tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post4860426556210130006..comments2023-10-20T02:08:39.524-07:00Comments on Atheism: Proving The Negative: Miracles Make It Harder to Prove God is GoodMatt McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17071078570021986664noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-16358339304779564572014-04-15T07:58:55.766-07:002014-04-15T07:58:55.766-07:00This is really just the problem of evil in new pac...This is really just the problem of evil in new packaging. It has been answered and debated quite a bit. Perhaps you are not happy with the answers theists give but restating the same problem without addressing any of the huge number of responses does not really move anything forward. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-62972318171080571552007-10-16T08:37:00.000-07:002007-10-16T08:37:00.000-07:00'Would you buy flowers for a girl who would just t...'Would you buy flowers for a girl who would just turn around and slap you in the face. I don't think so.<BR/><BR/>Why should God heal atheists who will still reject him. He provides healing to those with faith'<BR/><BR/>Brilliant Comment! Well done.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-22120635995576883262007-10-11T14:08:00.000-07:002007-10-11T14:08:00.000-07:00QUOTE-->The existance of both a good god, and sens...QUOTE-->The existance of both a good god, and senseless suffering (or preferential interventions) requires some form of afterlife (heaven where those beings can be compensated in a way that the net sensless suffering in the universe can still be zero. (or perhaps that the sum of the squares of the probabilty amplitudes of suffering is zero)--|<BR/><BR/>When sin entered the world through adam and eve, so did pain and suffering. We all deserve hell since we all are sinners. Suffering occurs because either we sin (and we face the consequences) or someone sins against us (like stealing or abuse) and we feel the effects of it.<BR/><BR/>The original post actually promotes that miracles occur, and therefor does not deny God's existance. He merely plays around with the facts to support his viewpoint.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-24372439706647218852007-10-10T17:30:00.000-07:002007-10-10T17:30:00.000-07:00Would you buy flowers for a girl who would just tu...Would you buy flowers for a girl who would just turn around and slap you in the face. I don't think so.<BR/><BR/>Why should God heal atheists who will still reject him. He provides healing to those with faith!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-74757536004544291872007-09-22T09:44:00.000-07:002007-09-22T09:44:00.000-07:00A very good post.As a theist, I have tried to reso...A very good post.<BR/><BR/>As a theist, I have tried to resolve things this way, but am not yet entirely happy with it.<BR/><BR/><BR/>But the facts I see are.<BR/>There does not appear to be a god, interfering in a predictable way to stop sensless suffering, whether requested by prayer or not.<BR/><BR/>Miracles do not really break the law of physics, they are just very improbable events. (phsyical laws themselves may just be highly probable relationships). The universe seems to be built in a way that probability (or probability amplitude) is never zero. Thus miracles exist, it is just correctly interpreting their occurance. That the occurance of life on this planet is highly improbable cannot be proof that God, at the start of a quite week, intervened. Those who try to show this don't seem to answer why an omnipotent god could not, or did not create a universe where life arose spontaneously.<BR/><BR/><BR/>I degress back to my two solutions, the first one a bit silly but I still think it conforms to the good god assumption. This doesn't change the fact that most miracles can be explaing by the overzealous salesmen of religions competing for followers. There was a time when no self respecting religion would not claim miraculous powers.<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>1) Miracles could be allowed, without implying preference if they are distrubuted in a double blind sort of way. The chance of god answering your prayers is the same for everyone (The holocaust implies that the chances are very low). <BR/><BR/>2)The possibility of miracles, and the existence of sensless suffering works better as a deductive argument for the existance of an afterlife assuming a good god exists, than a proof by negation of the non-existance of a good god.<BR/><BR/>I.e. The existance of both a good god, and senseless suffering (or preferential interventions) requires some form of afterlife (heaven where those beings can be compensated in a way that the net sensless suffering in the universe can still be zero. (or perhaps that the sum of the squares of the probabilty amplitudes of suffering is zero)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-69009032039296217602007-06-25T00:32:00.000-07:002007-06-25T00:32:00.000-07:00If a little girl and boy during the holocaust witn...If a little girl and boy during the holocaust witnessed their entire family being systematically tortured and killed along with a multitude of others, should they believe in faith that this act was done so as to show that miracles are rare and therefore good in the end? Could means justify the ends in that situation? No. It is not honest to say that millions of tortured children in the world are a necessity for good in a best possible world. If I can imagine a better world than this one, then an omni-god does not exist. An objection to this would be that I cannot imagine a better world than this. I will rebutt by saying that all I have to imagine is one less