Zobel said:

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Right so when you limit the permissible to physical you get a physical output. Trivial tautology.

The reason is experiential. Documenting any past personal experience is metaphysical.

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So metaphysics is postmodern? It's all about personal experience? What output do you get when inserting a metaphysical structure into a scientific question? How do you choose the metaphysical philosophy and how do you verify it has contributed accurate information and data?

Sapper Redux said:

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Orthodox Texan said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Wait, you're saying Christian philosophy, with its explicitly neo-Platonic church fathers and neo-Aristotelean turn in the Medieval era has a lot in common with Plato and Aristotle? I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

And yes, you don't know. You keep asserting the importance of your metaphysics without any means of establishing the reality of that position. You might be right. You can't demonstrate it. You can only assert it.

I would agree that kids in school need more explicit exposure to different schools of philosophy. It's amazing how much of our lives are built on assumptions from often problematic philosophies. However, evolution and metaphysics are not linked. You can understand evolution without reaching for one specific religious faith or philosophy. Evolution is testable and verifiable in the physical reality we inhabit. Adding metaphysics is muddying the picture to push an agenda. Oh, and modern ideas about abiogenesis involve deep sea thermal vents.

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Surface level take on Plato and Christianity as usual. You take too much into account for Platonic vocabulary as a criticism against Christian thought which originates wayyyyyy before Plato. We like him though, it's just his conclusions were wrong and makes reality arbitrary just like your belief!

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Christian thought originates before Plato? Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought BC meant Before Christ. Theologians like Augustine were heavily influenced by neo-Platonic thought meaning Plato came first and helped direct Christian theology rather than the other way around.

And it's funny that on the one hand you want to appropriate Plato and Aristotle when they say something that you can use to argue for your metaphysics while ditching them the second they turn problematic. Maybe Plato and Aristotle don't support your metaphysics as much as you want to believe?

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Lol well a Jew would argue that Christianity stems only from the time period of the Incarnation but it's pretty stupid. Who did Moses see if humans can't see God? You can ask the same to Muslims. These arguments rarely come up anymore because they've been defeated with ease so many times. Modern Jews follow Rabbinic Judaism and refuse their own Scripture based on following a tradition of scribes and not prophets. Actually similar to how much of the Protestant world functions.

Truth can be anywhere but it's clear (at least to people willing to look for it ) that the fullness of truth is in the Orthodox Church. It's the only worldview that doesn't lead to an arbitrary reality and gives us transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. Plato has some interesting ideas and some really dumb ones. Using a little bit of his vocabulary to help explain our metaphysics doesn't diminish our position in anyway. Plato probably would have disagreed with our conclusions but that's ok because we have a better argument lol. Once you realize your worldview is arbitrary (regardless where that manifests itself) then you lose the argument. At that point you should just go about your way and just be as arbitrary as anyone else who is dumb enough to believe reality is relative.

"Fullness of Truth"

That's funny.. we say that all the time in the Roman Catholic Church!

Absolutely lol. Every worldview is in competition.

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So metaphysics is postmodern? It's all about personal experience? What output do you get when inserting a metaphysical structure into a scientific question? How do you choose the metaphysical philosophy and how do you verify it has contributed accurate information and data?

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No, I said past experience is metaphysical, not that metaphysics is experience.

Why would you insert a metaphysical structure into a scientific question? I feel like I'm repeating myself with the weight of a song. You can't use one level of hierarchy to describe another, any more than you can describe a composer by describing his work using strictly music theory within his work.

"Verify" "information" is saying "how do you know how tall the composer was using only the key, time signature, and rhythm of the music." Or like asking how long something is in pounds.

The point is not to say that metaphysics is part of physics, an unknown additional physical variable. That's just physics.

You keep using this same example as of it says anything. It doesn't. A song can be analyzed in multiple aspects. Some of which are quantitative and verifiable through testing and others of which are qualitative. The qualitative aspects are still subject to structured, scientific analysis based on biological, chemical, or physical attributes. It can be further broken down using historical, anthropological, or sociological methods. None of this may result in a singular "truth" about a song, but it also means that the song is not unknowable simply because it has layers of complexity.

