Choosing between miracles and what's in the Bible

Faith & Science Conversation
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Say you saw miracles from multiple sources from evangelical fundamentalists who are telling you to be evangelical fundamentalists like them and that Biblical scholarship is evil “because the wisdom of man is foolishness to God”, but of course the Bible still says what it says. The Bible still has a flat earth in the Old Testament, Genesis 1-11 is a polemic against Babylonian theology, scholarship does objectively help one understand the Bible better etc.

It’s an impossible situation to be in because the miracle workers want you to believe and proclaim something that is not true, but clearly they have some kind of power behind them and you don’t want to go against God, but your not willing to lie for God either saying what’s in the Bible is not actually in the Bible, “the waters above in Genesis 1:6 are just clouds don’t you know?” and besides God is supposed to not be a liar anyways so something sketchy is going on here. What would you do in such a situation?

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You know God exists because?
You know about God because?
You know what Gods purpose for us is because?
You know that death and suffering came to this world as a direct consequence of sin and that Christ died on the cross to atone for that sin so that we may be redeemed and restored from its clutches because?
You know that Christ claimed He will return again one day amd that He will wipe aways tears, wipe away death/pain/suffering, that there will be a new earth where none of these things will exist because?

Because…

We read it in the bible.

If one isnt going to actually pick up the bible to test God truth claims, then how does one know what is being presented to them is a God truth claim?

Acts 17:11
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true

If you do that you will also discover the following warning…

Matthew 24 23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

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I am sorry but since when were miracles limited to evangelical fundamentalists?

Perhaps you are cessationist inasmuch as there are no modern mirracles>

I am a witness to the persistance of mirracles, and I am definately not fundamentalist.

I really do not see how you can claim the bible denies or argues against mirracle, or that their existance conteadicts Scripture.

I think you need to explain further your problem

I have both winessed and performed mirracles (Strictly speaking God has done them through me)

What is your problem with that?

Richard

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If I’m seeing them from multiple sources, then presumably I’m not seeing the actual miracles, only accounts of them.

That’s not clear at all.

If I’m only seeing accounts of miracles, then they don’t clearly have some kind of power, they could be gullible or making stuff up - both of which are frequent occurrences. So I don’t need to do anything except point to a lack of verifiable evidence.

If I’m seeing the actual miracles, or there is verifiable evidence, then I’d first try to see if there was any sleight-of-hand, and if there wasn’t, I’d know it was real and change my worldview.

But having seen many, many stage magicians and many, many false claims of miracles, I consider this such an unlikely scenario that it’s not worth serious consideration.

Now…

Say you saw a UFO land in your back garden and little pink aliens with five legs scuttle out of it and start erecting a metal machine next to your garage, and when you approached them, they spoke to you in Portuguese (which you somehow understood) and told you that they were going to turn the earth’s crust into peanut chocolate to ease world hunger, but also make anyone who was more than 5 years old so highly allergic to peanuts that they would spontaneously combust on touching a ‘rock’.

What would you do in such a situation?

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For the Bible I would explain accomondationism, hyperbole and mythicized history as literary devices and why I think the Bible employs them. It works for global floods just as much as it works for walking on water.

Then even if the miracles are not just a literary device I would explain cessationism and laying on of hands.

Then even if I still thought they persisted, those claiming to do it I would highlight how those miracles work on unbelievers leading them to Christ, how they were doing it to giant crowds in the Bible and challenge these miracle workers to go in as many as they can fit in as many vans and buses as they can and go to a place like st Jude and they all work together to instantly and supernaturally cure a kid with stage 4 and if they can’t, and that’s god will I’ll just highlight how suspicious it is they healed someone without proof.

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It sounds like these folks want a commitment in the moment.

Only Jesus himself, God in the flesh, asked people at the moment he was about to perform a miracle, if they believed he could do what he was about to. after preaching and healing in the region for some time.

That’s not how the (real) apostles and disciples operated, those who were not God in the flesh. The Bereans are praised for NOT just taking the evangelists’ words for things, but for studying to see how or if they message they heard fit with scripture. Paul reasoned with people and left the rest to the Holy Spirit.

In the case of these pushy “fundamentalist evangelicals” (a term that applies to my tribe, but a scenerio that is nothing like anything I can imagine in churches I go to) I think you are in your right to tell them that you need to go study for yourself and pray about this on your own. And leave.

