Here's another thread in my ongoing discussion with Mike. Again, he's in italics; I'm not.
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You mention that it should be shameful to hold beliefs that are contrary to evidence. Fair enough, but--and this is a conversation we're in the middle of elsewhere--I honestly don't think any of my Christian beliefs are invalidated by, or incompatible with, anything science teaches. For example, I think it's no coincidence that Genesis described the creation in the same order as scientists describe evolution--to my eyes, Genesis is simply a quick, details-light way of describing the origins of life to an illiterate tribe of shepherds 4,000 years ago. As for miracles, well... I have an answer for you, but that's for another post. :)
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Re: Genesis. I guess it's just a shame that Genesis describes two incompatible versions of creation (man before plants, or plants before man?)
I would also hasten to perform what I term 'retroactive clairvoyance'; if you believe the Bible is correct AND is compatible with science, then I issue this challenge: make a positive prediction of some fact based on the Bible, and then test that hypothesis with science. If, for instance, you had said, in 1759, that Genesis suggests that all living beings are descended from a single common ancestor, which lived 3 billion years ago, and that the universe is at least 17 billion years old, while the Earth is at least 4 billion years old, then I might grant your argument. Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859 (150th anniversary next yr), so you would have been 100 years ahead of him, and over 150 years ahead of Hubble, who showed that the universe is old & expanding.
Make predictions; don't try to shoehorn the Bible into science.
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I'm actually anxious to hear about your reconciliation between miracles and science.
However, we must remember, of course, that discussions of these types (i.e. what are, in essence, theological explanations for observed events in the physical world) are all contingent upon one major axiom: god exists.If god exists, then we should ask how miracles and science can be reconciled. If god does not exist (and you are aware on whom the burden of proof falls for such an assertion), then we may as well be discussing how Santa manages to make it into my house which has no chimney to speak of.
But I am very much awaiting your explanation.
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"Make predictions; don't try to shoehorn the Bible into science."
I think we're confusing two arguments here. I'm not arguing that Darwin's subsequent discovery proves that the contents of the Bible are true. (If that were my argument, you'd be right: I would need to make a Biblical prediction was later proven independently.) I'm arguing not that the Bible is true, but that it is not contradicted by science. If there is a reasonable way to read the Bible that is compatible with scientific knowledge, then Christianity and science are compatible. That doesn't mean Christianity is true, but it means that it *might* be true. There's an important difference between people who believe things that haven't been proven and people who believe things that have been disproven. The former are reasonable; the latter are wrong. I'm trying to argue that I'm in the former camp.
So all I have to do is show that there is a reasonable reading of the Bible that doesn't contradict the proven facts.
I think Genesis 1 is close enough: it's a good outline of the origins of the world that didn't require its original audience (a tribe of illiterate shepherds) to be able to count into the billions. It's certainly not as detailed as the scientific account, but it didn't really need to be: the Bible is primarily focused on the nature of God and His relationship with humankind. All other details, however interesting or useful they might be, are kind of peripheral. We don't need it to thoroughly explain the physical world: that's what science is for.
(As an aside: I don't see any reference in Genesis to man having been created before plants. If I've missed it, can you point it out for me?)
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Paul,
My error re: Genesis. It's been a while since I've read it, so I misremembered the error. The plants/man thing is fine. It is the animals/man order that is reversed in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:
Genesis 1:25-27 (animals first)
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image.
Genesis 2:18-19 (humans first)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
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I wont go on with the Biblical contradictions; neither one of us (I think) see this as a major point. You're clearly ok with Genesis not being a literal account of creation, and I'm quite sure that the incongruent lineages of Joseph in the NT, as baffling as it is that the writers of the gospels couldn't get them right, wont phase you in the least.
Likewise, it doesn't concern me whether the Bible says this or that about god and what he wants for us; it doesn't matter if the Bible says Pi =3 (1 Kings 7:24). Even if the Bible said Pi = 3.14159, it wouldn't make a lick of difference. There's no evidence that the protagonist exists, and that, for me, is enough to relegate the Bible to the level of "fable"; nothing more. We take from it what we can, and move on; same as we do for Shakespeare (less, as it happens).
My problem is with those who demand respect for the belief that the Bible (or any other book) is anything more than this.
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I think you'll like (or possibly hate) my argument on miracles.
We haven't proven that miracles are impossible. Science, by definition, tests natural phenomena. We can design experiments for them: we control an independent variable and observe the effect on a dependent variable. When we observe a consistent result, we call it a natural phenomenon.
You and I both agree that what people call miracles don't happen naturally. Bodies, for example, don't rise from the dead under any natural conditions that we can identify. Certainly we can't make it happen. All we've proven, though, is that they don't happen naturally.
But miracles, by definition, are supernatural phenomena: they're what happens when some supernatural force causes a result that would not occur in nature.
In order to test whether miracles are possible, we would have to isolate this supernatural force as an independent variable: we'd have to bring it within our control. We can't do that. (You'd say that this is because God doesn't exist; I'd say that it's because God is, well, God. Either way, we can't control Him.)
