Do you believe in miracles?

[Mr.FixIt]

no i dont believe in miracles plain and simple!
im glad your mother survived long enough to see her grandchild stripedangel but if that was a miracle then why did my best friend die at the age of 32 leaving her children whose father had died less than 12 mths previously with no family?? (the rest living in trinidad)

I don't think that stripedangel intended this as a an example of a miracle...read her post again please.

[Mr.FixIt]

I think that we're pulling at threads here!

[icey]

i re-read it and was still left with the same impression.
if not then perhaps there is a different example?

[Mr.FixIt]

As far as Mom is concerned.....that was sheer will. She had been told that she would have no children at all before she was pregnant with me...she wasn't about to miss a grandchild's first word.

i tend to think that everything happens for a reason. At this moment, i can't think of an example of a miracle...possibly because i've been reading about the existance of God.

I, for one, believe that miracles do exist.

she was not citing her mother's unexpected longevity as a miracle, hense the phrase "sheer will" (her mother's own stong will to live). While many might prefer to cite this as an example of a miracle, stripedangel did not.

BUT, stripedangel does believe that God performs miracles still today. We differ (slightly) in opinion on this matter, but I understand what she is saying. I hope that this clarifies her intent for you.

[TomOfSweden]

To answer Yes or No does imply that you believe in God. So, if you don't believe in God, why answer the question at all? It wasn't directed at non-believers, obviously.

It's such a specific scenario catering to a very slim definition of God. Maybe? It's not even clear anything religious is intended with the original question. I think the question you are thinking about needed to be formulated more along these lines:

"If the [insert religion] theory of God would be true according to the [insert denomination/sect], do you think that it follows, that God still performs miracles".

By formulating the question as if it would be straightforward, or made sense as is, the creator is trying to play down the complexities of the question.

Without a kind of scenario given as I did, it is in fact impossible to answer.

[icey]

the phrase used i believe was asking miracle or sheer will ? but i dont want to get petty over it lol i guess we all interpret things differently

what does annoy me about this kind of thing and religion in general is while it seems non-believer and cynics will as a rule answer and debate such questions quite clearly and emphatically with no-inbetweens or turn arounds firm believers often have a tendency to turn things,go back on what they've originally said into different shades of grey and twist religion and bible quotes and all the like to suit themselves.

the phrases i take what i need and want from my religion,god gave us all free will, conveniently forgetting the shalls and shall nots (when it doesnt suit) that god also supposedly gave! are a few that comes to mind.

im probably saying this all wrong and totally changing the thread sorry and its not my intention to piss everyone off!

[Thorne]

what does annoy me about this kind of thing and religion in general is while it seems non-believer and cynics will as a rule answer and debate such questions quite clearly and emphatically with no-inbetweens or turn arounds firm believers often have a tendency to turn things,go back on what they've originally said into different shades of grey and twist religion and bible quotes and all the like to suit themselves.

the phrases i take what i need and want from my religion,god gave us all free will, conveniently forgetting the shalls and shall nots (when it doesnt suit) that god also supposedly gave! are a few that comes to mind.

im probably saying this all wrong and totally changing the thread sorry and its not my intention to piss everyone off!

You're not saying anything wrong. It sounds perfectly clear to me. And your comments about free will made me stop and think. We tend to believe we have free will, especially those of us who were born and live in a free society. So if God intended for us to have free will, why give us a bunch of rules and regulations? The Ten Commandments were not, after all, suggestions!

And as for changing the thread, these discussions are like the roots of a tree, growing, expanding, branching, sometimes intertwining, sometimes going off on their own, and sometimes undermining the foundations of our comfortable beliefs. And that's a GOOD thing!

[stripedangel]

It's such a specific scenario catering to a very slim definition of God. Maybe? It's not even clear anything religious is intended with the original question. I think the question you are thinking about needed to be formulated more along these lines:

"If the [insert religion] theory of God would be true according to the [insert denomination/sect], do you think that it follows, that God still performs miracles".

By formulating the question as if it would be straightforward, or made sense as is, the creator is trying to play down the complexities of the question.

