I never mentioned bread. I never mentioned Scripture.
Popular theology suggests that the feeding of the five thousand was a miracle of sharing rather than multiplication or creation. What I referred to was an actual event which defied all logic and any law of physics that might govern the perpetuation of a substance after decanting.
I don’t mind debating scientific explanations of miracles. I don’t even care if any miracle can be explained by modern science. That is not the point of miracles. But this one defied any explanation, scientific or otherwise, but one: God. However, on this occasion there appeared to be no one present who “needed” proof of the existence or presence of God.
But weren’t your opinion that everything God does has to be done by some in-life logic? How can they see him without light particles hitting their eyes? God ate and could be touched if I remember well so he indeed could affect physical world, couldn’t he? So if it’s not supernatural then what does this “spiritual body” would look under a microscope? Would it be made of atoms and if not then how could he be touched by means other than supernatural? Was he an illusion in Apostles brains? Isn’t there a contradiction? Or did I misunderstood your argument?
I wholeheartedly agree.
Very interesting… so it’s just another layer of reality we don’t understand, is this what you think? Do they have same connection to a real world as a quantum fluctuations do?
By that I mean that the same as quantum realm affects us all but we don’t see it and it’s incredibly hard to prove (it took millennia after all) it’s the same with spiritual world, it’s even deeper and even more fundamental and works on all of reality but is not disconnected from it or do you think that it’s something completely on another plane of existence and for most part doesn’t have connection to what is happening in real life?
If it’s the former do you think we could one day prove it’s existence? Measure it or do as little as deduce that there is really something there that causes would to work like this or that but not really knowing if it’s spiritual or just another law of universe.
Hmmm, that begs the question, if not supernatural, if not some improbable thing like Quantum then how the God does those things? Maybe sceptics will say that this is all just a coincidence but if God decided that it will happen then it is not, at least to believers. If that’s true then God had to do something, supernatural or not to make those things happen. For example, how did Jesus do the healings?
Was it just a coincidence that so many people just got healthy when Jesus wanted them to?
We can’t have something like that because it’s also very improbable and impossible to accept as something normal.
Did Jesus have vast understanding of medicine and could heal them with his human hands?
Well, it doesn’t explain why Apostles could also do that when he gave them power of healing, albeit they couldn’t heal the more serious illnesses. Did he teach them how to do it? Did he made some super advanced medication we are not aware of yet?
If not quantum fluctuations because they are too improbable then maybe spiritual realm healed them? But it’s just as ridiculous to a scientist as healing with quantum fluctuations because there is no trace of this “spirituality” in a real world, at least for now.
I just don’t see all those things being done by simple natural causes like Jesus doing some hand tricks, how do you think they happened then?
is allusion to multiplication of bread, sorry for misunderstanding.
Wait so when this happened? Was it your personal experience? Was it in Scripture? It seems that it’s just average guy who saw such thing happening, yes? I understand your point that many miracles could be explained by science but many more cannot, I don’t disagree with this stance, but I would really like you could say more about this tea situation. Why do you think God choose to show up in such anticlimactic moment?
It is said that for those with faith no proof is needed and for those without faith no proof is enough.
The bible illustrates this and Christ even teaches that His signs alone are insufficient to instill faith and understanding.
There needs to be other reasons for them, perhaps just a response to need?
My experience of miracles is that they are apt for the moment. Sometimes, as in this case they were not actually called (prayed for) A bit like the water into wine circumstance. It fulfilled a need and “harmed” no one or nothing. It might not have mattered if the milk did run out. It was just the end of Service social gathering. But, like I said, perhaps there are other reasons for miracles other than some sort of proof of God or His Spirit.
I thought I had made myself clear. I am referring to personal experience, not Scripture.
Yep. But seeing is ultimately something which happens in the mind.
Paul explains that the spiritual body is more powerful. Thus it can do more not less. And yet it is not a part of space-time structure subject to the laws of nature, by which all things are perishable. So it possible they could have seen Him by means of photons but perhaps not. And no you cannot examine spiritual things under a microscope. You see what it chooses for you to see and that explains the wounds, for they make no sense otherwise… or do you think people are resurrected with detached heads or burned to ash?
I wouldn’t use the word “layer” because that word because it implies an added spatial dimension, and I don’t think it is part of the same-time structure at all. If you look at my reasons to believe you will see that for me that is part of the whole point – reality is not summed up by this mathematical understanding of things.
No, I do not think so.
The latter.
On a connected issue I am a physicalist with regards to the mind-body problem and oppose the Neoplatonist confusion of the mind with the spiritual. The evidence doesn’t support mind-body dualism. I think there is only an effective dualism due to the mind being a different form of physical life based on linguistic information rather than chemical information. The physical spiritual relationship is another matter. More dualistic in some ways, but ultimately an effective dualism as well, to do with whether things are part of the space-time mathematical structure or not. In that case, I think the relationship is largely epiphenomenal, and with the exception of God’s involvement in our lives, most of the causality is from the physical to the spiritual.
So I don’t think you could ever prove it’s existence or measure it in any way.
