tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596708332568087278.post6248575705963784389..comments2024-01-24T10:39:27.668-05:00Comments on Coming Untrue: Anonymous Asks (34)Dr. S. L. Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06303707167715370504noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596708332568087278.post-56355108207047428472019-04-09T12:51:53.753-04:002019-04-09T12:51:53.753-04:00There certainly would.There certainly would.Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00346761712248157930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596708332568087278.post-22350943282066368292019-04-09T11:56:21.451-04:002019-04-09T11:56:21.451-04:00Agreed. My own experience with close or farther r...Agreed. My own experience with close or farther removed agnostic /atheistic friends and aquaintances has confirmed that over a lifetime. The cold analysis that the atheist claims needs to be applied to the subject of God totally fails them when it comes to the facts of miracles. As always, the majority of people arrange their life according to what is perceived to be most convenient for them. And there would be unwanted obligations if agreeing that God exists.<br />Qmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596708332568087278.post-70255177472633610202019-04-09T04:45:23.138-04:002019-04-09T04:45:23.138-04:00One reason I don't make much of such events is...One reason I don't make much of such events is that they are next-to-impossible to verify. <br /><br />More importantly, it seems to me the primary way God reveals himself to men and women throughout history is not through miraculous occurrences, but through his word. Even in the Bible, miracles are incredibly rare events, often occurring in bunches centuries apart from one another. In between, human beings lived and died believing what they read and heard, and exercising faith that God had really spoken despite seeing nothing remarkable to prove it. After all, without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and faith, by definition, is not sight (2 Cor. 5:7).<br /><br />Even more importantly, when God did provide several decades of concentrated miraculous events in the first century AD, the response of the Jews who saw them was to crucify the Son of God, then persecute his saints who followed in his footsteps.<br /><br />The bottom line: miracles don't convince obdurate sinners or move agnostics across the line, because they can always be explained other ways, however fantastic those explanations have to become. All miracles do is authenticate the existing prophetic word and strengthen the faith of those who already believe.Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00346761712248157930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596708332568087278.post-49290770776993446052019-04-08T21:57:01.548-04:002019-04-08T21:57:01.548-04:00I liked this particular blog. However, (unfortunat...I liked this particular blog. However, (unfortunately?) it also, and again, confirms my observation that the participants on this blogsite (except for myself :-) for one strange reason or another bury their head in the sand when it comes to the question of how can God be discerned as real to contemporary people. By that I mean why not simply acknowledge that God absolutely has not thrown in the towel with regard to that topic but is, as always, quite active by showing his presence through miracles all over this planet.<br /><br />We all know the usual comeback when that fact is mentioned to the unbelievers. They are not afraid to belief in what they call seeming miracles which they simply assign to a hard to proof conjunction or singularity of physical laws and time that is surely produced by nature and simply not yet understood by our scientists. E.g., the cancer destroyed face of the woman who is instantaneously and totally restored to a beautiful countenance during her visit to Lourdes. Or the broken and malformed bones of a wheelchair bound man that, in defiance of entropy, are spontenaously and totally joined, healed, and straightened interiorly as confirmed by competent medical authorities who admit that these occurances are not explainable and therefore are miraculous. Or, take the scientifically proven miracles of the transubstantiation of the Catholic Eucharist having been shown in some cases by competent, modern scientific analysis to be the heart muscle of a young middle eastern male who died by torture (it's amazing how competent our science and scientists nowadays are to be able to unequivocally make this determination when such samples are submitted for analysis). <br /><br />To the unbelievers it simply makes more sense to speculate that we are the progenitors of people who finally discovered time travel and invisibility and are coming back occasionally for study and then are curing and performing miracles with invisible instruments and methods ala Dr. McCoy and Spock in Star Trek. So strong is their resistance to admit to the possibility of a God that they would rather belief in such a far fetched possibility. In other words, it really always comes down to character.<br />Qmannoreply@blogger.com