Oh… that you are not alone.
Once you consider the possibility, and you really think about it, the coincidences and lapses in other people’s reason can become terribly overwhelming.
This little detour was about what we have experienced, and while I’m not in a position to judge your experience, I certainly am with respect to my own.
I also suppose that even if you saw a miracle, you wouldn’t be able to believe it, because it would mean other people didn’t see it and that would be too close to the neighborhood of damnationist theology.
Edit: This morning I heard about the revival at Asbury and I am excited to say the least. What a tremendous move of God’s Spirit! The signs are just lovely!
“And anyone who has spent time in Hughes Auditorium over the past few days can testify that this promised Comforter is present and powerful. I cannot analyze—or even adequately describe—all that is happening, but there is no doubt in my mind that God is present and active.”
ok so you believe Jesus performed or may have performed such miracles. What about his apostles, or others after Jesus?
If the incarnation happened, then so did the miracles, including those of the disciples and first circle or two of apostles. The laying on of hands worked for a few degrees of separation. Not 77. The Church rapidly lost its apostolic edge. That degree of dilution is homeopathic. The day a real, naturally impossible miracle occurs, the world will know. People being healed supernaturally of sciatica or depression or diabetes or cancer would show up in the stats. When they do, that would also be a real miracle, of a more subtle category. They won’t. Ever. Unless God changes His ways. And He never does.
Jonathan Edwards would vehemently disagree
LOL! In his day. But his intellect should have been big enough in this day to surmount even his fouled narrative.
It’s not so much the intellect as the experience… whether it’s being convicted of sin in the heart or seeing the work of the Spirit in the world.
What’s sin? What’s it got to do anything?
Treating other people like they don’t exist and loving what is not most lovely as if it was… I think Jesus’ summary of the law fits with this pretty good.
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Yeah, we all do that. Abuse power one way or the other. But what’s it got to do with the fact that there are no miracles now? When, if any of Jesus’ miracles were performed today, they would convert the New Atheists?
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And not loving what is most lovely to see the one behind the offer of infinite joy… I know that I’ve seen him in my life like what is happening at Asbury now. Keener also had that unmistakable experience of the presence of Jesus.
I’m sorry that’s your experience. It’s not mine. What possibility am I not considering that should have that affect on me?
There is consilient experience. And there is none of miracles.
Why and how do you suppose that, when if Dennett or Dawkins saw a miracle, they would believe? Why would I be any different? What’s other people not seeing got to do with anything at all? And how would a miracle, unless it were a lying one of course, validate damnationism?
And what does that entirely natural, un-miraculous group trance have to do with anything? I go to the theatre and rock concerts for that.
Now do you realise why I hide your replies?
The real thing bears genuine fruit… That’s a miracle in itself.
I wouldn’t say it’s totally indisputable but it makes a really good case.
For total complete certainty I’d turn you to the problem with an infinite regress, but even when the cosmological argument proves there is a first cause, it doesn’t prove the cause is aware of its action. It could be that it simply isn’t yet aware like so many other things in the world.
Even William Rowe kind of mixed this up a little bit. He was at Purdue which I heard some of the students from there are going to Asbury for the revival. I wonder if Draper who is now at Purdue, is seeing any of this.
Miracles these days do not seem to take place in the presence of unbelievers (? No sign but the sign of Jonah?) so don’t count on Dawkins being exposed to a miracle. That is sort of an uncomfortable aspect to see miracle healing pretty much limited to sub-cultures that promote miracle healings.
“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment and condemn the people living today, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. But look—something greater than Jonah is here!”
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It’s also something you have to see firsthand to believe.
Two occasions come to mind. A flicker of revival I witnessed around 2008 in a conference at a reformed cessationist church. The speaker was preaching about the power of Christ’s rescuing mercy even in the pit of hell. The group was so moved, it was like watching a wave come across the crowd, and we started to sing a worship song spontaneously.
The other was an entirely natural group trance at a 1998 Jane’s Addiction concert. If just one person would have spoke up, it would have shattered the paralysis.
I only have to see it in the statistics or on the BBC to believe it. Nature is rewarding the superstitious; it is its own reward. That they see things that aren’t there. And what makes you think, how do you know, that I haven’t seen such firsthand?