This question is directed toward anyone who takes their religious scripture of choice literally.
Why aren’t there any miracles anymore? Or do they only manifest themselves before believers?
I’m not sure I would consider myself a Bible literalist (others might think of me as such though), but I have seen miracles, or at least things that are unexplained by science, but do seem to have a divine reason behind them. For instance, when my grandmother prayed the rosary repeatedly for someone, she would have roses bloom in her rose garden (next to her statue of Mary) no matter what season it was. She had roses in the dead of winter more than once.
More recently (Gram’s been gone for a while), my priest was in a car accident. He blacked out, probably fell asleep, but he doesn’t remember the part of the drive leading up to the accident, drifted across the median on I-81, and hit an eighteen wheeler head on. His car was going around 60 mph and the truck was going over 70. Neither him nor his car was seriously injured.
Miracles, or, if you prefer, things that aren’t easily explained by science, seem to happen regularly. My roommate even speaks in tongues, but she has a friend who claims that she’s just speaking Spanish. It sure as heck doesn’t sound like Spanish to anyone else. I would presume that it appears that miracles only manifest themselves among believers because they are the ones who take them as such. If a nonbeliever survived the accident that my priest got in, they might attribute it to luck. If a nonbeliever spoke in tongues, they probably would question their sanity. Either way, it probably isn’t something that they would attribute to God.
As far as things like my grandmother’s roses, I would imagine that they manifest around believers because those are the ones that are asking for them. My grandmother asked for Mary to intercede for her and Mary responded with a visible sign. Ask and ye shall receive.
Also, I noticed you’re a guest. Normally, religious type questions go to Great Debates. They have a habit of getting quite…intense. Welcome to SDMB!
I don’t know where you are located, but around here Roses blooming in winter would be quite the miracle, since they are dormant.
You second instance is even more miraculous, considering the car was not seriously hurt in a head on collision at those speeds. Call me a cynic, but I’ll bet that story isn’t an accurate retelling of the events as they really occured. Any normal road car would be absolutely demolished.
Moved to Great Debates.
samclem GQ moderator
Thanks for the heads up.
So if it’s the case that prayers of the faithful are answered, what’s with all the unheeded suffering amongst the devout?
My grandmother was in the Washington DC area. I’m not a floraculturalist, but I believe roses are generally considered domant in the winter in that region, especially on snowy days. You say that it would be quite a miracle and in my eyes, it is.
I’m having trouble finding links about Fr. Patrick’s accident that you don’t need to pay for. Here’s one that gives you the search results from the Roanoke Times. The first result is the one that concerns him. He also got a write up in the Catholic Virginian that talks about his recovery. One of his legs was completely smashed, but to look at him today, just shy of a year later, you wouldn’t know. Considering the severity of the accident, it was quite suprising. Upon a read through, I realized that I need to preview my posts. I said that neither him nor his car were seriously injured. That should have read that neither him nor his dog that was with him were seriously injured. Cars, being inanimate, can’t even get injured. Sorry about that, sometimes my thoughts get ahead of my fingers as I type.
Also, you’re a cynic! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Now that this has been moved to GD, I will step back and let the debaters take over.
In the bible miracles were associated with someone holy or extraordinary - Moses, Jesus, Abraham etc. They didnt just happen to any Tom, Dick, or Harry. I guess men just aint what they used to be.
MissMossie: Not knowing squat about roses or regions, I’ma take a pass on your first story.
Inre the second, though, you say:
However, the links that you provide relay the following:
Both of which stand in direct contrast to your original claim that he hit a semi head on (didn’t happen according to the Roanoke Times) and that he escaped serious injury (also incorrect according to the Catholic Virginian). And in addition, a shattered leg is a serious injury according to anyone I’ve ever met.
If you’re going to make fantastic claims, then back them up. Otherwise, you do your side no favors whatsoever.
