St. Januarius, Miracles, and the Proof of God.

Great Debates
201

I love magic. I’ve dabbled in magic myself, but have also seen many tricks that I can’t explain. Some I have gone to great lengths to try to figure out and succeeded, and some I haven’t. I suppose that if I were a bit less educated and incurious, and a magician advertised himself as a miracle worker instead of an entertainer, I could probably be convinced he was performing miracles.

My point being is I don’t think something being unexplainable makes it miraculous. Even if not a single person in the world could explain it. There are many things that we could not explain and now can, things we do not understand and will figure out, and things we do not understand and may never understand because the human mind isn’t capable of understanding it.

Doesn’t make it miraculous.

202

Should it? The testable implications of quantum theory readily challenge very obvious beliefs on a daily basis.

It is not obvious at all that the universe needs a source. It is asserted without evidence that this is the case and even worse it is asserted by theists that this source, very conveniently, does not itself need a source.
Complete speculation of course, assuming a creator from which it can all start. The need for a “creator creator” is hand-waved away by simply defining it that way. That’s what we call “marking your own homework” Aquinas had a crack at this but his thoughts were as inadequate and circular as anything before or since.

If everything needs a source, then your creator needs a source and you are in infinite regress. Turtles all the way down.

If you declare, by fiat, that you can stop that regress at a certain point and call it “god” then on what basis and what evidence do you do that?

Even then, how can you say it is a single entity? If you have the ability for one eternal entity why not two, three or a billion?

And why even claim an eternal entity anyway. This must necessarily be a complicated thing who then goes on to create a universe from simple beginnings. How much less complicated is it to allow the same properties of eternal existence to those simple, unconscious elemental particles or energies. It requires far less explanation, provides exactly the same starting conditions and is even more in accordance with the world as we see it because it does away with the need to invent an omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, conscious, complicated, capricious and ineffable entity who provides no evidence for their existence and is superfluous to the working of the universe. As Laplace said, it just works without that assumption.

To me, this all feels like special pleading and the god of the gaps. The theists place their god where science cannot go because then they simply cannot lose.
You’ll note that as the explanatory power of science increases god becomes less and less involved in the actual, physical world. He never used to move in mysterious ways, he brought forth floods, plagues, talking shrubbery, pillars of salt, aquatic pedestrians, resurrections, food tampering etc. but has been curiously silent in a period where analytical techniques might actually be able to give weight to these “miracles”.

203

We should follow the procedure of the now terminated Randi $1 million dollar challenge. I’ve never seen a claim of a religious miracle (of the 2nd type, defined in post 93) that stands up to scrutiny. Including Fatima. The Catholic Church is wise to emphasize faith over proof.

204

How does proof of any one miracle constitute proof of monotheism, and Christian monotheism in particular?

There is a humdrum, everyday thing that makes atheists question their staunchly held beliefs. It’s called death.

I accept that I will never have a rational explanation for most phenomena.

205

The Piddingtons didn’t claim to be anything but a magic act, I should say. Though, during their shows they would present it as though it was telepathy and end the show saying, “Is it real? You be the judge.”

206

I have to notice that even EscAlaMike reports that the miracles Jim B. reported are not important to have faith or useful as evidence of God.

What does the OP says now?

207

This is a very important point. Consider, something bizarre and inexplicable happens.
atheist: Huh. I wonder what caused that.
believer: Isn’t god wonderful!

At this point, the believer is done with whatever that was, other than perhaps going to the sanctuary to adulate whatsoever it is they believe in.

The atheist, on the other hand, has a question, which they might ponder or might even start investigating in order to figure out just what the fuck that was about.

Personally, I find questions interesting – often more interesting than answers. It is true that belief does not always inhibit discovery/learning, but for the times that it does, I see that as possibly tragic. And I am sure that I will end my days will boatloads of unanswered questions, but I will treasure them far more than I would bland pat answers.

208

And I have to notice that this attitude from the Catholic church came after investigatory questions started being asked about said miracles.

209

If god proved he existed then everybody would be bothering him all the time. As much as I dislike God not answering my prayers he’s probably too busy.

210

You mean the Omnipotent One has limited bandwidth? Who knew? That’s gotta be in the Bible somewhere. Probably his ISP is throttling him for abusing his godly privilege.

211

yeah, and suddenly everybody’s favorite team wins, no more losers, no more death, hurricanes stop, cancer is gone, etc.

212

No, it did not. The church has reacted with scepticism and outright debunking of “miracles” for hundreds of years. The Shroud of Turin was debunked by a local bishop in 1390 after being publicly displayed between 1353 and 1357.

The church has certainly greeted many “miracles” with an inordinate credulity, but it is not accurate to say that it only began to question miracles after science began to challenge them.

213

Interesting that for most of the late 20th century, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting someone who had seen a UFO. Now that everybody has a camera in his cell phone, I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard of a sighting.

It’s kind of like how almost everywhere Jesus went, there were people possessed by demons that he had to cast out. Now that we understand mental illness a little better, there don’t seem to be any more demons.

So in answer to the OP, yes, there are phenomena we don’t understand. But if you want me to believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent God, he has to do something that demonstrated omnipotence and omnipresence — having every leaf on the tree in my back yard displaying a message from him would be a good start. Having something completely under the control of priests do something that happens in my kitchen every day, like lard liquefying, would not impress me.

214

No, it wasn’t. A local bishop wrote to the Pope and expressed his opinion that it was a forgery, but the Church itself never proclaimed it as such, and several recent Popes, including St. John Paul II, have said or implied it was genuine. They weren’t speaking* ex cathedra*, but they can’t be unaware of how much weight their considered opinion carries.

Moreover, it is extremely disingenuous to imply that the overall attitude of the Church toward miracles was skeptical. One of the main reasons there is a Protestant church today is because the Catholic Church was in the business of* selling *miracles (indulgences) like merchandise. The Church still conducts exorcisms. And it is a fundamental tenet that a miracle occurs during every mass when the wafer and wine are transubstantiated into flesh and blood.

215

The church never proclaimed that the shroud was genuine, either. The statements of recent popes has been that it is an object that inspires belief in the passion, but without ever claiming that it is “real.” JPII’s last quoted cryptic statement comes closest to you claim, although I would be interested is seeing the exact exchange with the reporters. A relic does not have to be authentic; it needs only be old and inspiring.

It might have been disingenuous to claim what you said, but that is not what I said.
The church has displayed credulity, as I noted, but I was responding to Czarcams’s implication that the church never expressed skepticism until challenged by science, which is not accurate. The church may not have expressed your level of skepticism for every event, but it also did not credulously embrace every event. You may have gotten who was being disingenuous a bit wrong.

216

“An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.”

— Pope John Paul II

217

I find it odd that he seems to think the fact that Christianity required a man-made institution to spread is a vote in *favor *for his fairy tale. Other religions have lasted far longer without such a deeply entrenched, centralized man-made institution.
Why would you prefer a deity that required a bureaucracy to keep it afloat?

218

You gotta believe.

219

The fact that the deity allegedly could do impressive things like parting seas and pillars of fire and causing a zombie apocalypse actually casts doubt on the namby-pamby miracles we do see. If the deity in question was inclined to do miracles to prove its existence, why does it restrict itself to things that are unconvincing? Because he wants us to rely on faith? If he wants us to rely on faith, why do miracles at all?

220

Personally I blame the rise of the automobile