I wouldn’t take it that far. It’s just that sometimes people (including myself) are wrong, honestly or otherwise.
Perhaps a different way to put it is that we all have bovine excrement detectors, but they all have different settings. When I hear, “It’s a miracle because it’s impossible,” my detector starts beeping. Why is it impossible? What research have you done to demonstrate that it’s impossible? How can you say that something is impossible if it has been observed to happen?
I’m not even going to try to determine what is going on in people’s heads or what they have experienced for themselves. That seems like a fool’s errand. I am also not the type of person that discounts all religions as something people imagine.
What I think I can do is figure out what is happening in the world external to our thoughts. That would include the probability of someone surviving a cardiac event. If someone says that it is impossible to survive after your heart stops beating for 45 minutes when there are many instances where people have survived such an ordeal, I just don’t buy it.
(I guess I could have left both posts up that I deleted – the first was an attempt at levity where what’s fuzzy in hair length is when it is really short and next to the scalp. ; - )
The second was about Carl Jung. He made the wrong choice with his synchronicities by not recognizing God’s involvement in ‘chance’ and cut him out, maybe because of a subjective prejudice. With his Reformed background, he was certainly aware of doctrine about God’s sovereignty and providence, even if his father had issues, and of course he was familiar with this:
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 16:33
I think you are mischaracterizing Dr. George’s testimony. One survey showed that 75% of doctors today believe miracles happen. It doesn’t happen often, but it does occasionally. Or maybe the miracle is caused by a remarkable coincidence of quantum mechanics. A perfectly natural explanation if you prefer.
Just a distinction to make of which most are already probably aware, but @heymike3 and I are arguing two different things.
It’s not that I am a cessationist and disbelieve in present-day miracles, but I am not claiming supernatural events, just preternatural timing and placing of multiple* ‘natural’ ones that pretty obviously imply the supernatural, “the Christian God’s providential interventions into the lives of his children.”
*Not just one-off ‘coincidences’ or a singular highly unusual event, although God is sovereign over them as well.
And then there is the disingenuous naysayer (maybe more than one) amongst us that pretends that the problem of evil is the invincible trump card and that there are no valid arguments for theodicy, neglecting all the while God’s inscrutability and daydreaming that we should be able to envelope God’s mind with our own.
@T_aquaticus you are more generous than I. I find I have no patience to carry on a conversation with people who insist I justify my lack of agreement with what they hold in the highest regard. I find it very easy to respect points of view other than my own but will not waste my time on those who will not even try to do the same.
How about patience with those who disallow the possibility of an idea because of an expressly subjective reason while at the same time pretending objectivity and openness?
I hope it didn’t seem like I was hijacking your thread. My conversation felt like it dovetailed off the question of what can be considered objective evidence for God. Remarkable providences in relation to prayer or calling are certainly one type of evidence, and it seems that it can be put alongside miraculous healings.
You mentioned Jung and his view of synchronicity, I had an experience where I was passing out Christian tracts and met a person who told me that he was once a Christian, but had discovered this remarkable way of thinking where he would identify his intentionality with the place that the universe begins. And in doing so he could find parking spaces or love interests.
I’ve shared that story a couple times here already, so I hope I’m not repeating myself.
I forget the verse, but there is a frightful passage that talks about how God will give a person over to the delusion or disingenuousness of their heart.
Who was the person who found a Turkish translator in Houston? I forget the specifics, but it something close to that. I seem to remember he was also a geologist. That was a good story. It also struck me how it was such an odd occurrence and it seemed to haunt him in the later years of his life.