If they pursue you, tell them they have your answer. Walk away. Go. Leave.

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Biblically mirales are linke to faith. You can’t have one without the other. Although Matthew treats them as “signs” it is only within the culture where such things were considered in that context…

As i see it, if you want verifiable evidence you are going to be out of luck. (unfotrunate terminology). Suc evidence could easily be used to prove the existence of God. If God had wantedd that He would be much more visible. As it is God would seem to prefer faith to evidence which is why the scientific approach can never work.

I have said before here that i have both seen and "performed£ miracles but…

That is second hand evidence, reliant on believing both me and my understanding of events. (Neither of which holld much weight here)

It would seem that , furthermore, scientific reproduction or explanation of an event that is claimed as mirraculous negates the hand of God, and eliminates the miracle. However, such things as coincedence, or having knowledge that is out of time, can be attributed to God by a person of faith, even if the scientists claims otherwise.
For instance, if Elijah’s preparation of the sacrifice on Mt Carmel included substances like Phosphorus or Magnesium, the flooding wth water would be the catalyst to ignition,instead of the apparent “overkill” that it appears to be. Would that make it still fire from God?

As it happens at least one of the miracles I have been involved with has little or no scientific explanation, but, then again, I neither need or want that explanation.

A traditional analogy to faith is the parachute, you can see it in action, you can undertand how it works but until you jump out of a plane you will neever know if that particualr parachute will work. All the knowledge in the world cannot replace faith,

As far as miracles are concerned, if you need proof of them they will never happen. Its as simple as that.

Richard

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Reality is what doesn’t stop happening if you stop believing it.

If miracles only happen to those who believe in them, they aren’t real.

All you’ve provided are the same old tired excuses used by conmen, frauds and snake-oil salesmen for millennia.

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O wow.

I know miracles happen. But I cannot prove them to you, nor can I “perform” for you. In fact I may never see or be part of one ever again.

I could cite Jesus in front of Herod, but that might be taken as some sort of comparison of abilities. I stress, I am not a miracle worker. Anything I may have done is by God’s power not mine.

The results are real enough, but how they happened? Well I guess that is a matter of faith, and that ignores all that you hold dear, sorry and all that.

There is a saying

For those who have faith no proof is needed, but for those who do not have faith no proof is enough.

Once you go down the road of needing validation you are separating yourself from faith. Name calling will do you no good.

Richard

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That’s just more tired excuses.

Apart from this:

Your suggested cite for miracles is a hearsay account of some-one not performing any.

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No excuses. I do not have to prove anything to you and you are free to think what you like. However, if you are going to just belittle or condemn the notion of miracles I will give the other side of the argument…

That is a view of Scripture I do not share.

Richard

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When are you going to start?

Really?

Do you think the author of Luke was present when Jesus was taken before Herod?

Or do you think Jesus did perform miracles then even though Luke wrote that Jesus didn’t?

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I am not going to argue Scripture with a clear non-believer.

I a not goiing to justify my faith with you or anyone else.

And I am not going to try and “prove” the existence of miraclrs.

Richard

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I have seen more than a few claimed miracles, so I would respond as I have responded before: test them against the scriptures, which in my case means the original text. It turned out that most of the claimed miracles were false, and the few that were real were unsought, so I’d say that the passage about seeking signs applies.

If I were to try to count the “accounts of them”, I’d be overwhelmed!

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And that was in an atmosphere where there were “miracle workers” in relative abundance.

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Not being a Christian, my initial reaction would probably be different than most here.

If these miracles were real, I would be adamant that they open up a hospital and start curing as many people as possible as quickly as possible. What people may or may not believe about the Bible would be way, way down the list of priorities. Imagine all of the people who are facing a death sentence with pancreatic cancer that could be cured in an instant?

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When I was in my early teenage years, my dad started studied in Theology at university and we didn’t have much money…a friend of ours gave us a lawn mower, because mum and dad couldn’t afford to buy one and the backyard was large and overgrown as a result.

This mower was worse then a lemon, it was a menace. The guy who gave us the mower told dad that it wasn’t running and needed fixing, however, given dad was a motor mechanic, he should be able to sort that. Unfortunately, dad being a motor mechanic and getting a lawn mower going didn’t correlate particularly well and so the lawn mower sat gathering dust…and the grass kept right on growing.

