Ship of Fools: Can skepticism be dysfunctional?

Thread: Can skepticism be dysfunctional? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

I am by nature skeptical. I am drawn to christianity, but hampered in fully embracing it by an in-built prejudice concerning the miraculous. I fit the profile described by many christian apologists who say that the principle reason for rejecting the historicity of the NT is that it reports miracles.

It interests me that some people seem to have no such problem, and I would certainly not class them as gullible because of that. I'd be interested to know how many shipmates share this prejudice, and what they do about it, from giving it full reign to suppressing it due to a stronger conviction that the NT is true and their skepticism dysfunctional.

I have often tried to isolate what is at the core of this skepticism. I am aware of the counter arguments, including things like the rejection of meteorites because they didn't fit the paradigm, and the significant body of well researched miracles, such as the few approved by the medical committee of Lourdes, for example. I also know of know sound basis for arguing that miracles cannot happen.

I think that there is a resentment at the idea of God requiring me to believe things that go against common sense. We know miracle stories gather around Saints, and it is so easy to see this happening with Jesus. I have never known anyone who had a credible account of a miracle, but less experienced one myself (like most believers). But I still have a sneaking doubt about my doubt.

Has anybody resolved this?

[ 22. January 2013, 18:29: Message edited by: anteater ]

Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :

Common sense and a refusal to deceive yourself is at the heart of your scepticism. Stick with it!

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

It's an interesting problem, isn't it? I have resolved it in a sort of way, by concluding that I just don't know. Thus, I don't know if God exists. I don't know if Christianity is true.

However, I also find that the symbols and narratives of Christianity fill me with joy and fulfilment, so that seems good enough for me. I see religion as useful, rather than true.

In a sense, the focus on beliefs strikes me as rather neurotic in any case. Praxis not doxis.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I would consider myself reasonably skeptical. I have had someone at work ask me question how I can be a Christian given that I am such a sarcastic person (roughly). The sarcasm is the expression of cynicism in a work environment.

To me the cynicism means that I reject both people telling me what to believe as well as a Dawkins worldview which fundamentally rejects the supernatural.

True skepticism means refusing to accept anything on face value, but requiring evidence and information. However, it doesn't mean rejecting things out of hand. It means keeping an open mind at all times. To my mind, that is a good thing, and something that is not in contradiction to a faith, but it is in contradiction to a blind or simplistic faith.

If your faith cannot cope with some skepticism, it is not very strong. That includes a scientific "faith".

Posted by The Rhythm Methodist (# 17064) on :

@anteater.

Interesting OP. I think some people do struggle with the miraculous, as you say. I suppose my take on it, is that we inhabit a created - even artificial - environment....which runs according to created scientific principles. I think of the miraculous as the suspension of the laws which apply to our own existence, but are not binding on the one who put them in place. We operate under scientific laws about such things as water displacement, the fermentation process - and even death and decay: but Christ can walk on water, turn it into wine or raise Lazarus, because those laws only apply to him insofar as he allows them to. In summary, I see all biblical miracles as a divine suspension of the scientific laws which God has put in place to govern our environment.

Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Rhythm Methodist:
In summary, I see all biblical miracles as a divine suspension of the scientific laws which God has put in place to govern our environment.

I don't think there is an outside to the world. I think biblical miracles are attempts to talk about the wonderfulness of the world, to say, if you like, that the natural is super.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

But RM you then have to face the moraL problem.

Why does God suspend those laws in some cases and not others?

Especially when he decides not to in cases where desperate human need requires it?

But meanwhile suspends the laws in instances which clearly imply some sort of favouritism.

Millions starve today. And millions are overtaken by earthquakes, tsunamis and the like. And God does nowt. Why?

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

Praxis and doxa are not choices. They are two aspects of the same thing. It's not a matter of choosing between them, but of fulfilling both.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

You don't have to resolve it. I know I have not. Most of things in the bible, and things people claim as miraculous in the present, can be dismissed as (1) explainable by other means, (2) made up deliberately or as a product of wishful thinking, (3) hopeful nonsense.

I personally harbour doubts about Jesus, and all of the miraculous things said to be part of his life (birth, activities whilst alive, death, resurrection etc). I also doubt God bothers answering prayers, that angels visit people, and that there are any convincing experiences of divine presence. The point seems to me that lack of proof about any of it is part of what it is to believe.

