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There is a fair amount of disagreement with regard to what is a miracle, whether they are still occurring or whether any have actually occurred in the first place. Might be best to first start with a definition we might all be able to agree upon at least for purposes of this thread.
mir·a·cle: a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.
"the miracle of rising from the grave"
Occurs to me as I consider all the different notions about whether to believe in miracles, aside from what should give us good reason to do so or not, is the fact that those of us less inclined to believe in miracles have no desire or want NOT to believe in miracles. Seems to me a lot of religious people don't understand this very well, but should.
I am an atheist, so I'm rather skeptical about claims of miracles occurring. Especially as some sort of divine act, but the fact is that I would LOVE to believe in miracles. Like so many of us, probably all of us, we've all wished a miracle would occur.
New Year's day morning our beloved dog, who was with us 16 years, went into convulsions. I could have easily believed it a miracle that she would stop convulsing as I tried to get the convulsing to stop, but it went on too long before she finally died. Her dying was a relief in the very end. Much like my father's 4 year stint with Alzheimer's. I would have been delighted to witness a miracle of him somehow coming out of that fog. Somehow be cured of that horrible disease. Be back to normal, but it only got worse with time of course. Indeed, why not a miracle instead?
Point is, no one really has good reason to want that miracles can't happen, but that want should not get in the way of recognizing what is natural and what is divine. If believers were more serious about the LACK of evidence that exists, the lack of evidence that keeps people like me from believing in miracles, I suspect we'd all come to understand that no miracles have ever occurred or are occurring now.
It is certainly not a question of what we want or hope for in any case. Well, not for those of us who are not prematurely inclined toward believing such things, as I suspect religious people tend to be. Or they would not be religious. It is critical thinking rather than wants, hopes and needs that keeps me from being religious too. Not in any way to be confused with my great wish for a miracle if such a thing were possible.
Also quite disappointing if not irritating are some people who DO believe in divine intervention and who will suggest that our good or bad fortune is in some way a judgement upon us by a god. That's where sometimes religious thinking can get very irritating indeed. How many millions of people have been misjudged in this way since our cave man days? Another sad testament of our backward ways that still persist to this day.
Speaking only for myself (though I suspect I'm not unusual among unbelievers), I simply see no reason to count on the miraculous. I certainly would have accepted a cure for my prior / 2nd / late wife's illness and asked questions later. I certainly would have accepted my first wife waking up one morning free of schizophrenia and BPD ... I wouldn't have rejected it on the grounds that I don't like miracles. I would have accepted my son's mental health issues getting better rather than worse. Of course. Who would not? And I would not be too proud to ask -- nay, beg -- god for help if I believed in him. I know this, because I used to believe in him, and I did ask.
But after all those events and more, I certainly don't anticipate the miraculous having the slightest positive impact on my life. I have been conditioned by life experience to think it so vanishingly unlikely as to be non-existent.
Another paradox of unbelief is the persistent notion that unbelievers must "hate" god. The irony is that hate is just disappointed love. The opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference. I am merely indifferent now. If I had continued to believe in god, I would be disappointed, and THAT would be hate. As it is now, I'm 110% accepting that life being a series of things happening, some of which I like, some of which I don't, but NONE of which is personal. [shrug]
Growing up as an evangelical Protestant, I always believed in the reality of the miracles recounted in the Bible. However, I wondered why the miraculous events seemed to have ended with the closing of Scripture.
As an adult, I converted to Catholicism and ohhh....so that's where all the miracles have been "hiding"
Humankind is the crown of God's creation. Humankind was brought about with a divine (i.e. miraculous) act, and God has never stopped intervening in Creation.
Miracles happen literally every hour of every day. Every time the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered, the bread and wine literally becomes the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a fair amount of disagreement with regard to what is a miracle, whether they are still occurring or whether any have actually occurred in the first place. Might be best to first start with a definition we might all be able to agree upon at least for purposes of this thread.
mir·a·cle: a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.