So while science can demonstrate that plenty of things don't occur in nature -- e.g. people rising from the dead -- it can't demonstrate that they never happen. If they happen at all, they are caused by a force that we can't possibly isolate and test. And they don't happen in a consistent pattern that we can observe. We all agree that people don't rise from the dead under predictable and repeatable circumstances.
None of this proves that miracles happen. It just shows that science cannot prove them to be impossible.
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Not sure if there is more on your 'miracles' post, but I'll weigh in.
Matthew 17:20
For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
Jesus is very clear that all prayers are answered, so long as faith is strong. That is, there are no restrictions on prayers being answered. He reiterates this later in Matthew:
Matthew 21:21
I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
So Jesus is clear: anything is possible for the truly faithful.
But we see no evidence that this is so. This should be testable, in exactly the manner you state. Jesus says nothing like: 'your prayer will be answered, and miracles will happen, so long as you don't perform any controlled experiments to test my father's ability at this stuff'. By contrast, this is one part of the NT in which Jesus speaks clearly. All prayers will be answered. The lack of evidence that they are suggests Jesus is wrong.
Re: miracles such as resurrections, I actually agree with you, in part. Science is, absolutely, concerned strictly with naturalistic phenomenon. The supernatural, if it exists, is outside the realm of science. That is not to say that the existence of miracles or of god himself is not a 'scientific' question; god exists or he doesn't. Jesus was resurrected, or he wasn't. All perfectly reasonable, scientific questions.
But if Jesus' resurrection, or the answer of prayers, depends upon supernatural forces, then science cannot go there. Science assumes the existence of an objective, natural reality.
I cannot prove that miracles are impossible. All I can say is that the current evidence suggests that resurrections and virgin births are not possible by natural means. If we allow for the existence of the supernatural, then all bets are off.
But (you knew there was a 'but')...the burden of proof lies with you to prove that the supernatural exists, if you want to use it to explain an alleged miracle. If we allow for the supernatural, then literally ANYTHING is possible.
How odd it is, though, that the age of miracles coincided so nicely with the age of (relative) human stupidity and ignorance, which you have already admitted to in your posts re: Genesis. Is it more likely that supernatural forces exist and violate the physical laws of nature, or that 1st century Israelites were simply too ignorant of these natural laws to recognize that resurrection and virgin births were simply not possible?
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"There's no evidence that the protagonist exists, and that, for me, is enough to relegate the Bible to the level of 'fable'; nothing more."
I think we're getting to the heart of the matter now. My argument is basically this:
1) Nothing proves that the Bible is untrue. (My first several posts were aimed at this point.)
2) If we agree that it's at least possible for the Bible to be true, we can move on to talking about whether it actually is. (That's where I think you're going when you demand evidence.)
I disagree when you say there's no evidence that God exists. Not all evidence is testable: we rely on historical accounts to determine, say, when the Napoleonic wars occurred, or even to determine my birthday. The Gospels constitute testimony from four witnesses. In my line of work, that kind of evidence can get you put away for life. :)
I think your argument is really that you find the evidence unconvincing. That's fair, but it rules out strict atheism. Agnosticism, though...
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Paul, the evidence that the Napoleonic Wars took place, or heck, that World War II took place, is not on the same level as the existence for god. It is disingenuous (in the strictest sense of the word) to suggest otherwise.
Historical evidence is perfectly valid, of course. But every word of the Bible could be historically accurate, and this would still not provide one iota of evidence that (a) god exists, (b) that god is Yahweh, and (c) the acceptance of Jesus as one's personal saviour is the only path to heaven. Surely you can see this.
Let us call ourselves agnostic; fine. But let us also be clear about what we are agnostic. If we are agnostic about the Christian god, we must also, for the same reasons, be agnostic about Allah, or about Zeus, or about Poseidon, or the Flying Teapot. Those are things for which I also have no evidence of non existence, and for which I find the evidence wholly unconvincing. If we're looking for 'testimonial' evidence, we can find that in virtually every religion that has ever existed. Yours is no different than any other in this regard.
God, if he exists, should have no problem confirming his existence today; right now, in the room in which I sit. And he should be capable of doing so without leaving ambiguity about the evidence.
No atheist that I know of states that there is no god; we simply state that there is no evidence. So call me an agnostic if you'd like. But unless you are prepared to explain your agnosticism toward Islam, I'd prefer 'atheist', thank you very much.
As a defense lawyer, I'm sure you'd have no problem poking holes in the testimony of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, seeing that they had a clear vested interest in getting their story accepted and believed. You'd also point out the glaring holes in their stories, and point out that not a single one of them lived during the time of the alleged 'incidents'.
You'd destroy them on the stand, I'm sure of it.
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You mention that the age of miracles coincided with an age of relative ignorance. This assumes that there are no recorded instances of miracles in recent years. In fact, there are several: Egyptians claim to have seen St. Mary appear in luminous form before a large crowd atop the dome of a church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitoun. (A number of the witnesses were apparently Muslim.) Other examples include run-of-the-mill healings -- a friend of my family's, after a period of fasting and prayer, was rid of leukemia in a sudden and medically inexplicable way. His doctors were baffled.
