It came I think from a comment where I said if I hadn’t found a new path I would be an atheist. That is true. The theory is my own every bit as much as Relativity is Einstein’s own work. Which is why I find the interdependence argument to be totally spurious. Einstein did the same thing I did–take the database of knowledge of the day and interpret it in a novel way. That is how knowledge improves. That is called Theory building. But to suddenly claim that Einstein didn’t do all that on his own would seem to be a strange claim. This analogy shows why the claim is not useful. Einstein did the work independently as did I.
I want to go to a couple of miracles to show how people actually avoid the miracle even in the face of a scientific explanation. Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction by an air blast is a great explanation for the pillar of salt story, as well as the fire out of the sky description of their destruction. So, are we through with miracle in this story? No, what is not scientifically explicable is why two angels came to try to get Lot and company out of Sodom. Even today with our technology we would have a hard time to detect this meteor aimed at earth. Just like we didn’t catch the Russian meteor from a few years ago coming into the atmosphere before it suddenly arrived.
So the miracle is this, someone knew the future. One out of this problem is to proclaim that part of the story wrong, but wouldn’t that be changing the facts to fix a scientific explanation, which doesn’t cover the whole of the story? The angels told Lot and wife to hurry, don’t tarry. They left at dawn and would have had time to go to Zophar by dusk when the meteor is known to have hit town because dinners were left half prepared in the archaeological record. It is almost like those angels knew the time it would hit and Lot barely escaped and his wife didn’t. That is how close the timing was. In this knowledge of the future likes the miracle–their technology of that day was not up to the task. Let’s see a scientific eplanation for this, one that doesn’t involve flying saucers.
The second miracle I think Mitch feels comfortable about is the late birth of Isaac to very aged parents. Yes, prior to his criticism of me for saying first exactly the solution he then suggested, I had the homonal episode in the opening post. But this doesn’t solve the problem. Abraham was told of Isaac’s coming about 40 years prior to his birth. Again, knowledge of the future. One scientific explanation for this is that god told all the men with barren wives around the world for centuries that they would have children at advanced age and then waited for one of them to do it, thereby creating the illusion of foreknowledge. Of course, this ‘solution’ makes God look like a cheap sleight of hand specialist.
Both cases of advanced knowledge either require one to communicate faster than light, and thus backwards in time, (advanced waves), or require a knowledge of things like Sarah’s estrus cycle 50 years after it stopped. Both seem technically impossible to me. lacking a scientific explanation for the advanced knowledge. Nonlinear dynamics should preclude such long term predictions as Sarah’s estrus cycle
Assuming God only spoke to Abe, then this foreknowledge is the miracle. But the fact that God communicates to us at all is a bigger miracle. As I understand Mitch’s position on the soul, from the Wigner Friend’s thread, he believes consciousness arises from the laws of physics. Since God is Spirit, this creates a problem because we all know that science can’t detect spiritual entities because such things are out of the realm of science. So the question of how God communicates to us becomes more problematic if our souls are not like I believe them to be, from evidence found in Quantum Mechanics, not subject to the laws of nature, but spiritual objects that can communicate with God the spirit. This requires the soul to exist apart from matter but interact with matter with a causal independence from matter but with an ability to affect the motion of matter which is what we see in Quantum with the observer problem…
So the three things I see wrong with the concept that God can’t break the laws of nature are 1, it assumes that these man-made/discovered laws, apply to God (a questionable assertion), 2. it assumes our current knowledge of natural law is complete (it isn’t), and 3. it seems to make it difficult for God to communicate with us, because that is outside the laws of nature, which God supposedly can’t break.
The point of all these “scientific explanation possible” is not to support the naturalist view that the science explains everything or that the scientific worldview is the sum total of reality. The point is that the Bible doesn’t have to be read like a comic book or Walt Disney movie – you can take both the Bible AND science quite seriously. It makes no sense whatsoever to have God making the laws of nature and then breaking them just in order to impress a few ignorant savages. That is completely absurd!
The point was certainly NOT to clam that these events were not miracles. What I am disputing is that for something to be a miracle it must violate the laws of nature. Magicians can supply endless examples of how things can appear magical and miraculous without breaking a single natural law. And everything Jesus says about miracles and signs tells us that it is making too much those things which wrong rather than making too little of them. “It is an evil generation that looks for a sign.” Magical claims even by religion are regularly debunked by skeptics. But that is only because people are confusing miracles with magic and a suspension of the laws nature. There simply is no reason to believe that miracles are any such thing.
