When something highly improbable happens that yields a happy result, we call it a miracle.
The first problem with this is obvious: some pretty terrible, highly improbable events also occur. Surely, you can think of enough examples on your own that I don’t have to name them here. Do you assign god the responsibility for these “anti-miracles” as well? You could take the lazy route and say Satan did it. But, as a miracle is by definition a suspension somehow of the natural order, then you are according Satan divine power, which goes against most Christian theology. Or perhaps you could say, “God allowed Satan do it.” First of all, god would have to imbue Satan with divine power before he'd even be capable of the anti-miraculous. Therefore, I argue that’s just semantics and, if true, all the blame for all the improbable bad should still fall squarely at god’s feet.
Furthermore, I notice that there are never any documented miracles that are truly miraculous. Everything falls somewhere on the spectrum of possibility, even if improbable. Miracles that are truly impossible, or that truly violate that laws of the universe, are never documented well enough to be validated or supported. Imagine that. I was told by some members of a Pentecostal youth group once that they succeeded in raising a man from the dead, only to have him die again 24 hours later. Riiiiiiight. What kind of absurdity is that BS?
Of course, the Absence of Miracles in Pentecostal circles is just as important as a miracle itself. One never wants to waste the chance to tell people how weak their faith is since they weren’t healed! How else should they keep everyone scared and in church every week? It as almost as if the word “evidence” doesn’t even exist to those kinds of believers.
Additionally, the definition of a miracle is itself a moving goal post. A child survives a plane crash with only third degree burns—miracle! (Never mind the 140 who died and the fact that a better miracle would’ve been if the plane had kept flying in spite of a malfunction that should cause it to crash. Funny how you don’t hear about those miracles very often.) And above what threshold of improbability do we actually declare something a miracle and not just lucky? It’s a moving goal post, so that whether we discover a reason for an apparently miraculous event or whether it stays a mystery, the believer is insulated from criticism either way. “It’s a miracle!” can easily be turned into, “Well, how lucky in any case!” Christian’s aren’t even embarrassed to make these kinds of equivocations. That’s serious evidence of cognitive dissonance.
Moreover, if a child falls off a carnival ride and dies, then god is just “mysterious.” It is all very convenient—so convenient it almost feels designed that way, so you can never pin the believer down on just what god is and isn’t responsible for. It reeks of snake oil salesmanship.
Another argument against the miraculous that most believers don’t seem to recognize is that, if a true miracle has occurred (the laws of the universe have been in someway suspended or altered just to benefit one person or group of people at one point in time), then all the explanations for how it may NOT have been a miracle need to be LESS believable than that it was a genuine miracle. In other words, if you said to me, “I prayed really hard and a dead person came back to life,” then it would have to be LESS probable that you could have been mistaken, or self-deluded, or lied to yourself, or deliberately deceitful, or maybe he wasn’t even really dead, than that a person was truly raised from the dead. This is required by the very definition of a miracle. If there is any possibility a miracle truly did NOT occur, then we are fairly safe in concluding no miracle occurred.
I think people have a fantastically hard time comprehending probability as a real-life concept. The fact that highly improbable bad things happen as well as good things is just proof that all these things lie on the same spectrum of “things that are possible.” And whatever is possible will happen, given enough time. That is probability. We should still celebrate when it falls in our favor!
Board index ‹ Miracles
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Re: Miracles do not occur
by jimwalton » Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:40 pm
It's impossible for your to substantiate your thesis. A supposed universal proposition like "all swans are white" cannot be logically proved, no matter how many sans we see, but it can be logically *disproved* by the observation of a single black swan. Your thesis of "miracles do not occur" cannot be proved.
The first step in any discussion about miracles is to define a miracle. Some philosophers say that it is an occurrence contrary to nature ("a suspension of the natural order"), but we shouldn’t be so quick to embrace that definition and then find our hands tied by our own definition. The Bible never claims that God violated the laws he himself imposed on the world. Maybe a miracle is God working with the laws of nature rather than against them, just in a different manner and on a different time scale. C.S. Lewis, for one, said that miracles were just nature on a different time continuum, like fast forward. He said water always turns to wine; it just usually takes four months instead of one second; human bodies have the capability to heal, just not instantaneously at the word of the Master. So what is a miracle?
The Cambridge Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (pg. 208) defines a miracle as "An event (ultimately) caused by God that cannot be accounted for by the natural powers of natural substances alone. Conceived of this way, miracles don’t violate the laws of nature but rather involve the occurrence of events which cannot be explained by the powers of nature alone." That's an acceptable definition, but I would tentatively define miracle as "a supernatural exception to the regularity and predictability of the universe, and therefore it is not a common (this term needs to be interpreted) occurrence." Maybe the laws of nature speak of naturally recurring events, and miracles speak of supernaturally nonrecurring events. After all, the laws of nature are not really laws, but rather more accurately forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong field forces) and constructs (velocity, mass, energy, acceleration). Einstein's theory of relativity lets us know that velocity makes a difference in reality and can come into play in ways we are still deciphering. It’s quite possible that God has forces as yet unknown to us, and can manipulate velocity, as well as other forces, to initiate relative states.
Secondly, we should realize that science cannot prove that miracles are impossible. After all, science can only speak to what is within the purview of scientific observation and the study of nature. Anything outside of that ballpark is outside of its scope. Science can't prove to us whether entities exist outside of nature, and whether or not those entities could possibly have an influence in our natural world.
