousand years of chaos. Perhaps we should not repeat the same mistake. After all, the wise learn from history. The fool ignores it.

What you are suggesting is that a very large group of Jewish con artists wrote a story about a magical superhero who is born into a poor family and dies on a cross. Why? Because when your nation is in political and religious strife, this is just a fun thing to do. Notice how that contradicted how people thought at the time: heroes were the greatest men alive and nothing more. They didn't die and were sons of kings.
After this, they went around the countryside of Judea and told their little story to the extremely devout Hebrews, who would have considered what they said blasphemy whether or not they knew it was true.
When they are done, their little story is so fun to tell people that they take it across the Roman Empire, and—because all of the non-Jews just happen to be completely gullible—the Gentiles stop worshipping their many visible gods, many of them older than Judaism itself, and leave them for the invisible one. Why? Because their story is so darn good.
And the best part is that these storytellers willingly die for the sake of their awesome storytelling.

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Life. The fact that we even can TELL between good and evil, let alone that we can actually experience it in our lives, points to an ultimate, unchanging good. That is evidence.

That is not evidence. That is a couple of examples of things you have ascribed importance to peppered with appeals to emotion. Do you have any actual evidence?

Yes. God is a 5-ft male, with a light-brown complexion and dark hair.
What you're looking for is an account of the day his voice boomed down from heaven, but that is something that you simply won't get.
And not because God wants people to believe in nothing. ANY concrete proof of the existence of God can be easily washed away by science. Even if the ocean legitimately parted, we would look for an explanation and find it in ocean currents. Using miracles in this present day and age simply would not work, no matter how spectacular.
Even if such a miracle DID successfully win a convert, the person would be a Christian out of fear and not love. It would be another failed attempt.
The avenue to being a Christian is wide open, with billions of Christians around the world. The origin of these Christians was heavily enforced far back into the past with the use of much more extreme miracles in a time of scientific ignorance. However, they succeeded in providing a strong foundation for Christianity.
In the present day and age, we are asked to look at the existence of, well—everything—for proof of God's existence. What we perceive to be good does not change. Therefore, there is an ultimate good that does not change. We have labelled this good, "God".

[Strongbad]

Slice it, dice it, chew it up and spit it out.......

Where all gonna die bubby! Does it really matter when, where or how?

Here's what happened: Free-will = Sin = Death

Here's your ticket out: Jesus = Faith = Eternal Life

I spat it out a long time ago, "bubby". "Eternal Life"? You, on the other hand, have swallowed it all - hook, line, and sinker.