When asked about why the large-scale miracles in the Bible were not refuted (or not reported to be refuted) there were two initial replies: 1) why bother responding and 2) evolution is true. If anything to the point has been discussed after the first few messages I missed it.

For 1) which I consider to be better of the two replies, I at first assumed it to be a rhetorical question; but taken at face value for just a moment I'll reply that I don't know why you bother to answer. The validity of the incident has almost zero relevance to the matter of its coverage.

Answer 2) is one that makes no difference to the matter regardless of its being a true statement or not. This is usually the case for replies that have entirely zero relevance to the question asked.

Anyway, it is quite possible to believe in both evolution and God. Indeed, Darwin himself, for a time, was counted in this category. The case made, basically, is that God is a being of lawful nature and thus works through natural laws rather than through specific and single-event miracles. This being the case, those who claim miracles to occur are in essence the athiests because they deny Goc's foresight in the initial act of creation.

A few thoughts which I will expand on in the discussion of the book, Evolution of God.

It seems that the hook that some atheists use to dismiss God is the "He can't violate the laws of Physics"

I asked a series of questions as to who determines the laws of physics. Not sure anyone ever answered. If they are determined by humans (which they are) then by what logic is God constrained by them? If they are determined by God, presumably He may do with them what He wishes.

Taking this further, if you look at:

Your comment here that belief in miracles is atheist is interesting as a point of logic. If God is real, then God works through forces, laws and structures that are omnipresent (everywhere) and omnipotent (all-powerful). Science has established a consistent and universal understanding that the laws of physics apply everywhere and govern everything without exception. Therefore for God to exist God must work through these laws that have been established in nature since the dawn of time, and anyone who claims otherwise is asserting that God does not really exist. This makes sense because the miraculous transcendental personal concept of God is an imaginary fantasy, conflicting with all real evidence and observation. To rehabilitate the concept of God the magical fictional beliefs of earlier days have to be abandoned or reinterpreted.

On early Christian discussion of miracles, you have to remember that there is no recorded mention of the miracles of Christ before the second century AD, so there was ample time for stories to evolve in the hundred or so years of oral tradition before they took the form we have them in the Gospels. The Roman writer Celsus regarded Christianity as utterly absurd, and the influential Christian theologian Tertullian agreed, saying that he believed because it was absurd. There is a large measure of early Christianity cocking a snook at pagan logic, asserting (it seems) that reason since Aristotle had been used to justify empire, but that God was against empire so God was also against reason. Paul explains this at 1 Cor 1:23 when he describes Christ crucified as a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. This five-fingered salute to reason was not sustainable, and when God was co-opted by the Roman Empire the irrational qualities of early faith were explained away by various rationalisations, aimed more at securing power than providing understanding.

I'm still unsure what your original post was intended to convey Kevin. Are you asking why people didn't debunk Jesus' claims that he fed tons of people soon after it happened? Premised, of course, on the assumption that they didn't happen. Ergo, they happened?

In that case, it's a very large question. I read a book a while back and discussed it with a Booktalk member who has since not been around named MadArchitect. It was titled "Did the Greeks believe their Myths?" The book gave great insight into the spread of information in that time period. Paper was scarce, and the ability to read and write was even more scarce. Many things that people were told in that time period came from authority figures who could read, or storytellers who could read. They relied on a very select few individuals to transmit stories and information, and great trust was placed in these people. Scholars of course criticized other scholars and storytellers, but the common citizen didn't even have access to those criticisms.

If the stories were written even as little as ten years after some event had happened, that's still a long time in the life of a person in that time period. The resources for skeptics would be almost nonexistent. Even if a person was at a certain place at a certain time with the knowledge and experience to debunk a claim of a mass feeding(which he knew didn't happen), he would, statistically speaking, be unable to document his skepticism because he'd be unable to write. He couldn't simply go to a news agency either. Ha!

The stories from that time period were created and controlled by a select few people(I consider a thousand people to be a select few, taken from the perspective that there were many hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in that time period across a couple of centuries.) Shining a light of truth backwards through time will never reflect back an accurate depiction of what happened due to the bottlenecks that controlled the flow of information. People are biased, prejudiced, motivated, deceitful, etc. And all copies of documents had to be transcribed by hand. There's so much room for error, bad translation, transcriber bias, etc, that the remains we have left to examine after burning of "wrong" information make it clear that the need to support documents from that time is paramount. It's a difficult task, but not impossible. Even with the terrible void of information from that period, there are still many contemporary sources. We can appeal to them to make a case for the veracity of the others. But during that process, the understanding of how the information has been passed down through the ages through many hands and minds and ears must always remain in the back of our minds to stoke our skepticism.


In a nutshell, you can't examine ancient documents without a scholarly lens. I'm not qualified to do such examinations. For an example of what I mean by a scholarly lens, you'd have to consider the fact that Theologians who were motivated to uphold their dogma as true would therefore also have motivation to quell information which eroded their beliefs. A man who firmly believed in the Christian bible in 400 AD and was also in charge of some library or another would be motivated to 'remove' any information from his library which contradicted his beliefs. This is merely speculation, as I've said, I'm not a scholar and don't have the lens. But I know a little of human nature. People tend to treasure their beliefs.

My boss at the YMCA, a few months back, came across some Scientology books that were delivered to the Y for free by the publisher of L. Ron Hubbard. I had intended to take them home, simply because I enjoy collecting books, even if they're parasitic garbage. But she seemed quite upset that they were in the Y, and she threw them out. There was no question in her mind whatsoever about the validity of the books. They were garbage.


Yet, when it comes right down to it, there is no need to debunk the really BIG miracles of Jesus. The reason is, the scenarios they propose are claimed events. If you claim an event has happened that is extraordinary, you must provide evidence that it actually happened. Such evidence could possibly have existed at some time in the past, but that is beside the point.

