The GOP Has Been HIJACKED!

[Eric the Green]

(05-30-2016, 01:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The question may not be so much whether one believes in God but instead what one means by "God". If one means that physical, mathematical, and logical laws exist and operate reliably, then  such at the minimum is God. Paradoxically the rejection of miracles is consistent with that view of God.

An inexplicable entity intervening in daily life? Sure. Blind, random chance beyond manipulation by any human will.

If one thinks that one has some way of manipulating blind, random chance to his favor, then he is either a bad gambler or a believer in a god of miracles... which I find suspect.

It may be suspect. The notions that there are no miracles, or that random chance and/or determinism can explain things and events, are very much over-rated. Determinism explains very little, except our capacity to use its ideas to make machines. But the universe is alive, not a machine. And life is mysterious and miraculous by nature. Science has not and cannot explain these miracles away. Every action and every event is really quite miraculous.

So the question is, how far can you go with this? Our experience does show that, so far, miracles have strong limits. Though determinism is false, being an absurd explanation of infinite regress, habits of nature persist. Things don't usually happen willy-nilly by miracles, except within those habits and limits. Still, they are possible, and happen sometimes. So, absolute convictions about the extent of miracles, or lack thereof, is merely speculation.

In a sense, then, everything is a miracle to some degree. So the term has little meaning. The question then is what is one willing to believe. We have various methods of obtaining knowledge of likely trends. To some degree, these trends are predictable. Merely attributing events to miracles, (or to conspiracy theories), when more prosaic explanations suffice, seems foolish. My rule of thumb, which I think is a good one, is that the more alive your subject of study is, and the more conscious it is, the least you can apply empirical-based predictions to them. More-dead things yield themselves to determined explanations or random chance explanations much more easily.

Quote:I can just imagine what I would have done had I been God during the monstrous reign of Adolf Hitler. Maybe I would have translated some heavy metal (maybe a lead statue of the Fuhrer) into U-235 while some Nazis were plotting horrific crimes against Humanity and detonated it. Just enough -- and then I would have made My Presence known to the world, explaining My Intolerance for monstrous iniquity. The scene out of Raiders of the Lost Ark in which the Nazis make a blasphemous prayer (I don't know Hebrew, but I can just imagine one that Biblical patriarchs might have used):

Hear, O Lord, as we beseech Thee, that Thou might deliver us from a foe that showeth contempt for Thy Law, that Thou might smite the doers of evil and injustice but avoid harm to the innocent in our time of greatest need.

Asking God  to use His Powers to aid evil is the worst of all blasphemies, and, yes, the Nazis would find out exactly what happens  when God smites His foes in the name of Justice.

The mistake here seems to be to attribute miracles only to one priviledged, miraculous, separate being, or maybe to a dueling pair of miraculous power beings (such as God and Satan); when in fact miracles (at least to a small or moderate degree) are constant and everywhere, and prayer to the God that Is-All-in-All is available to all.

So, let's kill two birds with one stone on this thread. Miracles are available to all, democratically, not just to the spiritual version of Cynic Hero's strong-man state heroes.

But yes, I like the idea of the Ark Spirit dealing with Trump and our other Republican enemies!