h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4902332.stm
"For many, miracles are distant legends. Others believe they are real ... Roger Bolton recounts his sceptic's attempt to reconcile the two."
Oh goody thought I, and interesting little bit miracles and why they aren't. Bear in ming this is his 'skeptic's attempt to' which, to me, indicates it is written from a skeptic's pov, yes? Well, if it is, it isn't a very skeptical skeptic, that's for sure. Talk about shoddy journalism.

"For a start, few physical miracles are accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as having occurred there - only 67 in the almost 150 years "
This is re: Lourdes BTW. What has the number got to do with anything? Without details of those 67 this is meaningless padding. Or are we supposed to sit there all dumbstruck and think, well, theymust be impressive cos there's all those other miracles that didn't make the grade? Stupid me for engaging my brain.

"and the church has a very rigorous screening process in place to evaluate the thousands of claims that are put forward."
Which is? Oh no, we have to just take your word as a 'skeptic' that its rigourous and therefore your acceptance of 67 miracles must be reliable and truthful. Sheesh.

"We still know so little about the way the mind functions that it would be rash indeed to rule out this explanation of what are otherwise inexplicable "cures"."
That's it, first you set the stage up. (introduce reasonable doubt)

"We still know so little about the way the mind functions that it would be rash indeed to rule out this explanation of what are otherwise inexplicable "cures"."
Then you introduce the characters. (here's someone who is just like you)

"Eleven years ago when she was 16, she was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, a debilitating condition which has no known cure. "
Set the parameters for the plot

"I received prayer on the Sunday morning, and played hockey that afternoon. Prior to receiving prayer, I had barely been able to walk. It had to be a miracle."
And then leap to a conclusion.

And just in case you might still doubt how truly convincing this was to a 'skeptic' we'll introduce a poor confused doctor and use some pejorative phrases to show just how useless science is for this sort of stuff.
"Her doctor, unable to explain how she had been instantly transformed back to full health, tried to explain her illness away as a misdiagnosis.

I can;t be bothered to go on, it just gets worse and worse. Not only does he not seem to have any capacity for critical thinking, his woeful lack of knowledge about theological thinking is shown when he writes:
"if God can intervene directly in our lives in such small ways, why doesn't he intervene to stop the Boxing Day tsunami or the concentration camps?
Even believers have no easy answers to that."
Yes they do. I personally think they don't hold water, but this question has had some of the greatest intellects of the past 2000 yrs working on it, and surprisingly enough they've managed to find some answers. I knew at least one answer to that when I was 13! (and I know a much better one now )

Sorry, don't mind me, stressful time and this piece of just provoked a response. And I didn't want to rant in a forum

Did you honestly mean to put this here?

yes

aaaah...not something you wanted to do as a journal then?

Just being nosy. You know what I'm like

not really, no. I was offended by the article but it wasn't about me or my life so not really what I'd consider journal material. And I thought it would either be ignored or prompt the start of another pointless round of protestation of relevance by some of the more extreme religious types on here if I posted it in the main forums.
As it is, my opinion of it is stated, I feel better and no war has started. Plus if it is ignored I can pretend it's because it is on my PS and nopt because no one cares

aaaahhh....shall I unsub?

s'up to you! I son't mind you you reading it or commenting on it, or indeed anyone else doing so If I didn;t want it read/commented *at all* I wouldn;t have posted it. *shrug*
I just didn't fancy getting into a heated argument about it at the time

I'm curious to know what the answer you knew at thirteen was.

Free will, non determinism and the requirement of such for the human expression of true 'goodness' (and, of course, true 'badness').

I.e. if god went round ironing out all the big and little troubles in life then we as humans would not have opportunity to rise to the occasion. God isn;t there to make our lives easier type thing.

It also plugs into concepts such as humans not being perfect and the world we live in not being perfect. Our challenge as humans is to do the best we can in an imperfect world. If we can do that and not lose faith then god will reward us with the perfect world and life in heaven.

That's probably the least woo answer, others being punishment and ineffability.

It was around this time that I started to think that if I as a 13yr old can come up with and understand this stuff, and see the holes in it, then theological reasoning didn't really stand up much to intellectual scrutiny.

Thanks.

can I be curious about your curiosity then? Or was it just one of those bored reading someones PS and wondering type things?

I was half expecting a refutation or something!

"reading someones PS and wondering"

Yes. But I know only one explanation myself, and I was wondering what other people came up with.

I'll write it up. But now I'm going to eat some apple crumble.

TRiG.

fair enough, I would be interested in seeing that.

Enjoy your apple crumble (with cream or custard I hope!)

Custard's alright, but I prefer cream. But we didn't have any. Vanilla ice-cream is what I had with today's apple crumble, but I think it was milk I had last week. Warm milk poured over the crumble. Tastes nicer than it sounds, I assure you.



Where were we? Ah, yes. Pontificating.



It's all about the challenge in Eden, you see. And there's quite a lot of stuff in the Book of Job. But here's the basic plot outline:

1. God makes fellow spirit beings: angels.
2. God (and Son) makes physical world, including humans. ("All the sons of God began shouting in applause." "God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.")
3. One angel gets above himself and wants people to worship him.
4. Said angel talks to Eve by means of a serpent, and convinces her ("The woman was thoroughly deceived") that God is holding back something good from her and that she'd be better off without him. Adam went along with his wife.

Now look at the situation. It's a challenge to God's authority and integrity. The rebels do not say that they are stronger than God: that would be easily answered. Nor do they claim that God didn't create them. They simply say that they would be better off without him, and that they are competent to rule themselves. ("It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.")

So what does God do? He takes a step back and lets them try it. For just a little while. And, shortly, having proved his point, he'll come back and start ruling the world again. The Gospels quite clearly refer to Satan as the ruler of the world at the moment.

References:
Gen. 1:31
Gen. 3:1-7
Job 38:7
Jer. 10:23
Matt. 4:8-10
Luke 4:5-8
John 12:31
John 14:30
John 16:11
1 Tim. 2:14
James 1:14, 15

TRiG.

Cheers for posting that. Strangely, as someone brought up in a fairly full on christian family (not evangelical but certainly people who took the bible as truth as printed - although they have grown up a bit since then) I've never had that particular explanation. Odd.

An interesting explanation though, seems to link in several things and explain them within the framework of the hypothesised world order. As good as any other I've heard and more consistent than most.

p.s. I have no problem with warm milk on stuff, one of my comfort foods is warm milk (with brown sugar) on weetabix. Lovely Or white bread (has to be home made, no shop stuff) instead of the weetabix.

"As good as any other I've heard and more consistent than most."

Thanks. Actually, I don't think that anyone has yet told me that my opinions are not at the very least internally consistent.

Your explanation too has its merits. But I sense you've since abandoned it.

TRiG.

"Your explanation too has its merits. But I sense you've since abandoned it."
Oh definitly. It presupposes that God exists, which I disagree with

The only inconsistency I see, off the top of my head, with the one you give above is with comparison to the NT where God doesn't seem to be able to leave well enough alone and keeps letting some people off the hook. Actually, he does that in the OT too. But then there's plenty of inconsitency between the OT and the NT, and even between different books within each.

http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp