[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Let’s just say they’re all necessarily ahistorical. It is not possble that impossible events have ever happened. You don’t actually think Biblical claims of miracles are “evidence” of anything do you? If you do, then you really don’t have any grasp of what that word means. Do you think that Homeric accounts of supernatural events are evidence for Zeus? Can you articulate any rational basis for affording Bible stories any more literal, historical plausibility than the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Mahabharata?
[/QUOTE]
Ah, the parsing of logic. We have a definite problem here, Dio. Remember “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”? If you choose to define “miracle” as “something inherently impossible that it is claimed has happened,” then you will get unanimous consent, from Friar Ted to Der Trihs, that you’re right.
Unfortunately, that’s not what Christian theology means by “miracle,” and you damn well ought to know it. A miracle is a highly improbable event that it is claimed happened as a sign of some attribute of God, e.g., the feeding of the 5000 as his providence and as foretaste of the Eucharist and the supposed Heavenly Banquet. I’ve noted before that the writers are at pains never to actually say that Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes, only that, as he took and blessed five loaves and two fish, enough food became present for 5000 to eat their fill. That he may have used the example of the boy’s generosity to shame people in the crowd who had in fact brought food to share, is not ruled out by the Bible text. As we both know, there is a lot of material in the Scriptures that constitutes “highly improbable,” and I don’t believe anyone is under obligation to take the vast majority of it with a straight face. In fact, probably more than a little of it is rabbinic haggadah or the early-Christian equivalent, never intended to be taken literally.
And “evidence” is not confined to Scripture. Joan of Arc, Lourdes, personal testimonies by a wide range of people, myself among them… they’re “evidence.” What degree of credulity or skepticism you bring to their evaluation is necessarily an individual judgment, about which, IMO, de gustibus non est disputandum. But the claim that “there is no evidence” is at best handwaving. You may consider the evidence shitful, on a par with flying-saucer accounts. That’s your privilege. You may feel that there is absolutely no such thing as predictive prophecy (and you may be right) – meaning that every instance of such reported in Scripture was back-written after the fact, attributing it to Jesus or an apostle or prophet some decades in the writer’s past. Again, your privilege. However, there’s a bit of self-serving fraudulent analysis in that – circular reasoning: “Every instance of predictive prophecy in Scripture was written after the fact and attributed back to a prophet. We know this because of the dates those books were written. But one of the main reasons for dating those books as we do is that they contain clear predictions of things that had not yet happened as of the time they were supposed to be describing, and had to be written after the fact. We’re certain of this last statement because predictive prophecy does not exist.”
