Sorry to be so persistent but I'm having a problem understanding where you could get that kind of faith for starters, how it would even come into your head. Surely you wouldn't just invent it? How could you actually have faith in something your own mind came up with?
By "grounded in any kind of reality" I think I was trying to get at whether you recognize any objective sources in your environment for the idea. But I'm not sure that even quite says what I intend.
I'd have to say I had NO faith before I became a Christian, except in the very early stages I had some kind of belief in the reality of supernatural things, because of some "uncanny" experiences and the stories friends told me, which is what started me on the quest to learn about religions in the first place. But belief isn't faith -- faith implies some kind of trust but the supernatural isn't exactly trustworthy, most of my experiences were scary.
The dictionaries don't talk about "breaking the laws of physics" either. They describe miracles as seeming to be inexplicable by our current understanding of the laws of nature.
Ha ha. Couldn't be because there is an omnipotent intelligence who created the physical universe and can use it however He wants.
Is there some reason the Flood has to be a miracle? Seems to me it left clear physical evidence and creationists don't treat it as a miracle, they try to explain it by physical events.
I don't understand how someone just seeing something, like the Virgin Mary, could call it a miracle with any kind of assurance or confidence. ...
What if three children claimed to see her? What if a whole crowd then gathered and also saw her? What if she was heard to speak to them about world politics?
I think the last apparition preceded cell phones, but I also think apparitions can't be photographed. In fact I think they can only be seen with the "spiritual eye," or the "third eye" and I think this because one film I watched of the children looking at "Mary" showed them walking backwards with their eyes rolled back in their heads the way many Hindu gurus are often depicted. I think it is how you look when you are looking through the "third eye" which is supposedly located in the forehead. You get to see demons that way. I've never wanted to see demons, the idea creeps me out, and the experience I did have was not something I sought. But if you would like to test the idea I think if you meditated quietly on the idea and and concentrated very hard and rolled your eyes back in your head maybe you could do it.
abe: Seeing apparitions and other demonic miracles is what I've been calling petty or second rate miracles. God's miracles occur in real physical space and can be seen by the naked eye. So can some demonic miracles though, such as bleeding statues; they're just not on a par with God's miracles as to meaning or presentation.
I guess you intend to ridicule that statement though on what basis is not clear. That I'm comparing Hindu demon watching to Catholic demon watching?
I saw the picture of the children walking backwards way back in the 90s. I thought it was Fatima but I can't find it in the Fatima video. Other pictures of children watching appoaritions show them looking up usually at a pretty steep angle but not as far as the picture I remember. So I guess you don't have to roll your eyes back completely to see the apparition. But here's a video where one of the children comes closest to what I remember, this one from an apparition at Garbandal Spain in 1961: at about 3:24 and then 6:13
It's amazing how many of these apparitions are reported to be occurring these days.
Here's Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, with his eyes rolled back:
I saw a painting of him with the eyes extremely rolled back but now can't find that.
Sri Chinmoy (this is more typical of what I remember)
Those pictures used to be easy to find. I wonder if internet censorship is removing them. The really intense ones are pretty creepy.
As I started searching for images of these children I found out that there have been lots of Marian aspparitions since cell phones. But the images are not photographed and as I said I don't think they can be, because they are invisible to normal vision. I concluded they must be seen by spiritual vision or the third eye because of the way the seers roll their eyes back, which I know from my reading in Hindu listerature is how you look through the "third eye" or the spiritual eye. As I say in the post I finally put up on this subject, above, for some reason these images are hard to find now though I used to run across them all the time: gurus depicted with their eyes rolled back so far all you can see are the whites. And a painting of Ignatius Loyola looking just like that. Which I also can't find now. Which is really weird.
These are Catholic visions. If you're willing to accept Catholic visions, which in your view is not a Christian religion and whose leader is the antichrist, then are you also willing to accept Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu visions?
Of course I "accept" them. They are seeing demons and calling them God or angels or "Mary."
abe: Seeing apparitions and other demonic miracles is what I've been calling petty or second rate miracles. God's miracles occur in real physical space and can be seen by the naked eye. So can some demonic miracles though, such as bleeding statues; they're just not on a par with God's miracles as to meaning or presentation.
That is all something you believe on faith.