But that is not the same as saying that God and angels do not exist or that the physical universe with its laws of nature are all there is. A miracle is a surprising an unexpected event that God has had a hand in bringing about and that includes all of the events mentioned in gbob’s post as well as the things done by Jesus. So yes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an example of a miracle which is to say an example of God involvement in human affairs. And yes that includes the knowledge that something was going to happen. It certainly includes the birth of Isaac to a 90 year old woman. But it does have to be about God making a fetus appear out of thin air as if all the physical universe was nothing but whimsical garbage and the laws of nature nothing but hot air made up by numskulls.
And I think resorting to violations of the laws of nature makes God look like an inconsistent liar, necromancer and comic book superhero.
It most certainly does not require any such thing. Science is only about repeatable things which we can control. Information from a divine source is NEVER something that we will EVER be able to control. Skeptics will therefore always be able to dismiss such things as mere coincidence. But yes, in my book, any communication from God is by definition a miracle. But no that doesn’t equal a violation of the laws of nature or preclude a scientific explanation of the events.
Not exactly but close. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I think the spirit does play a role in the experience of consciousness, but not exactly a causal one. I think the choices an organism creates the spirit and this is equivalent to the spirit taking ownership of those choices. I think that ownership is the essence of consciousness, at least in part. This would only be in addition to a very strong likelihood of a completely physical explanation of consciousness as well. What I don’t believe in, is a mechanistic causality from the spiritual to the physical.
None of which describes what I have said. 1. God abiding by the laws of nature which He created says absolutely nothing about what God can or cannot do. 2. And no such assumption about the accuracy of current knowledge has ever been a part of what I have said. But I most certainly would shoot down any empty dismissals of scientific facts based on the completely incorrect idea that such things could simply change at some time in the future. New scientific discoveries cannot and never have erased the overwhelming accumulated scientific evidence. 3. All evidence, testimony, and experience tells us that communication from God with man is almost always subtle and never loud and flamboyant. And to say that this could ever be an obstacle to an all-knowing omnipotent God is frankly absurd.
On this we can agree. The Lord describes a miracle producing antichrist who will fool a lot of people. But that said, the way we humans work, it is hard to get our attention without something unusual happening in our lives.
But it does have to be about God making a fetus appear out of thin air as if all the physical universe was nothing but whimsical garbage and the laws of nature nothing but hot air made up by numskulls.
Of course what we have learned of nature was not developed by numskulls, On the other hand for us to limit severely what God does outside of the natural law places us in the position of judging God’s actions, which is a position in which we do not belong. God could program miracles into the fabric of nature, from the very beginning–as Frank Tipler suggests of the resurrection (he tends to take a very hard line on God not breaking natural law). Thus the resurrection becomes part of the natural law. I don’t like that approach because it is not my place to limit God’s actions.
And I think resorting to violations of the laws of nature makes God look like an inconsistent liar, necromancer and comic book superhero.
Again, I don’t think either of us has the right or proper perspective to say what God did in each and every case. However, when we can’t explain something miraculous, violations of natural law are quite possible–water to wine and resurrections come to mind. if we rule out say, the resurrection of Lazarus, why then would we keep the resurrection of Jesus. The scientific explanation for these things is that they only appeared dead. The mid 1960s book I debated with my physics advisor, The Passover Plot had Jesus merely being passed out, looking dead, but not really dead. The problem I kept pointing out was that it would be hard in that condition, with holes in hands and feet, and spear in the side, to walk around as if you are healthy and eating an order of Long John Silver’s fish filet as if your hands didn’t hurt. It the resurrection didn’t violate natural law, it wasn’t a resurrection, it was a revival.
It most certainly does not require any such thing.
I was listing faster than light communication as a possibility–given the laws of physics, which you had said were never broken: " I do not believe that God breaks the laws of nature", then Advanced wave solutions to the electromagnetic equations, tachyons or other exotic things like a Godel’s spinning universe would have to suffice to send info back into the past so as not to break natural law as we understand it. It is just a ‘scientific possibility’ which you seemed above to be open to rather than breaking natural law.
Science is only about repeatable things which we can control. Information from a divine source is NEVER something that we will EVER be able to control. Skeptics will therefore always be able to dismiss such things as mere coincidence. But yes, in my book, any communication from God is by definition a miracle. But no that doesn’t equal a violation of the laws of nature or preclude a scientific explanation of the events.
Excuse me if I don’t think the above is coherent. If divine communication is a miracle, and at the same time it doesn’t violate natural law, then natural law must allow for some sort of spiritual telephone, one way or two way. I think you haven’t thought about this issue like you should have.
gbob:
As I understand Mitch’s position on the soul, from the Wigner Friend’s thread, he believes consciousness arises from the laws of physics.
