It is funny how you bring up the loaves and fishes story as if it was fact. The whole argument is that the story of Jesus is mostly myth. If a man fed 5,000 people with 3 fish and 5 loaves of bread, why isn't that in any other historical documents from that time? That seems like a pretty significant event to me.
Common sense will tell you that it is impossible. THe only time we're not allowed to use common sense is when we read the bible. Right?
Christopher Hitchens
No, you are conflating a number of different issues.
Not that I blame you, most atheists tend to do the same thing.
But the necessity of rejecting the supernatural tends to override all other considerations.
The whole argument you made *at first* was that religion was based on emotion and therefore untrue.
I am quoting the New Testament story of the loaves and fishes to point out that there were episodes in the life of Jesus which could NOT have been explained away as autosuggestion or as psychosomatic effects on transient illnesses, which the peasants in their primitive states of knowledge merely mistook for a wondrous happening.
As to whether the miraculous stories are true or untrue, you are committing a logical fallacy somewhere between circular reasoning and begging the question--perhaps the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
If miracles are untrue, all accounts of miracles are false.
[Here BTW follows a surfacy-plausible account of how the legend got propagated.]
Therefore this account of a miracle is false.
Therefore there is no evidence of miracles.
Therefore all miracles are untrue.
You have to find out *first* if there is a supernatural, and *if* you can allow for or control or regularize its interactions with "everyday life".
Scientific empiricism is based upon "uniformity of causes in a closed system."
But the problem is, even among purely natural causes, real life outside of the laboratory has enough conflicting factors that scientific laws *seem* like they are broken, hence the presence of control groups in experiments.
So you don't have the conditions in historical areas for a rigorous test of whether the supernatural occurs.
And Judeo-Christian religious tradition explains "you must not put God to the Test" -- that is, it has been claimed all along that God reserves two rights:
1) God does not have to participate in any given experiment.
2) God does not even have to tell us whether he is participating or not, on any particular day.
It's damn frustrating when one is used to an ansatz which depends upon reproducible, subservient, *regular* natural phenomena.
But general statements of a particular law, always assume *no interference*. But Miracles claim to be interference, they claim to *be* an exception. So just quoting the law does nothing--if the event followed the law, it would have been ordinary life, and nobody would notice.
IF the Bible claimed that "bread always multiplies to feed the hungry" that is a regular statement of what always happens, and can be put to rest pretty quickly.
But saying "just once-holy cow!--the loaves and fishes *were* multiplied" then that is a very different thing.
If a man fed 5,000 people with 3 fish and 5 loaves of bread, why isn't that in any other historical documents from that time? That seems like a pretty significant event to me.
How extensive was the documentary coverage of events back then, and how many people would have dismissed the account out of hand just as you did?
Even many ordinary events of antiquity are "single-sourced."
For the nonce, try Googling "Mons Angels" and then ask why YOU never read about it in any secular accounts of...
...well, that'd give it away ;-)
Cheers!
...oh, and Merry Christmas!
You are absolutely right!!!
NIV Mark 6:2
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles!
NIV Luke 19:37
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
NIV John 10:24-26, 38
24. The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25. Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me,
26. but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.
38. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."