One of my personal favorite quotes is from someone that you may not have heard of, Dr. Delos Mc Kown.
Though often reported, miracles, so-called, are suspect because human beings lack the criteria for discriminating between any divinely engineered event and any rare (even unprecedented), unexplained (at the moment), but perfectly natural phenomenon. So, until distinguishing criteria are apprehended and explicated, nothing that has happened can legitimately be called a miracle.
I often find myself wondering where all of these spectacular miracles have gone? It seems as though what used to be an almost everyday occurrence has fallen by the wayside. “But there are miracles all around us everyday!” (Yes, I can hear you shouting.) What miracles? Those that can be simply explained through natural law? No, not those. I mean MIRACLES. You know, calling down fire from heaven, healing the blind, raising the dead (without the use of a defibrillator, of course) and things of that nature.
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. -John 14:12 NIV
Greater things than these… Well, let’s see. What miracles did Jesus allegedly perform?
- Water Made Wine: John 2:1-11.
- The Nobleman’s Son: John 4, 48-54.
- The Draught of Fishes: Luke 5, 1-11.
- The Cure of the Demoniac: Mark 1, 23-28; Luke 4, 33-37.
- Peter’s Mother-in-law: Matt. 8, 14-15; Mark 1, 29-31; Luke 4, 38-39.
- The Leper: Matt. 8, 1-4; Mark 1, 40-45; Luke 5, 12-19.
- The Paralytic Cured: Matt. 9, 1-8; Mark 2, 1-12; Luke 5, 18-26.
- The Cure at Bethsaida: John 5, 1-15.
- The Withered Hand: Matt. 12, 9-13; Mark 3, 1-6; Luke 6, 6-11.
- The Centurion’s Servant: Matt. 8, 5-13; Luke 7, 2-10.
- The Widow’s Son: Luke 7, 11-17.
- The Blind and Mute Demoniac: Matt. 12, 22.
- The Tempest Stilled: Matt. 8, 23-27; Mark 4, 35-41; Luke 8, 22-25.
- Expulsion of Devils: Matt. 8, 29-34; Mark 5, 1-20; Luke 8, 26-39.
- Jairus’ Daughter: Matt. 9, 18-26; Mark 5, 21-43; Luke 8, 40-56.
- The Woman In the Crowd: Matt. 9, 20-22; Mark 5, 24-34; Luke 8, 43-48.
- Two Blind Men: Matt. 9, 27-31.
- The Mute Spirit: Matt. 9, 32-34.
- Five Thousand Fed: Matt. 14, 13-21; Mark 6, 34-44; Luke 9, 12-17; John 6, 1-15.
- Jesus Walks on the Water: Matt. 14, 22-33; Mark 6, 45-52; John 6, 16-21.
- The Canaanite Woman: Matt. 15, 21-28; Mark 7, 24-30.
- The Deaf Mute: Mark 7, 31-37.
- Four Thousand Fed: Matt. 15, 32-38; Mark 8, 1-9.
- The Blind Man: Mark 8, 22-25.
- A Possessed Boy: Matt. 17, 14-21; Mark 9, 13-30; Luke 9, 37-43.
- Tribute Money Provided: Matt. 17, 24-28.
- The Man Born Blind: John 9, 1-38.
- The Mute, Lame, and Blind: Matt. 15, 29-31.
- A Woman Cured: Luke 13, 10-17.
- The Man with the Dropsy: Luke 14, 1-6.
- The Raising of Lasarus: John 11, 1-44.
- Ten Lepers: Luke 17, 11-19.
- The Blind Men at Jericho: Matt. 20, 29-34; Mark 10, 46-52; Luke 18, 35-43.
- The Fig Tree Blasted: Matt. 21, 18-22; Mark 11, 12-25.
- The Servant’s Ear Healed: Luke 22, 49-51.
- The Draught of Fishes: John 21, 1-14.
Wow! A little of everything in there from producing some pocket change to raising the dead. What works could you do greater than those? After all, God said it, you believe it and that settles it, right?
Oh, I know! Why don’t you pray for the immediate regeneration of an amputee’s limb? THAT would be cool. Oh, Oh even better! Why not go after something globally; like, say, the complete remission of cancer worldwide! Or even AIDS? In Jesus’ name, of course. That is, if you don’t believe that AIDS is God’s way of killing off all the homosexual heathen.
Wanna really get people to believe in the crap you’re peddling? Try some of those suggestions.
Are those miracles in the same league as Moses parting the Red Sea, Joshua asking the sun to stand still, Hezekiah requesting the sun to retrogress?
To the modern scientific mind, miracles are figments of imaginations from ages past. They come from times out of which arose many myths, fables, and legends. They were for the benefit of the nation, but they are not historical. They are unscientific and unworthy of meaningful thought in view of modern scientific enlightenment.
