Hi, I.
We are talking about a MIRACLE if I remember correctly.
....
You want to limit the amount of power God has.
No, what we want to do is to use the very plain evidence in front of us to determine whether the alleged miracle did occur.
Suppose, for example, that we all know that Joe Blow died at 5:07 pm on 5 July. Now suppose that someone makes the claim that, through a miracle, Joe was resurrected and still lives. What would be the evidence for the claim? Well, for starters, I would expect to see Joe walking around alive. Now, if he is walking around, we could still argue whether he was truly dead to begin with, but at the very least if I check and Joe is still dead, then I have reason to doubt that the claimed miracle ever occurred. Sure, maybe Joe was resurrected but died all over again, but if I see no evidence that at any point after 5 July Joe was ever alive, and if all indications are that Joe has been lying in the morgue since 5 July, I think it would be a safe bet to assume that the claims of a miracle were in error to begin with.
For instance, it is granted that an omnipotent god could have created the universe all at once (or during a seven day time period) only 6000 years ago. But what would such a created universe look like? Well, for starters, since this god could have just snapped her fingers and created all the rocks all at once, I would expect that radiometric dating would consistently give dates less than 6000 years for all the rocks. Instead, we see dating that is so consistent that we can reconstruct a four and a half billion year history of the earth. Creationists try to argue about "changing rates of radioactive decay", but this really makes no sense -- why would a god, who can do anything, so such a complicated, non-intuitive manner, especially since this very method, our omniscient god knows, will mislead people into coming to an incorrect conclusion?
The same with this sun business. An omnipotent god could have arranged for the shadow on the sun dial to turn back 10 degrees. For the movement of the sun, 10 degrees is a pretty large amount; there were civilizations at this time that would have noticed this, and the fact that it wasn't noticed gives us reason to doubt it.
Unless this is yet another miracle that the omnipotent god arranged in such a way so as to leave no evidence of it occurring. Maybe it was some sort of local phenomenon -- and the fact that the claim has been made that it only occurred in the courtyard is interesting. What makes someone think that it wasn't some sort of magic sleight-of-hand trick arranged by the prophet to fool Hezekiah? What makes someone think that this isn't just a legend that came into being sometime after the alleged occurrence?
This is the problem with trying to argue away the lack of evidence of a supposed miracle. Why would someone just accept such a miraculous occurrence without evidence when there are more mundane explanations for the phenomenon? I think that the fact that someone continues to insist that Joe Blow was actually resurrected by god despite the fact that Joe is still lying in the morgue and there is no sign that he's moved since the 5th tells us more about the believer than about the alleged miracle.
Q: If science doesn't know where this comes from, then couldn't it be God's doing?
A: The only difference between that kind of thinking and the stereotype of the savage who thinks the Great White Hunter is a God because he doesn't know how the hunter's cigarette lighter works is that the savage has an excuse for his ignorance. --
jhuger
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