Without a kind of scenario given as I did, it is in fact impossible to answer.

Are you telling me that with your high intelligence, you cannot simply recognize that it is a question for whatever religion? What's it matter the religion of the thread starter?

So, why not answer it according to what you believe, in stead of complaining that your religion (or non-religion, whichever the case may be) was left out?

So, Tom, according to what you believe, if you believe in God, and that he performed miracles, do you believe that He still performs miracles today?

[stripedangel]

[QUOTE=icey;608377]the phrase used i believe was asking miracle or sheer will ? but i dont want to get petty over it lol i guess we all interpret things differently

icey, it was a statement, not a question. The rest of that story is in the lower paragraphs...

"As far as Mom is concerned.....that was sheer will. She had been told that she would have no children at all before she was pregnant with me...she wasn't about to miss a grandchild's first word."

Sure, religious folks cannot answer all of the questions..and sure, there are those who change their minds and views about God, and the Bible, sometimes only to suit themselves.

Thing is.....that's why they call it faith. It's not about knowing all the answers, or having proof that God exists. It's about believing, even with no proof....no matter what your denomination or beliefs are.

[icey]

yes you did say sheer will sorry i just re-read the post...again!

although my opinion will not change, im not going to dispute the definition of the word faith, but what about the actual rules and decrees of the church and such, how can anyone justify twisting those to suit themselves.

and if those with 'faith' dont have proof that god exists how the hell can they then say he makes miracles! and if people arnt too sure that 'god' exists than how can they worship him? why do they pray to someone/thing they're not even sure is there?

[Thorne]

Thing is.....that's why they call it faith. It's not about knowing all the answers, or having proof that God exists. It's about believing, even with no proof....no matter what your denomination or beliefs are.

I have no problem with people having faith . Everyone is entitled to believe as and how they will. MY problem is with those who feel the need to try to convert the rest of the world to believe as they do. Those who say (and possibly even believe) that their superstition is the only true faith and you MUST convert to save your soul.

And let's face it, believing without proof opens the door to all kinds of kooks and nuts. How many times have we read about some cult committing suicide because they believed the world was ending and they were heading off to heaven without the rest of us? How does that differ from what YOU believe? (That's a generic "YOU", by the way: not pointing a finger at anyone in particular.)

[icey]

? i didnt post that lol

[stripedangel]

[QUOTE=Thorne;609063][QUOTE=stripedangel;608843]

I have no problem with people having faith . Everyone is entitled to believe as and how they will. MY problem is with those who feel the need to try to convert the rest of the world to believe as they do. Those who say (and possibly even believe) that their superstition is the only true faith and you MUST convert to save your soul.

QUOTE]

I agree with ya, Thorne, most of the people who are into church and all of their activities tend to think that because you go to their function on Easter, you're wanting to sign up for missionary work. But nobody was trying to do that with this thread...it was a simple question that was picked apart by others who were on the defensive almost immediately.

Without fully understanding Christianity, most assume that Christians would disapprove or judge the BDSM lifestyle, and many aspects of it. However, God commanded that wives submit to their husbands. The concept of BDSM at its root is almost parallel to this biblical instruction. What a trip!

However, let's take a closer look at this thread...what's a trip is the fact that very few posters on it have actually answered the original question...and the majority of it has consisted of nonbelievers aggressively attempting to convert believers into nonbelief.

Nonbelievers are more commonly outspoken about it, but they don't show up at your door with a "bible" of nonbelief. Hence, my previous statement ...

The devil's biggest trick was convincing people that he doesn't exist.

To clarify, If the devil doesn't exist then God must not exist either, and nonbelievers have nothing to worry about.

That being said, to answer the original question, i believe that God still performs miracles today.

[Thorne]

? i didnt post that lol

No you didn't. I didn't do that on purpose. Sorry.

[icey]

i thought it was a miracle *winks* my post editing itsself!! lol...god trying to prove a point or something

[Thorne]

i thought it was a miracle *winks* my post editing itsself!! lol...god trying to prove a point or something

Nope. Not God. Just a little devil!