Actually it's my conclusions based on the Biblical descriptions of God's miracles and descriptions or illustrations like those posted on this thread of petty miracles that demons can do.
Yes you found the same film I ended up posting of Garabandal apparitions, the only images I could find at all similar to the film of the children I remember from the 90s with their eyes rolled back in their heads walking backwards while seeing a Marian apparition.
Right. Faith keeps claiming that miracles can't be analyzed scientifically, but can't say why except by piling on another helping of goofiness.
Weird. This thread keeps going deeper and deeper into Wonderland.
What I said, which seems to me to be simple and straightforward and unimpeachable, is that the reason miracles aren't subject to scientific testing is that they are unpredictable ephemeral one-time events that don't leave enduring evidence. The minor miracles I say demons can do, that I call petty, such as bleeding statues and that sort of thing, may leave enough evidence if you want to test those.
You talk as if I'm happy miracles can't be tested but why should I be?. It's just my observation that they can't be. At least those described in the Bible.
Christianity is dying out in the west because Christians have become weak and compromised, which is why we are now having a resurgence of paganism.
Hi Faith, I know this is just a sideline, and I won't derail the thread. Could you point out a few places I can read up on the resurgence of Paganism? If it's as you say I'll be interested in reading up on it, I have not heard anything like that at all. Thanks!
Hi Aussie, I run across mentions of it quite a bit, but probably the main analyst of the situation is Peter Jones who has written many books related to the resurgence of paganism in the west. (It's totally irrelevant, but I've always enjoyed the fact that Peter Jones was best friends with John Lennon through their early teen years, and identifies some of the Beatles songs as pagan at core.)
And another. I've barely skimmed it but it looks like a nonChristian site that agrees that paganism is on the rise although they like it while the Christians don't. I suppose you might welcome it.
I just realized one confusing point I contributed to earlier: when I said "natural," although I kept defining it as created as versus uncreated, it must have kept being read as "physical." We know about the physical laws of nature, but if there are created beings that don't belong to the physical world, which would include all "spirit beings" like angels, cherubs, demons, fairies and so on, it doesn't clarify anything to insist on their being natural in the sense of created. They are sufficiently outside our ways of knowing to need some other kind of category. But one thing to note is that they are all BEINGS, living creatures, we're not talking about a world composed of some other kind of matter, at least I haven't been.
This is probably off topic at this point but I felt it needed some kind of attempt at clarification.
Aaa, this has been answered a million times already. There simply is no physical evidence left behind from a one-time miraculous event. Even if there are physical remains there is no way to prove they got there by anything but nonmiraculous means. You may have wine left in the pot that was changed to wine from water but just that fact proves nothing about how it got there. You'd have to have been there when the miracle occurred. Or of course believe those who were and try to tell you about it in the teeth of your refusal to believe, which you won't no matter what they say, as this thread amply demonstrates. The Bible gives plenty of witnesses to miracles but you rationalize them all away. You want "scientific" evidence of something that simply by its nature can't exist. The argument is ridiculously futile. I believe the Bible witnesses, you don't and really, that's all there is to it.
So, no, we would NOT have evidence of a miracle if it occurred.
I haven't argued that God "suspends natural laws all the time," and I don't know who does. He's pretty sparing with His miracles it seems to me. He rather likes His natural laws and the science based on them. The biblical reasons for the miracles are always to validate the claim that the God of the Bible is the Creator God who made it all and runs it all, and that Jesus is also God. It's to demonstrate divine powers to distinguish the true God from lesser gods. Even miracles claimed today are generally done in parts of the world where the people have never heard the gospel, where they need proof of the divine power of the God they are being told about, since they know of the lesser powers of their local gods who can't do what the Creator God can do. Those who live in a Christianity-saturated culture have all the proof we need in the millions of witnesses and the whole history of Christianity. If you spend all your energy debunking it, that's your loss.
Yes, today there could be evidence of healing miracles.
Bible believers know what a prophecy is and have said so for millennia. Now we have unbelieving "scholars" coming along saying the believers are wrong because the scholars don't understand how Bible prophecy works, and besides they actually distort facts such as dates to "prove" their claims.
Still true: I believe the Bible witnesses, many people here don't. That's all this is about in the end.
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