Not exactly but close. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I think the spirit does play a role in the experience of consciousness, but not exactly a causal one. I think the choices an organism creates the spirit and this is equivalent to the spirit taking ownership of those choices. I think that ownership is the essence of consciousness, at least in part. This would only be in addition to a very strong likelihood of a completely physical explanation of consciousness as well. What I don’t believe in, is a mechanistic causality from the spiritual to the physical.
I am not sure that entirely clears it up for me. It sounds as if matter makes soul, which is the essence of the materialist position–consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain is the way many state the issue–without of course defining clearly how the epiphenomenon arises. It would appear to me that since the choices in the above appear to be prior to the ownership, the spirit really was created as a bag into which choices are poured and kept. If I am walking by a bank, and a man runs out, dumps a bag in my hands and runs off, just as the cops see me standing there holding a bag of stolen money, I have ownership but not responsibility. I don’t see how your analogy works here.
None of which describes what I have said. 1. God abiding by the laws of nature which He created says absolutely nothing about what God can or cannot do.
No, I said as much in what you quoted. It seems to me it is you saying what God can and can’t do.
- And no such assumption about the accuracy of current knowledge has ever been a part of what I have said. But I most certainly would shoot down any empty dismissals of scientific facts based on the completely incorrect idea that such things could simply change at some time in the future. New scientific discoveries cannot and never have erased the overwhelming accumulated scientific evidence
Depends on whether you think the Ptolemaic system was unscientific. It too was based upon observation and mathematical modeling just as our views are. I could even suggest that the Newtonian view, which philosophically was a world of particles and objects pulled around by string-like things we call forces, was replaced by the field view of gravity and E&M where by the particle looks at the local gradient and moves accordingly, was a replacement of what the world looked like. No, it didn’t wipe out the raw data but it was certainly a whole different view of life. Indeed, Lagrange’s principle and the Hamiltonian view of how particles sniff out the minimum action path is a bit different from both the above. The philosophy behind the math of physics has been changed many times, but that isn’t quite what you meant and I know it, except in the case of Ptolemy.
. 3. All evidence, testimony, and experience tells us that communication from God with man is almost always subtle and never loud and flamboyant. And to say that this could ever be an obstacle to an all-knowing omnipotent God is frankly absurd.
There you go again telling God what He is allowed to do. This is no different, in my opinion, than what the YECs do to God in saying God couldn’t use evolution because it is cruel. I really don’t like the clay telling the potter what the potter can do. I think it is the wrong approach to our Christian lives.
The explanation is that the definition of “dead” has changed. Which it most certainly has and I will change again when our medical technology improves.
Incorrect. Consistent repeatable means of communication would change the laws the laws of nature. A one time “communication” will never be more than a statistical anomaly. I most certainly have thought about it and there will not be such consistent means of communication because the accumulated evidence disagrees with there ever being any such thing.
You gave an analogy. I did not. I am saying that consciousness consists of this sense that certain events are our actions and without such a sense there is no consciousness. But that is describing ownership of those events. You gave an analogy without any sense of ownership so it was not any kind of counter-example at all.
Incorrect. I said what God will not do not what God cannot do. I said God will not do it because it is inconsistent for too trivial of a reason. I frankly think it caters to a childish have your cake and eat it too mentality – the essence of magical thinking.
Ptolemaic system remains an accurate description of the motion of planets in the sky. It is talk about “how things really are” which is so much baloney because it is all relative. The real point is that you can look at things from different frames of reference, geocentric, heiocentric, galactocentric, galacto-group centric, and so forth.
Incorrect. I am simply observing what He does in fact do. I am simply bring this down from the Walt Disney comic book version for children to the everyday life experience of reality.
And I don’t like this portrayal of human beings as nothing more than clay pots. I think it is the wrong approach to our Christian lives.
So you must believe in the revival view rather than the actual resurrection model. That is the only way I can interpret what you say. If Jesus wasn’t dead, as in ‘as a dog’ then there was no resurrection and our faith is worthless. Reviving a person from an hour underwater in a cold winter lake does not a salvation make.
Incorrect. Consistent repeatable means of communication would change the laws the laws of nature. A one time “communication” will never be more than a statistical anomaly. I most certainly have thought about it and there will not be such consistent means of communication because the accumulated evidence disagrees with there ever being any such thing.