"the miracle of rising from the grave"
Occurs to me as I consider all the different notions about whether to believe in miracles, aside from what should give us good reason to do so or not, is the fact that those of us less inclined to believe in miracles have no desire or want NOT to believe in miracles. Seems to me a lot of religious people don't understand this very well, but should.
I am an atheist, so I'm rather skeptical about claims of miracles occurring. Especially as some sort of divine act, but the fact is that I would LOVE to believe in miracles. Like so many of us, probably all of us, we've all wished a miracle would occur.
New Year's day morning our beloved dog, who was with us 16 years, went into convulsions. I could have easily believed it a miracle that she would stop convulsing as I tried to get the convulsing to stop, but it went on too long before she finally died. Her dying was a relief in the very end. Much like my father's 4 year stint with Alzheimer's. I would have been delighted to witness a miracle of him somehow coming out of that fog. Somehow be cured of that horrible disease. Be back to normal, but it only got worse with time of course. Indeed, why not a miracle instead?
Point is, no one really has good reason to want that miracles can't happen, but that want should not get in the way of recognizing what is natural and what is divine. If believers were more serious about the LACK of evidence that exists, the lack of evidence that keeps people like me from believing in miracles, I suspect we'd all come to understand that no miracles have ever occurred or are occurring now.
It is certainly not a question of what we want or hope for in any case. Well, not for those of us who are not prematurely inclined toward believing such things, as I suspect religious people tend to be. Or they would not be religious. It is critical thinking rather than wants, hopes and needs that keeps me from being religious too. Not in any way to be confused with my great wish for a miracle if such a thing were possible.
Also quite disappointing if not irritating are some people who DO believe in divine intervention and who will suggest that our good or bad fortune is in some way a judgement upon us by a god. That's where sometimes religious thinking can get very irritating indeed. How many millions of people have been misjudged in this way since our caveman days? Another sad testament of our backward ways that still persist to this day.
"Believe it or not..."
True belief is NOT something in our conscious control despite opinions to the contrary. Our True beliefs are our TRUE convictions about the state of the spacetime field that establishes our Reality. This suggests possibilities about them that are obscured by those who think beliefs ARE in our conscious control.
We have a corollary state of mind we also call a belief that we have some influence over consciously which is why there is such confusion. It is that corollary belief (Cbelief) that seems most people refer to concerning miracles.
Cbeliefs are derivative and only loosely tied to our True Beliefs (Tbeliefs). No amount of conscious desire or willfulness can make a Cbelief become a Tbelief. The truth is we have no clue how that change occurs but it can and does occur within us.
For miracles, the general and most common Tbelief is that they are not normally possible in our Reality. But for many, the Cbelief is that they CAN happen if God Wills it. This accounts for prayers to influence God's Will.
As a Tbeliever in God, my view that our spacetime field is actually a consciousness field that represents the consciousness of God provides ample accommodation for the phenomena of Tbelief and Cbelief with God's Will represented by the actual state of the spacetime field (Reality).
Under this rubric, Tbelief and Cbelief can each either be in concert with each other or not and either in concert with God's Will or not. This is not an ideal situation for the scientific method to validate.
Tbelief requires the complete absence of doubt or skepticism. On the contrary, the scientific method requires the presence of doubt and skepticism. Cbelief can accommodate various levels of doubt and skepticism but Tbelief cannot. Most of us have Cbeliefs augmented by what we THINK are scientifically validated Tbeliefs.
But the scientific method can only validate the actual state of the spacetime field that we can measure without doubt rendering any Tbeliefs acquired from it automatically tainted by the existence of doubt. That makes them more Cbeliefs than Tbeliefs about the state of the spacetime field (God's Will).
Tbeliefs and Cbelief ONLY reflect the state of our consciousness with respect to the actual state of the spacetime field (Reality). The actual state of the spacetime field (God's Will) remains beyond our grasp. Differences in our Tbeliefs and Cbeliefs account for our response to anecdotal reports of miracles.
Tbelievers in God see acceptance of miracles as in concert with the existence of God. Tbelievers in the limited Reality measurable by science do not. Absent the ability to directly measure the presence and content of consciousness, this will not be resolvable.
