Board index ‹ Miracles

[jimwalton]

I'm not familiar with the chemistry of wine. My point was that sometimes miracles seem to be an issue of time rather than of some abnormal intervention. For instance, Jesus did many healings. We all know that our bodies are self-healing, as they are able. It just takes time, if it happens at all. We don't know many of the illnesses that Jesus healed, but possibly some of them were the telescoping of time rather than controverting natural processes. At least one example: when Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law in Capernaum, she was sick with a fever (we don't know what kind, from what, or how severe). But rather than it taking however many days to recover, she was healed instantly—possibly a miracle of time, not of change. That's my point.

And I will readily agree that the point of miracles was often to confirm the prophetic message—to convince people. No argument there. But they were never mere theatrical devices to impress primitive people, or showboating of any kind. Miracles were often given to confirm the revelation, and also often to substantiate it—so that people knew that he was the Lord, and that the message was legitimately from him.

> When the Jews fled Egypt, god supposedly sent a pillar of fire to cover their escape into a parted sea. This does not sound like some incredibly well-timed natural phenomena.

It wasn't. I never contended that all miracles were incredibly well-timed natural phenomena. What I said is that some were telescoping of time, some were natural phenomena well-timed, and some were outright interventions in natural processes.

[Mayor Maher]

> "some spiritual force"

How do you measure this? How can you be sure it wasn't Zeus? Odin? Because you can't say with certainty that it wasn't them.

[jimwalton]

My point in another reply to this same question (I'm getting responses from many different people) is that the Bible doesn't give us criteria to know whether a miracle is from God or from Satan or another source. Since there may be many spiritual forces at work in the world, and since beings other than God are capable of miracles, it may not be possible to us to accurately discern the source or cause. Therefore we always have to be thinking people, analyzing what is going on, trying to think and act with wisdom and reason, and to discern as we are best able. In the Bible, miracles are often confirmations or affirmations of other revelation, so usually the best way to determine the source is to evaluate the source of the accompanying revelation. That often takes one in the right direction, but we still always have to be reasonable and careful because, as you know, it's too easy to be deceived, and it's too easy to believe what you want to believe and see what you want to see.

So to answer your question as honestly as I can, it's very difficult to measure, but often the best way is by critiquing the accompanying revelation.

[Dr. 88]

Then what exactly are "miracles"?

[jimwalton]

Great question. I've yet to ever read an accurate definition, but probably the closest I've come across is this: when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it. This "intrusion" can take many different forms, from simple, ordinary occurrences that are perceived as unusual blessings to us, to obvious contraversion of the natural order. Miracles can be natural occurrences specifically timed, the single incidence of unnatural occurrences, a speeding up of the time continuum (such as some healings), and many other phenomena. It's what makes miracles particularly difficult to nail down (like nailing milk to a tree). The problem is, the breadth of possibilities opens the field for abuse: "I got a green light on my way to work. It was a MIRACLE!!", or "I miraculously recovered from my cold." Duh. But we also know that many inexplicable events happen in the world, and it's difficult to know if we are just short on understanding, or if some other forces are at work. Christians, obviously, believe that other forces are at work.

[I Fell]

There are starving Christian children in Africa who would like to have a discussion with you about whether or not prayer works.

Prayer works when you have Highly educated doctors and surgeons.. who knew.

But when you are on your last day in a 3rd world country and you pray for food, prayer doesnt seem to solve your problem.

Craziest thing

Reminds me of a picture I saw that makes me quite sad. An African baby is trying to breastfeed from his dead mother. That's an image I can not unsee.

[jimwalton]

That's an awful image. Now I won't be able to get it out of my head either. Such things are unspeakable tragedies. Often the solution is not prayer, but the rich sharing what they have with the poor, and purging corruption out of governments. Both of those, as we know, are plagues of our world that never go away.

On another front, however, prayers don't work on a strict cause-and-effect principle. If they did, there would be another real problem. If God was obligated to answer my prayers at a higher rate than chance occurrence (because I'm a follower of his), then I become the one in charge, and He merely my retainer. Not only that, I would quickly become corrupted, for we all know the corruptive nature of power. But if God, to spare me such corruption, answered my prayers then at a rate lower than chance occurrence, then he is punishing me, so to speak; I'm actually worse off than I otherwise would have been. Instead, prayer is removed completely from the cause-and-effect continuum, so that I can neither count on my prayers being answered just because I prayed them, nor can I assume God will ignore me. Ultimately the decision and the action lie in his court, and my prayers may or may not bring any particular effect, and that's what the Bible teaches.

Therefore any kind of scientific studies (people who spontaneously recover from cancer who don't believe in God and who don't pray vs. plenty of people who are prayed for who still die; prayer works when yo have highly educated doctors and surgeons) are inadequate for the subject matter at hand, viz. prayer. (And, by the way, the doctors had done nothing for my friend. They couldn't take an MRI because of his pacemaker, and therefore couldn't administer tPA because of the potential harm. So all they did was monitor.) They are not the proper approach to understanding either the subject or its effects. It's like trying to prove by science the way I choose ice cream flavors. Sometimes it's my mood, sometimes the temperature, the day, the people I am with, the pictures on the restaurant wall, my preferences, the season, what I had most recently, or what everyone else is ordering. A scientist can't just figure out what my favorite flavors are and make a prediction. With so many factors, and many of them in my subconscious or environmentally motivated, a scientist's prediction is worthless. It's not a subject matter that is predictable.