All of this said, I proceed with Christianity 'as if' it were worthy of belief, and has some true ideas within, the extent to which I cannot determine. The idea of a world (and my life) without it isn't something I like. So instead of agreeing to the "prove it" mentality of science and scepticism, I go with the aesthetics of it. It is true as a novel is a true expression of human events, character and personality. There is some sort of eternal wisdom that is contained within some constructions of thought, within the stories of time and space. Just like the experience of eating the banana I just finished. Is the taste true? I suppose I'm also saying that the questions are somewhat wrong when we apply the sceptical approach to felt and lived things.

Certainly, you can challenge Christianity when it says things that science and logic show are simply false. But there is too much that cannot be so challenged. I'm thinking the sceptical approach is engaged today in extending itself beyond its competence, much as religion strayed beyond its competence before we knew the facts science and scepticism could tell us.

All of this said, I could be wrong, and probably am at least partly about many many things.

Posted by Drewthealexander (# 16660) on :

@anteater. I wonder what the source is of the doubt about your doubt. If reason alone is enough to understand reality in its entirety, and reason leads you to reject the miraculous then you doubt about your doubt is unreasonable.

But it becomes entirely reasonable if your nagging doubt is a sense that it takes something more than reason to make full sense of the reality we experince.

Posted by Drewthealexander (# 16660) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@anteater. I wonder what the source is of the doubt about your doubt. If reason alone is enough to understand reality in its entirety, and reason leads you to reject the miraculous then your doubt about your doubt is unreasonable.

But it becomes entirely reasonable if your nagging doubt is a sense that it takes something more than reason to make full sense of the reality we experince.

Posted by The Rhythm Methodist (# 17064) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:

But RM you then have to face the moraL problem.

Why does God suspend those laws in some cases and not others?

Good question - and I don't expect my answer will do it justice.

I really couldn't say why God seems to intervene in some circumstances, but not in others that we may perceive as more pressing. I am willing to accept that my rather one-dimensional snapshot view of life perhaps leads me to different priorities than God's, who I believe is intimately familiar with every aspect of the present and future.

In addition, I suspect that - between him and me - I am the morally deficient one, and also, that he is more loving than I am. None of which helps in the slightest, when I absolutely *know* what he should do, and he doesn't do it.

I struggle - the same as most Christians, I guess - when I think intervention is the only compassionate course of action, and it never materializes. But then I'm inclined to believe that if I was the omnipotent and omniscient loving God, I would act just the same as he does....even if I can't possibly understand his actions (or inaction) from my human perspective.

I'm sure there'll be those on this thread that could give a better answer.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
But meanwhile suspends the laws in instances which clearly imply some sort of favouritism.

Or implies that his goals are simply different than ours.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Skepticism isn't always dysfunctional, but it certainly has the potential to be so. If every time my wife left home and came back I demanded proof that she was not unfaithful to me while she was away, that would be a dysfunctional skepticism.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Has anybody resolved this?

It seems to me that it comes down to a question of plausibility, which in turns hinges on the question of whether or not there is more to creation than the physical universe (as hatless alluded to).

If, in addition to accepting the existence of the physical universe around me, which I can perceive with my bodily senses, I could also believe in a God with the power to create that universe, but not in anything else beyond those two, then I think I would have a very hard time believing that there could be a plausible way to "fit" the concept of miracles being part of reality. However, if there is more to creation than just the physical universe, then there is a wider context beyond what we are aware of and used to, and that wider context holds the possibility of a wider perspective from which miracles might make sense. Actually discovering that wider perspective is another matter, but at least our lack of such a discovery does not have to mean that it cannot eventually be discovered, at least in theory.

So, assuming you're able to accept the existence of a divine creator, the question is whether you're then able to accept the existence of anything more to creation than the physical universe. If not, then I can sympathize. But if you can, then I have trouble understanding why miracles would be such a stumbling block.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I think there's a middle way, which I seem to have found as I got older, where on the one hand, I'm not paralyzed by skepticism, but on the other hand, I'm not gullible about everything. I suppose it's a kind of acceptance of contradiction, or doubt, or the 'tension of opposites'. On the one hand, I don't really know anything, but none the less, I resonate with certain things, or I feel open to them, and that seems good enough.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

@The rhythm Methodist

quote:
In addition, I suspect that - between him and me - I am the morally deficient one, and also, that he is more loving than I am. None of which helps in the slightest, when I absolutely *know* what he should do, and he doesn't do it.

