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Author | Topic: The "science" of Miracles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
The word appeared in your definition too. It may be "ascribed" or "deemed" in some definitions but it isn't hard to find. You've plucked a definition that includes the word 'attributed' and latched onto it like a dying man. Edited by ringo, : Fixed quote.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
No, we do not know that. I've already referred you to the miracles in the Bible. Healing the sick does not require breaking any physical laws. And Jesus' face appearing to appear on a taco doesn't require breaking any physical laws.
We all know what a miracle is, it's a supernatural intervention, it breaks natural/scientific laws.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
I don't refuse to recognize the concept any more than I refuse to accept the concept of fiction. I do refuse to acknowledge that fiction is true. I also reject Tangle's definition of a "true" miracle because it doesn't even fit the miracles in the Bible.
But your position refuses to consider the concept of a true miracle....
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Healing the sick in the Bible IS a miracle but it doesn't necessarily require breaking physical laws - e.g. curing blindness by putting mud (salve) on the eyes.
Healing the sick requires a miracle if it's done with a shaman's chant and on an amputee. Tangle writes:
There is a fine line between what is attributed to a miraculous cause and what is not. The fact is that the miracles in the Bible do not necessarily require breaking any natural laws.
If it's done by a doctor an aspirin and a patient with a head ache it doesn't. Causation not outcome.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
Like jar, I don't see any way that we could recognize a "true" miracle if there was one. Our approach to everything should be, "Hmm, I wonder how that flashlight works...."
Do I understand correctly that you're saying you're willing to consider the hypothetical, for the sake of discussion, of true miracles? Percy writes:
I'm not willing to consider the re-definition of what a miracle is and always has been. But does this mean that you're not willing to consider the hypothetical of a true miracle if a miracle is defined as a violation of the physical laws of the universe? Hypothetically, if there was a God or other supernatural presence, I don't know if it could "break" the physical laws that it supposedly created. It makes no more sense to discuss that hypothetical than it does to discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If we're going to discuss miracles - particularly the science of miracles - we don't need to go off into fantasy la-la land with hypothetical definitions of miracles. Let's stick to the ones that we have. Edited by ringo, : Spolling.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Percy writes:
No, I'm assuming that the answer will always be, "There's no reason to think we'll never find a natural explanation."
But you're assuming that the answer will always be, "Once again, a natural explanation was found." Percy writes:
I wouldn't say that. I'd say that the events described are the perception of the authors. They thought physical laws had been broken. They attributed the cause to the supernatural. Ian Fleming thought James Bond was the good guy and Goldfinger was the bad guy. That doesn't make it so.
... if you're talking about the same kind of God as Faith, the one in the Bible, then he has broken the physical laws of the universe many times.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
As I've said, if there was a hypothetical God, I don't know if it could hypothetically break its own hypothetical laws. You can't sum that many hypotheticals and get anything resembling sense. So if, hypothetically, there were such a thing as a supernatural God like the one Faith believes in from the Bible, in other words, if, hypothetically, God exists and the Bible is his story, then the hypothetical situation under consideration includes that God has broken the physical laws of the universe many times. All we know is that some people believe God has broken His own laws. As far as I'm concerned, that belief has no value.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
That's what I'm saying. Why would you speculate one way or the other? You can make up arbitrary rules like, "God can break His own laws," or "God can't break his own laws," but what's the point of that? Speculate that there's a God. Why would you further speculate that he can't break his own laws? I mean, there's absolutely nothing to go on, how could you speculate as to His qualities? Believers can make up any plot point they choose to support thier beliefs. What has that got to do with the science of miracles?
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
The harm is in things like creationism. If you fixate on your speculations and convince yourself that they're the "word of God", science and education go out the window. It could be another Dark Age.
whats the harm in speculation? Phat writes:
That's a copout. You only use it when it's convenient. At other times you feel yourself free to claim that "we choose" Hell and God can't do anything about it.
... the point is that He is not bound by any law or rule by definition.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
How is it a speculation to say I don't see how we can speculate?
But I thought *you* were speculating in a particular direction when you said, "Hypothetically, if there was a God or other supernatural presence, I don't know if it could 'break' the physical laws that it supposedly created." Percy writes:
As I've pointed out, Tangle's definition doesn't work. It doesn't even fit the miracles in the Bible. I'm not talking to Tangle; I'm talking to the people who have sense enough to see that.
You're talking to Tangle and me. Miracles *do* have a definition... Percy writes:
Of course they can. How can you know ahead of time whether or not we can ever understand something?
... the examples of miracles Tangle and I have described cannot be reasonably viewed as phenomena we don't yet understand....
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Flood.
Effects with miracles are localalised.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
So they're localised unless they're not? Another fine definition brought to you by Tangle.
But the ones we're talking of at the moment - wine, bridges, mountains are localised.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Whether the effects were local or not is irrelevant. The fact is that "miracles" do NOT require a suspension of natural laws, local or universal, temporary or permanent. Healing the sick does NOT require suspension of natural law. The fact that the effects were local is significant as the effects were not universal, all of gravity has not changed, all wine has not changed - they're all targeted suspensions of natural laws. You're making the same mistake that creationists make - fixating on one or two examples that support your position and ignoring the ones that don't. In your case it's even worse because your "examples" are entirely fictional. The examples in the Bible of what people actually call "miracles", do not support your position.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
You and Tangle are missing an important part of the definition: that "miracles" are attributed to supernatural causes. When somebody calls something a "miracle", it's because he can't explain it according to natural laws, not because nobody can or ever will be able. You rejected Tangle's definition of miracle (your Message 194), but it should by now be clear that even if you don't like that definition, there's a pretty clear consensus out there that that is the proper definition. Miracles are subjective, not objective. There can not be a consensus that something was a miracle.
Percy writes:
That would not be how miracles are actually defined, so no. You might as well ask me to consider "for the sake of discussion" that leprechauns are eighty feet long and swim around Loch Ness.
... would you be willing for the sake of discussion to consider an example of a miracle using the definition you don't like, that a miracle is "an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws,"
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
Not "cannot be explained" - "HAVE not been explained". They're coming out with an explanation of flashlights next week.
Miracles are based on things that cannot be explained...not now and not next week. Phat writes:
How can you possibly know what will be explained in the future?
Perhaps you believe that everything can be explained eventually.
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