dermdoc said:

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And I have a hard time understanding believing in good supernatural(God) and not believing in bad supernatural(Satan and demons).

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Not sure if this is a question specifically for Christians, but I can tell you from my (atheistic) perspective. One of the justifications Christians give for their belief in God is due to the (perceived) necessity of a first cause. Though I don't agree with the argument, it resonates with me. I can understand why people believe that there needs to be a first cause, and Christians endow God with the requisite qualities to fill that role. So the belief in God is philosophically justified that way. On the other hand, when it comes to demons I have heard no such philosophical argument. It seems entirely fabricated, not flowing from something people think is a logical necessity. This is why the belief in God seems a little easier for me to swallow than a belief in demons.

All of the people that were involved in this act did so of their own free will. However, they cooperated with and committed evil. This is altar where Christ is made present. The priest hired 2 prostitutes that certainly appear to be ok with witchcraft, and bragged about defiling a house of God. He desecrated an altar, mocking his role as a priest, wearing his clerical garments and video taping the event. This was a Satanic ritual to mock the church and to bring evil into a holy place. Who knows what else was planned. What if one of these women were impregnated? It has been speculated they could have sacrificed the child through an abortion. We have always been in a spiritual war, but the enemy is getting bold now. I suspect he knows his time is running short.

Quote:

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Does any sex outside of a marriage invite demons into your life, since it's (I imagine) a desecration of one's body? Are there physical consequences to having invited demons into your life, or is it purely spiritual?

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It can. The videos address this directly. We should also remember the number of demons is both massive and finite...while world population has exploded.

So, a lot of problems are not-demonic. Which is why the Church orders a full psychological battery of tests first.

Second, consequences tend to be physical, mental, spiritual, emotional - also addressed in detail in the videos.

Serotonin said:

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Ol_Ag_02 said:

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Serotonin said:

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Countless miracles happen every year for Christians around the world. Countless prayers have been answered.

You seem to be applying a level of skepticism to miracles today that you do not apply to miracles recorded in the Bible.

Or, restated, you have:

• 100% faith in Christian miracles described nearly two millennia ago
• 0% faith in Christian miracles described today

I think Zobel's point is: How do you reconcile these two beliefs?

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I literally just answers this above.

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No you didn't. Your post above describes your beliefs (you hold miracles as false unless they meet a physical standard like growing a limb or some kind of third-party verification).

My question is: Why not apply that same standard to the Bible? How do you have faith that God acted in the world a long time ago through miracles but no longer acts in the world through miracles?

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I agree With this reason to a totally different conclusion. He's right to reject modern miracle claims they tend to be impressively bad. In the modern world Christians appear impotent to call upon divine power in ways shown many times in the Bible.

It's not at all unusual for Christians to notice this lack of power and consider the miracles of the NT special circumstances. I'd say it's a downright common belief to think so. Some leave room for "minor" miracles, virtually all would scoff at a claim of someone laying their hands on people and instantly curing disease. I've seen this is true for many Muslims also.

Luke 4:25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansedonly Naaman the Syrian."

Lack of miracles is not proof of the absence of God. Miracles can be real and rare.

I am, however, also very skeptical of some of the modern day miracle claims. Things like cancer suddenly improving happens occasionally to believers and non-believers alike, so I get uncomfortable attributing a good turn in a incompletely understood process as something supernatural. It's way worse with the miracles related to icons for me. The idea of moving, weeping, bleeding, speaking or healing statues was a old con first cooked up by the Greek pagans. Christians should be above such things

There has been profession of belief in miracles and criticism of miracles or what people consider miraculous in this thread. Speaking as Catholic it appears there is a constant doubt in what the Church declares as a miracle. I don't know if would help, but the Church does not just declare miracles to rush causes for Saints and to fool or trick people into belief. We do not continue pagan practices of making icons or images cry or bleed. I know many here will just call BS, because your are suspicious of anything Catholic, and think that the Church needs to somehow keep us simple minded Catholics in the fold. However there is a process to declare something a miracle and it faces great scrutiny, in order to combat this frequent objection. For something to be declared a miracle there is criteria.
From Karlo Broussard
https://strangenotions.com/what-constitutes-a-miracle/
Aspect #1: Exclusively attributable to divine power
Aspect #2: Beyond the power of created nature
Aspect #3: Beyond the order of created nature
Aspect #4: Extraordinary
Aspect #5: Sensible

Ag4coal said:

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Your prerogative. You're obviously cherry picking, like not addressing the second miracle, but that's fine. There are many, many, many examples. Read them however you want, but read them. There are massive amounts of these stories that aren't possible to explain with modern medicine. If you think Jesus and the apostles came and performed miracles, then it all went away, feel free. But it feels like you are radically limiting God's power because you haven't been able to personally witness it.

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Can non-Catholics or even non-Christians perform miracles in your opinion? Does the RCC ever investigate "miracles" performed by these other groups?

God is the only one who performs miracles so it is his prerogative to perform them for any group, or through the intercession of His Mother or any of the saints. Matthew 13:58 shows that if there is a lack of faith the Lord will not perform miracles.