See this wouldn't work for me. If someone was suffering in front of me I'd want to help them. If the only answer to the question of why any god would allow suffering is "ours is not to reason why" or "there is a higher purpose my son" its no answer at all. If you can have faith and be skeptical at the same time as people here claim then good for you. If it came down to having to make a choice between skepticism and faith I'd choose skepticism every time.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

I read the OP without seeing who wrote it, then was not surprised to see that it was one of yours. very interesting, as always.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I am by nature skeptical. I am drawn to christianity, but hampered in fully embracing it by an in-built prejudice concerning the miraculous. I fit the profile described by many christian apologists who say that the principle reason for rejecting the historicity of the NT is that it reports miracles.

It interests me that some people seem to have no such problem, and I would certainly not class them as gullible because of that. I'd be interested to know how many shipmates share this prejudice, ...

If it was 'prejudice', then it would be a judgement not based on all the evidence, wouldn't it? To realise that 'miracles' are better explained by many other means is a far more rational approach.

quote:
I have often tried to isolate what is at the core of this skepticism. I am aware of the counter arguments, including things like the rejection of meteorites because they didn't fit the paradigm, and the significant body of well researched miracles, such as the few approved by the medical committee of Lourdes, for example.

That seems to be a very weak example, since if 'better' explanations are not fully available at present, then 'we're not sure' is a far better response.

I think I count myself lucky because I never had to cope with large areas of doubt.

Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :

This is going to sound like a smartass answer - it's not meant to be. I am a committed Christian but if when I have doubts it is a strong (sometimes overwhelming) leaning towards total materialistic naturalism.

But I have learned to be sceptical of my scepticism. That is, I'm not at all sure in any area of life scepticism is a good way to get to true beliefs. It certainly isn't applicable in relational categories, as Mousethief has pointed out. I think the idea that scepticism is the best way to get to true beliefs is a hangover from a rationalism that I can't sign up to in other areas of my life. YMMV.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
To me the cynicism means that I reject both people telling me what to believe as well as a Dawkins worldview which fundamentally rejects the supernatural.

I'd quibble slightly with the use of the word 'rejects', since sceptics and non-believers know that there are far better explanations for every single thing that is considered as supernatural.

quote:
If your faith cannot cope with some skepticism, it is not very strong. That includes a scientific "faith".

'Scientific faith' as you call it does not need to be strong in the same way that religious faith does, since it relies on things tried and tested.

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
To me the cynicism means that I reject both people telling me what to believe as well as a Dawkins worldview which fundamentally rejects the supernatural.
I'd quibble slightly with the use of the word 'rejects', since sceptics and non-believers know that there are far better explanations for every single thing that is considered as supernatural.

Can I say I am sceptical of this.

Jengie

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Rhythm Methodist:
Interesting OP. I think some people do struggle with the miraculous, as you say. I suppose my take on it, is that we inhabit a created - even artificial - environment....which runs according to created scientific principles.

Just to clarify - it sounds here a bit as if you think that Science created the principles rather than that it was people observingn what happens and writing it down as principles. Have I read correctly ... or possibly made it sound more muddled? [Smile]

quote:
I think of the miraculous as the suspension of the laws which apply to our own existence, but are not binding on the one who put them in place.

Why is it necessary to think of the 'miraculous' as anything other than a misunderstanding of the reality that happened?

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

DrewTheAlexander:

quote:
@anteater. I wonder what the source is of the doubt about your doubt. If reason alone is enough to understand reality in its entirety, and reason leads you to reject the miraculous then you doubt about your doubt is unreasonable.

But it becomes entirely reasonable if your nagging doubt is a sense that it takes something more than reason to make full sense of the reality we experince.

I think you're close to the issue. I would prefer to say that I think something beyond testable theories is needed to understand reality, and I think most would agree.

For example ethical issues which are not subject to empirical proof.

The thing that triggered the OP was reading Austin Farrar's "Saving Belief" where he has a long discussion on the seeming unfairness of God in requiring faith. Of course, he is not a hard liner and would not equate atheist with damned and gladly admits that atheism is preferable to religion when it becomes ossified and oppressive.

His view is that it is just an essential factor in the same way that an absence of neurotic suspicion is needed to build a decent relationship. If someone, for whatever reason, is hyper jealous, it is very difficult indeed to have a decent relationship. So he sort of thinks that some people are hyper skeptical, for whatever reason.

