Post by DKleineckePost by b***@dodo.com.auAnother point occurred to me - Christ's miracles were as abvious to
the uneducated as much as the educated.
To appreciate Newton's (and for that matter Einstein's) contribution
to scientific thought one needs some education in those areas. But if
a man who has been dead for four days, such that putrefaction has
already set in, suddenly gets up and walks and talks, in full health,
this will be as much of a shock to a Harley Street surgeon as to an
illiterate Papua-New Guinean tribesman from the highlands.
I cannot speak for (or even about) Harley Street surgeons but if a
real scientist were to observe such an even he would not respond with
shock. His reaction would be curiosity. He would want to know what
happened. In detail - as much detail as was possible. For example, was
the corpse really beginning to putrefy? And, if so, where did all the
putrefaction go? And, since no one was expecting this event, none of
the tests he needs were done.
So all we have is a man whom somebody reports was recently a partially
putrefied corpse now walking about in full health. The scientist can
do nothing. He has no useful tests. All he has is some anecdotal
evidence. So, as I explained before, he must conclude that either it
happened, and was therefore natural, but inadequately observed or it
didn't happen. From a scientific point of view nothing follows.
Perhaps you are visualizing a surgeon for whom a patient died on the
operating table. Or, since he is observed in full health a few days
later, then obviously he did not die. In fact he is in better health
than he would have been had the operation succeeded. Believe me that
surgeon would want to run a massive series of tests to try to
determine what happened. In particular he would want to know what
happened to the condition that led to the operation in the first
place.
Enough of this scenario. The point is that response to an unexpected
event is not necessarily shock or awe. To a real scientist, that is
one who understands and accepts the basic philosophy of science an
unexpected event is gift. It needs to be explained and explaining is
why one becomes a scientist.
A scientist may have to give up some old familiar theory in order to
explain the event. With luck he will he will be able to advance an
alternative hypothesis. But now he must test the hypothesis. If the
original event cannot be duplicated he cannot draw any conclusions.
The entire investigation must be set aside until the event happens
again.
This is not what people who have not been indoctrinated as scientists
think the reaction to unexpected events should be. Apparently it is
impossible to explain science to people who not wish to understand.
Witness, for example, the wide-spread opposition to the idea of
evolution and the results of paleontology.
And, of course, any miracles that Jesus might have performed were done
so far back in time and were so poorly documented that they have no
value as evidence for anything.
Post by b***@dodo.com.auI do think there was an element of the spiritual about the Nuremburg
Rallies, but from the devil.
I was under the impression that devil was supposed to be able to
create anything.
However I have no use at all for any hypothetical devil. The evil at
Nuremburg was human evil.
God can be accessed, though not through science, and assures us of his
actuality. If you claim there is also a devil who exists as a
separate entity then I think you have become a Manichee. Not that Mani
did not have a great idea - a war between good and evil - but that his
idea seems to have been wrong. There simply is no evidence that God is
not One.
And, of course there is no room for a devil inside the Unity of God.
If a man was certified "dead" and then buried for four days (which has
some relevance to my own father for example - he was dead for four
days before anybody found his body, due to the smell), such that
putrefaction had set in (which in the case of my own father, it well
and truly had according to one of my uncles, who helped to clean up
the mess afterwards), and then is subsequently raised again in full
health, then it would be a shock.
However the difference between Lazarus and my father is that Lazarus
was known to be dead for four days before Christ arrived. No-one knew
about my father. I might add my father did not come back to life,
rest aasured, although I did have the peculiar experience of his
appearing in my room the night he died. We argued, we talked and at
the end he gave this terrifying scream and disappeared.
So Lazarus's death was confirmed, and putrefaction confirmed ("he
stinks"). Had my father come back to life in the state of
decomposition that was evident even on the mattress (he died in bed),
a lot of people would have been surprised.
I fail to see the logic of denying the existence of the devil. God
exists, and so do we, outside of his unity.
The devil is likewise a created being, just as we are, and owes all
his gifts to his creator - every single one of them.
For a modern miracle, I'll submit the testimony of the "dancing sun"
at Fatima, witnessed by thousands, including atheists.
I've lifted the following off the web. It was written by somebody
else.
START OF QUOTE
"On the 13-10-1917 more than 70000 people saw the sun dance in the
sky, change color, and then fall down and coming up to its normal
place; these facts lasted for about ten minutes and were saw not only
from the 70000 people at Fatima, but also from people living in the
villages around Fatima.
