Of course you would. You’re a skeptic. It’s what you do. 
What I’m doing is using common sense. People who aren’t skeptics have that too. If you’re seriously not sure the world wasn’t created in one of the ways described in Genesis, you’ve got big-time suspension of disbelief going on. I thought you were making a point about being unable to know for sure- not that you personally are unwilling to rule things out just because.
I was in the first post you quoted. But I couldn’t resist a good-natured jab in the second. ;j
If they did, then God is a weasel who likes toying with humanity.
What if he just wants to test us?
Then god is a weasel who likes toying with humanity.
Actually, they do pretty much brush off anything that can’t be corroborated
if it can’t be, it’s usually designated literature in which case, it’s historical accuracy MIGHT be discussed, but most historians would dismiss it as any kind of authority. Exodus wouldn’t be brushed off as a literary tale that tells us cultural/societal information about it’s authors. But, for the most part, no one’s going to look at it as a truly historical document, and it won’t be considered in that sense.
Dio is right about the Exodus story. It’s created off of an epic tradition whose purpose is to invent a mythological background as the basis for a religion. As a result, its focus is to create stories with a message - like parables - and not to accurately depict genuine historical events.
Jthunder, I think you are right when you say the miracle is in the timing, and I understand why you chose the parting of the Red Sea to make this point. But I think you might have had more success with your point if you chose a real world example, as they suggested, to illustrate your point. You should know that with this group, picking a miracle from the Bible and say “Assume it’s absolutely true, then it’s obviously a miracle, therefore miracles are possible” isn’t going to win any points for your side. For starters, nobody arguing against the possibility is going to make that assumption with you.
Well, you’ve got me there. :smack:
I agree, but Moses is a bad example, since Occam’s Razor would suggest that the event just didn’t happen that way at all anyway.
Nonsense yourself. Tides and their timing are much discussed because they are interesting, in terms of them happening at predictable but complex intervals. Birds and their timing are discussed because they are interestingly seasonal.
People demanding that the gods do something essentially never, ever ever get recorded unless their demand happens to co-incide with what they have demanded. It’s going to happen every now and again, and when it does it’s all that religious people talk about, and all they record.
How many times do you think that someone, in the age of Moses, prayed for rain, or a boychild, or for their son to come home safely from war? How many times did someone wish for something impossible like that their dearly departed could return from death to be with them?
For every one of those probably billions or millions of prayers, exactly how many that did not come true do you think are still on the historical record a couple of thousand years later? Proportionately, the answer is zero.
Two answers. Firstly, bah humbug, I bet lots and lots of tsunamis, earthquakes etc from two thousand years ago have no current historical record. Secondly, I bet if they do, they are attributed to something to do with Gods, rightly or wrongly.
Well if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been recorded in the Bible, would it? How many lines in the Bible can you recall along the lines of
“And then there was an earthquake. Not for any religious reason, just cos stuff happens, I guess”
And yet, in the span of time covered by the whole of the new and old testaments, heaps of stuff must have happened.
Or perhaps
“The great religious leader called out to his God to provide some miracle essential to this story. Nothing happened. Same the next day. And the day after. And the same thing happened to 30 other great religious leaders, on almost every day.”
No, only when something weird happens does it get mentioned.
You keep saying that the timing is what can make a miracle inexplicable. I and many others are saying that the timing only causes something to appear inexplicable if you count the hits and not the misses, which is precisely what history tends to do.
The timing is evidence of human nature. Period.
You need to deal with this point or you are not going to get anywhere.
In all fairness, it’s not as if the bible was meant to record every event that happened in the lives of these people. I mean, they didn’t tell us anything about what sort of threads Hezekiah wore, what Noah bought at the store, or what Nicodemus hung upon his door. 
That’s the real answer of course. Timing is a component of alleged miracles though. The coincidence of a unique event like the parting of the Red Sea, (which we have to concede is the sort of thing that if it was common there’d be historical and contemporary accounts of incidents) with stunning coincidence of timimng would suggest a miracle, if it happened. But it didn’t. I’m just supporting the logic of the argument that miraculous timing is a component of a miraculous event and cannot be dismissed because there could be a natural explanation for the physical component.
Eclipses happen, no miracle. But if an eclipse happens when astronomically there isn’t one due, at a significant historical/religious moment then it’s either a miracle or a piece of fiction made up after the fact. I vote for the latter but just because there could be a physical phenomena behind an apparent miracle is not a sufficient, and I use that term in the technical sense, reason in itself for dismissing the possibility of a miracle. Logically speaking.
No - miracles are not ‘by definition’ impossible events. They are impossible in both your and my worldviews but we have, as skeptics, to be open to evidence to the contrary not deny the very possibility in the same was skeptics denied the existence of meteors because rocks falling from the sky was ‘by definition impossible’. That’s as close-minded as any fundamentalist.