This could be true of me. I was raised as a JW so well exposed to religious bullshit, with a parent who was, to say the least, highly irrational to the point of being borderline delusional. Many of my christian friends suppose that this has made me over skeptical.

But there is another side to this. Our skepticism tends to be about the miraculous, but as Denis Nyneham well said in an afterword to "honest to God", the liberal idea of a non-miraculous Jesus, totally given to others is also hard to take, and in Nineham's view, a morally pure person is about as likely as aquambulism, if that is a word.

So my doubt about my doubt is based on this sort of thought. Add to that, that the zeitgeist is antisupernatural, and that unless anyone can provide one, there is no convincing argument that I know of that would rule out the miraculous.

But I still find it hard to say I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, even though strictly speaking human parthenogenesis is not biologically impossible! The pious legend just seems more probable.

Posted by The Rhythm Methodist (# 17064) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:

If someone was suffering in front of me I'd want to help them. If the only answer to the question of why any god would allow suffering is "ours is not to reason why" or "there is a higher purpose my son" its no answer at all.

Yes, I think I can see where you're coming from, George. I'm essentially expressing a faith position. I'm saying I believe that - despite what it may sometimes look like to me - God is still "as advertised"....in the sense that he is loving and compassionate. I don't know if there are bigger things at stake, when I want to see the quick fix, or if that fix would somehow impinge on a grander design. Truth is, I haven't a clue - I just believe certain things about the nature of God, and I'm willing to recognise there may be a much larger picture than the snapshot of life that I'm privvy to. So I guess I am guilty of thinking there may be a higher purpose, as you suggest. I'm not sure about "ours is not to reason why", though: I think it's more of an incapacity than a prohibition.

quote:
Originally posted by Susan Doris:

Just to clarify - it sounds here a bit as if you think that Science created the principles rather than that it was people observingn what happens and writing it down as principles. Have I read correctly ... or possibly made it sound more muddled?

I didn't intend it to sound that way, SD. My belief is that God created our environment, and put in place a framework to govern what happens therein. From time to time, we 'discover' elements of this framework, and call them scientific laws....or we might just think we are on to something, and call it a 'theory'. I believe physics, for example (from astro right down to quantum) is really the exploration of God's system or framework...even if those doing the research wouldn't see it that way.

quote:
Why is it necessary to think of the 'miraculous' as anything other than a misunderstanding of the reality that happened?

Why is it necessary to think of the miraculous as a misunderstanding?

Sure, if you believe that the universe just created itself from nothing - you might take that point of view. Or perhaps you might share Stephen Hawkins notion, which basically comes down to "In the beginning there was a law of gravity, and - because there is a law of gravity, matter can and will produce itself". Without wishing to get into the technical details of that one, it rather begs the question "where did that law of gravity come from?" Perhaps I'm dysfunctionally skeptical, but I find the concept of a creator-being - outside of the constraints of time and space - rather more plausible. That being the case, I have no problem with him occasionaly tinkering with the laws he has created for our environment.

Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
But I have learned to be sceptical of my scepticism. That is, I'm not at all sure in any area of life scepticism is a good way to get to true beliefs. It certainly isn't applicable in relational categories, as Mousethief has pointed out. I think the idea that scepticism is the best way to get to true beliefs is a hangover from a rationalism that I can't sign up to in other areas of my life. YMMV.

Too true. I doubted my Christianity, but then realised that the doubts only sounded plausible because they were doubts attacking my own system of belief, rather than a system of belief that had to stand up in its own right. They systems of belief that those doubts belonged to held just as many problems as my own. I still doubt and it's still horrible, but I realise that I wouldn't be free of doubting just by becoming an atheist.

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

@Dinghy Sailor

But why is doubt such a bad thing? There is a long tradition of living with doubt as spiritual practice.

quote:
One time, Zen Master Seung Sahn said:
I don't teach Korean or Mahayana or Zen. I don't even teach Buddhism. I only teach don't know. Fifty years here and there teaching only don't know. So only don't know, okay?

Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on :

Because my faith is valuable to me and I'd rather not be on the brink of losing it all the time? Because Christianity is true, I'd rather be convinced of it and if it's false, I'd rather just sack it rather than wavering in the middle?

