What would you do if you found out God existed

[Catholic_Lady]

Well, dont we know through science that natural disasters are caused by winds, temperature fronts, tectonic plate movements, etc? Don't we know that murderers, and other evil acts are caused by people, not some magical force? Perhaps there are some religions that believe God causes all that in some supernatural way, but I can't speak to that because it isn't what I believe.

I do believe there have been instances of miracles, yes. In those cases God is intervening. But i do think these miracles are extremely rare, and they are the exception, not the rule. If God were to intervene every time something bad was about to happen, we'd be puppets  living in a very different world I think.

We only determine something is a miracle when there is no other possible explanation for it. Example, a man suffers from severe headaches and seizures. He has a mass in his brain consistent with a stage 4 brain tumor as seen by multiple doctors in various imaging tests, MRI, and CT scans. He goes to a church and prayes his heart out. The next day he has another appointment and more imaging tests are done in preparation for surgery. The mass is completely gone, when it was just there a few days before. He hadnt yet started any sort of treatment yet. The surgery is cancelled. His headache is gone, and he never again suffers another seizure. A case like that would get investigated for the possibility of being a miracle, and may be officially proclaimed as one.

I guess some people are very quick to call every little thing a miracle when it could have just been good luck, but there's nothing official about that, so I can't really comment on it. I'm not one of those people.

Fair enough, but how do you determine that we've exhausted every other possible explanation?  Especially when considering the miracles that have happened more than a century ago, when our knowledge of science was nothing compared to what it is today (and going back further it gets even worse), were those people with their limited knowledge validated in concluding that they had run out of every other possible explanation?  Would someone today be reasonable in saying they've run out of every other possible explanation, if a new explanation might be around the corner in 20 years with new technology?  That's the big issue I have with calling anything a miracle, even if it's an event that seems miraculous to us at this point in time, because we don't know what sort of new investigative abilities we'll have in the future - it seems premature.

And you mentioned determining the cause of weather/murder/etc.  There are plenty of events that could be explained by natural/material forces that are still held up as miracles, even 'official' miracles accepted by the Catholic Church.  For example, the miracle recognized by the Vatican for Mother Teresa's canonization beatification was the apparently miraculous healing of an Indian woman's abdominal tumor after she rubbed a picture of Mother Teresa over the area.  She was being treated by doctors and was undergoing therapy for her disease for nearly a year, and even her husband said the miracle is a hoax, and that the thing that cured her was modern medicine (conveniently, the medical records were confiscated by the Missionaries of Charity).  

The above 'miracle' is officially recognized by the Catholic Church - but it seems to fit your description of something that is NOT a miracle - we have a physical, material explanation with a mechanism for how the result (tumor healed) was achieved.  Do you think the Catholic church was wrong in considering this a miracle?  Could you give an example of a miracle that you consider to be genuine?

EDIT - beatification, not canonization

I guess it's impossible to determine that. Maybe 100 years from now we will discover that a certain type of scent immediately makes brain tumors go away if we inhale it or something lol. And that's why the guy in my example was spontaneously cured. I haven't looked into nor am I familiar with many Church approved miracles, but if I had to guess I'd say some of them were probably caused by completely natural causes. I definitely do believe in the Fatima sun miracle. I see what you mean about proclaiming something a miracle "prematurely", and considering we will never understand everything about the world, every miracle made official will be premature in that sense. I suppose for lack of a better way to put it, it's "harmless" to believe that something was a miracle. With the exception of the miracles of Jesus, the immaculate conception, and others in the Gospel, official miracles are still not dogmatic. This means that they are not infallible teaching that all faithful Catholics must adhere to. Actually it's perfectly fine for a Catholic not to believe in the Fatima miracle or any other miracle of the like. Probably for the very reason you listed.    

I'm not too familiar with the abdominal tumor miracle, but I'll look into it and let you know what I think. The "rule" for officiating a miracle like that is that there cannot be possibility of the cure being caused by medical treatment. So it strikes me as strange that they'd officiate it.

[FatAndFaithless]

Fair enough, but how do you determine that we've exhausted every other possible explanation?  Especially when considering the miracles that have happened more than a century ago, when our knowledge of science was nothing compared to what it is today (and going back further it gets even worse), were those people with their limited knowledge validated in concluding that they had run out of every other possible explanation?  Would someone today be reasonable in saying they've run out of every other possible explanation, if a new explanation might be around the corner in 20 years with new technology?  That's the big issue I have with calling anything a miracle, even if it's an event that seems miraculous to us at this point in time, because we don't know what sort of new investigative abilities we'll have in the future - it seems premature.