Since a miracle, by any definition, is a once only, nonrecurring event, it is outside the scope of science (which can only observe and test recurring sequences) and naturalistic evidence. Miracles can only be proven in two ways: (1) that they can be shown to be logically consistent with the physical world—the way things are, or (2) by enough corroborating, credible eyewitnesses to substantiate the claim being made.
If I put $20 in your pocket today, and then another $20 in there tomorrow, logic and reason would tell me that there will be $40 in your pocket. And of course that's true, provided that no one has meddled in your pocket. So one of the first things to establish when we discuss the possibility of miracles is to find out whether your presuppositions have ruled out all "meddling" by definition. In that case, of course miracles are impossible to prove. You have made it impossible by your arbitrary definition. The second thing to notice is that nature is full of once-only, non-recurring events, such as the cosmic blast that happened in Russia in 2013. It would be sort of foolish for a group of scientists to gather there saying, "C'mon, do it again!"
As far as the second, if you have enough trustworthy people whose eyewitness accounts corroborate with each other, even though the event may not repeat, it could be considered to be accepted as reality. Even our courts rely on such testimony as acceptable.
There is no philosophical argument or scientific experiment that conclusively disproves the possibility of miracles. Scientifically speaking, the odds of certain miracles occurring (such as the resurrection) may be infinity to one, but theologically speaking they are x:x (unknown to unknown). Miracles are outside of the scope of probability calculations. But realistically, the question (and possibly your question) is not so much "Can they occur?" but "Do they occur?" Anyone will admit that scientists exclude the miraculous from their scientific work, which they are entitled to do. But that's because if a scientist tried to offer a miraculous explanation for something, he or she would no longer be doing science, but something else, like theology or philosophy. Miracles are inadmissible as scientific evidence because they are unpredictable, not able to be compared with a control group, and unrepeatable for confirmatory studies.
Ultimately you are asking the wrong question of the wrong discipline. Science can really only work in a uniform environment that is predictable, repeatable, and (in this situation) controllable (a control group and an experimental group). Evidentiary demands require some sort of material remains that allow a phenomenon to be studied, but this requirement is outside of the sphere of what we mean by "miracle." Miracles are not predictable (so the situation can't be intentionally studied before the event), reproducible (so the situation can't be tested again to confirm hypotheses), nor controllable (cannot isolate causal mechanisms).
Science is appropriate when dealing with repeatable (reproducible) phenomena that can be studied under controlled conditions and give confirmatory results. One time events that were not predictable and don’t leave behind any material evidence can’t possibly fall under that category. Suppose you had a sneezing fit a few weeks back. I want you to quantify it and analyze it, or better yet, prove to me that it happened. That's not possible' Should I then assume you never sneeze, never sneezed, and that you’re wrong until you can prove it? What evidence do you have that you had a sneezing fit? Or walked around the mall last month? Or saw a mountain lion? We have to use the proper measure for the proper category. And science is not the proper measure for understanding or proving miracles. Even in the area of astronomy, for instance, where some phenomena are one-time only events, to study them scientifically requires multiple repeatable examples that can be observed and compared/contrasted. Again, miracles don't fall into this category.
In short, the bottom line is that knowledge is not one-dimensional. The methods of evidentiary scientific study are not applicable to much of our knowledge, including the occasion of miracles. Attempting to extend scientific evidence as the grounds of all knowledge is doomed to failure in many arenas, not just this one. To presume that anything remaining outside of science’s scope fails to qualify as knowledge is not justified by science or any other argument, and is, in fact, self-contradictory.
Can anyone prove that a once-only nonrecurring event is a miracle from God or not? No, because either way it's an interpretation of what one has seen or experienced. We all decide based on what we determine to be consistent with our understanding of the world and the evidences on which we build those understandings.
Let’s talk a little bit about Newtonian physics and miracles. People's main problem with miracles is that they mess with what people know about science, while at the same time requiring them (if accepted) to subscribe to metaphysical realities like spirits and spiritual forces. But if we are honest philosophers and scientists, we have to be open to reputable questions (as any scientist would ask): Why can't the causal continuum be interfered with by supernatural and transcendent powers? Why are miracles necessarily incompatible with modern science? A little probing will reveal that they are not. They are only incompatible if it can be proved that nature is a closed continuum of cause and effect, and closed to any intervention from outside that continuum. Classical (Newtonian) science is nowhere near sufficient for anti-interventionism. Newton himself believed that the laws he observed reflected the nature of what God had created. According to Newton, natural law describes how the world works when, or provided that, the world is a closed system, subject to no meddling. The Newtonian laws of physics only apply to isolated or closed systems, but there is nothing in them to say there is or can be no God who can intervene in such a system to make change to the matter or energy in question. Furthermore, it is not part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare that the material universe is a closed system— because that claim isn't scientific, but theological, philosophical, or metaphysical. The laws don’t tell us how things have to go, or even how they always go, but only how they go when no outside agency acts on them.
Interestingly, quantum mechanics offers even less of a problem for special divine action than classical science, since quantum mechanics is characterized by (among other things) indeterminism: a spectrum of probabilities to the possible outcomes. Quantum mechanics doesn't by necessity prohibit any answers to prayer, raising the dead, or walking on the water.
