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To: A_perfect_lady; mas cerveza por favor
Happily, miracles from 2000 or more years ago can’t be investigated at all.

How could any miracle at any time ever be "investigated"? By definition, if there should exist, outside the realm of what we call the contingency of materialism, a cause of a change of any sort, it cannot be spotted by examining the events leading up to or away from it. The most one could say is that something inexplicable or unknown happened. If one, like Carl Sagan, has been previously committed to the viewpoint that the contingency of materialism is all there is, was, or ever shall be, one could only say that the inexplicable cause of the event is, in principle, discoverable but that one's present degree of technology for detecting it is insufficient to the task.
61 posted on 12/30/2011 6:44:14 AM PST by aruanan
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To: aruanan; A_perfect_lady
Well played, sir.

What's fun is the constantly shifting goalposts of the libs/atheists.

Everything is regular: Occam's razor, there are uniform causes, therefore no need to question a closed system. ("If there were a God, He's reveal Himself through miracles.")

Miracle happens: "That doesn't count:
1. it wasn't under controlled conditions
2. it wasn't observed by specialists, only by common people who are given to [various generalized ad hominem descriptions which are *themselves* unsubstantiated]
3. the textual descriptions are uncertain, and were not reported immediately in a properly peer-reviewed journal
4. there are charlatans, who fake miracles for money. this instance purports to be a miracle. therefore if the witnesses are acting in good faith, they were merely deceived by a charlatan."
The problem isn't that there is "no evidence" : it is that they reject the evidence at hand as not being of sufficient quality / quantity to allow them to apply "scientific principles" (e.g. Occam's razor, null hypothesis).

But they don't realize that science doesn't give you "the TRUTHTM" but instead is a tool for pruning existing models to eliminate false positives.

It doesn't do such a good job on false negatives: for in matters of the supernatural, the skeptic tends to conflate a Scottish Law verdict of "not proven" with "necessarily false."

And, similar to the glee with which atheists and 'higher thinkers' tend to attack sola scriptura ("just pull on this one loose end and the whole thing unravels!"), so too, they cannot allow *any* tinge of the supernatural, or their whole materialistic faith unravels.

Cheers!

68 posted on 12/30/2011 7:33:05 AM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: aruanan
The problem with miracles and faith is that the whole system is based on circular logic. People believe that certain men spoke with God's authority because they performed miracles. How do you know they really performed miracles? It says so in the Bible, which contains testimonies of their friends. How do you know the Bible is true? Well, you have to believe in it first, then you can see the truth. Uh huh.

The fact that humans have a) imagination, and b) a tendency to lie should be enough to alert anyone about swallowing a whole world view that then requires you to suppress your doubts and obey strangers.

71 posted on 12/30/2011 7:55:05 AM PST by A_perfect_lady
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