And you mentioned determining the cause of weather/murder/etc.  There are plenty of events that could be explained by natural/material forces that are still held up as miracles, even 'official' miracles accepted by the Catholic Church.  For example, the miracle recognized by the Vatican for Mother Teresa's canonization beatification was the apparently miraculous healing of an Indian woman's abdominal tumor after she rubbed a picture of Mother Teresa over the area.  She was being treated by doctors and was undergoing therapy for her disease for nearly a year, and even her husband said the miracle is a hoax, and that the thing that cured her was modern medicine (conveniently, the medical records were confiscated by the Missionaries of Charity).  

The above 'miracle' is officially recognized by the Catholic Church - but it seems to fit your description of something that is NOT a miracle - we have a physical, material explanation with a mechanism for how the result (tumor healed) was achieved.  Do you think the Catholic church was wrong in considering this a miracle?  Could you give an example of a miracle that you consider to be genuine?

EDIT - beatification, not canonization

I guess it's impossible to determine that. Maybe 100 years from now we will discover that a certain type of scent immediately makes brain tumors go away if we inhale it or something lol. And that's why the guy in my example was spontaneously cured. I haven't looked into nor am I familiar with many Church approved miracles, but if I had to guess I'd say some of them were probably caused by completely natural causes. I definitely do believe in the Fatima sun miracle. I see what you mean about proclaiming something a miracle "prematurely", and considering we will never understand everything about the world, every miracle made official will be premature in that sense. I suppose for lack of a better way to put it, it's "harmless" to believe that something was a miracle. With the exception of the miracles of Jesus, the immaculate conception, and others in the Gospel, official miracles are still not dogmatic. This means that they are not infallible teaching that all faithful Catholics must adhere to. Actually it's perfectly fine for a Catholic not to believe in the Fatima miracle or any other miracle of the like. Probably for the very reason you listed.    

I'm not too familiar with the abdominal tumor miracle, but I'll look into it and let you know what I think. The "rule" for officiating a miracle like that is that there cannot be possibility of the cure being caused by medical treatment. So it strikes me as strange that they'd officiate it.

Bolded mine - that's pretty much what I was getting at, yeah. If one can't definitively prove that there is no other explanation, then one is not justified in citing god as a cause, and unjustified in calling it a miracle.

I don't really agree that its completely harmless though, since any misinformation or support for a flawed way of thinking or making decisions is undesirable in and of itself, in my opinion, and could be the basis for flawed thinking in making other decisions as well. But that's a discussion for another time.

Just on the tumor miracle - the doctors said her recovery was nothing abnormal and followed the expected response to treatment that they'd done before - not a single one of the medical staff responded to the Vatican's call for someone to support it as a miracle. That's just the most blatant one that comes to my mind, I'm sure other people are more informed on other miracles.

[Catholic_Lady]

[FatAndFaithless]

[Catholic_Lady]

[henryp]

You can excuse those things without God with little difficulty by simply not believing people are inherently important.


The trick is reconciling God who allegedly believes people are inherently important and the actions.  I can't do it.  But I can't do a lot of things.  And that's in the real world, let alone a hypothetical world involving infinite amounts of things I can't know.

---

This is the big joke at the end of the rainbow.  The truth, like everything else, doesn't mean shit.  You do not get bonus extra points on your deathbed if you spent your life seeking the truth rather than believing nonsense.

You do. Truth causes awereness - whatever comes at the other side can be better dealt with if Your mental faculties have developed.

My bad.  I responded to your post not realizing you were christian rather than atheist.  As a theist, you obviously should be searching for the truth so you can better serve God and stuff.  My remark was about Atheists who make a big deal about the truth.

[FatAndFaithless]

[Catholic_Lady]

Yeah if they truly believe this was a miracle and the medical records back that up, it seems they'd release them to the public with Monica Besra's permission.

[FatAndFaithless]

Yeah if they truly believe this was a miracle and the medical records back that up, it seems they'd release them to the public with Monica Besra's permission.

And it's not like I can ever make the claim "there was absolutely no intervention by the spirit of Mother Teresa"...because I don't know how on earth I would provide evidence for that.  I just find their purported explanation really unjustified.

[Catholic_Lady]