The first step in any discussion about miracles is to define a miracle. Some philosophers say that it is an occurrence contrary to nature ("a suspension of the natural order"), but we shouldn’t be so quick to embrace that definition and then find our hands tied by our own definition. The Bible never claims that God violated the laws he himself imposed on the world. Maybe a miracle is God working with the laws of nature rather than against them, just in a different manner and on a different time scale. C.S. Lewis, for one, said that miracles were just nature on a different time continuum, like fast forward. He said water always turns to wine; it just usually takes four months instead of one second; human bodies have the capability to heal, just not instantaneously at the word of the Master. So what is a miracle?
The Cambridge Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (pg. 208) defines a miracle as "An event (ultimately) caused by God that cannot be accounted for by the natural powers of natural substances alone. Conceived of this way, miracles don’t violate the laws of nature but rather involve the occurrence of events which cannot be explained by the powers of nature alone." That's an acceptable definition, but I would tentatively define miracle as "a supernatural exception to the regularity and predictability of the universe, and therefore it is not a common (this term needs to be interpreted) occurrence." Maybe the laws of nature speak of naturally recurring events, and miracles speak of supernaturally nonrecurring events. After all, the laws of nature are not really laws, but rather more accurately forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong field forces) and constructs (velocity, mass, energy, acceleration). Einstein's theory of relativity lets us know that velocity makes a difference in reality and can come into play in ways we are still deciphering. It’s quite possible that God has forces as yet unknown to us, and can manipulate velocity, as well as other forces, to initiate relative states.
Secondly, we should realize that science cannot prove that miracles are impossible. After all, science can only speak to what is within the purview of scientific observation and the study of nature. Anything outside of that ballpark is outside of its scope. Science can't prove to us whether entities exist outside of nature, and whether or not those entities could possibly have an influence in our natural world.
Since a miracle, by any definition, is a once only, nonrecurring event, it is outside the scope of science (which can only observe and test recurring sequences) and naturalistic evidence. Miracles can only be proven in two ways: (1) that they can be shown to be logically consistent with the physical world—the way things are, or (2) by enough corroborating, credible eyewitnesses to substantiate the claim being made.
If I put $20 in your pocket today, and then another $20 in there tomorrow, logic and reason would tell me that there will be $40 in your pocket. And of course that's true, provided that no one has meddled in your pocket. So one of the first things to establish when we discuss the possibility of miracles is to find out whether your presuppositions have ruled out all "meddling" by definition. In that case, of course miracles are impossible to prove. You have made it impossible by your arbitrary definition. The second thing to notice is that nature is full of once-only, non-recurring events, such as the cosmic blast that happened in Russia in 2013. It would be sort of foolish for a group of scientists to gather there saying, "C'mon, do it again!"
As far as the second, if you have enough trustworthy people whose eyewitness accounts corroborate with each other, even though the event may not repeat, it could be considered to be accepted as reality. Even our courts rely on such testimony as acceptable.
There is no philosophical argument or scientific experiment that conclusively disproves the possibility of miracles. Scientifically speaking, the odds of certain miracles occurring (such as the resurrection) may be infinity to one, but theologically speaking they are x:x (unknown to unknown). Miracles are outside of the scope of probability calculations. But realistically, the question (and possibly your question) is not so much "Can they occur?" but "Do they occur?" Anyone will admit that scientists exclude the miraculous from their scientific work, which they are entitled to do. But that's because if a scientist tried to offer a miraculous explanation for something, he or she would no longer be doing science, but something else, like theology or philosophy. Miracles are inadmissible as scientific evidence because they are unpredictable, not able to be compared with a control group, and unrepeatable for confirmatory studies.
Ultimately you are asking the wrong question of the wrong discipline. Science can really only work in a uniform environment that is predictable, repeatable, and (in this situation) controllable (a control group and an experimental group). Evidentiary demands require some sort of material remains that allow a phenomenon to be studied, but this requirement is outside of the sphere of what we mean by "miracle." Miracles are not predictable (so the situation can't be intentionally studied before the event), reproducible (so the situation can't be tested again to confirm hypotheses), nor controllable (cannot isolate causal mechanisms).
Science is appropriate when dealing with repeatable (reproducible) phenomena that can be studied under controlled conditions and give confirmatory results. One time events that were not predictable and don’t leave behind any material evidence can’t possibly fall under that category. Suppose you had a sneezing fit a few weeks back. I want you to quantify it and analyze it, or better yet, prove to me that it happened. That's not possible' Should I then assume you never sneeze, never sneezed, and that you’re wrong until you can prove it? What evidence do you have that you had a sneezing fit? Or walked around the mall last month? Or saw a mountain lion? We have to use the proper measure for the proper category. And science is not the proper measure for understanding or proving miracles. Even in the area of astronomy, for instance, where some phenomena are one-time only events, to study them scientifically requires multiple repeatable examples that can be observed and compared/contrasted. Again, miracles don't fall into this category.
In short, the bottom line is that knowledge is not one-dimensional. The methods of evidentiary scientific study are not applicable to much of our knowledge, including the occasion of miracles. Attempting to extend scientific evidence as the grounds of all knowledge is doomed to failure in many arenas, not just this one. To presume that anything remaining outside of science’s scope fails to qualify as knowledge is not justified by science or any other argument, and is, in fact, self-contradictory.
Can anyone prove that a once-only nonrecurring event is a miracle from God or not? No, because either way it's an interpretation of what one has seen or experienced. We all decide based on what we determine to be consistent with our understanding of the world and the evidences on which we build those understandings.