The Bible clearly portrays lots of communication in the countless 'And God said’s",and the Lord spoke’s we find all over Scripture.
gbob:
I don’t see how your analogy works here.
You gave an analogy. I did not. I am saying that consciousness consists of this sense that certain events are our actions and without such a sense there is no consciousness. But that is describing ownership of those events. You gave an analogy without any sense of ownership so it was not any kind of counter-example at all.
That would be the consciousness is an illusion view which is a widely held view. it leaves us soulless. It sounds like what New Scientist once said:
"A mind is just an object that some brains can model, and so become aware of.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931940-100-the-me-illusion-how-your-brain-conjures-up-your-sense-of-self/#ixzz6AmOCaPXE
Incorrect. I said what God will not do not what God cannot do. I said God will not do it because it is inconsistent for too trivial of a reason. I frankly think it caters to a childish have your cake and eat it too mentality – the essence of magical thinking.
I am so glad you have a direct line to god and can glean this information.
Ptolemaic system remains an accurate description of the motion of planets in the sky. It is talk about “how things really are” which is so much baloney because it is all relative. The real point is that you can look at things from different frames of reference, geocentric, heiocentric, galactocentric, galacto-group centric, and so forth.
Actually it no longer is an accurate description, Paralax disproved it totally in 1838 when it was observed. Up until that time, what you say is true. But it’s view of the world was a scientific view and it has been totally over thrown.
Incorrect. I am simply observing what He does in fact do. I am simply bring this down from the Walt Disney comic book version for children to the everyday life experience of reality.
this is inconsistent with what you wrote above:
Incorrect. I said what God will not do not what God cannot do.
gbob:
I really don’t like the clay telling the potter what the potter can do.
And I don’t like this portrayal of human beings as nothing more than clay pots. I think it is the wrong approach to our Christian lives.
that means both Jeremiah and St Paul are wrong: Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Incorrect. Jesus did not continue on with His physical life – obviously! That was resurrection not revival. I go with Paul in 1 Cor 15 which says that resurrection is a bodily resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical body. Not the same as Lazarus, for example.
Yes and you hear the same thing in sermons today… "God said to me… Happens all the time. Not the tiniest bit like a telephone. NOT communication which is under our control. God is not under our control and anybody who claims otherwise is either insane or a liar.
No that would be you with your telephone to god. I am just telling where the logic leads from taking both the Bible and science seriously rather than magic and fairy tale.
I am well aware that the Ptolemaic needs correcting with more recent observations in order to show the movements of the planets in the sky today. You objection just proves that you understand that the methodology works just fine and none of the observations and data was overthrown.
It means no such thing.
In any case, since you clearly have no desire to understand my point of view, I will thank you not to misrepresent me by speaking of what I have said ever again.
The supernatural events are pretty widespread. But ultimately I believe miracles existed. I don’t think there is any reason to think God can’t operate outside of natural laws. I take it case by case , using textual analysis, overall impact , and does it undermine science.
Take the burning bush. Yeah I believe it. Does not matter it defies science because it’s not undoing science. Spontaneous creating in six days however undoes science. If that was true, it would mean all science is a lie. I don’t believe it. The story itself carries itself like a mythological tale. God spends several pages going over the number or horses, chariots and food for tribes. But spits all of creation into two chapter? Then the differences between chapter 1 and Chapter 2. The textual analysis seems to indicate something as not true. Same as the verses about earth being a flat square supported by pillars. It’s obviously not true.
So just because something defy natural laws, and are miracles, does not mean every single other one must as well. It seems easy enough to reason through them.
Im only going to reply to this part, Meds are beating me down. I have a real problem philosophically, if Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t physical because going straight to spiritual means that it really isn’t a resurrection but a change of state. Further, I don’t think the evidence supports the non-physical resurrection because Jesus ate material food, something I would think a spiritual body wouldn’t be able to use. It might be able to use another form of spiritual food, but your view has a spiritual body taking material nourishment. That doesn’t make sense to me.
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We agree on the 6 24 hour view of Genesis 1. But I don’t like the idea of the creator being unable or unwilling to state simply what happened at creation. Everyone misses that there are alternatives to telling utter fables and telling something simple or maybe telling the truth in a way that might take a while to understand.