As a young person, I always took and interest in mechanical stuff…i ruined more than I fixed usually, anyway my eyes one day turned to this old lawn mower.

I went to the place underneath the house where this mower lay in wait and wheeled it out into the yard (I can still remember the exact spot where said mower and I were on the day of this story), filled it will fuel and then attempted to start the engine.

Now this mower was one of those “old wind up” ones where you open a crank handle, wind it around a few times, close the handle to activate the spring mechanism which then turns the engine over.

I tried a number of times to get this thing to start (whether it was six times, ten times…i just remember it was a lot of times) all to no avail. The engine did not even so much as splutter.

In a moment of “giving up”, a young teenager prayed to God “if you are there please start this mower”

The most incredible thing about my experience was that what happened on the next attempt at start that lawn mower, it burst into life and ran for a short while before stopping. I do not recall ever seeing that mower run again after that time.

Some here may see this story as a fluke of timing.

For me though, it was an experience that had a profound effect on me at the time. If that wasn’t God answering the prayer of a child, I could not believe a single miracle story in all the bible.

I have to believe that God answered my prayer that day and largely because of my inability to reconcile this experience outside of that of a miracle. It was not a conversion story, nothing like that, just a prayer from a young teenager that was very obviously answered.

Let me add the crux of this story now…the lawn mower on ran for a few minutes and it never started again on that day or any other. That is why I am absolutely convinced God started the mower that day. If the mower had of kept running and continued to run from that day forward, I would have put it down to a simple mechanical issue that had resolved itself (such as bad fuel or a temperamental ignition system)

BTW, one of my first jobs out of school was being trained and working as a lawm mower repairman…given that experience, I can honestly say it was only God who got that mower going that day and the fact it stopped again soon after is profound given clearly the issue with the mower was such that it wasnt capable of running with said problem.

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Thinking about NT accounts of miracles, yes, faith was involved, but there was proof as well. The blind guys were still not blind anymore days or weeks after Jesus healed them. Lame people who kept walking like physically able people weeks later were likely really healed. And so on. Wine and water are easy enough to tell apart.

As @Klax pointed out to me once, when the father of the demon-posessed boy confessed faith and still demanded “Help my unbelief!” Jesus even did just that in performing the miracle.

The Gospel writers seem, at least to me, to be relying on accounts of Jesus’ miracles to demonstrate that he was who he claimed to be. So that the miracles do not only require faith to be understood but that they build faith.

But they need to be reliable. There are -always have been- so many charlatans. Big showy “events” where “something” happens, but it isn’t what is claimed. I’ve know a few people sucked into these things. Maybe it builds their faith in Jesus, or some kind of Jesus, but mostly it makes them susceptible to suggestions to give more money to the charlatan’s “ministry.”

I am strongly inclined to skepticism. Can’t help it. If someone is claiming a miracle, and demanding I sign on in some way, I would want some basic varification. Which means I would expect the event to be open to varification. Not a miracle that could only be understood as a miracle if someone already believed it was a miracle.

I understand that you have had experience with miracles. I don’t know your experiences and have no way to evaluate them. So as a natural born skeptic, I am confident at least that you believe they were miracles, and I don’t have the impression that you are crazy, although I am not inclined just to accept the statement as fact that the events were.miracles. maybe after discussion and particulars I would think differently.

One of my best friends has experienced things she believes are miracles as well. They aren’t sham “healings” for example. So maybe they were miracles. My doubt proves nothing.

But thinking back to the OP, just because some does “something” doesn’t prove one thing or another. I think it’s important to be circumspect in our approach to these things, because the world is really full of con artists and fools.

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What people are missing is that in Scripture th existence of God is not an issue. God is. For the Jews, there was.is no issue: God is. The only issue in the Gospels is who is Christ? It is not “Is there a God!”
Demons, spirits, possession, they are all part of the culture. It is not so much is there a God as to which one is greatest? Also, it is not about what God can do, is doing, or will do. That was God’s business not theirs. They were just trying to keep on His good side so that He didn’t smite them.

Miracles were never about faith in God, but they are now!

Or at least, that is how people want to see them, and God is not playing that game.

Richard

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You started this conversation, and you introduced scripture.

Now you’re running away because the questions are too awkward.

What a wonderful example you are.