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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Tension of Faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Tangle writes: 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. The point is that calling it a miracle explains nothing. All we would know is that tests showed the wine did turn into blood; not why or how it happened. Calling something a miracle is as silly as claiming Goddidit. Someone might believe it was a miracle but that is simply a belief, not evidence that it is a miracle whatever a miracle even is. We can, and historically we did, label many unexplained things miracles but in every case what we are actually doing is pleading ignorance.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: How I long for a few sane people to argue with. You can't complain about unfair treatment here when you continually rip entire threads of people. The people you're discussing with are not the topic. Stick to the topic. I'm busy tonight (except for this brief check) and part of tomorrow, I'll answer your last post when I can. --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Sorry I just should have said that jar isn't making any sense, and you ought to recognize that instead of taking me to task for reacting to it. However, I suppose perhaps you don't know he isn't making any sense. Oh and there's some irony here since this is the first time in a long time I've commented on the person while you did nothing but say insulting things about me in recent threads (thank you for stopping).
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9514 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Jar writes:
It explain that something that can't happen, did happen. That's what we call a miracle.
The point is that calling it a miracle explains nothing. All we would know is that tests showed the wine did turn into blood; not why or how it happened. No. What we would know is that a man can change the physical nature of wine just by talking at it. And we know that that is impossible. So it would be a testable, reproducable miracle, not just something we don't understand yet.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 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Tangle writes: No. What we would know is that a man can change the physical nature of wine just by talking at it. And we know that that is impossible. So it would be a testable, reproducable miracle, not just something we don't understand yet. So you claim. But the evidence over time has shown that what is believed to be impossible is in fact possible. It would still just be something we do not understand.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Sane people realise that stories of miracles, decades after the event are not good evidence of miracles. Sane people realise that eyewitnesses can be mistaken or deceived. Sane people accept the fact that stories grow over time. Sane people recognise that the Gospel authors can’t be reliably identified as eyewitnesses. Sane people don’t insist that the Gospels were accepted as infallible from the start. But you don’t seem to like arguing with people who do accept those facts.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9514 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Jar writes: So you claim. It's not a claim, it's a fact. Wine can not be changed into blood by somone talking at it. We know this, it's not a mystery.
But the evidence over time has shown that what is believed to be impossible is in fact possible. We now know that it is impossible to turn wine into blood just by talking at it. And we also know why. So if it actually did we'd know it was a miracle. It would still just be something we do not understand.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 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Tangle writes: We now know that it is impossible to turn wine into blood just by talking at it. And we also know why. So if it actually did we'd know it was a miracle. It would still just be something we do not understand. Too funny. So all you are saying is that YOU decided to call something not understood a miracle. Okay, if that makes you happy, go for it. But I still cannot see any evidence that a miracle happened.
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Phat Member Posts: 18348 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Which brings up a question in the larger context:
Is a given event declared a miracle by consensus or strictly by evidence? Things we all discuss.....Did Jesus ever exist? Consensus or answer=no due to lack of evidence? I say miracles happen due to consensus. The magician still may have managed to palm the pea, but the room says its magic. Jesus may have done ordinary things that were blown all out of proportion by a zealous audience. In a sense, I can see how the story has grown. We believe and makeup what we want to be true. Which leads credence to your saying: If the stories were all just tales told around a campfire, they would still have value. But its hard letting go of the certainty that a true miracle would have given. We all dare believe in a true miracle.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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: 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. I was speaking, as I said, "From a scientific perspective..." If you want to have faith that miracles are real then that's fine, but from a scientific perspective they have no more evidence than leprechauns, Santa Claus, and Bilbo Baggins.
You insist on seeing it for yourself,... No I don't. I'm not researching miracles personally. I'd be perfectly fine with reading a popularization of the scientific report issued by the team of scientists studying miracles.
...you simply will never believe in miracles though millions of others have seen them. This is the "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" fallacy yet again.
...but the supernatural is real and those who consider it real know quite well how to tell the difference. Now there's a very interesting unsupported claim. Just how does one tell when one is witnessing the supernatural and tell that it is real?
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. You misunderstand, and you quoted too little of what I said. Miracles are the realm of fantasy and religion, which are two different things. Miracles in fantasy works of fiction are just fantasies, as I'm sure you'll agree. Where you and I disagree is about the miraculous claims of religion.
Also, Christians don't use the term "religion" as you do,... I define the term "religion" in the same way you do, it's just that you refuse to acknowledge that flim flam is a big part of religion. If that's not true then explain Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts, Peter Popoff and Robert Tilton among many, many, many others. Religion is big industry.
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. You've never given a good answer as to why your holy books are superior to other religion's holy books.
I figure you just aren't thinking when you carry on as you do,... This is too often your resort, denigrating people you disagree with.
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. We don't believe that Napoleon and Genghis Khan and Buddha were real people because "reasonable honest people have said so," whose reasonability and honesty is often impossible to judge in the absence of corroboration. The evidence for Buddha isn't so good, about as good as the evidence for Jesus. The evidence for Genghis Khan is indisputable. His campaigns and empire left behind a great deal of written and physical evidence. Much of the written evidence is in Chinese. The evidence for Napoleon is even more indisputable.
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. That's a lot to claim to know about the supernatural and how it interacts with the real world. Without a careful scientific study, there's no way for you to know this.
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. This is a very credulous thing for you to say.
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. We have a pretty good idea of the reliability of people as eyewitnesses, and the conclusion is that they're damn poor at it. What we think we know about reality is learned through study, observation, experiment, and replication, all missing from religion. If the supernatural can manifest itself in the real world, then it can be studied.
(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.) People who have strong evidence for their position don't need to unilaterally exclude other sources of evidence. --Percy
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Tangle Member Posts: 9514 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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Jar writes: Too funny. So all you are saying is that YOU decided to call something not understood a miracle. Don't be an arse. I saying quite specifically that turning wine into blood by talking at it is impossible. Tell me I'm wrong.
But I still cannot see any evidence that a miracle happened. That's because no one has ever turned wine into blood. Despite Catholics saying that it happens at every mass. But if it ever happened it would be a miracle.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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: Sorry I just should have said that jar isn't making any sense,... No, you should discuss with him, and everyone else, rationally and dispassionately.
...and you ought to recognize that instead of taking me to task for reacting to it. Oughtn't I now? In a post that is addressed to the thread at large I'm supposed to recognize it's actually addressed to Jar? Is nothing ever your fault?
However, I suppose perhaps you don't know he isn't making any sense. If you muster no arguments for how he isn't making sense, how would anyone know?
Oh and there's some irony here since this is the first time in a long time I've commented on the person while you did nothing but say insulting things about me in recent threads (thank you for stopping). There you go with more unsubstantiated allegations. Why not just stick to the topic? --Percy
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Phat Member Posts: 18348 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Percy writes: IIRC, the subtopic was sane people to argue with. Why not just stick to the topic? One quote that I like from Phil Johnson, who is John MacArthur's elder:
quote: I wouldn't feel at home in a forum where everyone was a believer. 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 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Tangle writes: Don't be an arse. I saying quite specifically that turning wine into blood by talking at it is impossible. Tell me I'm wrong. Too funny. I will tell you I don't know if wine can be turned into blood. I know I don't know how to do it but if there was evidence that it happened my position would be "It happened but I don't know how!" not "It's a miracle." Sorry but you have not presented any reason to think it a miracle other then you believe it is impossible.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
kbertsche writes:
So somebody might have come to Jesus for healing and He failed? Doesn't non-repeatability kind of dilute the notion of divinity?
Miracles, by definition, are one-off events which can’t be repeated on cue.
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