[Midnite]

Actually the question, really was do you believe in miracles? Nothing else was intended, it is interesting to find out why some people to, and some people don't. Some Christians even believe that God doesn't perform miracles in this day and age. Anyway my answer to the question is, yes I believe in miracles.

[stripedangel]

Actually the question, really was do you believe in miracles? Nothing else was intended, it is interesting to find out why some people to, and some people don't. Some Christians even believe that God doesn't perform miracles in this day and age. Anyway my answer to the question is, yes I believe in miracles.

Master and i are baptised Church of Christ, and they do not believe that God still performs miracles in our time. I differ in that belief, myself.

[TomOfSweden]

Are you telling me that with your high intelligence, you cannot simply recognize that it is a question for whatever religion? What's it matter the religion of the thread starter?

So, why not answer it according to what you believe, in stead of complaining that your religion (or non-religion, whichever the case may be) was left out?

So, Tom, according to what you believe, if you believe in God, and that he performed miracles, do you believe that He still performs miracles today?

What about the Pantheist definition of God. Where God is the naturalistic universe following the laws of nature. I think it is totally valid to assume that is what is being meant since pantheism is the fastest growing religion in the world right now.

Anyway even if we believe in the Catholic Christian definition of God... then ...still ... no. We don't think that way. God created the laws of nature. The laws of nature is Gods work. When/if God breaks the laws of nature, then those breaks would be included in the laws of nature.

So it gets reduced to a semantic inconsistency. A miracle is the laws of nature being broken, but every break results us to redefine nature to incorporate the breaks as intrinsic to its laws. So with our paradigm of how we think of nature, miracles are impossible. We have no way of recognizing laws of nature being broken as described in the Bible in our language. Christianity rests on that humans/science reject certain Godly laws of nature, only to use the same as evidence of Gods existence. Confusing?

How about that for developing my position? It's just a matter of perspective.
Wasn't it the Muslim philosopher Avicenna who said that there's no point in doing science since everything is a miracle? Everything that happens is Gods will, so why bother studying it? Basically that everything is a miracle so the acts of Jesus, was just as normal/abnormal as everything else.

And even if we're atheist, and God exists. If a trajectory goes straight for 15 billion years and then wobbles a bit, science just assumes that the wobble is nature, and normal, no matter what caused it, and expect that it'll wobble again 15 billion years later. No matter its divine origin science will never understand it as a miracle. We have no way of detecting breaks in the laws of nature even if they did take place.

Christianity and the monotheistic theory of God is not philosophically or scientifically simple. I don't think it's possible to be Christian and understand your faith without studying philosophy for fucking ages. I know a guy who's done that. But he's stripped away so much from Christianity to make it consistent that it would be unrecognisable for the common unread evangelical Christian. Threads like this gloss over the philosophical problems. The interesting bits. And if one doesn't care, then why discuss it?

Was this thread only about affirming ones faith? Not understanding it? My left eye twitches when I come into contact with blind faith propaganda.

[Mr.FixIt]

Was this thread only about affirming ones faith? Not understanding it? My left eye twitches when I come into contact with blind faith propaganda.

What color is your car? If you believe that it is blue, why? It is simply because someone told you that the color that you see is known as blue, and you believed it, blindly. I am literally colorblind. I see colors different than you do. But, are you seeing the colors correctly, or am I? You believing that your car is blue could also be simply your own blind faith.

But is blind faith wrong then? Maybe not. You go ahead and believe that your car is blue, and I will believe that God exists. I won't try to convince you that your car is not blue if you will not try to convince me that God does not exist.

But, you still have not answered the original question. It seems that through all of your intellectual jargon, you, for some reason, are skirting the issue.

[TomOfSweden]

What color is your car? If you believe that it is blue, why? It is simply because someone told you that the color that you see is known as blue, and you believed it, blindly. I am literally colorblind. I see colors different than you do. But, are you seeing the colors correctly, or am I? You believing that your car is blue could also be simply your own blind faith.