Let’s talk a little bit about Newtonian physics and miracles. People's main problem with miracles is that they mess with what people know about science, while at the same time requiring them (if accepted) to subscribe to metaphysical realities like spirits and spiritual forces. But if we are honest philosophers and scientists, we have to be open to reputable questions (as any scientist would ask): Why can't the causal continuum be interfered with by supernatural and transcendent powers? Why are miracles necessarily incompatible with modern science? A little probing will reveal that they are not. They are only incompatible if it can be proved that nature is a closed continuum of cause and effect, and closed to any intervention from outside that continuum. Classical (Newtonian) science is nowhere near sufficient for anti-interventionism. Newton himself believed that the laws he observed reflected the nature of what God had created. According to Newton, natural law describes how the world works when, or provided that, the world is a closed system, subject to no meddling. The Newtonian laws of physics only apply to isolated or closed systems, but there is nothing in them to say there is or can be no God who can intervene in such a system to make change to the matter or energy in question. Furthermore, it is not part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare that the material universe is a closed system— because that claim isn't scientific, but theological, philosophical, or metaphysical. The laws don’t tell us how things have to go, or even how they always go, but only how they go when no outside agency acts on them.
Interestingly, quantum mechanics offers even less of a problem for special divine action than classical science, since quantum mechanics is characterized by (among other things) indeterminism: a spectrum of probabilities to the possible outcomes. Quantum mechanics doesn't by necessity prohibit any answers to prayer, raising the dead, or walking on the water.
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Re: Miracles do not occur
by Ulysses » Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:10 pm
> The Bible never claims that God violated the laws he himself imposed on the world.
Really!? So the resurrection, virgin birth, feeding of the 5000, speaking in tongues, sending fire from heaven to swallow people up, turning the Nile to blood, parting the Red Sea, making the sun not to set for a day--none of these constitute god violating the laws he seems to have imposed on the world?
> It’s quite possible that God has forces as yet unknown to us, and can manipulate velocity, as well as other forces, to initiate relative states.
Possible. But there is no evidence for this.
> science can only speak to what is within the purview of scientific observation and the study of nature. Anything outside of that ballpark is outside of its scope.
Why? Because you say so? I think the fact that some people claim miracles occur with no good evidence is a very good topic for science to cover.
> Miracles can only be proven in two ways: (1) that they can be shown to be logically consistent with the physical world—the way things are, or (2) by enough corroborating, credible eyewitnesses to substantiate the claim being made.
So, in Case #1 you don't have a miracle. In Case #2, you've got to remember that it must be LESS PROBABLE that the eye witnesses were mistaken, confused, deceitful, or deceived than that the miraculous actually occurred. Otherwise we can simply say they were wrong. Eyewitness evidence is one of the weakest forms of evidence.
> There is no philosophical argument or scientific experiment that conclusively disproves the possibility of miracles.
Admittedly. But we can apply the same principles of reason we use in order to presume that unicorns and fairies--while they may exist--are so improbable that it is a waste to live our lives even for one minute as though they were real.
Really!? So the resurrection, virgin birth, feeding of the 5000, speaking in tongues, sending fire from heaven to swallow people up, turning the Nile to blood, parting the Red Sea, making the sun not to set for a day--none of these constitute god violating the laws he seems to have imposed on the world?
> It’s quite possible that God has forces as yet unknown to us, and can manipulate velocity, as well as other forces, to initiate relative states.
Possible. But there is no evidence for this.
> science can only speak to what is within the purview of scientific observation and the study of nature. Anything outside of that ballpark is outside of its scope.
Why? Because you say so? I think the fact that some people claim miracles occur with no good evidence is a very good topic for science to cover.
> Miracles can only be proven in two ways: (1) that they can be shown to be logically consistent with the physical world—the way things are, or (2) by enough corroborating, credible eyewitnesses to substantiate the claim being made.
So, in Case #1 you don't have a miracle. In Case #2, you've got to remember that it must be LESS PROBABLE that the eye witnesses were mistaken, confused, deceitful, or deceived than that the miraculous actually occurred. Otherwise we can simply say they were wrong. Eyewitness evidence is one of the weakest forms of evidence.
> There is no philosophical argument or scientific experiment that conclusively disproves the possibility of miracles.
Admittedly. But we can apply the same principles of reason we use in order to presume that unicorns and fairies--while they may exist--are so improbable that it is a waste to live our lives even for one minute as though they were real.
- Ulysses
Re: Miracles do not occur
by jimwalton » Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:30 pm
> Really!? So the resurrection...
There's a caterpillar in the Arctic tundra (the woolly bear caterpillar—Pyrrharctia Isabella; the Isabella Tiger moth) that freezes solid to the point where all life functions cease. The heart stops beating; no ingestion or excretion; no brain function; no respiration. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Is it against the laws of nature that the caterpillar does this?
> the virgin birth...
You no doubt have noticed that God still used the egg, body, and womb of a woman for this event. I'm not sure it's so much an act against nature as it was something added to nature.
> Feeding of the 5,000...
Again, maybe just a time issue rather than a violation of nature. Any homemaker can tell you about a "Friendship yeast starter." Bread makes more bread. Yeast grows, and a yeast ball, with added ingredients, can make more bread week after week after week. Maybe Christ accelerated time (as Einstein says is within what nature does).
> Fire from heaven to swallow people up...
An expansive and destructive lightning storm isn't a violation of nature. The miracle is possibly not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> Turning the Nile to blood
There could be several possible natural explanations for this. The miracle is possibly not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> Parting the Red Sea
The text specifically says a strong wind blew all night. The miracle is not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> making the sun not set for a day
This is a misunderstanding of the text. What the text really speaks of is omens, not a stalling of the sun. There's no violation of nature here.
