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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1469 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Tension of Faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
GDR writes:
The very nature of a miracle is that it is not of the natural world and can't be tested scientifically.Percy writes: I just yesterday said pretty much the same thing to Faith, though I took more words to say it. This doesn't make much sense to me. Miracles can only happen in the natural world, because if they didn't we'd know nothing about them. Something that happens in the natural world can be observed and if it can be observed it can be tested by science. The transubstantiation of wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ at every Catholic mass is a claimed miracle. It's not a metaphor, it's claimed to be real. Science tells us that it's utter bullshit. As it's shown every other miraculous claim to be that has been able to be tested.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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jar Member (Idle past 419 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Tangle writes: The transubstantiation of wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ at every Catholic mass is a claimed miracle. It's not a metaphor, it's claimed to be real. But even if tests showed the wine did turn into blood literally it is still not evidence of a miracle.
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Percy Member Posts: 22489 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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Tangle writes: This doesn't make much sense to me. Miracles can only happen in the natural world, because if they didn't we'd know nothing about them. Something that happens in the natural world can be observed and if it can be observed it can be tested by science. It doesn't make much sense to me either, but GDR's view, I think, is that the supernatural takes place in the natural world. Obviously I don't accept this view, describing a view much like your own to Faith in my Message 1026, but GDR says, I think, that he accepts on faith that the gospels represent evidence of miracles, and I'm not going to argue with faith. My dispute is with claims of real evidence where none exists. --Percy
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ringo Member (Idle past 437 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
But how would you determine whether it "actually happened"? Your claim in Message 1010 was that, "The style in which they are written gives no indication that the accounts are anything but historical." In fact, the style in which they were written, including the description of miracles, doesn't distinguish them from fiction such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Some of the events may have "actually happened" but that's no guarantee that the miraculous ones did.
A miracle would be historical if it actually happened.
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Phat Member Posts: 18332 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
I had to look this up to get further clarification.
GotQuestions.org writes: It always made sense to me that the concept was spiritual and not literal. But if the Eucharist could actually be tested, how would this not be evidence of a miracle...if it was also verified that it was either wine or grapejuice before the blessing? "The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: ‘Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.’" In other words, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that once an ordained priest blesses the bread of the Lord's Supper, it is transformed into the actual flesh of Christ (though it retains the appearance, odor, and taste of bread); and when he blesses the wine, it is transformed into the actual blood of Christ (though it retains the appearance, odor, and taste of wine). Is such a concept biblical? There are some Scriptures that, if interpreted strictly literally, would lead to the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. Examples are John 6:32-58; Matthew 26:26; Luke 22:17-23; and 1 Corinthians 11:24-25. The passage pointed to most frequently is John 6:32-58 and especially verses 53-57, Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.’ Roman Catholics interpret this passage literally and apply its message to the Lord’s Supper, which they title the Eucharist or Mass. Those who reject the idea of transubstantiation interpret Jesus’ words in John 6:53-57 figuratively or symbolically. How can we know which interpretation is correct? Thankfully, Jesus made it exceedingly obvious what He meant. John 6:63 declares, The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Jesus specifically stated that His words are spirit. Jesus was using physical concepts, eating and drinking, to teach spiritual truth. Just as consuming physical food and drink sustains our physical bodies, so are our spiritual lives saved and built up by spiritually receiving Him, by grace through faith. Eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood are symbols of fully and completely receiving Him in our lives.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith
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jar Member (Idle past 419 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Phat writes: But if the Eucharist could actually be tested, how would this not be evidence of a miracle...if it was also verified that it was either wine or grapejuice before the blessing? The whole idea of grape juice instead of wine is REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid. Now that that is out of the way, it would be evidence that not blood changed into blood but not of any miracle. It would go into the unexplained pile but only a simpleton would jump to "miracle" as though that explained anything.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2157 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined:
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Tangle writes:
Miracles, by definition, are one-off events which can’t be repeated on cue. So they are not testable in the normal sense of science. They CAN be observed, but it’s easy to come up with alternate ad-hoc explanations for such one-off events. Miracles can only happen in the natural world, because if they didn't we'd know nothing about them. Something that happens in the natural world can be observed and if it can be observed it can be tested by science. (I agree that the claim that transsubstantiation is a miracle is nonsense.)"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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jar Member (Idle past 419 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Miracles are what we believe on faith alone is a miracle. They exist only within or imagination.