He he. Now you succinctly summed up the problem philosophy has been grappling with for the last 250 years. The problem is that we are changing reality by watching it. We are loading it in a way to suit our needs. My reality isn't the same as yours. Neither of us has access to the real reality. So much philosophers can agree on. No philosopher since Plato has claimed that the true reality is accessible to any human ever. So I think that a good answer is that neither you nor I know that correct interpretation of the colour of the car.

But that doesn't mean that there is no reality. Philosophical relativism is not the same thing as reality being arbitrary. Reality is there, we just can't use our common sense or senses and pretend like that's some kind of definite proof of anything. This is where semantics and science helps. Numbers and measurements are less open to interpretations than vague concepts like colour or feelings.

My car is R: 256, G: 0, B: 0

But is blind faith wrong then? Maybe not. You go ahead and believe that your car is blue, and I will believe that God exists. I won't try to convince you that your car is not blue if you will not try to convince me that God does not exist.

Of course blind faith is wrong. Blind faith is the same thing as arbitrary faith. It's just a rhetoric question. Blind faith is always worthless. Nobody believes anything based on blind faith. It's always based on evidence and conclusions drawn from them. Always. One might be wrong or basing ones faith on sketchy evidence, but that's not the same thing as blind faith.

But, you still have not answered the original question. It seems that through all of your intellectual jargon, you, for some reason, are skirting the issue.

I believe I answered this in my first post in this thread.

[stripedangel]

I believe I answered this in my first post in this thread.

Missed that one...I even looked to make sure. Sorry.

i am a Christian. i believe in God, and i believe that there is a higher power out there, no matter what you call it. Everyone learns about a higher power...Greek Gods/desses, Mayan Gods, etc. Native Americans beieve in the higher powers of Mother Earth. I don't down others' beliefs,and i believe it's the same higher power with many different names and forms. We've all learned it differently.

i also believe that those who are not secure in their own beliefs will try and force those beliefs on others, in an attempt to validate them. You'll never see me on your front porch with tracts and scriptures. Your salvation (or non-salvation) is your business.

I don't care that there is no "absolute proof" of God's existance. The proof need only be in my heart. I've seen what His light has done for myself, my family, and many of my friends. I don't attend church. They don't seem to understand that my relationship with God is MINE, not to be interfered with by anyone. I don't need instruction from them, i have the Bible. i have Master, who knows the Bible very well. i have friends and a Master who will pray with me when i request it. .......and i believe that God placed the Bible, my family, Master, and my friends in my path for a reason.

I met Master at a park that neither of us had been to. He was 45 days from the start of his enlistment. We were just gonna be fuck-buddies (sorry for the vulgarity) until he went away. I lived in #107 at the Park Place Apartments...he lived in #7 at the Southeast Park Apartments (right next to Southeast Park, where we met). Just buddies...and less than two weeks after we met, he was proposing. We're soul mates, best friends, lovers, and now, Master and slave. Together, we've been able to do a lot of good things for ourselves and others. We have been there to lend aid and see 3 people and a dog die in 3 different car accidents, all within a few months' time. We've been able to pitch in and help send a friend for a potentially life-saving operation. We have always tried to be generous and helpful, anytime we get a chance. How long does a miracle take? Is it a "one-fell-swoop" kinda thing, or can it take years? Could it be a miracle that Master and i met like we did? Neither of us was in a good place in life when we met...but we are now! How would our lives have been otherwise? As good as it is now? There's no way to test that, so i will say it happened for God's reason!

i had "blind faith" in Master When i said "yes" to his proposal. i guess if "blind faith" is "wrong"......then i don't wanna be right...but now, my faith in my Master is no longer "blind."

[GearJammer]

Missed that one...I even looked to make sure. Sorry.

i am a Christian. i believe in God, and i believe that there is a higher power out there, no matter what you call it. Everyone learns about a higher power...Greek Gods/desses, Mayan Gods, etc. Native Americans beieve in the higher powers of Mother Earth. I don't down others' beliefs,and i believe it's the same higher power with many different names and forms. We've all learned it differently.

i also believe that those who are not secure in their own beliefs will try and force those beliefs on others, in an attempt to validate them. You'll never see me on your front porch with tracts and scriptures. Your salvation (or non-salvation) is your business.