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

The Rhythm Methodist

Thank you for your response; very interesting.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
To me the cynicism means that I reject both people telling me what to believe as well as a Dawkins worldview which fundamentally rejects the supernatural.
I'd quibble slightly with the use of the word 'rejects', since sceptics and non-believers know that there are far better explanations for every single thing that is considered as supernatural.
Can I say I am sceptical of this.

Jengie

I don't think you've quite got the hang of scepticism.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
@Dinghy Sailor

But why is doubt such a bad thing? There is a long tradition of living with doubt as spiritual practice.

quote:
One time, Zen Master Seung Sahn said:
I don't teach Korean or Mahayana or Zen. I don't even teach Buddhism. I only teach don't know. Fifty years here and there teaching only don't know. So only don't know, okay?

Nice quote. I seemed to arrive at don't know with advancing years, so it's possibly a sign of senility, but I also realized that it's impossible to know. How could one know the truth? Well, I suppose there is such a thing as a direct experience, which seems incontrovertible. For example, I am here.

I connect this impossibility of knowing, with the separation of science from metaphysics, so scientists don't torment themselves with questions like 'do atoms really exist?'

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I think that there is a resentment at the idea of God requiring me to believe things that go against common sense.

Like Himself you mean.

It is a shame that that you can accept the existence of an omnipotent creator God that requires you to believe things, but not accept the idea of one fluid transforming into another fluid, for instance. This seems like the perfect example of 'straining out gnats yet swallowing camels'.

If you can't believe in the littlest miracle, how can you possibly approach a proper understanding of the ultimate miracle - God Himself - who defies any human scientific-rational box, lable, measurement or equation.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I am by nature skeptical. I am drawn to christianity, but hampered in fully embracing it by an in-built prejudice concerning the miraculous. I fit the profile described by many christian apologists who say that the principle reason for rejecting the historicity of the NT is that it reports miracles.

Are you drawn to Christianity or to Christ? Put differently, is the Christ you are drawn to Divine? I used to be drawn to Socrates (as described by Plato), but I never believed that Socrates was Divine. So I never was a Socratian as part of Socratianity, in the same sense that I am now a Christian as part of Christianity.

If you answer that no, you are not drawn to the Divine Christ, then what is the problem? There is no reason then to worry about miracles. Consider them as literary embellishments in the ancient mode of a largely historical report about a human sage called Jesus Christ, whose teachings you really like.

If you answer that yes, you are drawn to the Divine Christ, then what is the problem? Apparently you didn't need miracles to believe that Christ is Divine. So whether they happened or not is basically immaterial to your faith. You know intellectually that they could have happened, given Christ's Divinity. But if they were merely a literary device to induce in others the faith you gained otherwise, then that is also OK. Expedient means. Entertain your doubts as much as you like, they have no further relevance.

The only way miracles could be a hindrance to your faith is if you require them as proof for His Divinity. Do you? Or are you stalling for other reasons and this is just a convenient excuse?

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I think that there is a resentment at the idea of God requiring me to believe things that go against common sense.

What "common sense" are you talking about there? Perhaps you mean the endpoint of a long cultural development that made the West a clear exception to the historical and global rule in many ways? We may all be good little materialists and empiricalists these days in these parts, but that is definitely by nurture not nature.

The general pain that you feel is having to go against the grain of the culture you have grown up in. The specific pain that you feel may have more to do with your personal upbringing. Frankly, good on you that you are interested in religion at all.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Has anybody resolved this?

I believe in Christ due to reasons largely independent of the miracles reported in the NT. I know that the kind of God I believe in can work miracles. In consequence, I believe in the NT miracles in a "why ever not" manner. I'm mostly interested in what God is trying to tell us specifically with the actual miracles He worked (beyond that He is God, which I assume as given).

The meaning of multiplying loaves and fishes, for example, is hardly exhausted in the violations of various physical conservation laws that require Divine interference. It is a teaching moment with echoes all the way to my Eucharistic practice today. A miracle is an exclamation point that God uses to direct my attention to something crucial. This is also what I think about more recent miracles associated with the saints etc. They say things like: "Hey, you. Witness my servant St Francis, with whom I am well pleased. Perhaps you could try to learn something from him?"

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:

quote:
is the Christ you are drawn to Divine?

Yes.

quote:
If you answer that yes, you are drawn to the Divine Christ, then what is the problem?