No. As Jesus said, He could simply see what the Father was doing. God healed them through entirely physical processes which He could effect the outcome of. But God would only do so within the statistical limits which define the laws of nature because those limits are important, needed for the process of life itself to work.
He taught them to pray. He did not give them the power of healing. It is God, the Father, who did the healing. Jesus was no wizard nor necromancer. I am a scientist but it is not ridiculous to me, because these spiritual things are not things you can measure and control. Objectively, they can be dismissed as chance and coincidence. But all that means is that the objective is not the limit of reality.
Dont really know if prayer works. But even if it doesnt for some reason it gives me a temporary comfort when i do it. I would imagine than praying for the healing of others its the same thing,No one knows if it works or doesnt.But if the person does indeed feel better i guess it might do (at least in the pshychological sense)
The proof of prayer is one of those awkward, almost impossible topics. I believe in it and have seen some results that would confirm it works, but…
Did my prayer actually change the course of events or would it have happened anyway
If I pray to move a mountain (as suggested by Christ) is it realistic? Do I actually believe it? (probably not). Would I be surprised for it not to happen? (Definitely not).
What if the person I pray for either does not believe as I do or even might have difficulty accepting the result?
This is so complex I cannot possibly do it justice here. I would have difficulty covering it in one twenty-minute sermon. Suffice it to say I believe in prayer, but not because it works, more because it is a way to communicate with God. And the bible does more than encourage it.
Again i dont really believe if it works or not.Im kind in the middle.I mean i dont really know. \
But for me when things in life get a lot harder i just turn to prayer sometimes by myself.Just like when you need to eat or drinkand do it without realizing.I just turn to the Guy up there and talk to him. I sometimes get frustrated and shout at him and other times get emotional and cry . But in the end the result is the same.I end up with an amen and the will to keep going.Dont know why that happens .Maybe its a cope thing i created when things get really bad? Dont really know .Its like something in me after the prayer that tells me (a little longer,hold on a little longer)Im not really tryna communicate with him but just ask for help.When i was a crhistian i remembered God in my happiest times and thanked him.So i kinda feel that he is obligated (to some extent) to help me . I by no means am beign ungratefull about the things i have . I count my blessings.
In the end wll never know if the result was prayer or just luck maybe .
Sorry, I can’t imagine the world that you are trying to explain to me.
Spiritual world from your opinion would be:
Something disconnected from the real world
Cannot be measured and is not based on physics (like causation or quantum mechanics).
God affects real world spiritually yet he is bounded by real life physics or at least chooses to
He can do things unthinkable by normal laws of nature (Spiritually healing someone blind for his whole life is just as sensible as it happening by pure chance)
I probably understood it incorrectly as I often do with far simpler things but to me the rules seem to contradict each other, whatever you see them as, I can’t understand it and I don’t really see what meaning is there in doing things spiritually instead of in quantum physics for example because a scientist if he were to live and walk with Jesus Christ, after seeing him resurrected, just passing through a wall and touching is wounds would be impossible to disregard as a “coincidence” just as it wouldn’t be possible to disregard apple forming with quantum fluctuations from thin air.
The only explanation I can understand, spiritual world being just a part of reality as gravity is, also doesn’t change much because it’s so unknowable by us that God could literally do anything and we wouldn’t be able to say if he is disregarding laws of nature or not knowing we don’t even know what the laws of spiritual world are.
I don’t recall saying anything about a “spiritual world.”
Incorrect. The spiritual is real. The physical is only part of reality.
Physical things are all a part of this mathematical space time structure and have their existence from these space-time mathematical relationships. Spiritual things are not a part of that structure and exist by their own nature.
So in your “real” world everything is measurable and based on physics? I am a physicist and I think that is absurd. Physics is just a way of looking at the world in mathematical terms. Why should that be the sum total of reality? We can measure a few things and figure out some mathematical relationships between them. But why would one go from there to the idea that these measurements and their mathematical relationships are all there is? It frankly sound like a football player saying that football is everything… a kind of self-centered myopia.
Yes because He created the laws of nature for a reason.
I don’t think God does anything of the sort. And it is not unthinkable that people regain their sight after being blind. To be sure most examples of this are due to medical procedures and those blind from birth tend have difficulties using their sight as well as others.
Sorry for putting words in your mouth, I say things like “quantum realm” or “spiritual world” to create some distinction from different levels of reality, obviously after all, they can be all connected, for example you would probably agree that quantum fluctuations and real life are not different but yet I recognise them as such to make discussion easier, perhaps I am just making things complicated after all instead.
Very well so you agree with my second description of spiritual, that it is a part of reality, unique, but just another part of it.
What I mean by that is that it has some influence on real world, and if it has, the changes it makes to it are still visible even if spiritual things cannot be. I agree that God can’t be measured with physics.
But won’t he violate them if he does something spiritually? After all they are not part of physics and yet he needs to influence physics so they reflect his choices. Do you mean that physics have naturally inbuilt system to incorporate things happening spiritually? Is this system quantum fluctuations or something different. I question this again because you agreed that quantum fluctuations are a way for God to do something but that he wouldn’t choose them because they would appear too disruptive, so if he won’t choose them to exert his will, are you talking about some other, milder way of affecting reality or are you still talking about fluctuations but used in far less invasive manner.