HossAg said:

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Ag4coal said:

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Your prerogative. You're obviously cherry picking, like not addressing the second miracle, but that's fine. There are many, many, many examples. Read them however you want, but read them. There are massive amounts of these stories that aren't possible to explain with modern medicine. If you think Jesus and the apostles came and performed miracles, then it all went away, feel free. But it feels like you are radically limiting God's power because you haven't been able to personally witness it.

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There are massive amounts of concepts and events that weren't explainable by modern science until they were. It's ignorant to act like something can't be explained just because we haven't figured it out yet.

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Exactly. A medical oddity does not mean miracle. There are seven billion people on earth, frankly with the onset of modern media and a connected world the rare and uncommon should be something that We are made aware of every day.

Basically if something is miraculous; i.e. one in a seven billion chance it happens everyday. I have yet to see a valid response from the RCC regarding why none of these miracle workers can perform miracles "on demand" as described in the New Testament. Again. Let's see someone raise the dead, walk on water, ascend to heaven, cure leprosy immediately, as all of these are examples as shown in the New Testament.

Not one example of a miracle as described above can be provided by those saying that the RCC has verified these miracles.

I really don't see how you can hold the belief you have, which is essentially materialistic and rationalistic, and accept the scriptures.

You have a hand-wave explanation for miracles (given for a time) even though the scriptures themselves never say this.

What is your explanation for demon possession? You've carefully ignored the question.

Zobel said:

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I really don't see how you can hold the belief you have, which is essentially materialistic and rationalistic, and accept the scriptures.

You have a hand-wave explanation for miracles (given for a time) even though the scriptures themselves never say this.

What is your explanation for demon possession? You've carefully ignored the question.

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I do not believe there is any demonic possession occurring outside of the biblical era, nor do I think that there are any miracles performed outside the biblical era. They are no longer needed, as we have written evidence.

John 20: 30-31

30And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; 31but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

I've ignored it until now because demonic possession doesn't warrant a rational response IMO.

That verse doesn't mean that at all. That is a repeated theme by St John, that the purpose of his writing is testimony. The legal witness motif is the major theme of that book. So, the signs which are written in the book were written as part of this witness to who Christ was.

It says nothing whatsoever that the miracles were performed only in a definite time. It also can't simply be limited to the personhood of Christ, because they were performed by others in evangelical fashion. It seems to me that if miracles were good and useful as signs to nonbelievers in the 1st century, they wouldn't lose their efficacy later.

But again, you've dodged the question on demonic possession. Was it irrational for the authors of the scriptures to believe in demonic possession? St Luke, the physician, makes a distinction between physical and spiritual problems. Was he mistaken? Or was Christ Jesus?

And demon possessions are no longer needed? Or why did they stop? Did the demons change? Or people?

It seems far more likely that you just don't believe in demon possession or miracles, but you're not willing to accept what that means with regard to the scriptures.

Wrong thread.

I told you what I believe and why regarding miracles and demonic possession. I'll be glad to eat crow with some valid proof an actual miracle, not a medical rarity.

Have a good one.

So you can't rationalize it. Cool.

I hope you don't apply the same approach to belief in the Incarnation or Resurrection.

Out of curiosity how do you rationalize their absence in the world today? I don't' see how the position that miracles used to happen and are attested to in sources one trusts but today all miracle claims do not appear up to a standard of evidence one finds sufficient to be so inconsistent. The question is why would god use miracles then and not now-which let's be honest, christians shrug their shoulders at much bigger mysteries than this.

However, your position seems to suffer similarly. You can offer consistency that if god used miracles then he certainly could have a purpose for them now-yet the miracles then were bold, out in the open, undeniable, powerful, immediate, and effective. The ones now are designed to make james randi laugh-how do you explain that?

The scriptures say that Christians in the future will surpass the miracles of jesus-yet we've never seen it. So while I think believing in miracles is silly, I'm not sure how your views are less silly than his merely because of a preference theological consistency over evidential consistency.

I don't think his beliefs are silly. They're empirical, which is fine. They're just not consistently empirical.

I don't worry about it. I think miracles happened, people saw them and testify to them. Not just in the NT period but in the years after. I haven't seen one or met anyone who has, and that's ok. I don't think the frequency is relevant. I also don't think that simply because I can't testify to them, they're precluded.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the idea that miracles are common is a bit of a confirmation bias due to the frequency in the scriptures. There was really only one time in history when entire nations witnessed bold miracles, and that was the Exodus. All the other miracles were limited to one time and one place, and the audience was relatively small. Even when Jesus fed the 5000 people, he didn't use fireworks and trumpets. The congregation probably had no idea a miracle even occurred. They just saw people walking around giving out food. There was a supernatural plague in David's day after he started a census, and if you were in the right place at the right time you knew that. However, the vast majority of the population probably didn't think there was anything miraculous about another plague.

That's why I quoted those verses from Luke. No one witnessed Naaman getting miraculously healed except Naaman. No one witnessed the widow's miracle but her and her son. Even then, those barely witnessed miracles were the only ones done during that time. So they are obscure and rare. That's been the rule, and anything else has been the exception

Zobel said:

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So you can't rationalize it. Cool.

I hope you don't apply the same approach to belief in the Incarnation or Resurrection.

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Hey ass. I don't owe you anything, and frankly I've played along for quite a while answering your repetitive questions.

But just becuase you don't like my answers doesn't mean you get to question my belief in the Son of God and his resurrection.

What a dick.

Kinky.