tortured and murdered child who was tortured and murdered by his parents who got away with it, and that the child was forgotten, therefore not adding any meaningful complexity to the world.Jonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02877962468047811190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-89319277234757702912007-06-25T00:07:00.000-07:002007-06-25T00:07:00.000-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02877962468047811190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-58121353510128377582007-06-24T03:11:00.000-07:002007-06-24T03:11:00.000-07:00I was thinking that the theist might say that the ...I was thinking that the theist might say that the reason so few miracles are performed is that few and sporadic miracles are just the right amount for humanity. If you have too many miracles, then faith is gone because God is obviously there- I don't need faith to know that it is raining if I am standing in the rain, if that makes any sense. And if there were no miracles, then there would be no reason to believe that there was a God. Perhaps miracles are "placed" in the most efficient way towards bringing humanity salvation through faith; some people may need direct intervention to have faith, whereas others need only to hear about a Jesus tortilla. As for the suffering of millions of others, that is not an issue. In the end, whether or not you suffer is secondary to whether or not you have faith, as it is through faith that salvation is attained. Any earthly suffering is nothing compared to the rewards of heaven. God's benevolence is displayed in the maximized opportunity of faith and thus the maximized opportunity of eternal life. The scarcity of miracles is in fact the optimal amount for all of humanity for all time, leading to the salvation of the greatest number or the most deserving or the predestined or whatever. Or something like that.<BR/><BR/>To John, the last part of your comment was great.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-25145465554411235752007-06-21T20:10:00.000-07:002007-06-21T20:10:00.000-07:00Good points in this post. And I think many theist...Good points in this post. And I think many theists also find the premises pretty reasonable. If I am not mistaken, I think Hick is one who argues that God's consistently performing miracles would eliminate the "epistemic gap" between God and humans (which for some reason he thinks is a really important thing). And Van Inwagen and some others argue that miracles (or miracle-like interventions) would create a "highly irregular" world, which would be bad. (Always remember: you cannot necessarily trust your intuitions that an omni-God would have prevented the Holocaust, but you <I>can</I> be sure that he would never permit causal irregularity...because that would be <I>really</I> fucked.)Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12093567794628982488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-76806088083733635982007-06-20T22:24:00.000-07:002007-06-20T22:24:00.000-07:00You cover the whole miracle thing so well I'm not ...You cover the whole miracle thing so well I'm not sure there's much left to add.<BR/><BR/>I guess I want to say that this is where the theist will either try to say that "miracles are everywhere" we just have to have faith and "see them." This move, of course, dilutes the whole notion of what a miracle is supposed to be in the first place -- something irregular in the space of normal everyday experience -- some breaking of the nomological laws.<BR/><BR/>Thus, I think I will mention that miracles not only cause big problems for claims of omnibenevolence, but are themselves so highly subjective that they are meaningless.<BR/><BR/>That is, the theist can't use miracles in arguments for the reasons ellucidated by Matt, and moreover, from the first-person point-of-view reflect no kind of objective truth or knowledge at all.<BR/><BR/>Put more precisely, most "miracles" are not evidence of anything factual, but merely personal interpretations of experience, subject to all the typical problems of context and perspective.<BR/><BR/>Therefore, it would seem to me that the whole notion of miracles is incoherent or self-contradictory:<BR/><BR/>Objective truth doesn't necessarily (or usually) follow from limited subjective experience.<BR/><BR/>That is, what the theist wants to claim is that if S experiences M, then S has objective proof of M (whatever M IS) and all it implies. However, we can see that no objective truth at all follows from S's experience of M -- only an interpretation.<BR/><BR/>Therefore, like Hume says, a real miracle, something that provides objective evidence of God, needs to be something so major, so amazing, and so empirically verifiable that millions of people would need to experience M in such a way that there would be a clear majority interpretation across cultural, political, and theistic contexts.<BR/><BR/>Nothing like this has ever happened.<BR/><BR/>Hence, no miracle has ever happened.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716347331682132223.post-22519105537749794282007-06-20T00:16:00.000-07:002007-06-20T00:16:00.000-07:00If Islamists believe that Salmon Rushdie should be...If Islamists believe that Salmon Rushdie should be killed right away, should not their omni-god take care of the matter via miracle instead of causing "grief" amongst the faithful? Or to immediately punish Britian for thier act of be-knighting him? Only a minor god would allow such blasphemy. Only a minor god would need to perform miracles in the "best possible world" that was pre-destined.Jonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02877962468047811190noreply@blogger.com