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Again, in Lee Strobel's book, The Case For Faith, he asks: <BR> <BR>"Does a person have to suspend their critical judgement in order to bleieve in something as improbable as miracles?" <BR> <BR>His interview with religious scholar William Lane Craig, Ph.D , Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California is discussed relative to the starting question on miracles.
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Why the need to "explain" miracles? Either one believes in them, or doesn't. What sort of "proof" is sufficient to change from a miracle to a natural event?
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Craig defines Miracle as: <BR> <BR>"A miracle is an event which is not producible by the natural causes that are operative at the time and place that the event occurs." <BR> <BR>Atheistic philosopher Michael Ruse said,"Creationists believe the world started miraculously. But miracles lie outside of science, which by definition deals with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law." <BR> <BR>Craig says, "Notice that Ruse does not say miracles are contradictory to science. He says miracles lie outside of science,and that's quite different. I think a Christian who believes in miracles could agree with him on that. He could say that miracles, properly speaking, lie outside the province of natural science - but that is not to say they contradict science."
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If miracles actually were "events" they would be able to be studied and tested. <BR> <BR>Seems like nowadays the only miracles you hear about are in the mud hut zones where video cameras are in short supply but superstition abounds. <BR> <BR>Bob, could you give a recent example of a miracle which has no plausible natural explanation? <BR> <BR>I recently saw Criss Angel walk on water and turn water into wine. Were they miracles? No, he is a descendant of the Magi of Jesus' birth- a Magician.
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I have not had very good luck with miracles in my life. <BR> <BR>Miracles are never fair. All of us have heard about the plane accident where a person, at the last minute, decided not to get on the flight that later killed all passengers on board. Why didn't all the people decide not to get on the plane? Why a miracle for only one passenger? Who decides who is healed after prayer? Most aren't healed. Only occasionly does a person survive after prayer. <BR> <BR>My middle daughter died of cancer at 28. After many, many prayers for healing by a lot of us. I remember praying with her the 91st Psalm while we waited for the ambulance that took her to the hospital. She died a few hours later. How come some are healed, but not my young daughter leaving her two little children for my husband and I to raise? <BR> <BR>Miracles are discriminating and not very fair. <BR> <BR>If there are miracles, they are the wonderful doctors who do the impossible for many, many people. Doctors are miracles if there are miracles. <BR> <BR>renie
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Renie, <BR> <BR>Such sad stories like yours abound. Those who frequently request prayer for healing may pray all they wish, but if prayer has ever cured someone that is totally attributable to prayer and no medical assistance, this is the forum to which it should be posted.
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The point was that the virgin birth was a miracle and that it is not untrue because it does not meet scientific retestable standards. It is not saying that sin does not cause cancer or choice and chance do not cause death. <BR> <BR>The splitting of the Red Sea, was a miracle that is not retestable. It is a miracle, the Flood and Creation are miracles. They are part of our history. They do not fit the rules of Science, that does not make them untrue or unbelieveable.
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<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>Atheists themselves used to be very comfortable in maintaining that the universe is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that they can no longer hold that postion becasue of modern evidence that the universe started with the Big Bang. So they can't legitimately object when I make the same claim about God - he is eternal and he is uncaused. - William Lane Craig, Ph.D<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
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<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>So they can't legitimately object when I make the same claim about God - he is eternal and he is uncaused.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <BR> <BR>Hey, Bob, you finally stepped in something that is correct! <BR> <BR>Only problem, it removes you 'watchmaker' argument. <BR> <BR>Sorry buddy.
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I believe He intervenes, the watchmaker theory believes, it is made and left alone. I don't.
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<font color="0000ff">I believe He intervenes</font> <BR> <BR>I can believe in VOODOO. Doesn't make it so. <BR> <BR>So what.
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You said it removes my watchmaker argument. I don't know that I used it. I believe God intervenes. Like creation, like a flood. He doesn't just make the watch and watch it tick.
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Neal, your signature quote is good, keep using it. Because when God created man in His image, freewill was part of the image. I like you using it, good deal.
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<font color="0000ff">Flood and Creation are miracles. They are part of our history.</font> <BR> <BR>more appropriately, they are part of Hebrew mythology, probably borrowed from older Babylonian myths, adapted and adjusted to make the hebrews appear more important to world history than their tiny tribe of nomads actually was. In a continuing attempt to prove their divine claim to ownership of the Holy Land.... <BR> <BR>...Adam, and later Noah, were purported to be fathers of the entire world.....all Hebrew ancestors... <BR> <BR>...even tho Issac was Olde Abe's 2nd son, after Ismael, whose decendants also claim the Holy land, the Hebrews use their ancestry back to Olde Abe as a reason to dispossess their cousins decendants. <BR> <BR>...with the Hebrew lineage deriving thru Jacob, via a stolen birthright, even tho Esau should have been the patriarch....except Jacob had stuck his hand out during birth before the delivery of Esau!!!! (an old wives tale if ever there was one!!! by a wife who wanted her son to get the fathers goats and birthright...and who even helped cheat the old man) <BR> <BR>...might be good to remember the tale of Sargon's reed basket trip down the river was a thousand years older than Moses tale.... <BR> <BR>...and all these efforts may even have resulted in the Hebrews belatedly resorting to fabricating the tale of Lots incestuous romp in the cave with his daughters... in order to justify killing the Moabite decendants and taking their land, but saving and "using" the virgins. <BR> <BR>a lot of the Old Texts can be reasonably understood without resort to magic or miracles..... <BR> <BR> <BR><img src="http://www.atomorrow.net/discus/messages/16/862.jpg" alt="">
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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John, same old story. Known of the Bible was orginal, all copied from pagan sources. You part of The Emerging Church. Multiple gods, copying pagan ideas. Everything evil. You swallowing all this?
