The Tension of Faith

Have to take that back. I do know of some healing miracles, for instance the instantaneous healing of a shattered ankle bone which was a WWII war wound. This was the Dutch Christian Brother Andrew's experience, who was called to smuggle Bibles into the Iron Curtain countries after the war. No way to prove it, just want to correct my statement. There's a reason in this case too, that he'd be on his feet a lot in the service of his mission.

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 everyone so many here have denied that the accounts themselves offer us any real evidence. I dispute that since millions have taken them for evidence over the last couple of millennia, but I'm not arguing that for those here who refuse to accept that sort of witness evidence. I just want to know what anyone WOULD accept as evidence of Jesus' miracles now, specifically Percy, because as it stands there is simply no way to convince him. But as evidence for those who witnessed those events at the time I believe my description is sufficient.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

How I long for a few sane people to argue with.

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.

I agree, you are right, I just reacted with a sort of blurt and didn't give enough information to make it clear what I had in mind. I was simply reacting to jar. And no I won't discuss such irrelevant nonsense with him..

Observation is observation and there is no way to test a miracle experimentally since it is a one-time event in the past, so if you refuse to believe the reported observations of others you've made it impossible to believe miracles occur even when they do actually occur. No it is not. It is a simple if-then proposition. The millions seeing them are the premise -- they SAW them, it's not hypothetical, and if this was the case you would have no way to know it because you refuse to trust witness reports. The same way you can tell a dream from the room you wake up in. I have no idea what the point of this distinction is supposed to be. Fake religion is big industry, genuine Christianity is not, and there are Christians galore who call those guys fakes and charlatans. The differences are enormous and any literate person ought to be able to see it with some careful reading, but if you can't even tell genuine history from fiction, the style of an honest reporter from a fantasy writer, I have to give up.No, you believe in the historicity of Napolean and Khan and anybody else because you believe the written reports so apparentlly you assume the reports are honest reports. But since you deny such an obvious point I'm going to drop that one too. One knows the supernatural by experience and by reports of trustworthy witnesses and by the revelation of God. But there's no point in trying to argue with you about that either. Well, I too can tell the difference, and I think you could too if you weren't too confused by your own assumptions. Another topic to drop here. No it cannot unless it can be required to perform on cue and it cannot. There is no way to study something that occurs without warning and can't be repeated on command. And you are talking completely abstractly about eyewitnesses. If someone you know well and trust tells you about an experience of the supernatural, or you have one yourself, that could be a test of your stubborn theories about these things, but I'm not holding my breath. Another topic bit the dust. Sorry, there is no comparison between Christianity and any other religion. Christianity is God's own revelation to the human race, other religions are human observations of supernatural things or the inventions of demons. But there's no point in arguing this either with someone whose mind is utterly closed to the evidence there is for such things.Time to call it quits on this. Maybe Mod has more energy to continue it, I don't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't do ploys as you imagine I do, Percy. What unfortunately happens is that I have a strong impression that then changes as I get new responses. For whatever reason I'm always completely convinced something is at an end, and then find myself having to respond further. Maybe I'm "bipolar" or something but I haven't been able to change this pattern though I've tried. I succeed once in a while in anticipating such an eventuality, but not often enough.Aa for the content, it actually still holds that there is nothing more to say. Once you've decided I'm misjudging the evidence there's nothing more to say.I know Christianity is the only true religion and it's probably the main reason I'm a Chrsitian. Some religions hold people because they were born into it, that's a very shaky basis even for Chrsitians, but other religions don't have the objective value Chrsitianity has. I don't defend it because I'm a Christian, I'm a Chrixtian because it's true.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

To deny the clear facts that distinguish a miracle from a normal event makes Hume's judgments nonsensical. Water does not normally turn to wine, great seas do not part and expose the dry ground beneath, corpses do not come back to life, lame people don't just up and walk and so on on and so forth. To ask for more evidence than the witnessing of such events by some number of people is ridiculous.

