I was just wondering if you saw the comment It seemed like you didn’t
No I can’t unless you edit it into the foregoing.
The comment wasn’t that important. If I have your attention, I’d be more interested in having you answer the question of whether reality and nature are synonymous (in your view).
Nature is the only reality we have any infinitesimal consilient experience of. Nothing in nature requires transcendent reality. I certainly desire the latter nonetheless. Who wouldn’t? So yes, nature and reality are synonymous as far as we know.
Maybe as far as you know… and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But don’t include me in your we.
You made a comment awhile back that made me wonder if you were able to say those terms are synonymous. I need to go back and look at the original comment to remember the implication.
If you know otherwise by consilient natural epistemics, then I’m all eyes.
Funny, it goes back to the comment I thought was unimportant.
God doing contrary to nature miracles is child’s play compared to how he answers prayer using the choices of other people. That’s the real wonder.
Have you heard the story of the Turkish translator?
That isnt how the world works. They will always come up with any excuse not to believe. Just as many did in Jesus’ day - people, for the most part, viewed Him as a magician. Not real. Nothing has changed.
Nonsense. A miracle speaks for itself. As it did then. The problem with then was superstition, magical thinking. Lack of rationalism. Jesus’ thousand days of miracles were attributed to Satan. Not fakery. Not modern magic. The problem with now is also superstition. Not rationality. If a miracle occurred no rational person could deny it. Rationality, objectivity, disinterest, science, statistics guarantee the detection of miracles if they were to occur. They don’t.
Sure they can. Sometimes I find myself doubting the miracles in my life. But I’m pretty sure my skepticism doesn’t look like yours.
A spontaneous healing is a reasonable belief. It’s harder to maintain it isn’t a miracle when it occurs in perfect coincidence with prayer and with the experience of power, but I wouldn’t put it past anyone.
Everybody prays all the time. Superstition is normal still. Miracles aren’t. The dead don’t rise. The eyeless don’t see. Except by implants. Mutilated lepers aren’t made whole. The terminally deranged aren’t made sane. They don’t need coincidental prayer. They just need to happen. Science would easily detect them.
Then there are certain multiple lottery wins that break the statistical surface, among them George Müeller’s. Of course miracles are impossible, if your worldview precludes them, even if someone is raised from the dead right next to you. “There is something I don’t understand, but it wasn’t a miracle.” Or, “There is something I don’t understand, but IT WASN’T A MIRACLE!"
And by the way, I fully endorse the rituals of the Church, as faithful to the early Church as possible. Despite having no unnatural effect since the Apostolic Age at least.
I’ve heard more stories than you can shake a stick at. We gorged on them in my cult. Brilliant, spine tingling stuff some of it. Nearly as scary as my beloved grandmother. To me as a young man.
If God wants to do a miracle, I’m not stopping Him. And science would bow the knee.
So you dont believe Jesus healed anyone, and therefore how he is portrayed in the Gospels, both in word and deed, is completely false?
What? Why do you ask such questions? Where does that come from?
Because I said that real, medically, statistically, thermodynamically impossible miracles don’t occur? As in no longer. That fact does not preclude Jesus.
It’s when you experience it firsthand that your naturalism starts to get a little wobbly
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I’m 68. I’ve had several lifetimes of experience. Including one as a fundamentalist. So I’ve had at least as much firsthand experience as you that I interpreted as miraculous. I have one that still gives me pause. 5 minutes out of thirty six million. Surrounded by many descending answers to prayer.
Your interpretation now feels more like a way to settle past accounts. On some days I suppose you could still see it the other way.
Then again, I’d bet you never really felt like you were alone in the world, to then have God answer your prayer that you are not.
When you think about it, solipsism could be the purest form of naturalism.
Not to me. No I couldn’t. No I didn’t. Not what? I wouldn’t know.