I'll provide two relevant explanations. There may be a third, or more. If there are, let me know lest I commit a fallacy. Here they are:

1) The miracles actually happened, and all evidence has faded over time.
2) The miracles are fictional stories created by men.

In scenario 1, a supernatural premise is required. Of course, equivocations could be had back and forth(starting with the law of conservation of energy on how matter cannot be created nor destroyed), but what it boils down to is that to provide food where none had previously existed means that something supernatural occurred. In recent centuries, our ancestors have been fairly good at documenting their observations. We observe things, then inductively and deductively reason out the implications of those observations into predictions. There are things we can say with confidence about our reality that hold true to these observations. The uniformity of nature and consistency of laws is an important part of scientific understanding. Not only can we extrapolate and thus predict(roughly) some future events, we can also extrapolate backwards. There is no reason nor evidence to entertain the idea that the laws of nature were different in the past than they are today. There are exceptions, of course, when we peer back in time(using the tools of induction and science) extreme distances, but those exceptions are for another discussion.

In scenario 2, the hypothesis has some ramifications regarding the motivations of men. Would they lie, why would they lie, cui bono?, etc. We know that men tell stories, some true some false. To say accept the hypothesis that the miracles are fictional stories created by men does not contradict any current observations or scientific theories or laws.

Which means, it is reasonable to accept hypothesis 2 rather than hypothesis 1, that men fabricated the stories. Since by accepting the first hypothesis, we would have to accept the premise that the laws of nature have, at some point in the past, veered off course. Sorry for the wall of text, I was bored.

...or at least that God is incompetent. I know a Mr. Einstein. It was quite a shock to me that anyone would have the last name of Einstein. It is similar to when as a kid I saw my elementary school teacher shopping at a grocery store. - - What are you doing here? There just seems to be certain roles for people to play - and that gets me back on point which to mention the saying God doesn't play dice with the universe.
I didn't realize this. I have a Bible with time ranges listed for the authorship of the various books but I've never payed attention to them. This seems to me to be the answer to why weren't they refuted - they werent claimed until long after the supposed events.

EDIT: Interbane, thanks for the reply. I'll look it over.

Really interesting nonsense. Laws have no power in and of themselves and therefore CANNOT be omnipotent. Laws are descriptive of observations. You are totally off base with your Tertullian quote as I have pointed out several times in the past. You would be well served to re-read those posts or investigate Tertullian a bit more in depth than the standard employed by Murdock.

I won't bother with the rest of the above except to wonder what, 'cocking a snook,' is.

This is backwards. The laws are abstractions built from numerous observations, using inductive reasoning. Which means, we've seen the same thing happen so many times, without ever once having an exception, that we can safely say such things are uniform and thus we call it a law.

The idea of god is an ontologically positive claim. One of the consequences for claiming he exists is that the laws we've developed are violable by him. That is an extraordinary consequence. In this case, if we expect god to be able to violate the laws of physics, and he is also a personal god, then the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

The idea of god is silly. There is no need for it, no good reason for it, and no evidence for it. So when we say that your claim would mean proposing an entity who could violate the laws of physics, it comes across preposterous. It's like proposing a pig that can fly. For what purpose?

Founders obviously did not think enough of him to protect him did they? Agree Interbane.

Hi Stahrwe, 'cocking a snook' is when you put your thumb on your nose and waggle your fingers at someone to illustrate your contempt for their views, a method of argument also known as the five fingered salute. The Tertullian line, 'I believe because it is absurd', is explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum as follows:



So, the mistranslation 'I believe because it is absurd' is a mocking reference to Tertullian's statement 'it is certain, because impossible.' Admittedly, there is a small distortion of Tertullian's actual words, but this distortion retains the essence of his view and shows its manifest error as a contradiction and piece of rank stupidity.

D.M. Murdock comments on the date of the Gospels at http://stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel-dates.html where she states:

The first historical mention of the Gospels is made by St. Irenaeus about 190AD and the only other mention is by Theopholis of Antioch who mentions the Gospel of John in 180 AD.

Nothing to show that the Gospels, the only source or authority for Christ existence were not written until some 150 years after the events that they portray.

Walter R Cassels the author of "Supernatural Religion" one of the greatest works ever written on the origins of Christianity says:

"After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the First Century and a half after the death of Christ."

How can something not written until 150 years after Christ is supposed to have died, and do not rest on any trustworthy testimony have even the slightest value as evidence he ever lived.

To a normal person using logic and common sense this is a huge problem, which is why it is said that the writers were guided by the Holy Spirit or other such nonsense.

The names of the particular gospels are made up as well; no one knows who wrote them so the names of Jesus' followers were added to give the text more credibility.

Of course these facts are not generally taught in church, so common Christians never hear about it and go on thinking that their faith is well backed up by historical events, which is totally false.

But what you are seeing from stahrwe is something else altogether… he has trouble, or refuses to accept, that some people (most people) do not hold the gospels as much of an authority on history (I do not hold them as an authority on anything) and that in that case he needs to use other evidence to support his religious claims. The failing here of course is that there are no other works that support his position, so he (like a broken record) keeps pulling his material, over and over, from the same place that he knows we find un-credible.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

You're still starting from the wrong point. There's no reason to believe in the first place. You have to believe before you believe you will be saved. You have to consider the foolishness non-believer's perspective before you turn into a believer. Unless you think the foolishness was downloaded into your head while you were still in the womb.

Do you think that from inside the mirrored room of Scientology their beliefs seem like foolishness? I assure you they are able to defend their beliefs as well as you're able to defend your beliefs. Such foolish beliefs may be internally consistent, but they are still foolish.

I normally avoid videos but in this case, it seems appropriate to the discussion.

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