Dan Barker writes in http://atheism.about.com/od/bookreviews/fr/LosingFaith.htm :
“Everyone knows that the Bible contains accounts of miracles, and that alone is enough justification for any rational person to conclude that there may be better uses of one’s time than studying Scripture. (And, no, this is not an a priori dismissal of the supernatural. It is the same criterion Christians use in valuating other religions. How many Baptists believe that ancient Roman amulets cured diseases?)
Most believers are compulsively addicted through repetition to the idea that their Bible is the greatest, most important, most inspired book in the world, and therefore the miracle accounts must have … credibility; but the rest of us are under no obligation to feel that way. Many believers have been taught that Scripture is the ultimate measure of truth, never imagining that the Bible itself might come under a higher measure of truth, under the scrutiny of reason. [...]
Most religionists, who are normally quite capable of analyzing everyone else’s ideas with careful precision, suspend the rational process when they approach their own beliefs, Suddenly, everything is possible, even probable, “The Bible says it, I believe it,” some say. We who doubt are accused of an “a priori bias” against miracles or a “prejudiced denial” of the supernatural when we are merely following the process that all humans use to learn anything.”
A Cambridge University professor says many of the Bible miracles can be explained by science:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/2967039.stm
Robin Williams having a little fun with miracles:
http://www.yoism.org/?q=node/352
You want miracles? I got cher miracles right HERE!!!
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f171/cynatnite/1599078.gif
Who knew the pope was one of the Super Friends???
What about unprecedented incidents occuring seconds after one’s praying.? And thirty very stunning incidents, which can only be named “small miracles” ?
SMALL MIRACLES by Askin Ozcan, ISBN 1598001000 (Outskirts Press) gives detailed account of these unbelievable occurences
in the life of the author. They can not be co-incidents.
http://www.outskirtspress.com/smallmiracles
Available at all major internet bookshops.
@askin, an excerpt from the website you posted:
“I couldn’t go to my fiance’s birthday party without a present! I thought of not going to the party, but Anne was waiting for me and probably told her friends that I was coming. It would be a big disappointment for her. I was thinking on the sidewalk about what I should do. Time was running out! Suddenly a big truck stopped in front of me at the red light. Then it took off at the green with such speed that its back doors opened and a parcel flew out to the road. I wanted to take the parcel, but I was afraid that someone might see. But, there were only two persons around, one on a side street about a hundred yards away, the other on the main road about two hundred yards away. I went to the middle of the road and picked up the parcel. My first thought was to put it into the mailbox on the corner, but as I inspected the parcel, I noticed the address was ripped off. It could neither go to the addressee nor to the sender.”
==================================================
(snark)
Not quite turning water into wine or raising the dead, now is it? So essentially this could be called: “The Miracle of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time?” Or, The Prodigal Present?” How about: “The Miracle of the Box of Fake Rolexes?” Actually, I was surprised after having seen the author’s picture, that the cops weren’t there handcuffing him the moment his fingerprints were on the box:
http://outskirtspress.com//BOOKCHAIR/author.jpg
But anyways, the message of this “miracle” seems to be that its okay to steal someone else’s property if it falls off a truck. Jesus must have wanted him to have it, obviously. Otherwise he would’ve made sure they truck doors stayed closed. Like manna from heaven.
Why not do the right thing? The legal thing? Take the box of merch to a police station and report what happened. I’m sure the owners will love not having to lose the income from which they feed their families and pay their bills. But instead, this Christain miracle allows for the exoneration of the thief in breaking the Sixth Commandment in order not to appear to be a cheap bastard in front of his fiance and her friends. Hallelujah!
Its good to see that god has his priorities straight….
(/snark)
[...] Please provide verifiable video footage of you doing a miracle that is greater than any miracle that is attributed to Jesus. For a list of miracles he supposedly performed and reason for this particular challenge, please read this. [...]
One thing that strikes me as odd about all these purported miracles is how selfish jesus was in performing them.
Did he heal all the lepers? Nope. Did he bring sight to all the blind? Nope. Just one or two, here and there.
One of the things that tells me that the stories are a complete fiction is that in the event that a man actually did perform many of the above miracles, he would be inundated unto death by people desperate for him to perform the same on their children and relatives. He would not be able to find a single moments peace, ever.
And it also occurs to me that god would have been able to find a better way of helping mankind to believe in him other than simply coming down here and getting killed. Remember, jesus was one of maybe a thousand people on the cross in those days – it was by no means an unusual death.
And people today constantly give their lives for people they do not know. All of us lose the lives of everyone we love, including ourselves, every day. I would think that the creator of the universe would have been a bit more creative.