I don't care that there is no "absolute proof" of God's existance. The proof need only be in my heart. I've seen what His light has done for myself, my family, and many of my friends. I don't attend church. They don't seem to understand that my relationship with God is MINE, not to be interfered with by anyone. I don't need instruction from them, i have the Bible. i have Master, who knows the Bible very well. i have friends and a Master who will pray with me when i request it. .......and i believe that God placed the Bible, my family, Master, and my friends in my path for a reason.

I met Master at a park that neither of us had been to. He was 45 days from the start of his enlistment. We were just gonna be fuck-buddies (sorry for the vulgarity) until he went away. I lived in #107 at the Park Place Apartments...he lived in #7 at the Southeast Park Apartments (right next to Southeast Park, where we met). Just buddies...and less than two weeks after we met, he was proposing. We're soul mates, best friends, lovers, and now, Master and slave. Together, we've been able to do a lot of good things for ourselves and others. We have been there to lend aid and see 3 people and a dog die in 3 different car accidents, all within a few months' time. We've been able to pitch in and help send a friend for a potentially life-saving operation. We have always tried to be generous and helpful, anytime we get a chance. How long does a miracle take? Is it a "one-fell-swoop" kinda thing, or can it take years? Could it be a miracle that Master and i met like we did? Neither of us was in a good place in life when we met...but we are now! How would our lives have been otherwise? As good as it is now? There's no way to test that, so i will say it happened for God's reason!

i had "blind faith" in Master When i said "yes" to his proposal. i guess if "blind faith" is "wrong"......then i don't wanna be right...but now, my faith in my Master is no longer "blind."

The opposite of faith is not unbelief. Faith, as a matter of fact, is not belief. Faith is WHY one believes. The opposite of faith, then, is sight. No doubt you have faith in your master, but as to the matters you described as associated with the blind faith in the beginning... now you have sight on those.

[TomOfSweden]

i had "blind faith" in Master When i said "yes" to his proposal. i guess if "blind faith" is "wrong"......then i don't wanna be right...but now, my faith in my Master is no longer "blind."

No...no...no. "Blind faith" would have been if you had no prior experience of him, men or living life at all. Even your human instincts... the stuff we're born with that makes us go yummy when we see a firm and muscular ass removes you from the ability to claim that you said "yes" based on nothing but "blind faith".

Let's sort out the terminology. "Faith" is about measuring things and drawing conclusions from it. There's Kierkegaardian faith, (the so called "leap to faith") where you accept that there's holes in our ability to gather evidence about some things and you simply need to fill in the holes yourself to get a meaningful picture. But that still isn't blind faith. It is also different from the leap of faith, (as defined by Thomas Kuhn) which is when we've measured enough times with the same result to assume that it will always behave the same way. This is the type of faith who people who believe in scientific theories hold.

Both these are different from "hope" which is wishful thinking.

"Blind faith" is when we spend no time reflecting about anything, and rather try to beat any kind of thinking or reason out of the equation at all... probably because we subconsciously know that we're not going to like the result. Keeping ourselves intentionally in the dark because we're is fighting to keep a delusion intact. Blind faith is nothing anybody would want to be proud of ever. If you do, you haven't understood the terminology. To be blunt, it's a bit like tattooing the word "retard" in your forehead and sporting it proudly. Just don't. Please.

"Belief" covers all three definitions of "faith".

Maybe it was more like this: You squeezed that firm soldier ass and hoped that it would stay rock hard for a long while longer, and from this inferred that you were very much in love with him and couldn't care less about reason or measuring any damn thing! Could this have been a more accurate description of it? I doubt faith entered into it anywhere. It doesn't really fit.

Mr Fixit: I'm fucking proud of my intellectual jargon.

[stripedangel]

OK, Tom, i see your point about blind faith....i had it wrong.

So how 'bout responding to the REST of my post??

[TomOfSweden]

OK, Tom, i see your point about blind faith....i had it wrong.

So how 'bout responding to the REST of my post??