Among those people there were also many atheist journalists from some
anticlerical journals,
who were there in order to discredit the religious "superstitions" of
catholicism, since the child Lucia said that on that day God would
have given a great sign for everybody.
In fact, since 1910, the portuguese government had started a very hard
battle against the Catholic Church: many religious orders were
expelled and their property confiscated, new legislation banned the
teaching of religion in schools and universities and annulled many
religious holidays. Persecution of Catholics in the early years of the
republic attracted international attention and brought the new
political system into conflict with foreign diplomats, humanitarian
organizations, and journalists.
Those journalists have written very detailed accounts of the facts
occurred at Fatima ,
which were reported on all newspapers in the world, including the New
York Times.
Among the journalists present at Fatima on October 17, there was the
(atheist) director Avelino de Almeida of the government (and very
antireligious) newspaper "O Seculo". The article, published with the
title "Terrifying Event! How The Sun Danced In The Sky Of Fatima" can
be found on the site
www.ewtn.com/fatima/apparitions/October.htm
In his article, the journalist describes a crowd of biblical
dimensions, spread in the fields of Fatima. At a certain point, this
immense crowd begins to cry "Miracle! Miracle!" looking at the sun.
The journalists describes then an amazed crowd, who cry and pray.
I have tried to analyse these data to see whether it was possible to
find a plausible explanation, excluding a divine intervention, but I
have found none. No scientifically acceptable explanations exist for
such a phenomenon.
I do not think it is reasonable to hypothesize a conspiracy of 70000
people, simulating a collective vision. On the other hand, it would
not have been possible to hypnotize such a crowd, spread on an area of
some square kilometers. Besides it is scientifically impossible, even
with the present technology (you can imagine with the technology
available in 1917!), to realize an optical illusion like that.
Some atheists try to explain this miracle as a banal optical effect;
when we look at the sun for a while, we see coloured pulsating spots,
or when the clouds move in the sky, they can create the illusion that
the sun is moving.
Obviously, we all know this, we all have looked at the sun and we all
know the effects, we all have seen the clouds moving in the sky. Those
who were at Fatima certainly knew this as well.
So, unless we hypothesize that at Fatima there were only 70000 idiots,
such explanation is not plausible at all.
Some then speak about hysterism or suggestion. However, if catholics
were all subject to hysteric crisis or they were so easily
suggestionable, one couldn't explain why in 2000 years of catholicism
there are no other cases of crowds witnessing to having seen such
extraordinary phenomena. Actually, there was only the word of three
children, and if this was sufficient to suggestionize so much
catholics, then whoever claims to have some visions of Our Lady, could
easily make a crowd of 70000 catholics to see the sun dancing in the
sky.
The miracle of Fatima is the most extraordinary and well recorded
miracle in all history. This miracle has occurred in the Catholic
Church, since the three children were catholics (Lucia, the only one
of the three children still alive is a catholic nun).
The fact that so many people saw these phenomena cannot be explained
without the hypotesis of a supernatural being, because neither science
nor
logic would allow something like that to happen.
Some then ipothesize that some rare physical phenomenon must have
happened at Fatima that day; certainly it should have been a very rare
phenomenon! I do not think such ipothesis have any value, but even if
it should have been a rare physical phenomenon, the fact that it
occurred exactly in the place and in the time predicted by the three
children is for me the most evident proof of the supernatural nature
of such event.
A brief and incomplete description of the supernatural facts occurred
at Fatima can be found also in some contemporary encyclopedias, for
example the Britannica (also available on internet at www.britannica.com)
gives at the voice Fatima :
village and sanctuary, Vila Nova de Our=E9m municipality, Santar=E9m
district, central Portugal; it is located on the tableland of Cova da
Iria, 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Leiria. F=E1tima was named for a
12th-century Moorish princess and since 1917 has been one of the
greatest Marian shrines in the world, visited by thousands of pilgrims
annually. On May 13, 1917, and in each subsequent month until October
of that year, three young peasant children, Lucia dos Santos and her
cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, reportedly saw a lady who
identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary. On October 13, a crowd
(generally estimated at about 70,000) gathered at F=E1tima witnessed a
"miraculous solar phenomenon" immediately after the lady had appeared
to the children. "
END OF QUOTE