Rodney Barbati
TRACKBACK where-have-all-the-miracles-gone
TRACKBACK where-have-all-the-miracles-gone
A few weeks ago, my Pastor died after a long illness and despite much prayer by all of us. In my initial distress, I decided to search the internet to see what has been published on the topic of miracles. I googled the words, “where have all the miracles gone”. One of the earlier hits on the list, underscoring its popularity, perhaps, was this blog posting ……
You are the brick! Reading stuff like this written in the way like this is a great pleasure for me.
answer to de swiss on nov 15
I see no reason your non-existing cops should have hand -cuffed me after I picked up that box, as there were no addresses of the sender or the receiver on the box – both were considerably ripped off. If there was any address at all, on the box, I would have put it in the mail box right there. I didn’t know where the big truck belonged to either. Under these circumstances what I did was normal. If I took the box to a police station which was miles away,
an impossibility anyway, as busses didn’t work everywhere in that snow, the police would have taken my name and address and return the box to me after the prescribed time, as no one would
claim it anyway. Police don’t even have resources to deal with the mentally ill who attempt to insult academicians and authors judging them from their portraits wrongly. It is your mind and its
preconcepts and complexes which should be “hand cuffed”.
WOW! Talk about discounting the gift – miracles are all around you every second of every day. Do you have any idea where you exist? That there is a here is a miracle of the highest order! That you are able to witness the here is a miracle of the highest order. You are a miracle of the highest order.
You are constructed entirely of energy – mind boggling amounts of energy are wrapped up in the material that is you. You are a completely mechanical being, built from the ground up using the smallest units of matter capable of doing the job, with senses so highly optimized and integrated that you even believe you are conscious and alive.
We stand here on spaceship earth, traveling through the most amazing environments imaginable, and you stand there and have the sheer, unmitigated audacity to say that you have a hard time finding miracles.
You want to know the miracle that I have performed that is greater than anything the mythic jesus was purported to do – that’s easy! I know god intimately, I see god every day, all day. I know what god is going to do to this planet. I know gods will at every moment of the day. I have broken through the shitstorm of utterly ridiculous bullshit that men call religions and holy books. I have found the truth, and it is so basic, so simple, so non-deterministic nor judgemental – that it is hidden in plain view.
If you want to know where the miracles have gone, just look somewhere. If you don’t see one, then you will also not notice that you are looking directly at god.
Rodney,
I put it to you that, when stripped of all the verbiage, your comment resolves to, “I cannot understand how the universe works, so I will believe that god did it.”
Rather than exercise your mind and critical faculties, you shut down enquiry dy declaring that what you cannot understand is a miracle and therefore cannot be understood. You are creating a case for your ecclesiastically-induced lack of perspicacity and you may be sufficiently obtuse that you are satisfied by this stance. Others, who would rather seek the truth than the excuse, are not so easily satisfied.
I wish you happiness in your ignorance, but maintain a hope that you will one day begin to use the wonderful thing within your head, when you will realize that it is not there merely for cooling the blood.
Glebealyth,
Hmm, I thought I was being rather clear. But let me explain – I fully agree with you, and I understand a lot better than most the workings of the universe, our bodies, etc.
What I was saying was that there is indeed a god – it has no body other than everything that exists, it has no image other than what we provide, its will is what ever I or anybody else wants to do right now. It is not conscious, not good, not bad, and definitely not compassionate or merciful. It is what it is – and it did create us. Irrefutably, we are here, and we are dirt – hence, we were created (and most definitely created via evolution, which by the way is still in full swing).
The god I know exists will make galaxies collide – not via conscious thought, but because that is the way it works. Is that evil? Nope. The god I know exists will wipe out all life on this planet eventually. Will it be gods wrath that it happens? Nope, god has no human attributes. Is that evil? Nope.
In other words, god is not a being, and is nothing like the god described in the religious works of the world. But there is a god – everything that is is god. If there were a god like that described in the religious works of the world, and thank god there isn’t – he would exist in the one true god.
You see, because I understand that at some point all of what we call reality washes up on a beach that doesn’t even exist, that everything we think is real at some point becomes completely abstract – for example, where do you think this universe exists? – what is the container for this universe? And if you find that container, what is the next container outward? At some point, all of those containers are basically floating around in… in what? As I said, reality is completely abstract. It is magic. It is a miracle.
So, to summarize. Everything we take for granted is pretty much magic. That there is a here is completely improbable, that you are here to witness it is even more improbable. Could there be some existence after death? Absolutely – and it would be no more nor less improbable than the existence we live today.
Glebealyth – if you need me to spell it out in the most basic of ways – nature is god. And nature is a miracle.
Rodney Barbati