My personal conviction is that God's Will CAN be influenced to change the state of the spacetime field to accommodate what we would consider miracles by Teblievers whose Tbeliefs resonate with the actual consciousness of God. But any doubt, no matter how little or trivial would invalidate the resonance of the Tbelief with God's Will.
Unbelievers will find this completely unacceptable thinking and prior to my encounter, I would have been among them.
Growing up as an evangelical Protestant, I always believed in the reality of the miracles recounted in the Bible. However, I wondered why the miraculous events seemed to have ended with the closing of Scripture.
As an adult, I converted to Catholicism and ohhh....so that's where all the miracles have been "hiding"
Humankind is the crown of God's creation. Humankind was brought about with a divine (i.e. miraculous) act, and God has never stopped intervening in Creation.
Miracles happen literally every hour of every day. Every time the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered, the bread and wine literally becomes the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I remember my Pastor who was on the mission field in India, and he got to India and was travelling to a group of Christian churches, and on the way a man stepped out on the road, and they hit the man at 80 clicks ...... The man died right there on the highway and the police came and took them all to jail....... A few hours later and the man came alive and was healed, and they got out of Jail, so they went on to their mission which was a calling of God ...... They told this story a few times and there was a police man from home who travelled with the Pastor, so it was hard to not believe ........ Heard other stories where a Christian man from Africa rose from the dead after four days, which would take the cake
Some people argue that if God gave you free will, He is not to blame for your failures or successes.
And if a miraculous event occurs, why is it a presumption that it was done by God?
What if people are the hands and feet of God, and they're ultimately responsible?
Using "the Force" for good - or evil - is more likely.
Probably Hitler thought his early successes were miraculous, too.
Some people argue that if God gave you free will, He is not to blame for your failures or successes.
And if a miraculous event occurs, why is it a presumption that it was done by God?
What if people are the hands and feet of God, and they're ultimately responsible?
Using "the Force" for good - or evil - is more likely.
Probably Hitler thought his early successes were miraculous, too.
Some people often compare God and us to us and our children...
I'd like to think I promoted "free will" with our two children. Perhaps better described as using their free will to do good and not do bad. Whether God and/or us parents are responsible for how our children turn out is another subject of debate, and often depends on how we and/or our children turn out. If good, we can thank God and credit the parents. If bad?
Well we all know how this works generally speaking...
Heard other stories where a Christian man from Africa rose from the dead after four days, which would take the cake
Yes the stories are always second (or third, or fourth) hand, in some distant land or in the distant past.
If raising the dead were an actual thing it would have been witnessed, documented, celebrated by billions already.
The usual answer to such a critique is that if god did anything in plain sight it would not be faith. But if that were the true situation, then there would be no point in intervening in human affairs at all, because for miracles to inspire you, you'd have to be inadvisably credulous anyway. Faith is the demand for belief without evidence, so why do we need even rumors? Wouldn't faith be more "genuine" if there were not even rumors and anecdotes that miracles happen, and people believe in them anyway?
It's campfire stories, all the way down, I'm afraid.
Yes the stories are always second (or third, or fourth) hand, in some distant land or in the distant past.
If raising the dead were an actual thing it would have been witnessed, documented, celebrated by billions already.
The usual answer to such a critique is that if god did anything in plain sight it would not be faith. But if that were the true situation, then there would be no point in intervening in human affairs at all, because for miracles to inspire you, you'd have to be inadvisably credulous anyway. Faith is the demand for belief without evidence, so why do we need even rumors? Wouldn't faith be more "genuine" if there were not even rumors and anecdotes that miracles happen, and people believe in them anyway?
It's campfire stories, all the way down, I'm afraid.
Ironically, it is our consciousness that possesses the phenomenon of imagination that provides some basis for believing in miracles. In my view, the spacetime field that establishes our Reality is a consciousness field. That would suggest that its imagination is the substrate of our Reality, ergo ...
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True belief is NOT something in our conscious control despite opinions to the contrary. Our True beliefs are our TRUE convictions about the state of the spacetime field that establishes our Reality. This suggests possibilities about them that are obscured by those who think beliefs ARE in our conscious control.