We say what scientists always say - extraordinary evidence demands extraordinary proof. Timing of an unnatural event could be evidence, repeated patterns of minor natural coincidences could be evidence. I’m totally convinced that whatever ‘evidence’ is put forward will crumble in that light but I’m not prepared to assume that a priori.
so I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this ~
The Characteristics of the Atom match the characteristics of the Eternal Soul.
1.) Eternal, without beginning or end, unless an atom bomb is applied.
2.) Unlimited by time or space, explains prophecies and miracles.
3.) Atoms all connected, Avatars say we are all one big happy family.
4.) Atoms have Consciousness.
5.) Atoms evolve. Sages speak of us beginning as nothing then becoming air, water, mineral, plant, animal, human, evolving, always evolving.
And since I see these sparks all the time around me flash for a millisecond I know for a fact, that we are Human Consciousness Level evolved Atoms. Residing in the Pineal Gland. Jump out when the body dies. You see it in the movies even, a disincarnate soul as a spark of light zooming around. But that’s not Science. So Physics proves the existence of the Eternal Conscious Soul.
And, once we learn the powers of the Consciousness outside of the physical body, time and space, we then have a basis for the explanations for miracles.
Archaeology, tho’ considered a “soft science” is the Key to the Hidden messages in the entire Bible. The Four Horsemen of Revelation were the first two kings on earth, and their two sons for example.
Secular History, another “soft science” matches events in the Bible. You wouldn’t believe who Mother Mary, Jesus and Mary really were, but it’s right there in plain sight. The destruction of Egypt, Canaan, the cities dug up matching the Bible, etc.
The Ark of the Covenant was just a radio so Moses and Aaron and whoever was flying the pillar of smoke by day fire by night spacecraft, could communicate with Ahknaton back in Egypt. After they killed Amen-hotep first. And the worship of the “one God” was instituted in Egypt, and in the Wilderness until all those that knew the Gods of Egypt were dead.
Knowing about the “excellency in the sky” and the two angels dropping Hail and Brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah we see the work of a nuclear bomb. Also a spacecraft could explain the plagues of Egypt perhaps, in dumping frogs, lice, flies, etc…
Have these already been mentioned?
To get back to what originally kicked this part of the debate off, where does your point actually take you?
Sceptics say that if you call anything that you can’t explain a miracle and evidence of a god, then you are accepting that god is just something you say when you don’t know ie just a word to fill gaps in knowledge.
But your “timing” thing just makes god something you say when the odds are long. You’re simply proposing a “God of the Extreme Ends of the Probability Curve”.
When the odds are long against an event, you call it a miracle and evidence of a god.
That’s frankly sillier than the god of the gaps thing, because he’s used to explain things that are not understood, whereas a god of the extreme ends of the probability curve is being used to explain something that is inevitable, if rare.
I don’t know whether your post was serious, MM12, but the only sentence with even a grain of truth to it was “Atoms are connected” (if one considers electroweakstrong interaction, or perhaps the tiny gravitational interaction, as “connection”). The rest was simply not true, save perhaps for you having some problem with your vision such that you see flashes.
Nah, most of us are careful to keep our tinfoil hats on and keep out that sorta stuff. Half the time you can’t tell if it’s being beamed in by the One True Fluffy Bunny or implanted by Daemons anyhow, so you’re just better off not knowing.
I use a Hagbard’s Double Thickness Mindshield[sup]TM[/sup], which I find good, but some people think that a triple layer of ordinary kitchen foil (as long as you tug it down round your ears) is just as good, and it saves on the hempscrip, certainly.
Of course this comment creates something of a double bind for those that propound miracles that are not reported outside of their own religious text.
I don’t believe in miracles - the only, small points I’m making is that you can never rule anything out a priori and second - arguing about hypotheticals isn’t necessarily a tautology, and miracles have two components, only one of which is susceptible to natural explanations.
My personal opinion is that the ‘timing’ component comes from the liklihood that the reporter of miracles is making shit up in one way or another but if the parting of the Red Sea or some such event did happen - an unheard of physical phenomena, at precisely the time Moses called for a miracle, then calling it a coincidence explains nothing. The time component, the ‘coincidence’ could theoretically indicate an outside agency or factor (not the same as saying it must be a miracle, it might be but I doubt it).
As a skeptic I want to examine that component too, who knows it might point to a natural phenomena we have no idea about just as investigating alleged impossible falls of stone from the sky heralded a new understanding of the solar system.
You can rule out the impossible a priori and miracles are impossible by definition. If they weren’t impossible, they couldn’t be miracles.
(And I will define “impossible” as any event or phenomenon which would violate the known laws of physics)
It is impossible for a dead body to come back to life therefore it didn’t happen. Calling it a “miracle” does not qualify its innate impossibility in any way. It’s no different than calling it “magic.” The distinction between impossible and “miraculous” is utterly vacuous.