The Tension of Faith

This doesn't make much sense to me.Miracles can only happen in the natural world, because if they didn't we'd know nothing about them.Something that happens in the natural world can be observed and if it can be observed it can be tested by science.The transubstantiation of wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ at every Catholic mass is a claimed miracle. It's not a metaphor, it's claimed to be real. Science tells us that it's utter bullshit. As it's shown every other miraculous claim to be that has been able to be tested.

But even if tests showed the wine did turn into blood literally it is still not evidence of a miracle.

It doesn't make much sense to me either, but GDR's view, I think, is that the supernatural takes place in the natural world. Obviously I don't accept this view, describing a view much like your own to Faith in my Message 1026, but GDR says, I think, that he accepts on faith that the gospels represent evidence of miracles, and I'm not going to argue with faith. My dispute is with claims of real evidence where none exists.--Percy

But how would you determine whether it "actually happened"? Your claim in Message 1010 was that, "The style in which they are written gives no indication that the accounts are anything but historical." In fact, the style in which they were written, including the description of miracles, doesn't distinguish them from fiction such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Some of the events may have "actually happened" but that's no guarantee that the miraculous ones did.

I had to look this up to get further clarification. It always made sense to me that the concept was spiritual and not literal. But if the Eucharist could actually be tested, how would this not be evidence of a miracle...if it was also verified that it was either wine or grapejuice before the blessing?

The whole idea of grape juice instead of wine is REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid.Now that that is out of the way, it would be evidence that not blood changed into blood but not of any miracle. It would go into the unexplained pile but only a simpleton would jump to "miracle" as though that explained anything.

Miracles, by definition, are one-off events which can’t be repeated on cue. So they are not testable in the normal sense of science. They CAN be observed, but it’s easy to come up with alternate ad-hoc explanations for such one-off events.(I agree that the claim that transsubstantiation is a miracle is nonsense.)

Miracles are what we believe on faith alone is a miracle. They exist only within or imagination.The thing or act or vision may well exist but a miracle is only a name we create and assign.

You asked how anyone could know a miracle had happened and I said how it would have been known to those who were there at the time. I had asked how it could be possible for US to know about the miracles in the New Testament since everyone so many here have denied that the accounts themselves offer us any real evidence. I dispute that since millions have taken them for evidence over the last couple of millennia, but I'm not arguing that for those here who refuse to accept that sort of witness evidence. I just want to know what anyone WOULD accept as evidence of Jesus' miracles now, specifically Percy, because as it stands there is simply no way to convince him. But as evidence for those who witnessed those events at the time I believe my description is sufficient.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nonsense. Water does not normally become wine in the blink of an eye and if it did that wouild clearly be a miracle, something that does not normally occur in the natural course of events. If a wide and deep body of water splits so that the dry ground at its bottom becomes a safe path to walk through it, that is certainly a miracle. Etc etc. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They've been observed and described by hundreds, thousands, but the reports of those observations are simply denied by you on the basis of your own prejudice and nothing else. You insist on seeing it for yourself, and we can be pretty sure you'd find some way to explain it away even if a thousand others witnessed the same event with you. This continues to be a perfect example of what Jesus was telling Thomas, who believed because he saw: "But blessed are those who did not see and yet believed." Because they believed the other witnesses who'd told him about what he had to see for himself. If someone is determined to believe his own prejudice instead of the witness of many others, there's nothing that can be done about it, you simply will never believe in miracles though millions of others have seen them. But it is fantasy only in your own fantasies. Those of us who believe they are real, well, we believe they are real, whenever we trust the honesty of those who have reported them. Fantasy is the product of the mind, dreams are the product of the mind, hallucinations are the product of the mind, but the supernatural is real and those who consider it real know quite well how to tell the difference. Also, Christians don't use the term "religion" as you do, which as you use it is just a synonym for something of the human mind. We DO believe the accounts of the Bible as records of actual historical events, and I'd say there's plenty of good reason for that, but convincing you doesn't seem to be a possibility. I figure you just aren't thinking when you carry on as you do, but there's no point in trying to convince you of that either. Apparently so, one of the few things GDR and I agree on. But I at least wouldn't qualify them as "of religion," and perhaps he wouldn't either, I just don't know. Reality is reality and if they are real they are real. Real historical events. I guess, but it's the same sort of faith I have that Napoleon was a real person in history, or Genghis Khan, or Siddhartha/Gautama Buddha for that matter: reasonable honest people have said so.The relation to science is that there is a spiritual realm that is not physically testable in itself, because it is not physical, although it can "manifest" in the physical world under certain circumstances. Science can only measure physical things and presumably that would include anything manifesting as physical, but the problem is that such manifestations are unpredictable one-time events, you can't force them to occur. The only such thing I've ever seen was not a miracle, but the appearance of an apparition or "ghost" but I didn't need to have that experience to know they can occur because I'm one of those who believe the many others who have described such things, people I know to be reasonable and honest and able to distinguish the products of their own mind from external realities. In fact perhaps what you really need is a little more faith in your fellow man rather than this weird fantastical version of "faith" you think "religious" people have. (I'm speaking only of Christians in all this, please don't drag us off into all the other religions which are not really comparable.)Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Utter nonsense Faith.You might believe it is a miracle but there is no evidence for a miracle.Sorry Faith but claiming a miracle happened is only a figment of the imagination unless you can provide direct verifiable evidence of the process, procedure, model, method or mechanism.All you show are things YOU cannot explain; evidence of ignorance.

They may believe there was a miracle but that is not evidence of a miracle.

How I long for a few sane people to argue with.

You're going to have to explain that.