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the biggest miracle no longer believed? <BR> <BR>Joshua's long day...with the sun going backwards in its daily trek over the flat earth. <BR> <BR>It is even celebrated as the Poem of Jassur... <BR> <BR>to even appeal to the most scientifically ignorant today, one must redefine that tale as the jingoistic war chant or theatrical celebration of a tribe of nomads who thought their god was on their side as they tried to kill their neighbors and take their land, and "use" their virgins. <BR> <BR>the longer Christianity tries to hang on to such <BR>tales as always literal and inerrantly required for salvation, the smaller will become the churches influence, and the less valued will become its other, more beneficial values, ethics, and ideas.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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John for your reading pleasure: <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2189" target=_top>http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2189</a>
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Bob <BR> <BR>From your Apologetics Press link:<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>If each solution has difficulties, what is one to make of the event? Primarily this: it was a miracle.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <BR> <BR>The simplest explanation (and the correct one via Occam's razor) is that they were stoned. The perception of time is impeded in someone that is stoned. There is evidence that these guys were a bunch of stoners and it explains the story perfectly. <BR> <BR>The only other possible explanation, now that we know the earth is spinning at 1000 miles per hour, is that the earth was stopped. This is not possible. I realize the goat herders thought the earth was stationary but they were wrong. About a lot of things. <BR> <BR>(Message edited by neal on March 24, 2009)
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Bob's link: <BR><font color="0000ff">Joshua prayed for divine assistance, and he received it. An omnipotent God could have helped in any way He chose</font>.... <BR> <BR>but instead of trying other options, such as bringing on a drought, forcing the inhabitants to leave, thereby allowing a peaceful takeover of the Holy Land by the hebrews, according to the tale as told by the Hebrews, the God of the Universe used a miracle, upsetting the motion of the universe, overturning the laws of inertia, temporarily overcoming gravity, taking time off from running things out there, and thereby allowing asteroids to crash into the earth and moon, and galaxies to go astray and collide with each other, stars to blow up as super novas, the one in 1987 being 170,000 light years away!!!! <BR>meaning, it first happened 170,000 yrs ago, and it took that long for the light to reach us!!! <BR> <BR>and the reason? <BR> <BR>to help a small, insignificant tribe of nomads KILL more of their neighbors, and take their land, and use their virgins. <BR> <BR>if you believe the people who wrote the exaggerated story.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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If God created all the moving parts of the Universe, He sure, in my book, can find a way to give the appearance of an elongated day.
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...but why would a loving God do that, just to give His favorite tribe more time to massacre more people? <BR> <BR>isnt is so much easier to believe this tale as an exaggerated war story? told in theater? the poem of Jassur? <BR> <BR>that way you don't have to strain belief by assuming God would disorder the universe just for this massacre, <BR> <BR>and <BR> <BR>you no longer have to believe God actually assisted in killing people justto help the Israelites.... they did it on their own, and probably exaggerated things in the process....
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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God disrupted the earth to destroy the wicked by flood and by fire at Sodom. That is the cultural way back then to describe things. You should be able to relate. Since Vietnam, we try to not go into a war we can't win. Iraq has been a challenge but each generation learns something or should from the previous one. There was a land promise given, that meant He/God meant to displace someone for His chosen people. What is so strange about that. It turns out if you read the context, usually the people that Israel was up against were blatantly evil, and as the Bible says, "The fullness of time had come."
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And it was the victors who wrote the story. The Bible is a very biased story always attributing miracles to God, or the natural disasters were also His doing. It's the "one answer fits-all" theory. <BR> <BR>Not unusual in an early preliterate society. The surrounding cultures also had gods and they gave them credit or blame for actions over which they had not control. It made sense to them with their worldview. <BR> <BR>That it seems to make sense to moderns today should be an embarrassment to those who have not yet welcomed the 20th century, never mind the 21st. <BR> <BR>When you need medical advice, to be consistent, you should seek the local priest and listen to advice: perhaps to offer a bullock would be appropriate, or maybe quarantine you for several weeks or months unti you were not longer "active." <BR> <BR>Two cents that you do NOT refer to the Bible for medical diagnosis and treatment. Yet, you reject the other scientific discoveries, or do you?
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If I can make sense of your point, Modern Medicine is what it is. God did use miracles, possibly natural disasters, that appeared as miracles but they were not something that they could have predicted or brought about themselves.
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Strobel continues: <BR> <BR><blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>J.P Moreland, the noted philosopher who wrote Christiantiy and the Nature of Science... used an illustration of the law of gravity, which says that if you drop an object, it will fall to the earth. But, he said, if an apple falls from a tree and you reach out to catch it before it hits the ground, you're not violating or negating the law of gravity; you're merely intervening. <BR> <BR>[Craig responded] "Yes, that's my point with the <i>ceteris paribus</i> conditions. The law of gravity states what will happen under idealized conditions with no natural or supernatural factors intervening. Catching the apple doesn't overturn the law of gravity or require the formulation of a new law. It's merely the intervention of a person with free will who overrides the natural causes operative in theat particular circumstance. And that, essentially, is what God does when he causes a miracle to occur." <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
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