Jesus and Miracles

[Neo-Scholastic]

Were the meteorites an unlucky coincidence...to bombard that particular strip of earth?...where along the line does God stick his hand into the universe?

As I understand it, God influences every single event at all times. I do not see God as a deistic watchmaker that set things in motion and stands aside.
Personally, I think analogies based on a mechanistic view of the universe are horribly outdated, although I occasionally make them myself.

Since ...every event to be naturally explainable...then it means ...God interfered *indirectly* when he set the universe in motion"....doesn't that mean that certain people ...were deterministically doomed?

Well, not from the very beginning of time, no. And not of necessity. The natural order seems to be much more dynamic that once believed, most certainly at the subatomic scale. It could very well be that very very small pertubations could ripple up with massively unpredictable results (from a human perspective at least). At least that's the idea behind chaos theory.

I realize I'm engaging in a large measure of rationalizing, i.e. this his how miracle might possiblely, just maybe work. At the same time, your view of natural law is already a deterministic one. Initial conditions of the universe have already established what my responses to you will be and vice versus. My point in I am not just defending my belief in God, but also my belief that "I am not a number; I am a free man."

Secondly, the dominant view of causality not so cut and dry as it seems on first blush. The dominant idea is that event A leads to B leads to C etc. I do not think that progression is justified. The past no longer exists, so how can something that does not exist act on that which currently does exist? I do not have the answer. I find the problem interesting. (You may recall my previous thread about the discontinuity of reality at the Plank Scale.)

Instead, I see the relation of cause and effect as one of identity. The lighted match being the cause of the fire and the fire being the effect of the match are actually the same condition differently described.

[Drich]

Dont forget, Christ healed lepars, brought a man back from the dead after he began to decompose, scraped scales of the eye balls of the blind, reconstituted withered limbs, even reattached a severed appendage, among hundreds if not thousands of other things. I would assume being resurrected had something to do with that power he had or had access to.

All of what was done is indeed explainable. Just maybe not to where any of us can explain or even comprehend the explaination even if we heard it. Isn't it a little presumptuous to think that just because something can be explained you are smart enough to decipher what has been explained to you?

[Neo-Scholastic]

...Isn't it a little presumptuous to think that just because something can be explained you are smart enough to decipher what has been explained to you?

Or to think that our current scientific understanding is the correct one, like the Tycho Brye spheres or aether.

There is an important distinction between natural laws and the laws of physics. Natural laws are the metaphysical pre-conditions of reality.[/php] The laws of physics summarize our current model of physical reality.

[FallentoReason]

I understand everything as coming from God. The miraculous is something extraordinary that follows biblical precedent.

God filled the tank with gas: supernatural event that supposedly has some meaning or we would dismiss it as not God sourced. Facts: the tank was empty, it's now full with no physical explanation. Along comes materialist who doesn't believe supernatural intervention. Person is deluded, they forgot that they had already filled up/they want to believe the car suddenly appeared to get heavier/ etc.

Supernatural acts can always be explained away naturally, but that doesn't mean that they actually were natural acts. It's possible to construct a natural cause in explanation that doesn't acknowledge the actual cause.

It took us 3 days to finally be on the same page... you could have said that the supernatural acts *SUPERNATURALLY* in the realm of nature... instead of continually being ambiguous about natural phenomena in what I kept thinking was the scientific sense, *not* the "naive materialist" sense.

All I have to say is that it would depend on the situation whether we could know if it's a supernatural event or not e.g. registering a jump in my car's weight due to fuel spontaneously appearing would be a dead give-away. Looking for my car keys for 15 mins, then praying to God to help me and finding them a minute later would be more on the ambiguous side. But of course, the charm of religious thought is that God essentially *needs* to act shyly by human definition: the more ambiguous the situation the bigger the gap for God to fit in.

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Were the meteorites an unlucky coincidence...to bombard that particular strip of earth?...where along the line does God stick his hand into the universe?

As I understand it, God influences every single event at all times.

I can't make sense of this, unless your view is pantheistic.

Since ...every event to be naturally explainable...then it means ...God interfered *indirectly* when he set the universe in motion"....doesn't that mean that certain people ...were deterministically doomed?

Well, not from the very beginning of time, no. And not of necessity. The natural order seems to be much more dynamic that once believed, most certainly at the subatomic scale. It could very well be that very very small pertubations could ripple up with massively unpredictable results (from a human perspective at least). At least that's the idea behind chaos theory.