Secondly, answers to prayer are not always scientifically observable, again making the subject matter irrelevant to scientific study. Many prayers are answered by normal means, since God uses normal means to make things happen. The Israelites walk around Jericho 7 times and blow trumpets. Just then, JUST THEN, a small earthquake happens and part of the wall collapses, enough for them to charge in and conquer the city. Is that an answer to prayer? Jericho is built on a fault-line. Earthquakes happen ALL the time. Does the event make it an answer to prayer? Does the timing? Or was it fortuitous happenstance? Science and reason can't answer this question.

Prayer is also answered at times with unexpected results—not the way the pray-er had in mind. In 2 Chron. 32, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, is laying siege to Jerusalem. King Hezekiah prays for deliverance. In 2 Chr. 32.21, the Assyrian army is annihilated and they retreat. An Egyptian legend says that they were infested by a plague of rodents. Was it an answer to prayer? Science and surveys can't answer that question either. Prayer is not able to be dissected, analyzed, and boxed up the way you seem to want.

We have two logical arguments in the mix:
1. If God does not exist, my prayer will not be answered.
2. My prayer was answered.
3. Therefore God exists. (!Q>!P)

This is an inadequate argument for a host of reasons, all of which involve #2 being impossible to prove or verify. But I'm inclined to see the culprit as correlative fallacy rather than confirmation bias ("What I wanted happened after I prayed, therefore it happened because I prayed"), but the ultimate failure is the same. The case in which #2 CAN be proved is if the "answer" involves something so astoundingly coincidental and/or something that our current understanding of nature considers impossible, such that Occam's Razor indicates that the simplest answer is divine intervention. But this is no longer the argument from efficacy of prayer, but rather the argument from miracles, which is what we are discussing.

The second argument is like it.
1. If God does not exist, my prayer will not be answered.
2. My prayer was not answered.
3. Therefore God does not exist. (Q>P)

This is also a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." Instead, what actually happened when prayer is not answered is this:

1. If God does not exist,my prayer will not be answered.
2. My prayer was not answered.
3. No conclusion is possible ( = we don't know if God exists or not).

The difficulty in making this statement is that you have to prove its first premise. When Christians say that "no is still an answer," they aren't trying to prove premise 2 of the argument from the efficacy of prayer, they're refuting this premise (i.e., providing a [legitimate] reason other than nonexistence for non-answer). It's possible, logically and theologically, that God can exist and not answer prayer according to our standards of cause and effect.

If the efficacy of prayer were the only argument for the existence of God, people who wanted to believe in God would have a pretty bad time of it. But it isn't. And if you want me to admit that there is no assurance of answered prayer, fine, because Christians believe that anyway. If it was to prove that the argument from the efficacy of prayer is invalid, well, technically it isn't. If anyone could manage to prove that even ONE indecent, ever, in the history of time, occurred as an answer to prayer, and NOT from some other cause, it would prove that God exists (or existed at that point in time). I have no idea how one could possibly go about proving this, however, so I will admit that the argument, while technically valid, is practically useless.

So the science of answers to prayer, or non-answers, don't really take us anywhere, because there is no such science (statistical reasoning, deductive reasoning, etc.). What I have is an event that I must interpret:

1. 19-year-old has an ischemic stroke in the brain stem, the location of life-sustaining actions.
2. Doctors are unable to act, but monitor his well-being as best they can. Parents are warned that death is a very real possibility.
3. People pray.
4. Student has a quick and unexpected recovery.

We are left to interpret, but "miracle from God" is not an unreasonable conclusion.

[Dr. 88]

> Miracles can be natural occurrences specifically timed

These are coincidences, if that.

> the single incidence of unnatural occurrences

What is "unnatural", and how do you quantify and analyze it?

> a speeding up of the time continuum

Now you've wandered into Star Trek territory - what does this mean, exactly, and what evidence do you have to support this claim?

> Christians, obviously, believe that other forces are at work.

Sure, and so do other proponents of other religions, as well as those who believe in inter-dimensional aliens and Nazis on the Moon. The trouble is, how do we go about determining who is right? Until we figure that out, I'm going to assume you're all wrong.

[jimwalton]

You're mistaken to think that miracles are part of the world of scientific inquiry. Science is appropriate when it's 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. Should I assume you never sneeze, never sneezed, and that you're all wrong until you can do so? What evidence do you have that you had a sneezing fit? Or walked around the mall last month? 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. You are setting up a false equation, and then discarding the whole thing as "all wrong", when you have used a flawed definition and a unfounded measure in your category of analysis.

[Progedy]

> The definition of a miracle as being "outside the laws of nature" is where I think we're running into a barrier. I don't define miracle that way.

I endeavored to address the impossibility of the miracle at Cana. I don't think that it's a lack of scientific understanding that prevents me or others from conceiving how water molecules could become red wine molecules. Even given an infinite expanse of time, which seems to be what you propose might be the natural law responsible.

Jesus also allegedly raised the dead on a couple occasions. One such time, the bible reports that several days had passed and the stench of death and rot was abundant. And what of the miracle of his own resurrection? Or the walking on water? Do these not seem outside the laws of nature?