You can't answer the basic question of which metaphysical philosophy to use and why it is necessary because you have no means of actually weighing the validity of those philosophies. The reasons I've seen you use to justify your Christian metaphysic are reliant on observations and deductions no different from the tools used by scientists, scholars in the humanities, and social scientists. There's no definitive reason you can provide to show your metaphysics are necessary or better than those of any other faith tradition. You just keep asserting that since humans are limited in understanding, there must be a grand metaphysic in addition to physics. Knowing that humans are limited in our ability to grasp all aspects of the universe creates a gap. God is not the only answer for that gap.

This might be the most arrogant post I've seen on this forum. Congrats. That's impressive.

You're completely missing the purpose of the analogy. I didn't make any truth claims about music, I'm describing the error of arbitrarily limiting your descriptive tool to one language by trying to make a simple example of a metalanguage.

Music theory and notation in this case is one language. It can be used to describe anything happening within time, and it can be used to repeatedly generate the same result. It can't, however, tell you from within the sheet music anything about its origin or the person who wrote it or played it.

A person who is an expert in reading and playing music would be foolish to say -- there's nothing else going on when I play this music other than music. And just as foolish to challenge someone to prove the existence or characterize the composer using only sheet music.

Listing off a laundry list of how we may characterize something is irrelevant to my point: you can't get out of the layer you're in by describing that layer. It also runs into another issue that we know we can't fully characterize the system we're in internally.

It is amusing though to be lectured by you about history or sociology like they're science. They're not, they're not demonstrable. History is not a science - it can't have experimentation or reproducible models. It may be a discipline. Especially since I suspect that between the two of us I am the only one who's published papers in scientific journals.

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You can't answer the basic question of which metaphysical philosophy to use and why it is necessary because you have no means of actually weighing the validity of those philosophies....There's no definitive reason you can provide to show your metaphysics are necessary or better than those of any other faith tradition.

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I haven't tried. Forget what is best, I strictly have been showing two things:

- excluding it through physical rigor is impossible
- eliminating it altogether is an assumption

and we may add a third to this list, that as logic, mathematics, and all other foundational building blocks of science are self-constrained by their own structures, it is necessary that something outside the system exist from which to view the system. Call it whatever you want, call it unknowable or the gap, I don't care.

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You just keep asserting that since humans are limited in understanding, there must be a grand metaphysic in addition to physics.

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It would be difficult to keep doing something that I haven't done once.

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as logic, mathematics, and all other foundational building blocks of science are self-constrained by their own structures, it is necessary that something outside the system exist from which to view the system.

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This is a critical point. It ties in with your analogy to trying to gain a complete understanding of music by referring only to sheet music. Sapper's argument is, essentially, that sheet music doesn't tell us anything about the composer or even that there was a composer solely by examining the sheet music itself.

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Truth can be anywhere but it's clear (at least to people willing to look for it ) that the fullness of truth is in the Orthodox Church. It's the only worldview that doesn't lead to an arbitrary reality and gives us transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge.

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This statement reads as though the truth of the Orthodox Church should be obvious to everyone and that any moderately capable thinker considering the nature of reality and knowledge must inevitably conclude the same truth. How do you reconcile this statement with reality?

The reality that more than 2/3s of the planet rejects Christianity and that the majority of Christians are not part of the Orthodox church? The reality that people far more intelligent than you, Zobel, or anyone else here have wrestled with these questions for thousands of years and have reached all manner of different conclusions? Philosophers, scientists, theologians, and artists over thousands of years and from all manner of life have struggled with these questions because they are hard. To dismiss all conclusions not matching yours as bias, laziness, or 'not being willing to look for it' seems itself a lazy conclusion.

Believing that one philosophy is the only viable philosophy that doesn't devolve into nonsense and can permit the transcendental conditions necessary for the possibility of knowledge seems perfectly fine. Stating it as fact and being able to definitively dismiss the majority of the most brilliant thinkers our species has to offer is a pretty fantastic thing. Or dismissing another philosophy an account of it not measuring up to the presuppositions and standards of your what your philosophy should be obviously problematic.

When I read statements like the one above, I imagine an amateur scientist walking into the room of the most brilliant scientists who have ever lived and saying "'This' one! 'This' is the right scientific theory of everything and the rest of you are clearly idiots who aren't really trying." It takes some balls to think like that.

I think most people just like to be right about their religion, politics, philosophy, whatever. That wanting to be right and KNOWING you are right is the enemy of truth.

Zobel said:

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Most modern people are strict materialists, and that includes Christians. I had a person call me an ******* in this forum because he said he didn't believe in miracles and I asked how he squared that with the resurrection.