I realize I'm engaging in a large measure of rationalizing, i.e. this his how miracle might possiblely, just maybe work. At the same time, your view of natural law is already a deterministic one. Initial conditions of the universe have already established what my responses to you will be and vice versus. My point in I am not just defending my belief in God, but also my belief that "I am not a number; I am a free man."

I only believe in a very mildly believe in determinism. When it comes to things like e.g. meteors, I tend to see it exactly the same as a game of pool; once the white ball has been hit, every motion of all the other balls have been determined. When it comes to complex structures such as us, I don't hold the belief that we can be explained entirely in a naturalistic way (when it comes to the mind/brain etc), so I have the gut feeling that determinism can't possibly account for the behaviours in someone's life. There's something extra there to account for.

Secondly, the dominant view of causality not so cut and dry as it seems on first blush. The dominant idea is that event A leads to B leads to C etc. I do not think that progression is justified. The past no longer exists, so how can something that does not exist act on that which currently does exist? I do not have the answer. I find the problem interesting. (You may recall my previous thread about the discontinuity of reality at the Plank Scale.)

Instead, I see the relation of cause and effect as one of identity. The lighted match being the cause of the fire and the fire being the effect of the match are actually the same condition differently described.

I'm still well and truly stumped on that thread you made!

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Dont forget, Christ healed lepars, brought a man back from the dead after he began to decompose, scraped scales of the eye balls of the blind, reconstituted withered limbs, even reattached a severed appendage, among hundreds if not thousands of other things. I would assume being resurrected had something to do with that power he had or had access to.

All of what was done is indeed explainable. Just maybe not to where any of us can explain or even comprehend the explaination even if we heard it. Isn't it a little presumptuous to think that just because something can be explained you are smart enough to decipher what has been explained to you?

Can you blame me for trying?

[fr0d0]

By human logic the supernatural is undetectable. Our world views determine our interpretation of events. What to you would be coincidence to me would be God working. You would never _know_ either way.

[FallentoReason]

By human logic the supernatural is undetectable. Our world views determine our interpretation of events. What to you would be coincidence to me would be God working. You would never _know_ either way.

I'll remember to praise Allah next time I find my keys

You know, what I find rich is that from my experience of testimonies about miracles, God *always* seems to accomplish the things that are within human reach: "thank you God for that A in my assignment!", "thank you God for that job promotion!", but when you see those truly hurting, truly praying for God's glory to shine through healing them of a life-long disease, God isn't anywhere to be found. Only after surgery does God get a pat on the back, after *humans* did 100% of the work.

No. If God *really* acted in our universe, it would be obvious. Freaking space-time would warp around the kid who got prayed for because of a broken leg. The unbelievable would happen before people's eyes just like it did in the Bible. But of course you can't accept this view, because you need to find a way of having your cake and eating it. "God acts supernaturally" and "the supernatural looks ambiguous" don't fit what we read in the Bible *whatsoever*, but it fits your perception of reality in a way that allows you have your cake and eat it.

[Edwardo Piet]

fr0d0, you already admit to believing in the unverifiable anyway, come up with a sound premise before you attempt to present a valid argument, please.

[NoraBrimstone]

Dont forget, Christ healed lepars, brought a man back from the dead after he began to decompose, scraped scales of the eye balls of the blind, reconstituted withered limbs, even reattached a severed appendage, among hundreds if not thousands of other things. I would assume being resurrected had something to do with that power he had or had access to.

So, was he more like David Blaine or Dynamo? They do pretty cool tricks like that, too.

Don't you think it a little weird that a supposedly good man with all these magical powers of healing didn't heal all the lepers? Whoever wrote that particular story didn't understand the concept of magical healing powers, or "good people".

[Edwardo Piet]

Drich would never be suspicious of God's existence because God might punish him if he did so.

[Cyberman]

Don't you think it a little weird that a supposedly good man with all these magical powers of healing didn't heal all the lepers? Whoever wrote that particular story didn't understand the concept of magical healing powers, or "good people".

Right. The character only healed the people he happened to bump into, instead of curing all leprosy, all blindness, raising all the dead etc. That would at least be more impressive than some peripatetic wizard working his wonders while trying (and succeeding) not to be noticed by history.

Ah, but then we have to face the inevitable question of why miracles on this scale are not seen today. No wonder the faithful have to rely solely on a book to underpin their faith. Their god is known to act solely within its pages.