> Possible. But there is no evidence for this.
But my point is there's no evidence against it. You can't justifiably conclude that miracles don't occur. That's all I'm saying.
> Why? Because you say so?
No. By definition and practice.
> So, in Case #1 you don't have a miracle.
Possibly you do. Miracles (such as the miracle of the falling of the walls of Jericho, which was probably a supernaturally-timed earthquake) can be totally natural events. all we need is one miracle (like one black swan) to nullify your case.
> In Case #2, you've got to remember that it must be LESS PROBABLE that the eye witnesses were mistaken, confused...
You can't begin to tell me that EVERY eyewitness ever was mistaken, confused, etc. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
> Eyewitness evidence is one of the weakest forms of evidence.
There are thousands of things we accept on the basis of eyewitness testimony: witnesses in a court of law (accepted), medical evaluation in hundreds of areas (location and intensity of pain, psychological analyses, talk therapy, etc.), what something tastes like, all expressions of our humanity (love, forgiveness, anger, fear, worry, hopes, dreams, etc.), consumer product reviews, critic reviews, expert review, news broadcasts (based on a journalist's notes of what someone said, history ( a lot of history is based on what someone wrote), surveys, and on and on and on.
The bottom line is, you cannot justify your thesis that miracles do not occur.
There's a caterpillar in the Arctic tundra (the woolly bear caterpillar—Pyrrharctia Isabella; the Isabella Tiger moth) that freezes solid to the point where all life functions cease. The heart stops beating; no ingestion or excretion; no brain function; no respiration. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Is it against the laws of nature that the caterpillar does this?
> the virgin birth...
You no doubt have noticed that God still used the egg, body, and womb of a woman for this event. I'm not sure it's so much an act against nature as it was something added to nature.
> Feeding of the 5,000...
Again, maybe just a time issue rather than a violation of nature. Any homemaker can tell you about a "Friendship yeast starter." Bread makes more bread. Yeast grows, and a yeast ball, with added ingredients, can make more bread week after week after week. Maybe Christ accelerated time (as Einstein says is within what nature does).
> Fire from heaven to swallow people up...
An expansive and destructive lightning storm isn't a violation of nature. The miracle is possibly not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> Turning the Nile to blood
There could be several possible natural explanations for this. The miracle is possibly not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> Parting the Red Sea
The text specifically says a strong wind blew all night. The miracle is not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
> making the sun not set for a day
This is a misunderstanding of the text. What the text really speaks of is omens, not a stalling of the sun. There's no violation of nature here.
> Possible. But there is no evidence for this.
But my point is there's no evidence against it. You can't justifiably conclude that miracles don't occur. That's all I'm saying.
> Why? Because you say so?
No. By definition and practice.
> So, in Case #1 you don't have a miracle.
Possibly you do. Miracles (such as the miracle of the falling of the walls of Jericho, which was probably a supernaturally-timed earthquake) can be totally natural events. all we need is one miracle (like one black swan) to nullify your case.
> In Case #2, you've got to remember that it must be LESS PROBABLE that the eye witnesses were mistaken, confused...
You can't begin to tell me that EVERY eyewitness ever was mistaken, confused, etc. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
> Eyewitness evidence is one of the weakest forms of evidence.
There are thousands of things we accept on the basis of eyewitness testimony: witnesses in a court of law (accepted), medical evaluation in hundreds of areas (location and intensity of pain, psychological analyses, talk therapy, etc.), what something tastes like, all expressions of our humanity (love, forgiveness, anger, fear, worry, hopes, dreams, etc.), consumer product reviews, critic reviews, expert review, news broadcasts (based on a journalist's notes of what someone said, history ( a lot of history is based on what someone wrote), surveys, and on and on and on.
The bottom line is, you cannot justify your thesis that miracles do not occur.
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Re: Miracles do not occur
by Ulysses » Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:40 pm
> There's a caterpillar in the Arctic tundra (the woolly bear caterpillar—Pyrrharctia Isabella; the Isabella Tiger moth) that freezes solid to the point where all life functions cease. The heart stops beating; no ingestion or excretion; no brain function; no respiration. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Is it against the laws of nature that the caterpillar does this?
Is this what happened to Jesus? Does this in any way relate to a human being tortured, crucified, stabbed in the side and buried being resurrected? They are not even similar.
Do you also believe in unicorns because they can't strictly be disproven? Or do you apply reason and probability to the existence of unicorns and fairies? Would you feel comfortable telling someone fairies don't exist? Based on what evidence?
What about Shiva? Does Shiva exist too?
Is this what happened to Jesus? Does this in any way relate to a human being tortured, crucified, stabbed in the side and buried being resurrected? They are not even similar.
Do you also believe in unicorns because they can't strictly be disproven? Or do you apply reason and probability to the existence of unicorns and fairies? Would you feel comfortable telling someone fairies don't exist? Based on what evidence?
What about Shiva? Does Shiva exist too?
- Ulysses
Re: Miracles do not occur
by jimwalton » Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:40 pm
> Is this what happened to Jesus?
Resurrection is what happened to Jesus. We don't know anything about the mechanism or the anatomical progression of events. Your point was that resurrection violated the laws of nature. I have shown you that it is consistent with at one example of what we find in nature.