Unlike almost everyone, I have a reading of Genesis 1 and 2 that maintains 1. historicity and 2 science, and actually makes the account consistent with science. It took me a lifetime of study to get to that place and as I am about to leave this material abode in a few months, it was just in time. http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2019/06/days-of-proclamation-historical-reading.html
I’ll read the link in a bit. I don’t really know what everyone believes but for me by looking at all the evidence from textual analysis, recorded science, and understanding God had to share a story with people who had a different understanding of the world it’s resulted in me believing that genesis is an ahistorical , not a historical, story about Adam and Eve. I believe that we evolved and eventually it got to the point where God could reach out to a primitive man and woman who were probably young and guide them to a special place and he was raising them up and teaching them. As they got older, they disobeyed and was kicked out. Over the lifetimes and ages that story has spread into what we call Judaism and Christianity.
So I do believe that God can break the laws of nature. I also believe maybe sometimes those laws just were not understood by those who witnessed it. I don’t believe science can explain the supernatural. Maybe in the future we will find a way to detect another aspect of reality but I doubt it.
There is a lot we agree on, like we evolved. My view is, well, unique–because I believe strongly God should know what happened at creation and be capable and wiling to give a simple version of what happened. I don’t believe in surrendering historicity in Scripture easily. On this, I think the liberals give up without a fight for it. Just say the whole thing is hogwash and imagine into it, some deep meaning in a document they otherwise say is false.
More than a change of state. More like a combination of states. He ate food but appeared inside a locked room. He had holes in his hands (or more likely His wrists) and side, but they did not bleed and apparently didn’t cause Him pain.
Appearing inside a locked room does not rule out materiality in light of quantum mechanics. Euan Squires, a mathematical physicist from Durham University wrote some fascinating books on quantum, said (bolded part is the relevant part). Control of quantum outcome allows one to pass through walls. we don’t have that control, but God might.:
" Quantum theory offers at least two possible roles for a ‘God’, where we use this term for a being that is non-physical, non-human, in some sense superhuman, and is conscious. "The first role is to make the ‘choices’ that are required whenever a measurement is made that selects from a quantum system one of the possible outcomes. Such a God would remove the indeterminacy from the world by taking upon himself those decisions that are not forced by the rules of physics. Although expressed in non-traditional terms, this is reasonably in accordance with the accepted role of a God. He would be very active in all aspects of the world, and would be totally omnipotent within the prescribed limits. Prediction of his behaviour from the laws of physics would be impossible (note that we are not permitting any hidden variables in this chapter), although from both the theological and the scientific viewpoint we would want to believe that there were reasons for at least some of the choices: otherwise we would be back with random behaviour and the God would not have played any part. It is interesting to note that this role might even permit ‘miracles’, if we were to regard these as events so highly unlikely that they would be effectively impossible without very specific, and unusual, ‘divine’ choice. For example, according to quantum theory, there must be a small but non-zero, probability that if I run into a wall, then I will pass right through it. This is a special case of the potential barrier experiment and the wavefunction on the left-hand side, corresponding to transmission is never quite zero. Then, however small the probability for transmission might be, a God would be able to select it as the outcome, if he so chose. ” Euan Squires, The Mystery of the Quantum World, 2nd ed., (Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994), p.66-67
True that. I feel that is consistent with my feeling that the real problem with young earth interpretations is they make God a deciever.
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Phil, in my mind both YEC and accommodation make God into a deceiver–the YEC by having god plant old earth evidence in the rocks of this earth, and the Accommodationalists, by having God say things that are not true. After all, the only person speaking in Genesis 1 is God, and he is telling quite a fable there if there isn’t a way to concord it with science.
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Not might but does.
The problem is reconciling the verses that talk about spiritual resurrection with what we see Jesus doing after His resurrection. To me the simplest explanation is there was a physical and spiritual resurrection. Surely you don’t have a problem with that.
As long as it is both, I can be happy. I agree with you that I should have phrased that sentence differently–God does.
referring to the quote of Euan Squires,
That is kind of the point I am making… science allows far more than people might think.
You just have to know where to draw the line. It is one thing to say that you saw a miracle where someone walked through a wall. It is quite another to claim that you can walk through a wall whenever you want. One thing that miracles are not and never could be is something that you can control. But like I have said before, without that control then science can put them down to statistical anomalies.
Let’s look at your approach and say that the resurrection of Jesus was a quantum statistical anomaly to the googleplex degree. Three days after death a random fluctuation put all the molecules back where they have to be for him to live again. It seems to me that there would be NO theological significance of such an event. It would merely be one of those rare flukes that happens every now and then, like all the molecules in a room ending up compacted in one corner at the same time. Statistically that too is possible. God, then, had absolutely nothing to do with the resurrection, it was a statistical fluke of natural law. Such a view sucks theological significance from the event and our belief that Jesus is the son of God would be about as firm as the chimpanzee’s view of the 2001 monolith