I think it is that I have always felt awkward being part of a church whilst having reservations against key aspects of belief. If you say that a genuine suspension of judgement over whether certain miracles literally occurred is acceptable within Catholicism, then I am surprised, but will take your word for it. Plus, if the miracles are not to be accepted as they stand, why should anything else be? Which relates back to Nineham's comment that I referred to.

quote:
Or are you stalling for other reasons and this is just a convenient excuse?

That's always possible. But it's hard to analyse your own motives.

quote:
I know that the kind of God I believe in can work miracles.

This may be a difference twixt you and me. I do believe in God, but have more doubt about miracles. In your case, God appears to include miracles as part of the package.

quote:
This is also what I think about more recent miracles associated with the saint

Many I know are very skeptical about non canonical miracles. I'd be interested to know how far that RCC underwrites modern miracles.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

I like reading all these arguments. Any individual line seems to make sense pro- or anti- God. As a whole, neither makes sense to me. Its a bit like the cryptic crossword - the fun lies in the working out the clues, not in what the words are.

I don't really mind which side, or neither or both is true, and before Etymological Evangelist joins in, I don't really care which sort of Truth.

That's my sort of scepticism. Silly, flippant, ignorant but not as far as I can tell dysfunctional.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
If you say that a genuine suspension of judgement over whether certain miracles literally occurred is acceptable within Catholicism, then I am surprised, but will take your word for it.

We were not discussing whether you could become (Roman) Catholic; that's a different topic as far as I am concerned.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Plus, if the miracles are not to be accepted as they stand, why should anything else be?

That's why I think that this is a proxy issue for you. Perhaps you are concerned here with the status of scripture or tradition, and hence get worked up about miracles as a purported failure mode thereof. But as far as the miracles themselves are concerned, there is no particular reason why anything else should fall if they do. Obviously I can tell a story that is perfectly true except for one aspect. And as it happens, miracle ingredients are particularly harmless in general. The super-natural is one of the most ubiquitous literary means to make stories more exciting, meaningful, etc. Again, I think the real issue here is a conflict between various assumptions that you make. Perhaps you think scripture has to work in particular evidential manner, and then miracles contradict this manner.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
This may be a difference twixt you and me. I do believe in God, but have more doubt about miracles. In your case, God appears to include miracles as part of the package.

That has nothing to do with "my case". If you do not believe in a God that can work miracles, then you do not believe in God. Arguably, you do not even believe in a demiurge then, because a demiurge would at least appear miraculous in its powers to us. At best, you believe in some kind of superman. That God can work miracles follows necessarily from what God is. Whether God did in fact work any miracles ever, and which ones when, is however a different question entirely.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Many I know are very skeptical about non canonical miracles. I'd be interested to know how far that RCC underwrites modern miracles.

In general, the RC Church's official actions are permissive rather than proscriptive in these matters. The point (at least with post-NT miracles) is typically that the Church is concerned with safe-guarding her official worship and liturgy against "enthusiasm". Official approval means that people can express their belief in something in Church, as part of Church, rather than privately. Look into Medjugorje to see an example of a typical conflict between popular enthusiasm and official reluctance playing out at the moment. And furthermore, in most cases (namely, the canonisation process) miracles play the role of evidence for something else, not the main role. In the end there the official decision is about declaring somebody a saint, not directly about the miracle. Though the miracles very much fed into the canonisation process, what is (supposedly) guarded by the Holy Spirit is the declaration of sainthood, not in the final analysis the (partly miraculous) evidence considered.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not paralyzed by skepticism, but on the other hand, I'm not gullible about everything.

You're right - skepticism is dysfunctional when it prevents commitment, keeping the skeptic forever on the edge of every community.

Preventing that dysfunction means living with the tension, feeling the doubt and doing it anyway in the knowledge that one could be wrong but it doesn't matter too much. There is no final exam with a 100% pass mark at the end of life.

What's really unhelpful to those struggling with doubt in this way is the whole business of reciting creeds, the requirement for public commitment to beliefs as a condition for membership. But perhaps that's another thread...

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:m

quote:
If you do not believe in a God that can work miracles, then you do not believe in God.

So here we disagree. I see no inconsistency in believing in a God who does/can not work miracles. To say that God can do all that is possible does not imply that all is possible - and it may be that suspension of natural laws may be impossible. Do you see a basic objection to this idea? Of course, such a God is not the God of the Bible, but that's only saying the obvious.