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Materialism is certainly trending toward a dominant view, and not without reason, but I don't see how you can actually be a Christian and be a strict materialist. It seems much more fitting to say that even people open to metaphysical explanations don't find them compelling where good materialistic explanations suffice.

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Nevertheless. We believe God cooperates with us, as St Paul puts it. Co-operates in a literal sense. When Christians say they are the Body of Christ that means they are in a real way the means through which He works.

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This feels like a bait and switch, sure you can say the body of christ being the church implements much of gods will, but rather explicitly in the bible we have claims of miraculous intervention. Interventions that most certainly could be evidenced even if not explained by empirical means.

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Every Christian should attribute disease to demons in a broad sense because sin is the cause of disease.

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Is it? You are claiming every disease-causing virus, bacteria, fungus, cancer etc. didn't come along until sin?

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Again studying the mechanical impact of prayer is weighing songs.

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No it isn't. This is ONLY true if you claim the prayer has no effect on the goings of our universe, In which case fine, it's an untestable claim. But if you want to claim prayer has real healing power, then this is false, that is measurable and observable.

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If the metaphysical can create the universe it's illogical to say that it's ongoing effects have to be measurable within the system.

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No it isn't. Why on earth do you think this. Effects are...effects. If the effect is claimed to be something on our physical world by what logic do you claim that wouldn't be observable?

If you claim to pray for a rock a device is set to drop to have the rock instead fly upward and claim this prayer is powerful and effective, in what way would that not be measurable and testable? I'm not saying all forms of metaphysical claims are testable, but very many are. Nor am I saying this particular example is something religious people claim but it is analogous.

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That's like asking characters in a book to identify the actions of the author writing the story. It doesn't mean the author can't use perfectly consistent means to move the story along.

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No it's not, see above. You seem to be claiming there is a categorical disconnect, but the simple truth is that many of the claims Christians make and many of the events claimed in the bible are absolutely observable and could be evidenced by science even if not molded and explained.

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My point is that we know with utter certainty we can't completely describe the universe. Godel has proven it. So arbitrarily excluding metaphysical operation when we have a fully described mechanistic situation is illogical.

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Again, you are misunderstanding. I've repeatedly said you cannot disprove the metaphysical, you could even claim every act of the physical is a continuous consistent miracle. What I've said is that there are many claimed metaphysical operations that would be evidenced if they occurred that do not.

Again, curing any of the diseases I listed earlier would be directly contrary to our natural explanations, yet there is ostensibly no limit on the claimed metaphysical healing to deal with such issues, why then do we not see people healed of these conditions?

How do you know every single healing that happens isn't a result of metaphysical action?

Zobel said:

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How do you know every single healing that happens isn't a result of metaphysical action?

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Trees that fall in the forest don't in fact make a sound if no one's around to hear it. I prayed that they would but I can't verify it.

Zobel said:

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How do you know every single healing that happens isn't a result of metaphysical action?

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Come on man, at least read:

"Again, you are misunderstanding. I've repeatedly said you cannot disprove the metaphysical, you could even claim every act of the physical is a continuous consistent miracle"

You're asking me to defend claims other supposed Christians are making. I have no idea what claims they are or aren't making or if I agree with them.

My point about the body of Christ is that Christianity teaches God chooses to act through people in the world. You could say the Incarnation is the ultimate extension of this, in grand miraculous fashion, but it doesn't have to be fireworks to do it.

When people do good things, they're imaging God. God is the only source of Good, so they're participating in His Goodness when they do good. If God wants to heal someone, He might do that through a doctor, or through someone praying, and the business end of that may be through the person resting and their immune system working. People not participating in God doesn't prevent God's work, but it does deprive them of participating, cooperating with God.

If you took every firework wowser miracle in the scripture you get .. what... a couple hundred? There's fewer than a hundred people positively identified in the scriptures as prophets... over thousands of years. Miracles may be relatively common in the scriptures, that doesn't make them common in the world even if you take them at face value.

That doesn't consider that every single miracle in the scripture could potentially have a perfectly plausible materialistic explanation. And, if they do, it doesn't preclude a parallel metaphysical activity going along with it. It's untestable, you would have no way of knowing.

Zobel said:

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You're asking me to defend claims other supposed Christians are making. I have no idea what claims they are or aren't making or if I agree with them.

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Ok I'll clarify to make sure we are on the same page:

Do prayer miracles occur, that is to say, does god intervene medically in a way inconsistent with a materialistic understanding of medicine? Or are these only limited to the instances shown in the bible?