I'm not saying that either of these incidents were definitely miracles -- it's possible that they were natural but unexplained phenomena. I'd have to know more about the incidents to develop an opinion on either of them. But it's inaccurate to say that miracles are only said to have happened during a comparatively ignorant age.
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Paul,
All it will take for me to believe in the existence of miracles is the spontaneous re-growth of a single severed human limb. If we can say anything thanks to science, it is that severed human limbs do not spontaneously re-grow.
"Miracles" involving healing always healing something that is self-limiting (i.e. it might have gotten better on its own).
As for natural 'miracles', time was when the waxing and waning of the moon was a miracle; the rise and fall of the sun, earthquakes, all at one time attributed to the actions of god(s).
The spontaneous re-growth of a human limb would indeed be very good evidence for the existence of miracles. But as you well know, the absence of such evidence is not evidence for the contrary proposition.
I agree that as far as I know, healing miracles involve ailments that could get better on their own. But they don't always involve ailments that could have naturally gotten better in the manner in which they did. Most of the miracles I've heard of involved sudden cures for rather severe ailments (blindness, cancer, leprosy, paralysis, etc.). These are harder to explain away as natural phenomena.
There may have been some natural phenomena (the cycles of the moon, etc.) that some ancient cultures saw as miracles. But those aren't the kinds of miracles described by Christians. Here's more C.S. Lewis:
We must not say "They believed in miracles because they did not know the Laws of Nature." This is nonsense. When St Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was "minded to put her away." He knew enough biology for that. Otherwise, of course he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity. When he accepted the Christian explanation, he regarded it as a miracle precisely because he knew enough of the Laws of Nature to know that this was a suspension of them. When the disciples saw Christ walking on the water they were frightened: they would not have been frightened unless they had known the laws of Nature and known that this was an exception. If a man had no conception of a regular order in Nature, then of course he could not notice departures from that order... Nothing is wonderful except the abnormal and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.
One more quick point: while most of the miraculous cures involve ailments that might have spontaneously healed, there's also the miracle of Lazarus, who (according to John 11) was raised from the dead after four days in a tomb. Obviously we can argue about whether this actually happened, but if it did, it can't be explained as something that might have happened naturally.
One more quick point: while most of the miraculous cures involve ailments that might have spontaneously healed, there's also the miracle of Lazarus, who (according to John 11) was raised from the dead after four days in a tomb. Obviously we can argue about whether this actually happened, but if it did, it can't be explained as something that might have happened naturally. - my emphasis
And there's the rub, Paul. We can argue about its truth or not. But the onus is on you to provide the evidence that it is, not on me to disprove that it ever happened. I cannot disprove many things; that doesn't make them more likely to have happened. Surely you know this.
When St Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was "minded to put her away." He knew enough biology for that. Otherwise, of course he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity. When he accepted the Christian explanation, he regarded it as a miracle precisely because he knew enough of the Laws of Nature to know that this was a suspension of them. When the disciples saw Christ walking on the water they were frightened: they would not have been frightened unless they had known the laws of Nature and known that this was an exception. If a man had no conception of a regular order in Nature, then of course he could not notice departures from that order... Nothing is wonderful except the abnormal and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm. - C.S. Lewis
This is really more Lewis gibberish, Paul. I'm sorry, but this is nothing but post hoc rationalization, and missing the point completely. C.S. Lewis misses one very small point: what is the evidence that these things happened AT ALL? Until some evidence of that is proffered, the discussion on this point is meaningless. If we accept these things, ON FAITH, then we can have a discussion; this is theology, and it is also the point at which reason and faith diverge.
So, please provide the evidence that Mary was impregnated through anything but the normal means, and that Jesus could walk on water. Once we have this in hand, we can proceed.
The ignorance of nature I'm talking about is much more vast; it is the ignorance not of demonstrably true things like pregnancy or the relative buoyancy of human beings. It is the ignorance of the mechanisms of earthquakes, or of sunrises, or of death, or birth, or of disease. ALL of these things were, at one point, believed to be caused by a god or gods; some still are.
But as you well know, the absence of such evidence is not evidence for the contrary proposition.
Quite right; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Unless what is absent SHOULD be there is the proposition is true. Jesus is quite clear that ALL prayers will be answered if faith is strong enough. The fact that mountains cannot move, as Jesus states, or that not a single limb has ever spontaneously regrown, or, in fact, that intercessory prayer is demonstrably ineffective, IS evidence of absence because these things should be true, given what Jesus says about the nature of prayer and miracles.
Moreover, I would say that this is no mere absence of evidence; this is a vast chasm of absence, stretching over 2000 years into the past. When evidence is this lacking, perhaps it's time to concede that this particular absence of evidence has become evidence of absence.
But your point is well-taken; one cannot prove a negative. Let us remember that when it comes time to assign the burden of proof for all of this.
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