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Author | Topic: The "science" of Miracles | |||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Well, they're not miraculous. They're called miraculous because the caller can't explain them.
ringo writes:
Yes they do. If the didn't, they wouldn't be miraculous now would they? The fact is that "miracles" do NOT require a suspension of natural laws, local or universal, temporary or permanent. Tangle writes:
Some blindness can be cured. Some lizards can regenerate their tails and some tissue can be grown in the lab; who's to say that limbs won't be regrown in the future?
Yes it does, IF long dead people are brought back to life instantly by command, limbs regrow on demand etc etc. Tangle writes:
That's the point; a million imaginary tales are no better than one.
I can create a million imaginary miracles - how many do you need before they're enough? Tangle writes:
Nonsense. There are lots of things that we haven't explained yet. Indeed, there may be an explanation that causes a paradigm shift but that's the exact opposite of what you're claiming.
it would only take a single miracle to throw the whole of science out of joint. It's the black swan, the rabbit in the Cambrian. Tangle writes:
I haven't said any such thing. I've said that it's impossible to be sure that something is impossible.
You say that miracles are impossible.... Tangle writes:
It's interesting that you've refused to engage the miracles that are actually described in the Bible, the ones that can be explained by modern science. They show that your premise is false.
It's noticable that you have refused to engage with these miracles. Tangle writes:
They do not support your claim that miracles require breaking natural laws.
Of course they do, the events occurred on demand by someone claiming miraculous talents. Seas parting, dead rising, water to wine, floods forming etc etc etc.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Yes, you keep adding new qualifiers. Your definition of "miracle' doesn't fit the usage of the word, so you keep trying to prop it up with new patches. Please note the qualifiers - human, command of a shaman, spontaneously - they're important. Only a creationist thinks that human limbs are special. The events in the Bible do not require a shaman - they're all attributed directly to God. And "spontaneously" is just circular.
Tangle writes:
I'm not saying it's a matter of definition. I'm saying your definition is factually wrong.
It's unscientific to shrug your shoulders and say that it's a matter of definition and philosophy.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
On the contrary, many of the "miracles" that we're discussing are ordinary. Many things that were called "miraculous" in the past are considered ordinary today. The important point is that somebody thinks it's impossible, not that it is.
I add them because you keep trying to make a miracle ordinary - which is not the situation we're discussing.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
Pull-ease. Wikipedia says:
Attributed isn't part of the definition of miracle. Here are several definitions: Wikipedia: an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. quote: You're own Oxford dictionary quote uses the word "attributed" for fuck's sake. Your dictionary.com quote uses the word "ascribed" instead.
Percy writes:
Obviously it is. Read your own quotes.
So we can stop the back-and-forth about whether attributed is part of the definition of miracle.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
I believe in science and human potential because it's all we can count on.
You believe in science and human potential because its all you have chosen to believe in. Phat writes:
Miracles are believed to be special by people who believe in the "supernatural", often because they don't understand the natural.
Miracles by definition are special. Phat writes:
Do you believe a flashlight is miraculous? Do you think the Bible authors would have believed a flashlight was miraculous?
You try too hard to disprove any possibility that the stories in the Bible are actually miraculous.... Phat writes:
Certainly, a belief can be wrong.
A belief can be a belief regardless of evidence....
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
That's exactly the point. I didn't. Nobody did. It didn't happen. You made it up. It doesn't count as a "miracle".
When did you see a bridge fly? Tangle writes:
What we know is that people who think they see something "breaking the laws of nature" are mistaken. Maybe they just don't understand the laws of nature or maybe their observation was careless. What they thought they saw, didn't happen.
... the stuff we know is enough to tell us beyond all doubt that wine can't turn to blood....
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
That's what I'm saying. Science doesn't label things as "impossible" or "against the laws of nature".
Because science is tentative it doesn't matter that we can't conclude miracle with certainty.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
No, we're discussing reports of miracles. In the present, somebody did see something that they call miraculous. For past reports, like the Bible, we have to question whether the reports themselves are authentic or whether they are just made up like your hypothetical flying bridge. Well we both know that miracles don't happen, so we're left discussing hypotheticals. If somebody reported a flying bridge, we would investigate it scientifically, just like we investigate UFOs. And we would either conclude that the witnesses didn't see what they thought they saw or that something happened that we can't explain yet.
Tangle writes:
No we have not. Healing the sick is ordinary - it's happened to every one of us. Jesus' face on a piece of toast is ordinary. We can explain those "miracles" scientifically.
You're talking about the ordinary again. We've already ruled all that crap out.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
As I said before, you're the only one who doesn't seem to understand. The rest of us seem to be on the same page.
Yes we have. Many times. Tangle writes:
Nothing is a miracle unless you believe in miracles. That's why we have to define miracles in terms of belief: A miracle is something that somebody believes has supernatural causes. Whether or not it is "possible" is irrelevant.
That'll be because they're not miracles....
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
There's no such thing as "not explicable by natural or scientific laws". It may be currently not explicable, like a flashlight to an illiterate Pacific islander, but we can not predict what might be explicable tomorrow.
But now imagine you're confronted with the "impossible" or (to use words I actually said) "an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws". Percy writes:
The first topic of discussion would be, "Did it really happen? Was the observation accurate?" We have that discussion about UFOs all the time.
There'd have to at least be a discussion. What happened took place in the natural world. Is it science? Something else?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
No. I'm saying that nobody can predict what will be explainable.
So you are saying that literally, everything will someday be explainable? Phat writes:
I've answered the same question to you many times. When will YOU ever learn?
Sounds like deification of human wisdom, again! When will you ever learn?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
"Rest of us" = All of us that aren't arguing with me about the definition of "miracle". That includes even you now, doesn't it?
Define "rest of us." Percy writes:
An event is called a "miracle" by people who believe there is no natural explanation. Whether they attribute it to a specific supernatural cause or not, "can't be explained by natural causes" implies supernatural causes, doesn't it?
Miracles don't have to have a supernatural cause.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
That's exactly why we can't claim that something is inexplicable.
Science is tentative.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
I can keep correcting you as often as you insist on being wrong about that. I believe that humanity, human knowledge, etc. is all we can count on. We certainly can not count on your God because He has His own agenda and His own whims. If we want something done, we gotta do it ourselves.
Ringo seems to nearly incorporate faith in humanity as a religion, however.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
No. The only one of those who has disagreed with me about the definition of "miracle" is you - and you were just misreading your own references.
Calling Tangle "the only one" was a bit off. More accurately, it's you and Jar on one side, me and Tangle on the other, Phat and caffeine sort of auditing, and New Cat's Eye with a middle position where miracles are possible and supernatural and never scientific. Percy writes:
It's a paraphrase. What's the proper notation for indicating a paraphrase?
Why is "can't be explained by natural causes" in quotes? Percy writes:
And yet in the very next line yo say:
It isn't wording I used or would use, so I don't understand the quotes.quote:Silly me, I thought that "can't be explained by natural causes" and "not explicable by natural or scientific laws" meant the same thing. Percy writes:
It's made up. Why do you have to make up examples? Why can't you refer to the examples that are actually called "miracles"? the miracle having taken place here in the natural world (the George Washington Bridge moving 50 miles up the Hudson) is very much part of the natural. Your example is easily explained by natural causes: You made it up.
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