Additionally, you made this claim with respect to demons so I'll follow up on that question:

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Is it? You are claiming every disease-causing virus, bacteria, fungus, cancer etc. didn't come along until sin?

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When people do good things, they're imaging God. God is the only source of Good, so they're participating in His Goodness when they do good. If God wants to heal someone, He might do that through a doctor, or through someone praying, and the business end of that may be through the person resting and their immune system working.

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Again, any claim of metaphysical involvement in an event 100% consistent with materialistic understanding isn't something we can investigate or evidence. It's simply a matter of faith. Even so, for the most part even Christians are broadly hesitant to claim god's direct intervention in such instances.

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If you took every firework wowser miracle in the scripture you get .. what... a couple hundred? There's fewer than a hundred people positively identified in the scriptures as prophets... over thousands of years. Miracles may be relatively common in the scriptures, that doesn't make them common in the world even if you take them at face value.

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It's a big populous world. Jesus claimed the miracles of his followers would surpass his own-did that come to pass? Even an incredibly rare healing of an amputee would be hard to miss.

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That doesn't consider that every single miracle in the scripture could potentially have a perfectly plausible materialistic explanation. And, if they do, it doesn't preclude a parallel metaphysical activity going along with it. It's untestable, you would have no way of knowing.

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Again I'm not stating the metaphysical can be disproved. But it's hard not to find it curious that no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism. Even though there are countless ways in which this could happen.

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But it's hard not to find it curious that no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism.

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That does not seem to be an accurate statement at all.

Jabin said:

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But it's hard not to find it curious that no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism.

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That does not seem to be an accurate statement at all.

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By all means show me...

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Do prayer miracles occur, that is to say, does god intervene medically in a way inconsistent with a materialistic understanding of medicine? Or are these only limited to the instances shown in the bible?

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Do they occur? I mean, sure. probably. People have inexplicable turns for the better all the time. But I think you'd have to affirm also that God intervenes medically in a way that appears consistent with materialistic understanding, too. That's probably much more common.

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Is it? You are claiming every disease-causing virus, bacteria, fungus, cancer etc. didn't come along until sin?

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With regard to how humans are in the world - mortal, mutable, passible - yes. If you're asking if viruses existed or evolution happened I also say yes. But I believe humans in particular are subject to these things as the result of sin, or the fall, or however you want to refer to it.

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Again, any claim of metaphysical involvement in an event 100% consistent with materialistic understanding isn't something we can investigate or evidence. It's simply a matter of faith. Even so, for the most part even Christians are broadly hesitant to claim god's direct intervention in such instances.

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The first point is kind of what I've been getting at, the second is irrelevant (kind of an argumentum ad populum). Especially when you say "even Christians" you're really saying something more like "even modern materialist Christians" and at a minimum I'd suggest "most" needs a *citation needed.

All I've been getting at is that you can't set up a dichotomy that says if I have a materialist explanation this excludes the possibility concurrent metaphysical one. You seem to accept this but argue against it at the same time, all these posts are like "yes but..." over and over again.

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Jesus claimed the miracles of his followers would surpass his own-did that come to pass?

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He didn't say that, if you're talking about John 14:12. Works, erg-- is where we get energy from, activity. Or if you like Latin instead of Greek, operation. Hence, co-operation with the father. It's what I've been describing.

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But it's hard not to find it curious that no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism. Even though there are countless ways in which this could happen.

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If the material reality is consistent with the causal reality which you have softly accepted precedes it, why shold we expect incongruity?

Aggrad08 said:

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Jabin said:

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But it's hard not to find it curious that no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism.

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That does not seem to be an accurate statement at all.

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By all means show me...

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The multiple instances of the dead being raised to life as recounted in the Bible, the origin of the Universe, the origin of life in general, and the origin of human individuals are just a few that come immediately to mind.

I used to be bothered a lot by the current lack of true miracles, like those described in the book of Acts. My question to just about anyone who would listen was "Where is God?"

But about ten years ago I lived in a house that had a pear tree out front. The pear tree bore hundreds if not thousands of incredibly delicious pears every year. I started pondering how the pear tree essentially turned dirt into such succulent objects. And, even more amazing, if I put **** on that pear tree it did an even better job.

I pondered further that we really don't know how the pear tree does that. Sure, we can describe it in broad brush strokes but those strokes, if examined carefully, reveal a lack of all of the important details. Again, we have no materialistic explanation for how the pear tree produces pears.