The thing or act or vision may well exist but a miracle is only a name we create and assign.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1469 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You asked how anyone could know a miracle had happened and I said how it would have been known to those who were there at the time. I had asked how it could be possible for US to know about the miracles in the New Testament since
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1469 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Miracles are what we believe on faith alone is a miracle. They exist only within or imagination. The thing or act or vision may well exist but a miracle is only a name we create and assign. Nonsense. Water does not normally become wine in the blink of an eye and if it did that wouild clearly be a miracle, something that does not normally occur in the natural course of events. If a wide and deep body of water splits so that the dry ground at its bottom becomes a safe path to walk through it, that is certainly a miracle. Etc etc. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1469 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I don't think I have any good answers for you. From a scientific perspective, theoretically miracles should not exist, and from an experimental/observational standpoint they've never been observed. They've been observed and described by hundreds, thousands, but the reports of those observations are simply denied by you on the basis of your own prejudice and nothing else. You insist on seeing it for yourself, and we can be pretty sure you'd find some way to explain it away even if a thousand others witnessed the same event with you. This continues to be a perfect example of what Jesus was telling Thomas, who believed because he saw: "But blessed are those who did not see and yet believed." Because they believed the other witnesses who'd told him about what he had to see for himself. If someone is determined to believe his own prejudice instead of the witness of many others, there's nothing that can be done about it, you simply will never believe in miracles though millions of others have seen them.
Miracles seem to be the realm of fantasy (I'm not sure whether to classify fantasy and the supernatural as separate things or as the same thing) and religion. Fantasy, by definition not part of reality, is not amenable to scientific study. But it is fantasy only in your own fantasies. Those of us who believe they are real, well, we believe they are real, whenever we trust the honesty of those who have reported them. Fantasy is the product of the mind, dreams are the product of the mind, hallucinations are the product of the mind, but the supernatural is real and those who consider it real know quite well how to tell the difference. Also, Christians don't use the term "religion" as you do, which as you use it is just a synonym for something of the human mind. We DO believe the accounts of the Bible as records of actual historical events, and I'd say there's plenty of good reason for that, but convincing you doesn't seem to be a possibility. I figure you just aren't thinking when you carry on as you do, but there's no point in trying to convince you of that either.
But concerning the miracles of religion, I think you and GDR believe they're real phenomena. Apparently so, one of the few things GDR and I agree on. But I at least wouldn't qualify them as "of religion," and perhaps he wouldn't either, I just don't know. Reality is reality and if they are real they are real. Real historical events.
Given that science has no answers for a claimed phenomena for which there is no theoretical, experimental or scientifically observable/detectable evidence, there are a couple avenues science could take in forming an opinion. One could be that given the lack of theoretical support and physical evidence that science cannot take a position. Miracles might exist, they might not. Another avenue, and the one that I've taken, is that given that miracles are a violation of the natural laws of the universe, i.e., they're supernatural, they cannot exist as part of natural reality. That's because if miracles did exist as part of natural reality then they'd just be another natural phenomenon and therefore not miraculous. I guess it all comes down to whether you have faith that the supernatural exists, and faith that it's been observed many times. I guess, but it's the same sort of faith I have that Napoleon was a real person in history, or Genghis Khan, or Siddhartha/Gautama Buddha for that matter: reasonable honest people have said so. The relation to science is that there is a spiritual realm that is not physically testable in itself, because it is not physical, although it can "manifest" in the physical world under certain circumstances. Science can only measure physical things and presumably that would include anything manifesting as physical, but the problem is that such manifestations are unpredictable one-time events, you can't force them to occur. The only such thing I've ever seen was not a miracle, but the appearance of an apparition or "ghost" but I didn't need to have that experience to know they can occur because I'm one of those who believe the many others who have described such things, people I know to be reasonable and honest and able to distinguish the products of their own mind from external realities. In fact perhaps what you really need is a little more faith in your fellow man rather than this weird fantastical version of "faith" you think "religious" people have. (I'm speaking only of Christians in all this, please don't drag us off into all the other religions which are not really comparable.) Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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jar Member (Idle past 419 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: Nonsense. Water does not normally become wine in the blink of an eye and if it did that wouild clearly be a miracle, something that does not normally occur in the natural course of events. If a wide and deep body of water splits so that the dry ground at its bottom becomes a safe path to walk through it, that is certainly a miracle. Etc etc. Utter nonsense Faith. You might believe it is a miracle but there is no evidence for a miracle. Sorry Faith but claiming a miracle happened is only a figment of the imagination unless you can provide direct verifiable evidence of the process, procedure, model, method or mechanism. All you show are things YOU cannot explain; evidence of ignorance.
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jar Member (Idle past 419 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
They may believe there was a miracle but that is not evidence of a miracle.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1469 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How I long for a few sane people to argue with.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Jar writes: But even if tests showed the wine did turn into blood literally it is still not evidence of a miracle. You're going to have to explain that.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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