You make no sense. Like most I accept the story as is. I just don’t agree with the insertion of things which are not in the text – that this was accomplished by means of supernatural powers.
Probably because you define miracles differently than I do. You define a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, and I do not. I define a miracle simply as an unexpected event which God has made happen. Life is full of miracles.
What I find utterly absurd is the idea that God would violate the laws of nature He Himself created just in order to impress ignorant savages who wouldn’t even know the difference anyway. ANY good magician can impress people without breaking a single law of nature SO WHY CAN’T GOD DO THAT TOO? Is God more stupid and less inventive than these magicians? God CAN do great things and do them WITHOUT using any supernatural powers.
Are you a bad atheist troll? It is the atheists (and creationists) who try to put scripture in opposition to science the way YOU are doing – NOT ME!
WHY?
There are only two possible reasons for doing such a thing. You want them to discard science or you want them to discard the Bible. I refuse the false dichotomy because there is nothing in the actual text which is opposed to science no matter what people have chosen to assume.
I asked you to explain how one walks on water with supernatural powers for a good reason. Because any attempt to explain so rationally is going to suggest ways to do this without any supernatural powers. Was Jesus walking on the surface of the water? In a storm? That doesn’t even make any sense. How can you walk on top of a rough changing surface like that? Or was Jesus jumping from one point to another? Like the idea of Jesus floating high in the water like beach ball, I don’t see how anyone would describe that as walking at all. The only sensible suggestion is that Jesus was walking on a flat surface below the surface of the water. But if there is a flat surface below the surface of the water then what was He walking on?
I have seen nothing in the Bible which forces us to believe that nature has been defied. The fact of the matter is that astounding things ARE POSSIBLE without breaking the laws of nature. I see NO CLAIMS in the Bible that Jesus has supernatural powers – quite the opposite. The only supernatural claim is that God is real and God interacts with events. And I certainly believe that. AND I think it is sufficient to explain the events described in the Bible.
With you it is like talking to someone after a magic show trying to convince us that either…
- The magician has supernatural powers.
- That the people in the audience are all lying about what they saw.
Clearly this choice is ridiculous, when the simplest explanation is that with a little ingenuity God or a magician can make astounding things happen without breaking a single law of nature.
Rather than simply dealing with what the text says since it contradicts your worldview, you are reading it as something else completely inserting your own text. You should just create your own version of the Bible, putting in what you want and make it say whatever you want, like the version of Mark 3:1-5 you like so much above. But the ESV simply says “the hand was restored” – and that is all it says. Because what you imagine of the story in your head doesn’t count for anything.