> Do you also believe in unicorns because they can't strictly be disproven?
I don't. My point was the illogic of your statement "Miracles do not occur." It is not a thesis that can be substantiated.
> Does Shiva exist, too?
No.
Resurrection is what happened to Jesus. We don't know anything about the mechanism or the anatomical progression of events. Your point was that resurrection violated the laws of nature. I have shown you that it is consistent with at one example of what we find in nature.
> Do you also believe in unicorns because they can't strictly be disproven?
I don't. My point was the illogic of your statement "Miracles do not occur." It is not a thesis that can be substantiated.
> Does Shiva exist, too?
No.
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Re: Miracles do not occur
by Fluke » Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:50 pm
> There's a caterpillar in the Arctic tundra (the woolly bear caterpillar—Pyrrharctia Isabella; the Isabella Tiger moth) that freezes solid to the point where all life functions cease. The heart stops beating; no ingestion or excretion; no brain function; no respiration. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Is it against the laws of nature that the caterpillar does this?
I was unaware that Jesus was a caterpillar. Humans don't do this. Humans doing this goes against nature. Ergo, this goes against nature.
> You no doubt have noticed that God still used the egg, body, and womb of a woman for this event. I'm not sure it's so much an act against nature as it was something added to nature.
A human is developed from a sperm and an egg, each containing 23 chromosomes. Are you saying that jesus wasn't really human in that he only had half the chromosomes requires to become human (since he would inevitably be missing the Y chromosome). So, that Y chromosome had to come from somewhere. Since Y chromosomes don't just appear spontaneously in nature (conservation of energy and all that), this mysterious appearance of the Y chromosome is violating the laws of nature.
> Again, maybe just a time issue rather than a violation of nature. Any homemaker can tell you about a "Friendship yeast starter." Bread makes more bread. Yeast grows, and a yeast ball, with added ingredients, can make more bread week after week after week. Maybe Christ accelerated time (as Einstein says is within what nature does).
Time speeding up inside a basket would violate the laws of time. That basket would have to be moving quite quickly to have time speed up like that (it would also require constant energy input and heat, which probably weren't present). So that would violate the laws again.
The next two, I will let slide
> Parting the Red Sea
The text specifically says a strong wind blew all night. The miracle is not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
So you're saying a wind blew the two parts of the sea apart for just long enough for the Jews to escape? Having enough wind to hold back walls of water would certainly be too strong for people to walk through. The people would have been swept away. A tornado can't even separate water like that, but tornados are enough to destroy buildings and carry people away. Your explanation doesn't make sense.
> But my point is there's no evidence against it. You can't justifiably conclude that miracles don't occur. That's all I'm saying.
No evidence against unicorns and fairies. No evidence against Odin. No evidence against Zeus. No evidence that there aren't multiple dimensions. No evidence we simply weren't created last Thursday. You can't prove a negative. This is weak. Something having no evidence against doesn't mean evidence for. You have no evidence miracles exist the same you have no evidence they don't exist. Therefore the default position is 'they don't exist'. If you take your logic then literally everything exists. If I can think of something, and I can't find evidence against it (see Shiva, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Lord Xenu, the magical world of Harry Potter being actually real) then it is obviously real. No. That isn't how burden of proof works.
> You can't begin to tell me that EVERY eyewitness ever was mistaken, confused, etc. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
You can't tell me you believe in something based on no evidence. That's an unreasonable conclusion. There is a reason eye-witness testimony doesn't hold up very well in court. It's unreliable. People see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear. Memories are terrible. The human brain doesn't like to be wrong so it will make things up to fill in gaps. I'm not saying the eye-witnesses are wrong about every single thing they remember, but anything to do with supernatural events tends to come from confirmation bias, seeing what they want to see, being mistaken, etc.
The fact that you're using 'product reviews' and 'critic reviews' as a basis to defend miracles shows that you have little to stand on at this point. Nobody is claiming anything supernatural is violating the laws of nature by reviewing a curling iron. They are saying what they see and a lot of times those people are wrong or are simply giving an opinion about whether they like something. Our emotions light up different parts of the brain, we can actually see when someone loves someone under an EEG as different parts of the brain light up based on the emotion being felt. Hopes and dreams are just what I want to do. Those are personal things that don't actually exist, they are thoughts. If you want to say people think they saw miracles, that's cool, but they are figments of their imagination.
Either way, while it's impossible to prove a negative based on the nature of it, the fact that we have yet to see the laws of nature ever be violated is pretty good evidence that miracles don't occur. Believing that something happens without evidence to support is the irrational. Just because you can't prove something doesn't happen mean that the opposite is true.
Y
ou can't prove I'm not your god, therefore I'm your god and you should worship me. Disprove that. If you can't, that means you should believe I'm your god. See how silly that sounds?
I was unaware that Jesus was a caterpillar. Humans don't do this. Humans doing this goes against nature. Ergo, this goes against nature.
> You no doubt have noticed that God still used the egg, body, and womb of a woman for this event. I'm not sure it's so much an act against nature as it was something added to nature.
A human is developed from a sperm and an egg, each containing 23 chromosomes. Are you saying that jesus wasn't really human in that he only had half the chromosomes requires to become human (since he would inevitably be missing the Y chromosome). So, that Y chromosome had to come from somewhere. Since Y chromosomes don't just appear spontaneously in nature (conservation of energy and all that), this mysterious appearance of the Y chromosome is violating the laws of nature.