I agree that if it can be detected and measured it's a natural phenomenon but I'm not sure that's the end of the category. "Outside the bounds" is a risky formulation because all the phenomena being called supernatural are certainly within the bounds of the universe, just not of the same stuff. But we are misusing the concept of "supernatural" if we simply confine it to the unmeasurable untestable nonphysical realities we're talking about here, though it is a handy shorthand I fall into too. They are no less natural for being unmeasurable. I don't know the best way to conceptualize these things but if they exist they are real the same way the physical material things are real, and I don't see any reason to think of them as a separate universe since they interpenetrate the physical universe we live in.I suppose the best analogy is the mind or the soul. Extreme materialists may claim these don't have reality but they must have the same kind of reality as demons and angels so they serve as a model for this nonphysical universe that is wrongly called supernatural.The only TRUE supernatural entity is God Himself, everything else was created by Him, including the spiritual nonphysical entities such as angels and fallen angels and whatever other beings may be part of that realm of being. Such creatures are sentient, they can't be made to conform to scientific tests. They are normally invisible to us but some ascribe a "degree" of physicality to them, whatever that means, something to do with their ability to "manifest" in the physical world.True miracles on the order reported in the Bible are suspensions of the laws of the physical universe that only God can do, since He created it and runs it. (There is an order of "manifestations" that demons are able to do but they are trivial little tricks, that for instance some Hindu gurus may invoke, and they are often faked too. The guru Sai Baba was known for these things. {See "Avatar of Night" by Tal Brooke.}) Well, the Bible disagrees with you since miracles are definitely put forward as evidence for the deity of Christ in the NT as well as the reality and nature of God in the OT. The appearances of angels and demons help to define the greater reality we all live in, which makes heaven and hell real places and the promises of eternity after death a reality. Probably true though not relevant.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm in tune with the entire history of orthodox Christianity so when you insult me you are insulting all of that.

There really aren't any true miracles in other religions. I haven't seen a believable account of a miracle in any other religion. Just saying such and such happened is not very convincing. The way the miracles are reported in the Bible has depth and reality and human context in a way that makes them believable, and they are important events that violate physical laws, not something a fallen angel could make a cobra do.. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The evidence of the supernatural has in fact been given over and over here, it's the witness of the Bible. That's it and it's good evidence but you are free to pretend it isn't. Just stop saying no evidence has been given because that's false.And no, the miracles in the Bible are not in any other religions, not even the shadow of a similarity so if you are going to claim they are you need to give the evidence that they are. Sorry, a flat out statement that the moon split is hardly credible and an expanding cobra isn't a miracle, and is probably also false.The miracles in the bible are truly violations of the natural law that can only be done by God Himself. You won't find anything remotely comparable anywhere else.If you insist on including the two examples above, which is ludicrous in the extreme, even then you have two very iffy candidates against dozens in the Bible which are obviously of much higher quality and credibility.

As I said, telling the supernatural from the natural is no harder than telling when you are experiencing something while awake or dreaming. It takes no superpowers at all. Even you could do it."Not been established." How many times do I have to point out that you can't verify the existence of something that occurs once and leaves only the evidence of witnesses. Well, you COULD establish it by accepting that witness evidence, as Chrsitians do, but since you wont', no supernatural for you. Actually no. They really do merely believe it because they are habituated to it, they really have no evidence for it at all, they just grew up in it, they've learned its rituals, but that's it. Sometimes demons may manifest in other religions but all thqt proves is the supernatural, not anything like Christianity's claim to be the revelation of God.Christianity does have evidence and not only evidence for the miracles in the Bible, but evidence of a massively transformed western world which is knowable through good histories -- not today's revisionist antireligious crap. Comparing Christianity to the other religions is beyond ludicrous. Christianity IS the yeardstick by which all other religions SHOULD be judged, and it gives an explanation for all of them as the work of demons because of hte Fall; and ARE judged by Chrsitians, and this used to be the case even among unbelievers who live in Chrsitian countries. Too bad the revisionists have taken over the universities.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.