Ok then. This is thread derailing, but I'm blaming it on you I do connect to miracles in the end of this post.

You claim that this is what you feel is "true in your heart". You made the claim that the correctness of the theory of God rests on how true you feel it is in your heart, right?

This logic leads us to two possibilities.

1) Everyone has their own truth, (Solipsism, ie what can be true for you can be false for somebody else). Like as in the Matrix, of being inside the Matrix as if that was the true world.

2) Or that there exists one truth for everybody. ie, the same laws of physics applies to everybody. Basically that there exists an external reality somewhere. Which is basically the claim Christianity is doing. When Neo exits his virtual reality pod.

If you belong to the second category, as all people outside the walls of insane asylums do, you now have to come up with a way to compare truths and realities. Suddenly how true something in ones heart doesn't hold a lot of weight. Basically if you are right, others with other faiths must be wrong.

I'm a big fan of Karl Popper, and I bet, so is the entire body of scientists in the world. In his philosophy of scientific truth he claims that there are things science cannot measure, which it certainly sounds like a belief you share. But discounting science does not give any added credibility to what "your heart" tells you or what just feels the most comfortable.

The best we can do is leave it open. Which is the opposite of faith. Which is basically that you follow your heart, but don't make claims that your heart tells you things better than other peoples hearts tell them.

You can have your life guided by the Bible, trying to be a good Christian because you think it gives it meaning and interpreting the voices in your head as God and not have Christian faith. It's a question of how much you respect other peoples hearts, or to put it more bluntly, your arrogance.

I'm guessing that it's just sloppy use of terminology to talk of "faith" here. Kierkegaard didn't ignore scientific "facts". He had a look at what existed and worked with what he had. Understanding the entire body of scientific knowledge is not possible any more for anybody.

The kind of faith Kierkegaard had and was on about is dead today. All of us. Every single living person today, knows that what they talk about reality they are only communicating a simplified model. Chemistry is not the study of sticks and balls. This is equally true for Christians as for atomic physicists. I respect Kierkegaard deeply. He's one of my favourite philosophers and nobody can claim he wasn't a genius. But he lived in a different time.

I'll give an example. When Creationists have "faith" in that the world is 6000 years old, they are ignoring scientific evidence. They're ignoring evidence that is readily available if they only could be arsed to evaluate it. What they have isn't called "faith" by any stretch. Not according to the definition of Thomas Khun or Sören Kierkegaard. What they are doing is actively maintaining a delusion, anybody who's attended school knows is doubtful. Believing something in spite of evidence is not faith. We can't even call it "blind faith" because we know, that they know better.

I'll try to be even more clear. The issue isn't whether the earth might or might not be 6000 years old. The issue is whether or not it is beyond any doubt. We all know that the scientific theories in the Bible isn't beyond debate, no matter if we're Christians or not. We all know that even if we believe it very deeply, lot's of people have very well grounded reasons to reject it. And we cannot ignore them and still maintain faith. If we haven't studied palaeontology and geology we can't really say anything on the subject. Neither for nor against. We cannot have faith. It is not beyond doubt, because we don't have enough facts, and we never will.

I may be repeating myself now a lot, but I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. Faith is when something is beyond doubt. The stuff that makes you stop worrying about gravity not disappearing over night. Or the faith that when you stab yourself in the hand, it will hurt like a mother-fucker. Beyond doubt. When atheists say they have faith in that God doesn't exists... it isn't really faith.

To return to the original thread topic. When you see something you can't explain, is that evidence of a miracle, or just evidence that you can't explain it? I live in a magical world full of miracles all the time. But I don't pretend like I have the foggiest notion of the source of it. Hell, I can't even build a car engine. The fact that a car that I drive moves at all is to me a miracle.

I'm not saying God doesn't exist or that miracles don't take place. We're not in a place yet where those are relevant questions. First we need to narrow down what a miracle is and what God is. This thread first needs to define that before there is any point in this.

[dynamicbuttler]

I don't believe in god, miracles, a soul, or a cosmos catered towards the happiness of sentient organisms.