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
IngoB:m
quote:
If you do not believe in a God that can work miracles, then you do not believe in God.
So here we disagree. I see no inconsistency in believing in a God who does/can not work miracles. To say that God can do all that is possible does not imply that all is possible - and it may be that suspension of natural laws may be impossible.

On a related note, I have no doubt that God can perform miracles, but have some doubt that she does break the laws of nature that she herself created.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
IngoB:m
quote:
If you do not believe in a God that can work miracles, then you do not believe in God.
So here we disagree. I see no inconsistency in believing in a God who does/can not work miracles. To say that God can do all that is possible does not imply that all is possible - and it may be that suspension of natural laws may be impossible. Do you see a basic objection to this idea? Of course, such a God is not the God of the Bible, but that's only saying the obvious.

This is just my own viewpoint, not of my church as far as I know - but for me miracles are tiny bursts of how natural law worked before the taint of sin. What will seem miraculous now will not do so post-Judgement, and did not pre-Fall.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I see no inconsistency in believing in a God who does/can not work miracles. To say that God can do all that is possible does not imply that all is possible - and it may be that suspension of natural laws may be impossible. Do you see a basic objection to this idea?

Since God is the lawmaker of nature, your opinion implies that every natural law (or at least every natural law against which a miracle is claimed) is a logical necessity. Otherwise it may be the case that A->B according to normal natural law (i.e., by the typical will of God), but God can still transiently and locally imposes A->C as law of nature, so that C (the miracle) can occur after A during a specific time in a specific place.

Now, other than by pointing to a miracle it is not possible to disprove your opinion. However, I would say that the nature of natural law as we discover it speaks against this. We find for example that the law of gravity F=G*m1*m2/r^2 (Newtoninan version...) contains a gravitational constant G, the value of which is not constrained by the theory itself but derived from observation. (Actually one can also see the power of two as such a constant, etc.) And even if we can derive this from a "bigger" theory, then we find that this "bigger" theory also has such "constants" somewhere. There always seem to be some "knobs" which God could turn. Furthermore, we often find simplicity in adding actions. For example, if one force F1 is acting on an object, and then another force F2 does as well, the total force becomes F=F1+F2. There is no obvious limit to this. So it appears that God could easily add and subtract physical actions without thereby breaking the rest of nature. This is furthermore supported by localization, an essential feature of nature: it is often possible to describe a part of nature as "closed system", because communication between different parts of nature is often limited. Even in the "worst case", a localized change will never be seen outside the lightcone of that event. So there's a natural tendency of nature to "contain" things. It is not in fact easy for anything on earth to influence anything on alpha-Centauri, even though by the standards of the universe we are almost on top of each other.

In summary, nature as we have so far described it by science looks very, very much like something to play around with, even though we are only capable of playing along with it. I bet every scientist has "played God" by mentally adjusting this or that part of natural law and asking "what if" as thought experiment. This is a most natural thing to do. And I reckon that is the case precisely because for God the world is indeed a constructed thing, His creation.

This is no proof, but I do think that it is rather suggestive. Furthermore, one can ask the other way around: what if you were right? It seems to me that in this case God at most can act as a kind of ignition spark for the universe. After that all just follows by strict logical necessity. In which case any sort of "personal" approach to God seems about as useful as courting an ignition coil. Christ certainly would have been quite wrong in His general attitude to God.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Of course, such a God is not the God of the Bible, but that's only saying the obvious.

It is hardly obvious that someone drawn to Christ rejects the God of the bible.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:
This is in danger of becoming a private conversation, and I will not take it amiss if you think you have said all you want to say.

quote:
It is hardly obvious that someone drawn to Christ rejects the God of the bible

It is easy to be drawn to somebody whilst seeing difficulties in giving your full allegiance. I just do not dispute that the miraculous is central to the biblical view of God, and obviously to Jesus' view.

I think the issue revolves around how big a place miracles have in your faith and life. For many christians, who solidly believe in them, they actually don't have such a big place. Their life revolves around their personal and corporate spiritual life and in most cases obvious miracles will not be a big, if indeed any part.

You asked once if my problem is that I need to believe in miracles in order to believe that Christ is God, and I get the distinct impression that you don't. I would put it this way: my tendency to be skeptical about miracles makes it the harder to believe in the testimony of the gospels, and since these are the primary source of our information about Jesus, it sort of casts doubt on the lot. Hence my repetition of Nineham's comments that there's plenty of other things apart from miracles that are not easy to believe, such as redemptive suffering and moral perfection.