Now, inre the OP: I remember arguing this point with someone who stood staunchly behind his claims that miracles happened all the time, just not here in the US, where they could be easily checked out. Most of what he was passing off as miracles happened in Asia, as I recall, and were reported exclusively in a Christian publication. And that even if miracles were to happen here in the US, then the secular media would never report on them. Despite my pointing out that if an honest-to-goodness miracle were to occur, the press would be all over it like a cheap suit.
God chooses when and where burning bush/water into wine/virgin birth miracles happen. I would definitely ask Him about His miracle scheduling rationale (among other things) if I had His phone number handy, but alas. 
By the way, if you’re interested in a specifically Catholic perspective on modern day miracles: Individuals are free to disagree about any specific miracle, even those the Church has officially certified. This opens the way for a lot of different ideas on what consititutes a miracle and how frequently they occur. I personally would be inclined to say that the existence of the universe and of human conciousness are two pretty sweet currently-unfolding miracles. I’m skeptical about roses blooming in winter and such, though.
Heheh. That was quick
Not sure which sort of roses you are talking about, or when in winter it was, but there are any number of roses that reliably or are known to sometimes bloom in winter and all over the place. There are also artificial ways to make roses bloom even if it isn’t their season yet.
http://www.columbian.com/lifeHome/lifeHomeNews/09142006news59074.cfm
The “Christmas” Rose:
http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&mainPage=prod2working&ItemId=43383&scChannel=Top%20Ten%20Main
http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&mainPage=prod2working&ItemId=43584&scChannel=Top%20Ten%20Main
Before addressing this, I’m curious about your definitions. What do you consider to be a miracle? Are you talking about fire raining from the sky, seabeds drying overnight, etc? Or are you talking about “miraculous” healings/life savings, prayers being answered, etc.?
If you’re talking about the latter, there’s plenty of examples and counter-examples of those, so those are really just a mattter of interpretation and opinion. Let’s talk about a guy who was given 3 months to live, but ended up being cured and living another 20+ years. A religious person would say he was miraculously healed. A cynic would say he was just in the lucky 0.01% that survived.
If you’re talking about the first, there’s more to discuss there. I might be considered a literalist, but I don’t view God as one who actively tinkers around with us in the way that many tend to interpret miracles. To me, that interpretation undermines the omnipotence and omniscience of God. In the same way that a master can set up tens of thousands of dominos and have them fall exactly as he intended, my view of God is similar. Because God had knowledge of all of the events that would transpire and how his miracles should interact, he could have easily set up natural processes, ensured certain leaders are in power, certin scientific discoveries have occurred, etc. such that his will will be carried out.
In essence, I believe this appears to happen less often because our understanding of these phenomenon has increased. That is, even though they are essentially acts of God, because we understand them, they don’t seem so much like miracles anymore.
The obvious question is that, if that is so, then why was God so open and active in the OT? No one claimed there that it was undermining anything: if anything, it was the opposite claim: that God’s demonstrations of power showed that he was true.
This of course takes us to the basic “argument from atheists” question about God, which is: what is the point of NOT making God’s existence simply a settled issue in creation? That is, if God exists, why is it even an open question for anyone? The issue of whether we are good people who will do what god wants is one thing: At the very least, it seems sort of dishonest and misleading of God. If God exists, I would like to know it, and I don’t see any reaonable excuse for withholding that information from me or anyone.
In fact, if God exists, and yet leaves its existence an open question, and I die and find out that God existed and I am to be punished for not realizing it, that’s seems just sort of dick: I was duped, or at least placed in a game where the obvious facts of life were deliberately obscured and made uncertain so that it was possible to be mistaken about them.
Apologists often respond that knowledge of God is bad for our freedom to make choises, but this seems implausible to me as an argument for many reasons. First of all, knowledge of God, even so direct as speaking to God all the time, didn’t seem to rob any of the OT characters of their “free will” (in that many of them still did bad things that displeased God). So in practice, there doesn’t seem to be any such problem after all. But more importantly, this whole argument seems, I think, to get the very idea of choosing wrong. When I have more information, I am BETTER INFORMED about my situation, and hence my decisions are MORE in line with my true intentions and wishes given the true picture I am dealing with. When I lack knowledge, my choices are restricted and confused and messed up by my ignorance.
