Changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana in Galilee was Jesus’s first miracle. John himself tells us that the water had become wine. The master of the feast commented on the quality of the wine. And John comments, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”
But you are saying that Jesus’s deception was able to fool the party guests and the disciples and his mother? Was Jesus really a creep?
So your God is an arbitrary goofballl who makes trivial laws so that He can break them for no other reason than to show people how powerful He is? Is your God really a creep? No. That is only the God made up by religious people in order to exaggerate their own importance. My God is certainly quite different. He made the laws of nature for a very good reason (support the very process of life itself) and no He does not change them or break them to impress people who wouldn’t know the difference anyway or to help religion mongers get a one-up-man-ship on scientists.
God is not a creep just because He didn’t do what you think He did. Jesus was not a creep just because He didn’t do what you claim contrary to what He said He did.
No… the creeps are the people contradicting Jesus to claim He was a wizard or necromancer.
What did Jesus say that He did?
John 5:19 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing;
John 14:12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do
Jesus never claimed that either God nor Himself broke any laws of nature. In fact, He made it quite clear that the same rules applied to Him as they did to anybody else.
What was the name of the MD who examined him? That would be the Great Physician: ‘Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”’ (John 11:14-15)
Denial of the supernatural character of miracles in scripture always ends in tears.
Who’s denying the supernatural character of miracles?
I am not.
Miracles are an act of God and God is supernatural. Therefore miracles are supernatural.
But another thing that this supernatural God, did was to create the laws of nature.
And don’t believe that God disobeys the laws which He Himself created because I think He created them for a very good reason.
I certainly don’t believe God breaks those laws for the stupendously absurd reason of trying to impress a bunch of ignorant savages who wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
What I don’t believe in is wizardry and necromancy. Magic is stage show, not a way of breaking the laws of nature which God created. I believe in God the creator of natural law, not some wizard necromancer God.
Jesus was not an MD. Nor was He a blue eyed, blond haired, white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant. The language He spoke was Aramic, not medicine nor English. And the definition of “death” in modern medicine had absolutely NO PART in the definition of the word Jesus used when He said Lazarus was dead!
What was their word for coma? There was none. There was no talk of anyone being in a coma before the 17th century. Do you think that means there were no people in a coma?
When can we say that people were correctly pronounced dead according to the modern definition? There really is no such time, because even with modern medicine, mistakes are still made where people are pronounced dead and even buried when they were not actually dead. For we now say that they revived and do not believe they were actually resurrected.
So when the Bible says, ‘Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died…”’, are you saying that Jesus himself was sincerely mistaken, because Lazarus was not dead, but in a coma?
And so, by logical extension, when Lazarus emerged from the tomb at Jesus’ command, Jesus mistakenly believed that Lazarus had been raised from the dead?
Moreover, many others were left mistakenly believing this also: “Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him…” (John 11:45).
I’m not wanting to be uncharitable, but I think your position is unsustainable with any reasonable reading of the text. I’m greatly concerned that your presupposition of rigid non-intervention is keeping you from biblical truth. It’s a presupposition that is unfounded and unnecessary.
Either the 7-10 signs attested by ‘John’, of which most are unique to ‘John’, were actually accurately recorded by the Johannine group for 30 years to 95+ AD, or they were made up in good faith from that group’s pious legends. No one was otherwise mistaken.
No need to hyperventilate. I was simply looking at the account of the wedding in Cana in the Bible.
No I am saying the meaning of the word “dead” has changed with modern science just as the meaning of the words “human” and “earth” have changed because of it. The result is that we impose our new meanings on the stories contrary to reality in order to transform stories of real people into a fantasy of wizardry and necromancy.
I’m not wanting to be uncharitable, but I think your position is unsustainable with any reasonable reading of the text according to the meaning of the words at the time. I’m greatly concerned that your presupposition of an inconsistent magical God with no integrity is keeping you from Biblical truth. It’s a presupposition that is unfounded and unnecessary.
No need to hyperventilate and sputter about Jesus being a creep when you do so.
To the OP. Can supernatural agency provide evidence for science? Well it would if it actually did something. Like this. Wait till Eccleston puts his shades on!
Not really. Science is best used at disproving thus to prove that god exists we need to demonstrate that all the competing hypothesis are wrong.
theories with universe having a beginning: suggests a transcendent prime mover?
This is resolved with some form of multiverse. It doesn’t require a personnal God.
interpretation of physical constants as ‘fine tuning’ - suggests a tuner?
This is resolved by the Anthropic principle combined with a multiverse. This basically says that observers will only exist in places where the observer can exist. This mean that any observer will exist in a universe that is “fine tuned” for that observer. It basically says that this univers is not random but responds to requirements that mean you exist.
if explaining the origin of life naturalistically does not progress - suggests supernatural intervention?
This is a god of gaps argument which is dangerous theologically.
Disproving the multiverse will be tricky and disproving the Anthropic principle you have to show that the logic doesn’t work.
What evidence is there for matter, energy, time, and space being created at the start of the universe?
On the other hand, I don’t think you can prove that it wasn’t. So I elect to believe that it was. (And I have other supporting evidence of God’s activities.)
Yes, medicine has advanced, but in Biblical times and even in earliest prehistoric times people understood what dead means. Even animals understand what dead means. Elephants will mourn their dead. A mother with dead offspring will eventually stop trying to revive them.
And according to that definition people are pronounced dead and even buried even though they are revived or even revive themselves - without breaking a single law of nature. It doesn’t happen often. It is a very rare event – even a miracle, but again without breaking a single law of nature. Lazarus was such an event, and like Jesus said, He saw what the Father was doing and thus knew that Lazarus would revive when He called Him. Because Jesus was no necromancer or wizard breaking the laws of nature, but only did things as His own followers would do, completely in accord with how the universe was made to work, allowing strange and miraculous events to occur.
Skeptics have suggested that Jesus himself didn’t really die on the cross but instead passed out and looked dead, but then revived in the tomb. His ignorant followers thought it was a resurrection.
@Dale I would say that the evidence points to the fact that the universe, including matter, energy, time, and space, was created by the Big Bang at the start of the universe.
Please do not include God into the discussion right now.
My reference to God’s demonstrable activity is entirely appropriate. You are obviously unaware how many times he has already been mentioned.
It is a mystery. Lazarus was revived/resurrected to continue life in his regular old human body, unchanged, and ultimately suffered death. Jesus was resurrected to something different, evidently unconstrained by time, matter, and space as we know it. They appear two totally different things, so perhaps Lazarus was indeed revived from near death. (Know the last thing in a human body to die? The eyes. They dilate.)
I am well aware of this. But there is nothing even remotely similar between the two cases. Lazarus continued with his regular life and died when it was his time at a later date. Jesus did not continue with His physical life and there was certainly no later death. He was simply gone.
If he merely revived, then it was certainly miraculous timing and placing, not unlike the individual talking to the storm on Galilee.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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