I am not concerned with unthinkability of what God does but how would he do something that wasn’t supposed to happen(meaning that it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t decide to act, not that it is impossible), I am confused on how you think God does something, he cannot plan ahead that a person will feel alright as it would be hard to predict where people with free will will end up so he has to do something right now, and if he cannot do it invasively, like change atomic structure of someone’s body, then I am confused how exactly would he do it.
I am interested if you have some concrete ideas or you don’t know but came to a conclusion that it has to happen like that. I have no disagreement with your thinking if I got it right, I just fail to imagine how would God do it. To do something right now but not be invasive from normal guy’s point of view.
Maybe the prayer that makes something happen, like you getting 1000$ or you getting healthy don’t happen anymore, maybe their function was to help Christians spread Christianity when they needed help against adversaries and now it functions as a way that God gives us strength to do something, for example strength or hope to withstand some hardship in life.
That’s how I see it, but do I have some proof that it works like that? Nope.
The “God is dead” (or at least impotent) ignores the existence of modern miracles of which I have claimed. As far I know it was rejected in the late eighties or nineties, anyway.
Well maybe? If thats so then well ill be damned. I dont want the strenght to suffer my entire life.If help is not gonna come i wanna know it. If God grants me strenght and nothing changes whats the point?
I didnt ask for money or something like it . I didnt ask for anything material. I asked for something for meaningfull than that.
Slowly ny the day my character is beign changed to the worst . If help doesnt come my heart will go hard and stone-like. Life circumstances really changes you either to the worst or the best.
I know i will survive life chalenges.But i dont want to lose my soul and heart in process.Because you see life situations sometimes makes you ruthless.And if God doesnt help well i dont think i can avoid it
Anyway got a little too personal on this one .
You clearly have a personal health problem, and I am guessing you would like some sort of Godly intervention?
I could ask why you think you might “deserve” it or words to that effect, but that would be aggressive.
A friend of mine once asked God to heal a cold. When nothing changed he was asked:
“Do want to be healed? Or do you want the symptoms removed?”
But that might be the healing God provides. It certainly was with my father. He got slowly worse but was able to maintain a certain level of sanity and serenity (and dignity) right to the end. Do I think God healed him? The answer is yes.
All I am saying, for now, is that prayer is not a matter of dictating to God the result we would like. And perhaps if you change the thrust of your prayers you might find the answers are more forthcoming. Although they may not be to your liking.
It is part of the real world, but yes it has some influence physical world. The laws of nature are not causally closed because God created to have a relationship with His creations. Yes the effects are visible even if we cannot prove that the causes can be traced to a spiritual effect upon events.
No. The spiritual is not part of the space-time mathematical structure and the laws of nature not being causally closed allow for an alteration in events.
Yes, there is back door in the laws of nature, so to speak (using software terminology).
Yes. It is the quantum fluctuations where the physics proves to be lacking in causal closure.
Quantum physics shows that we can only predict the probability distribution for the results of an interaction. But those probability distributions are the basis of the laws of nature. This give God a great deal of freedom in what He can do in a particular situation but places restrictions on changing the overall pattern. Changing a single event is allowed by the probability distribution. But changing the overall pattern would be a change in the laws of nature themselves. This is why I said that God will not change the over all pattern, but He can do miracles. A miracle is by definition a rare event not an everyday event.
Ok… let’s put it this way. Quantum physics means that most events have a roll of the dice involved in how things turn out. This is a part of the laws of nature. If God intervenes and make the results come up snake eyes just once then nobody will think anything is wrong with the dice, but if they keep coming up snake eyes, then people will think the dice are loaded, right? The first case with making the results come up snake eyes just once is a miracle. But making the dice come up snake eyes every time would be an alteration of the laws of nature.
Thus God’s ability to make miracles is built right into the laws of nature, but it also explains why those miracles don’t happen every time someone asks. got it?
Ok… but how does God make the “dice” come up snake eyes??? Is that what you are asking? There is no problem there because this is not an alteration of the laws of nature. There is no “thing” (no hidden variable) to be changed because we are not talking about actual dice but about a random elements built into the laws nature – something which is not determined by the laws of nature at all. And I am not talking about something we just don’t know about, but about something we have proof it doesn’t even exist. Now if that bothers you… heh heh heh… guess what? That bothers the heck out of a lot of physicists too… like Einstein himself. Nevertheless it is true.
Not really. Dont have any particular health problem that i know of
Isnt that the same or am i missing something?
Dont really understand this .If someones prays for something particular can something else happen instead?Interesting theology.Never heard of that.Sorry if i missunderstood what you said but thats what i got from it
Absolutely. It is the difference between perception and reality. You can believe that the whole world is against you, it might even look to you like it., but reality is almost certainly different.
Symptoms cannot kill you, the disease might.
Is prayer an immutable order, like demanding fish and chips at an Indian Restaurant?
We do not control God or His actions. That would be ridiculous. Prayer is a request. The answer can be “no”, or “try this”.