Board index ‹ Miracles

[Florida Waffle]

I don't believe miracles are possible. Walking on water, multiplying bread, and a floating axehead are common magic tricks performed by various stage magicians. Do you believe that Derren Brown and Criss Angel are performing miracles? You should unless you're a hypocrite.

I'm all for this conversation. But "possibility" is only the first step in a hypothesis. Verification of miracles is very easy to document. Show me the video. Yet somehow we have none ever on record which are convincing. James Randi will give you a million dollars if you have any verified evidence of miracles.

[jimwalton]

> Even the Bible disagrees with you: "Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen."

The Greek of Heb. 11. reads, "Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων·" You should know that ὑπόστασις, traditionally translated "assurance," means "Assurance; what stands under anything (a building, a contract, a promise); substantial nature; essence, actual being; reality (often in contrast to what merely seems to be); confidence; conviction; steadfastness; steadiness of mind." The steadfastness of mind which holds one firm. The term is common in business documents as the basis or guarantee of transactions. It's a philosophical term, not a religious one denoting the reality of a substance that undergirds the superstructure standing on it. It's a term of reality.

Secondly, ἔλεγχος means "proof; that which is proven; that of which I can be certain." What the author is saying is that faith is the reality undergirding our expectations and the proof of what we can't see, just as I wrote about. That's why the Biblical definition of faith is different than the dictionary definition.

> You don't know who Matthew was, or what his motivations were.

All of the Gospels are anonymous; it's the nature of the genre. Their anonymity is no evidence of authorship. Internal evidence shows that the writer was Probably a highly educated Jew, familiar with technical aspects of Jewish law. There is no specific reason to doubt that Matthew could have been the author. The superscription "According to Matthew" was part of the first editions (mid-2nd c. AD), and is found on all known manuscripts of the gospel, starting at around 125 AD. It was attributed to Matthew by Papias of Hierapolis (born in 63 AD, writing in about 125-130), and also by Irenaeus in the 2nd century. The early church fathers were unanimous in attributing it to Matthew. What evidence do you have that it wasn't?

> Complete bullshit. Give me a break. You're an academic then?

Yep. Bible teacher for 35 years. Shelves and shelves of resources, with notes deeper than you can imagine.

> Testimony is THE most unreliable form of evidence.

From Detective J. Warner Wallace: Reliable eyewitnesses can make or break a case in the courtroom. Any prosecutor needs to bring the very best eyewitnesses that are available, because they will be cross examined. Prosecutors use simple principles to demonstrate the reliability of a witness:

Were they present?
What are their motives in testifying?
How reliable are they?
What level of knowledge of the events do they possess?

When we examine the authors of Scripture, we have to assess whether or not they were wrong, lying, delusional, fooled, manipulated, or distorted. Eyewitness testimony can be very reliable, depending on the witness and the situation. An examination of the Gospel documents and their authors produces a high amount of reliability.

> Ask your Doctor or any medical expert if they think resurrection is medically feasible

Of course they won't say it's medically feasible. But is the miraculous logically possible? It is.

> Then why are you so very certain of exactly what happened 2000 years ago from a third or fourth party?

Well, first of all, the gospels are more likely 1st or 2nd party, as I've given evidence (and can give more), and the reliability of the authors can be determined. I notice that you have yet to give a shred of evidence, only expletives and disclaimers. That doesn't make a case.

> You aren't using science or reason to make your conclusions.

As I mentioned, most miracles don't leave any trace for scientists to study. The resurrection is the most evidentiary of all the miracles, and it has been studied quite thoroughly. Many who study it become convinced of its trustworthiness, but many don't, obviously.

> Do you believe that Derren Brown and Criss Angel are performing miracles?

Of course not. They're tricks, sleight of hand and deceit of the eye. There is no reason to attribute the ancient miracle stories to magic, unless you a priori don't believe in the possibility of miracles. But then, that's a statement of faith, not evidence. It's a philosophical position you've chosen to believe, not any evidence you've secured to adjudicate your perspective.

> I'm all for this conversation.

Can't the causal continuum be transected by supernatural, transcendent power? Miracles are only incompatible with modern science if it can be proved that nature is a closed continuum of cause and effect, and closed to intervention or interference on the part of beings outside that continuum, including God himself. Classical science, just by itself, is nowhere nearly sufficient for anti-interventionism. Newtonian physics tells how forces and laws work within the system, but don't (and can't) prove that nothing exists and acts from outside the system. According to Newton and classical mechanics, natural laws describe how the world works when, or provided that the world is a closed (isolated) system, subject to no outside causal influence. Sears and Zemanski’s standard text University Physics says: "This is the principle of conservation of linear momentum: When no resultant external force acts on a system, the total momentum of the system remains constant in magnitude and direction" (italics theirs). As a matter of fact, the laws of nature can easily reflect the Biblical nature of God and the things he created. The biblical portrait is consistent with what we see. There is nothing in science preventing the existence of entities outside of the system. Natural laws offer no threat to special divine action. Quantum mechanics offers even less of a problem for miracles because of its view of indeterminism.

> Show me the video.

Maybe none are happening today. What does that have anything to do with whether or not they happened in the past, scientifically speaking?