> Again, maybe just a time issue rather than a violation of nature. Any homemaker can tell you about a "Friendship yeast starter." Bread makes more bread. Yeast grows, and a yeast ball, with added ingredients, can make more bread week after week after week. Maybe Christ accelerated time (as Einstein says is within what nature does).
Time speeding up inside a basket would violate the laws of time. That basket would have to be moving quite quickly to have time speed up like that (it would also require constant energy input and heat, which probably weren't present). So that would violate the laws again.
The next two, I will let slide
> Parting the Red Sea
The text specifically says a strong wind blew all night. The miracle is not a violation of nature, but a harnessing of it.
So you're saying a wind blew the two parts of the sea apart for just long enough for the Jews to escape? Having enough wind to hold back walls of water would certainly be too strong for people to walk through. The people would have been swept away. A tornado can't even separate water like that, but tornados are enough to destroy buildings and carry people away. Your explanation doesn't make sense.
> But my point is there's no evidence against it. You can't justifiably conclude that miracles don't occur. That's all I'm saying.
No evidence against unicorns and fairies. No evidence against Odin. No evidence against Zeus. No evidence that there aren't multiple dimensions. No evidence we simply weren't created last Thursday. You can't prove a negative. This is weak. Something having no evidence against doesn't mean evidence for. You have no evidence miracles exist the same you have no evidence they don't exist. Therefore the default position is 'they don't exist'. If you take your logic then literally everything exists. If I can think of something, and I can't find evidence against it (see Shiva, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Lord Xenu, the magical world of Harry Potter being actually real) then it is obviously real. No. That isn't how burden of proof works.
> You can't begin to tell me that EVERY eyewitness ever was mistaken, confused, etc. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
You can't tell me you believe in something based on no evidence. That's an unreasonable conclusion. There is a reason eye-witness testimony doesn't hold up very well in court. It's unreliable. People see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear. Memories are terrible. The human brain doesn't like to be wrong so it will make things up to fill in gaps. I'm not saying the eye-witnesses are wrong about every single thing they remember, but anything to do with supernatural events tends to come from confirmation bias, seeing what they want to see, being mistaken, etc.
The fact that you're using 'product reviews' and 'critic reviews' as a basis to defend miracles shows that you have little to stand on at this point. Nobody is claiming anything supernatural is violating the laws of nature by reviewing a curling iron. They are saying what they see and a lot of times those people are wrong or are simply giving an opinion about whether they like something. Our emotions light up different parts of the brain, we can actually see when someone loves someone under an EEG as different parts of the brain light up based on the emotion being felt. Hopes and dreams are just what I want to do. Those are personal things that don't actually exist, they are thoughts. If you want to say people think they saw miracles, that's cool, but they are figments of their imagination.
Either way, while it's impossible to prove a negative based on the nature of it, the fact that we have yet to see the laws of nature ever be violated is pretty good evidence that miracles don't occur. Believing that something happens without evidence to support is the irrational. Just because you can't prove something doesn't happen mean that the opposite is true.
Y
ou can't prove I'm not your god, therefore I'm your god and you should worship me. Disprove that. If you can't, that means you should believe I'm your god. See how silly that sounds?
- Fluke
Re: Miracles do not occur
by jimwalton » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:13 pm
> I was unaware that Jesus was a caterpillar.
Let's not be ridiculous here. The contention was that resurrection was a violation of the laws of nature. I gave evidence that it's not.
> A human is developed from a sperm and an egg
Of course it is. We all learned this in middle school. The ancients of the 1st century didn't know this, but they still knew it took two to tango. You're right that the Y chromosome had to have come from somewhere. I mentioned in my text that something was added to nature. If that falls under the definition of "violation," then this one qualifies.
But my point is still that many miracles don't require such violation.
> So you're saying a wind blew the two parts of the sea apart for just long enough for the Jews to escape?
There's an article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Sept/Oct. 1992, p. 26: Two scientists recently recreated the parting of the Red Sea—on paper, at least. According to a Florida State University press release, Doron Nof and Nathan Paldor have provided calculations that they claim offer a plausible scientific explanation for the Biblical account of the parting of the Red Sea.
They based their calculations on a strong wind blowing for several hours before the crossing (Ex. 14.21), and on a crossing site at the northern edge of the Gulf of Suez. At this location the water is very long and extremely shallow. Because of that, the wind can lift a lot of water. It’s like blowing across the top of a cup of coffee. The coffee blows from one end to the other.
Nof and Paldor calculate that a 40-mile-per-hour wind blowing for 10-12 hours could push the gulf water a mile from the original shoreline and cause a sea level drop of about 10 feet. They say such a drop at the shallow north end of the gulf could allow a crossing on foot. The subsistence of the wind would cause the water to reflood the area in a matter of minutes.
Although their scenario requires a northwesterly wind, while the Bible story tells of an east wind, Nof and Paldor believe that local wind variability could create a similar effect elsewhere in the area. They also suggested that the exposure of an underwater ridge might explain the Biblical description of the Israelites being flanked on both sides by water.
“We’re not making a judgment on whether or not this event took place,” Nof says. “We’re just saying that the winds in that area could produce such an event.”
> You can't tell me you believe in something based on no evidence. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
I am definitely not telling you that I believe in something based on no evidence. Faith, according to the Bible, is evidentiary. Evidence is always required for me to believe something.