It occurred to me that God is constantly at work around me. So much so that I take it for granted. The pear tree's almost automatic production of such wonderful fruit happens so much like clockwork that I forget its miraculous nature.

Even the clockwork of the universe has no materialistic explanation. Why is the universe capable of rationale understanding? Why are there universal rules? There is no materialistic explanation for the existence of universal rules. Aren't the rules themselves, in fact, evidence of God's constant miraculous intervention in the Universe?

And Zobel gets at least one thing right. The Church, i.e. other Christians, are described as the body of Christ. When another Christian stops to help me, that is God stopping to help me. That is God actively working in my life.

Skeptics love to point to and are correctly put off by the hypocrisy of Christians. Yet Christians do so much good. Anything in human behavior that can be quantified shows that Christians, in toto, do more "good" things than non-Christians, including members of other religions. Why is that? Can it be explained in naturalistic or materialistic terms? Is it not a miracle?

Zobel said:

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Do they occur? I mean, sure. probably. People have inexplicable turns for the better all the time. But I think you'd have to affirm also that God intervenes medically in a way that appears consistent with materialistic understanding, too. That's probably much more common.

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Yet god never seems to intervene in a way contradictory to what science says is possible rather than simply inexplicable in ways that repeatedly happen at a certain statistical rate that tends to be pretty consistent per disease or ailment.

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With regard to how humans are in the world - mortal, mutable, passible - yes. If you're asking if viruses existed or evolution happened I also say yes. But I believe humans in particular are subject to these things as the result of sin, or the fall, or however you want to refer to it.

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How does this make sense, the diseases were there during the human evolutionary development. At some arbitrary point there is someone you are calling the first human I suppose? And that human had magical disease protection that was lost when they sinned?

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The first point is kind of what I've been getting at, the second is irrelevant (kind of an argumentum ad populum).
Especially when you say "even Christians" you're really saying something more like "even modern materialist Christians" and at a minimum I'd suggest "most" needs a *citation needed.

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The issue with the first point is applies only to a narrow selection of possible intervention, you are trying to make it apply broadly when it most certainly doesn't unless you limit gods intervention.

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All I've been getting at is that you can't set up a dichotomy that says if I have a materialist explanation this excludes the possibility concurrent metaphysical one. You seem to accept this but argue against it at the same time, all these posts are like "yes but..." over and over again.

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And what I've been getting at is there are endless possibilities for supernatural events that would evidence themselves and contradict a materialist explanation and yet they never do. So if we were to live in a world where supernatural healing occurs why would god find people suffering of ailments that couldnt' be cured except in ways inconsistent with materialism less worthy of mercy?

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He didn't say that, if you're talking about John 14:12. Works, erg-- is where we get energy from, activity. Or if you like Latin instead of Greek, operation. Hence, co-operation with the father. It's what I've been describing.

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Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

I see no limitation to non-supernatural acts. Co-operation with the father is implied whether the act is consistent with materialism or supernatural. Jesus did both, why should the works he refers to not be both?

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If the material reality is consistent with the causal reality which you have softly accepted precedes it, why shold we expect incongruity?

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For the same reason it's claimed in the bible, it's a needless limitation, and evidences god. Why should sick not be healed just because materialism says they are doomed? Why should sick not be healed just because it would be a great evidence for god?

Jabin said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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Jabin said:

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The multiple instances of the dead being raised to life as recounted in the Bible, the origin of the Universe, the origin of life in general, and the origin of human individuals are just a few that come immediately to mind.

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So you've got nothing but empty claims...
Funny how Christians suddenly lost the ability to raise the dead.

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I used to be bothered a lot by the current lack of true miracles, like those described in the book of Acts. My question to just about anyone who would listen was "Where is God?"

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I don't see how this answers the question as to why the current miracles don't exist.

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I pondered further that we really don't know how the pear tree does that. Sure, we can describe it in broad brush strokes but those strokes, if examined carefully, reveal a lack of all of the important details. Again, we have no materialistic explanation for how the pear tree produces pears.

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You are kidding right? If pears were such a big miracle why does god not seem satisfied with pears in the NT?

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Even the clockwork of the universe has no materialistic explanation. Why is the universe capable of rationale understanding? Why are there universal rules? There is no materialistic explanation for the existence of universal rules. Aren't the rules themselves, in fact, evidence of God's constant miraculous intervention in the Universe?