Of course, even that is beside the point, because if the test is whether or not I’ll do the right thing and be saved, then the test is pointless. It’s either my nature to do that, or it isn’t, and in either case an omniscient god would already know this and so running through the farce of an earthly life to determine it is pure nonsense.
Let’s postulate a world in which there is a deity that humans can see and interact with. Presumably they can understand and explain his powers to some extent. He’s part of their reality, part of their science.
There would still be humans debating the question of what, if anything, was behind and beyond the reality that they could see and understand. There would be religions (meta-religions from our perspective) to answer the unknowable questions about reality, of which the deity is a part.
It’s like a Matrix within a Matrix. Whoa!
Well, I don’t believe in God, but if there is a God, it doesn’t matter whether or not we think He is logical, or fair, or anything. I mean, He would pretty much be making the rules. It’s not like you could die, and when you see Him say, “I was duped!”. He’s pretty much the final authority.
Ugh. God.
I am not an apologist, but I do agree that knowledge of God affects our free will, just not in the way that they or you seem to interpret it. If I meet God face to face, I still have the free will to do his will or not, that is not in question. In this respect, our free will remains intact; however, I no longer have the free will to believe or not. It is no longer a question of faith in God, it is now a question of fact or at least my own interpretation of those events. The “test” is not about whether or not you’ll do the right thing, its about whether or not you have faith. Religion is not about making an informed decision, it is about faith… I don’t follow one religion or another because I am well informed about them all and chose the one that is most logical within the framework of that knowledge; I follow it simply because it is the one I believe.
FWIW, I don’t believe in eternal punishment in the way that many apologists do, so that might affect the nature of my argument. But that is a different debate, and I digress. I’ll drop in later and address if turns out to be relevant.
Power is not the same thing as authority. Just because someone can beat me up six ways from sunday doesn’t make them morally correct. If there is no way for God to be unfair, illogical, or immoral simply by definition, then those words have no meaning at all in the first place.
Why is the freedom to believe or not in any way important? It is important that I be able to believe that I am superman? I have to admit that I am, in fact, completely unable to believe that. And yet, I don’t feel less free for it. However, the reason I am unable to believe that is because I refuse to believe things I know are false and for which I have no evidence. If I lacked that drive, then I suppose I could believe that a God I know to exist does not, in fact, exist. In which case I don’t lack for freedom after all.
Honestly though: what sort of crazy test is that? If someone tried to give you such a test in real life, and then got mad when you failed it, you’d think they were nuts. Seriously: you are wrapped in a rug and thrown in the back of a van. Someone demands that you tell them what color the spoon in their hand is. Unfortunately, you can’t see the spoon since they are standing above and behind you and you can’t turn your head. You say “I don’t know” and they punch you in the back of the head. You say “silver?” and they shoot and kill you, because, actually, it was a trick question and there was no spoon. That’s the behavior of madmen… and yet that’s basically the equivalent of giving people a test about factual matters while actively refusing to inform them of the relevant facts.
Well, that’s exactly the problem: somehow then, a large number of people end up just being poorly informed. If faith is what is required, how does anyone know that, or know which thing to have faith IN? Obviously this is a serious problem, because people have faith in all sorts of different things.
Granted. If there are no consequences, then the immorality of it loses its meaning. However, the absurdity remains. If there is a God, then even out of mere curiosity and general social friendliness I would like to know, and heck, would actually enjoy being able to have conversations and stuff with God. Deliberately keeping things a game as to whether God even exists: even if the game has no ultimate consequences, seems just plain bizarre. Again, if some person acted like that: avoiding leaving any evidence of their existence, I would find them slightly nutty if not a little anti-social when I finally discovered their existence.