Are miracles evidence of the existence of God?

[Porcupine]

There are clearly things that gods just can't do.  Some are explicit.  The bronze age god in question told his followers that they were on their own against enemies with iron, for example.  The others are apparent.  That god fails to exert control over much, if anything, in our world is something that must be contended with by any genuine and well developed theology.  

It shouldn't be confusing when someone suggests that god may not have the control required for omnipotence.  That's a good example of people trying to figure out what kind of god that a god must be in this world, in this reality.  Of making god match facts on the ground.  God, in that conception, is a bit like Cassandra.  It knows everything, it wants the best, but it simply can;t effect those outcomes or forestall the worst in a world full of free agents who do not deign to do it's will or heed it's warnings.

If a being was not omnipotent but nevertheless very powerful .... it would only make sense for so much power to go to a being's head.

A God that believes that it is all-powerful has got to be a lot less improbable than a God that actually is all-powerful.

Power inflates egos. So if there was a Yahweh I can see why he would be so full of himself even though he's a total douche (I like to understate things).

[The Grand Nudger]

How would a god even know what it could and couldn't do? I don't mean to suggest that it's impossible to know, but working out the details can be illustrative. We learn what we can and cant do by trying and succeeding, or failing. How would a god learn that it could destroy a world, or couldn't, outside of trying it out? Maybe god is learning on the job.

If we add personality traits to the mix, if we imagine god is generally good in the sense that goofy apes like us use the term, then it stands to reason that there would be some situations involving power and the exploration of power that are relatable to us. A god might wonder whether it could do a thing, generally assume it's capable of doing the thing, but be unwilling to explore that intuition to determine whether or not it qualifies as knowledge. Omnibenevolence necessarily constrains omniscience and omnipotence. There must be things about such a god that even that god doesn't know, and is incapable of exploring for some reason or no reason at all.

[ignoramus]

Listening to the conversation.

Just like to add: (Not that any actual God would pop in to downtown Jerusalem to have a chat, or even send his hippie son), but what is insane to me is why would those in power at the time actually listen to God who makes rules for man if they cannot profit from it or at least maintain a tighter control. Assholes ain't gonna become nice blokes overnight. In fact, even if "God" did come down, his words would have been completely brutalized anyway to suit man's narrative the minute God left. So basically, if we did have one chance (first contact with divinity), well we blew it.
Did we really expect much more from barbaric raping goat herders.

We're just entertaining the notion here. I don't think any of us think for a sec that we were visited by aliens 2000 years ago who dropped off the "idiots guide to living".

[Porcupine]

How would a god even know what it could and couldn't do?  I don't mean to suggest that it's impossible to know, but working out the details can be illustrative.  We learn what we can and cant do by trying and succeeding, or failing.  How would a god learn that it could destroy a world, or couldn't, outside of trying it out?  Maybe god is learning on the job.  

Great point.

I guess I could believe he could have absolute knowledge of things he hasn't tried out by having absolute counterfactual knowledge if I actually believed in the existence of non-abstract counterfactuals but I don't. So, I guess to believe that omniscience is even metaphysically possible we would have to be a counterfactual platonist. So even the potentiality of such omniscience would require the actuality of a very specific sort of platonism that, to me personally, seems like an especially silly sort of platonism (and that's saying something).

[The Grand Nudger]

More likely, as with all of these omnis, we turn them into terms of art. No commitment to any sort of platonism required. Hell, no commitment to talking good and everythinng.

Or, as we prefer to say it, to a serious theologian, water might mean sand and sand might mean water and we shouldn't expect any term to mean what we think it means. They don't have in mind what a straightforward reading of the terms involved would seem to express.