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No there are tons of possibilities here. Cause jesus did it is one of very many. And this again is just answered by the weak anthropic principle. Appealing to design and calling the design a miracle is simply the teleological argument which has it's own flaws.

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Skeptics love to point to and are correctly put off by the hypocrisy of Christians. Yet Christians do so much good. Anything in human behavior that can be quantified shows that Christians, in toto, do more "good" things than non-Christians, including members of other religions. Why is that? Can it be explained in naturalistic or materialistic terms? Is it not a miracle?

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yea you might want to re-examine this. The Mormons kick your ass in most categories.

You seem to be changing your question. And, it's interesting that you seem to concede that there are no materialistic explanations for the miracles I listed, which is what you originally asked, wasn't it?

But your core question seems to be why doesn't God still do the miracles in the number and qualitative manner that He did in the Bible. Those are miracles such as instantaneous healing, raising people from the dead, turning water into wine, speaking in tongues that others can understand, and the like. That's a great question and one I've pondered a lot. I don't know the answer because God hasn't told us but here are my speculations:

First, as background, only a relatively few miracles are recounted in the Bible. As Zobel estimated, maybe a hundred or two. Further, they were spread out over 4,000 years and seem to have been clumped into specific time frames. So, even within the Biblical accounts, hundreds or thousands of years passed without God doing "in your face" miracles. So the miracles we see in the Bible are compressed through the telescope of the Bible. In other words, God wasn't "constantly" doing miracles during the Biblical years.

But why not for the last 2000 years?

Some claim that he is. I have very intelligent and normally skeptical friends who have served as missionaries overseas and tell me that they have personally witnessed miraculous healings. One I remember is a friend who watched a man's ear grow back. We all have questioned why overseas and not here in America or Europe? Again, we don't know but one possible explanation that is supported by some scriptures is that God uses miracles, at times, to break the ice when His gospel is being spread into a new culture.

Another possible reason is what Christ told the Pharisees - that they wouldn't believe even if they saw a man rise from the dead. Christ did rise from the dead and the Pharisees still didn't believe but lied about his resurrection ("his disciples stole his body") rather than admit the evidence before them. How many times does Christ have to rise from the dead before we concede that it's enough evidence?

And God may not constantly perform miracles because He is God, after all, He is not a vending machine that we can control at our will. He is not a dog that does tricks for us. I've worked for some extraordinarily successful men. I was very careful when I bugged them, even if my questions were legitimate. And, I might bug them once on an issue, but they would not tolerate me continuing to bug them on the same issue over and over again. If mere men are like that, then might not God be even more so?

God appears to hold to representational justice (I just made that phrase up so it's probably not accurate). What I mean by that is God holds the entire human race responsible for Adam and Eve's conduct. On the other side of that coin, we also all get a "get out of jail free" card because of Christ's sacrifice for us. Extending that apparent characteristic of God, He could well and probably does take the attitude that if He did a miracle 2000 years ago, it was good enough for all subsequent peoples.

And we can't complain about the lack of evidence from 2000 years ago. The amount of credible evidence that we have is truly extraordinary from a historical perspective.

So those are my speculations why I have not witnessed any "in your face" "one of a kind" miracles.

To your first point I don't take those seriously, I find the argument so bad as to not even be worthy of mention. I consider the idea that the Bible is a substantial enough bit of evidence to take seriously claims of rising from the dead laughable. So I ignored them not because they need materialistic explanations but because I consider them almost certainly fancies just as with other religions.

The claim that the universe creation or the creation of life a divine miracle I find wanting. It's a literal god of the gaps argument I don't find compelling or in need to pretend at knowledge. This all of course isn't central to my argument and I was ignoring those examples precisely because they don't address my central point not because of any change in my argument.

Getting past that we get to where have all the miracles gone. Well none of your excuses seem to apply any less to ancient times than to today. And I find each of them to be rather weak, and could work as excuses for virtually any faith and I find them equally uncompelling for a Muslim.

With regard to the credibility of ancient Christian sources. That's a topic for another thread suffice to say I've read quite a bit on it and find the sources quite flawed. Let alone when weighed against the extraordinary claims.

There really isn't anything you can point to today to explain why acts is so different. And if people could regrow ears they should be able to do so in a world where everyone has a video camera in their pocket

But your statement which started this discussion between the two of us was:

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no religion seems to be able to point to any power of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism..