> The fact that you're using 'product reviews' and 'critic reviews' as a basis to defend miracles shows that you have little to stand on at this point
Ah, so you cherry-picked two of my 25 points or so to discredit the whole theory? It doesn't work that way. The truth is, we give quite a bit of credence to eyewitness testimony. I just read in the news last night about a woman who escaped from North Korea, telling us about the horrible conditions there and the horrors of the Gulag there. I presume we should just ignore her because "it's just eyewitness testimony"? Jeff Sessions is testifying in court. Why should we both if eyewitness testimony is so worthless? All I'm contending is that we regard such things as very much believable as long as they pass the tests of truth.
Let's not be ridiculous here. The contention was that resurrection was a violation of the laws of nature. I gave evidence that it's not.
> A human is developed from a sperm and an egg
Of course it is. We all learned this in middle school. The ancients of the 1st century didn't know this, but they still knew it took two to tango. You're right that the Y chromosome had to have come from somewhere. I mentioned in my text that something was added to nature. If that falls under the definition of "violation," then this one qualifies.
But my point is still that many miracles don't require such violation.
> So you're saying a wind blew the two parts of the sea apart for just long enough for the Jews to escape?
There's an article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Sept/Oct. 1992, p. 26: Two scientists recently recreated the parting of the Red Sea—on paper, at least. According to a Florida State University press release, Doron Nof and Nathan Paldor have provided calculations that they claim offer a plausible scientific explanation for the Biblical account of the parting of the Red Sea.
They based their calculations on a strong wind blowing for several hours before the crossing (Ex. 14.21), and on a crossing site at the northern edge of the Gulf of Suez. At this location the water is very long and extremely shallow. Because of that, the wind can lift a lot of water. It’s like blowing across the top of a cup of coffee. The coffee blows from one end to the other.
Nof and Paldor calculate that a 40-mile-per-hour wind blowing for 10-12 hours could push the gulf water a mile from the original shoreline and cause a sea level drop of about 10 feet. They say such a drop at the shallow north end of the gulf could allow a crossing on foot. The subsistence of the wind would cause the water to reflood the area in a matter of minutes.
Although their scenario requires a northwesterly wind, while the Bible story tells of an east wind, Nof and Paldor believe that local wind variability could create a similar effect elsewhere in the area. They also suggested that the exposure of an underwater ridge might explain the Biblical description of the Israelites being flanked on both sides by water.
“We’re not making a judgment on whether or not this event took place,” Nof says. “We’re just saying that the winds in that area could produce such an event.”
> You can't tell me you believe in something based on no evidence. That's an unreasonable conclusion.
I am definitely not telling you that I believe in something based on no evidence. Faith, according to the Bible, is evidentiary. Evidence is always required for me to believe something.
> The fact that you're using 'product reviews' and 'critic reviews' as a basis to defend miracles shows that you have little to stand on at this point
Ah, so you cherry-picked two of my 25 points or so to discredit the whole theory? It doesn't work that way. The truth is, we give quite a bit of credence to eyewitness testimony. I just read in the news last night about a woman who escaped from North Korea, telling us about the horrible conditions there and the horrors of the Gulag there. I presume we should just ignore her because "it's just eyewitness testimony"? Jeff Sessions is testifying in court. Why should we both if eyewitness testimony is so worthless? All I'm contending is that we regard such things as very much believable as long as they pass the tests of truth.
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Re: Miracles do not occur
by Explorer » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:17 pm
> There's a caterpillar in the Arctic tundra (the woolly bear caterpillar—Pyrrharctia Isabella; the Isabella Tiger moth) that freezes solid to the point where all life functions cease. The heart stops beating; no ingestion or excretion; no brain function; no respiration. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Is it against the laws of nature that the caterpillar does this?
I'm not sure if you're intentionally misrepresenting this organism or just ignorant. Given you seem intelligent enough, a simple google scholar search on this species will reveal that what you're saying is false. The Caterpillar does not "freeze" solid at all, and indeed the entire reason is survives is because it actually retains much of its metabolic processes, albeit at a very reduced rate, by preventing being entire frozen through the glycerol it produces in its blood, as a response to freezing temperatures.
The organism does not "die" at all, biologically it is still quite alive. Nothing we know of literally dies, as in, full cellular collapse/death and can come back to life 3 days after that.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally misrepresenting this organism or just ignorant. Given you seem intelligent enough, a simple google scholar search on this species will reveal that what you're saying is false. The Caterpillar does not "freeze" solid at all, and indeed the entire reason is survives is because it actually retains much of its metabolic processes, albeit at a very reduced rate, by preventing being entire frozen through the glycerol it produces in its blood, as a response to freezing temperatures.
The organism does not "die" at all, biologically it is still quite alive. Nothing we know of literally dies, as in, full cellular collapse/death and can come back to life 3 days after that.
- Explorer
Re: Miracles do not occur
by jimwalton » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:17 pm
Then we also need to discuss what "death" is in the Bible. The Bible regards death somewhat similar to dormancy. While dormancy implies only a temporary suspension of function with expectation of renewal, Christian theology treats death in exactly the same manner, and the resurrection of Christ is specifically designed to prove that such is the case. When we die, according to Christian theology, the body enters a state of dormancy ("sleep"), awaiting a future bodily resurrection. Jesus' successful and effective resurrection is the guarantee of exactly that renewal from dormancy that we see in the caterpillar. The difference in perspective contrasts the natural view of death as the end of all life with the Christian view of death as the bridge to eternity. In Christian theology, death is not a cessation, but a transition.
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