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I disagreed with that statement because Christianity does point to powers of divine intervention inconsistent with materialism. You did not say that the religion had to point to powers that are persuasive to you. That's a whole different issue and one which may rest on your own personal psychology as much as the evidence.

And with regard to your God of the gaps argument, which you raise frequently, don't you do the same with science? That is, the typical materialist skeptic's response to the issues of how life began or how the universe began is that, although science doesn't have the answer today, it will someday. That to me seems as much or more of a leap of faith than believing God was integrally involved.

So you simply misunderstand. Lots of religions claim to be able to point to miracles in the ancient past. That's nothing unique I'm not at all sure why you thought Christianity would be an exception if this was your understanding outside of an extreme lack of familiarity with any other religions.

What I'm speaking of is being able to actually right now, in this time we live in evidence any divine power. We are talking about the power of prayer. And as best as anyone can show, all religions today have equally impotent prayers.

And no, that's not what I do with gaps. I say I don't know and neither do you. I don't have evidence of a divine explanation for the gaps so I don't insert it. I don't have evidence for a natural explanation so I don't claim one.

For many if not most of these questions I don't expect we as mankind will ever know. I don't think the universe is built with us in mind and is unlikely to divulge all its secrets.

I don't even claim to fully know that no gods exist. But I'm fairly satisfied that all revealed religions I've encountered have very weak arguments thus far.

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But I'm fairly satisfied that all revealed religions I've encountered have very weak arguments thus far.And I am completely satisfied that materialism provides no ultimate arguments whatsoever.

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By the way, you keep making statements that you are not persuaded. What makes you think that anything I said was an attempt to persuade you? Sometimes folks engage in discussions simply for the enjoyment of a discussion without attempting to persuade the other.

As an aside, In this discussion I do not believe that I said that Christianity was unique, as you asserted. I do believe that Christianity is unique, but have not made that assertion in this discussion.

I was speaking of lines of argument or reasoning I find credible. You seemed to assert that I made tacit admission of something you were claiming when I was actually ignoring it as broadly irrelevant and not a line of argument I find compelling. I was correcting this error.

Regardless of if you think Christianity is unique you misunderstood the criteria and context. I was speaking of the impotence of revealed religion and claims to access divine intervention through prayer or any other means in our current day and age. To this impotence I've seen no exceptions.

Aggrad08, it's always baffling to me when someone like you (who's not a scientist and doesn't rely on scientific methods) plays the "scientist" card to believers who actually employ scientific methods into their everyday professional life. Your unbelief is out of fear and convenience to conformity, not scientific prowess. Hope this helps!

You seem upset. If you have good evidence to put forward please do so. But I'm guessing if you did you would have leaned on that rather than whatever your post is.

Aggrad08 said:

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You seem upset. If you have good evidence to put forward please do so. But I'm guessing if you did you would have leaned on that rather than whatever your post is.

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Stings, don't it?

I think we are going in circles guys.

1. X wants proof.
2. Y offers proof in the form of well reasoned arguments.
3. X counters proof with equally well reasoned arguments.
4. Y doubles down on previous arguments.
5. X double down on refutation.

Do you see where this is going? There are some very talented minds here, however, no one is going to convince anyone who has their mind made up. That includes me. I'm past the, "Is there a God?" stage and onto "Where is God leading me?"

Um no

I do think this reached sort of a conclusion, and not to re-open the previous debate but here is an interesting piece about the 'rare earth' theories as to life (or complex life) being so unique/confined perhaps to just our planet.

Personally, I don't see that as probable, as the universe is so vast it's essentially incomprehensible to me, and this isn't a threat to my religious beliefs but it's interesting. Regardless, the scientific/philosophical debate is interesting. I once read a quote of Einstein that was something to the effect of 'half of my scientific peers are religious/believe in God, and half are not. I can't believe either half are completely wrong.'

It's crazy to think that with all of the timing, order, and beauty in the universe that it all just "happened" on its own. Big Bangs create chaos in nature, not timing, order, and beauty, and certainly not life, food for life, oxygen for life, water for life, perfect gravity for life, etc.

Right now, at the equator the world is spinning at about 1041 mph, and the earth is moving around the sun at about 66,000 mph, and no one even notices all of that speed and movement.

The fossil record shows the Cambrian explosion, where species all appeared at once. It doesn't show a gradual "evolution" of species.

No, along with the complexity of DNA, certainly more complex than the software running your computer, it shows that the world didn't just "happen" on its own, but was created and designed by God Almighty.