I fully admit that this skepticism is a gut-feeling and may well be a result of my early life plus my character. For what it's worth, I feel exactly the same about many aspects of science, even including the origin of life (though I have no intention of joining the anti-evolution lobby).

The only way I can see through it is to accept the accounts about the life of Jesus because of all the wider reasons that lead me to it, and just admit that the miraculous is not something I am never going to be all that comfortable with.

And I think it is the case that within the mainstream churches, there is no need to go to the fundamentalist view that every single miracle from Elijah's rod to Balaam's ass has to be taken literally.

Posted by Pre-cambrian (# 2055) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
This is just my own viewpoint, not of my church as far as I know - but for me miracles are tiny bursts of how natural law worked before the taint of sin. What will seem miraculous now will not do so post-Judgement, and did not pre-Fall.

As a matter of interest when did the Fall happen? Were dinosaurs, for example, living under different laws of physics, chemistry, life and death?

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Pre-cambrian, I think you're trying to apply a natural science perspective to what is really an aesthetic one. Jade's perspective has appeal because it informs us of what might have been and what we might strive for. It is not an objective truth, it is a truth about longing, about emotion, and it is aspirational. If we're only hard-headed about things, we never have vision, imagination and beauty.

I do feel sometimes that we're at a very low point with the arts, humanities and education. Where the cultural 'glue' has lost its stickiness and imagination is what we're told, not something we do for ourselves.

Posted by Pre-cambrian (# 2055) on :

As the claim seems to be that miracles suspend the natural laws of nature - or return them to a pre-Fall state - then asking the question from a natural science perspective seems entirely pertinent.

If Tracey Emin were to produce a half decent painting then considering miracles from the perspective of aesthetics might be valid.

Posted by Quinquireme (# 17384) on :

You might like to read "The Meaning in the Miracles" by Jeffrey John, which deals specifically with Christ's miracles as described in the Gospels. This was a real eye-opener to me, since it revealed hidden layers of meaning relating to Jewish history and OT culture, and shows how Christ comes out of and fulfils that tradition. My Theology teacher put me on to it. I find it actually more fascinating to understand these hidden meanings (and not necessarily believe Christ really performed the miracles) than just to think "Wow, did he really do that?" like some pre-Derren Brown figure.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I think the issue revolves around how big a place miracles have in your faith and life. For many christians, who solidly believe in them, they actually don't have such a big place. Their life revolves around their personal and corporate spiritual life and in most cases obvious miracles will not be a big, if indeed any part. You asked once if my problem is that I need to believe in miracles in order to believe that Christ is God, and I get the distinct impression that you don't.

Well, it depends on what you mean. Without the miraculous, I'm spending every Sunday worshiping some bread and some wine as God, really God. That would be ridiculous, to say the least. And while it is true that I do not really need any particular miracle of the gospels to be a follower of Christ, it is also true that removing them all would destroy a key vibe in the gospels. When I was young, I was much taken by Socrates as described by Plato's dialogues. However, I never thought of Socrates as of the Divine breaking into the world. God may be Wisdom, but wisdom is not necessarily Divine. Miracles act to bring the flat (human) story of Jesus into a (Divine) relief, they set Christ apart from merely the sages. So as a whole, rather than individually, I would say that I need them. Or perhaps needed them, possibly now I could continue without them - but that's because I now come from a place where Christ is firmly established as God in my mind.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I would put it this way: my tendency to be skeptical about miracles makes it the harder to believe in the testimony of the gospels, and since these are the primary source of our information about Jesus, it sort of casts doubt on the lot. Hence my repetition of Nineham's comments that there's plenty of other things apart from miracles that are not easy to believe, such as redemptive suffering and moral perfection.

And I continue to be suspicious about this. The mode seems wrong to me. This is not really a fact-checking exercise in the historical, journalistic or empirical mode. You are, or should be, asking religious, moral and philosophical questions here. That does not mean that the factual truth of the reported miracles is unimportant, but they cannot be important in quite the same way as if you are a BBC reporter trying to confirm a story. And whenever we go into the "if I accept this, then I have to accept that" thinking, it is generally the "that" not the "this" that we should worry about directly. If miracles are a proxy for other issues you have with the gospel, then you will not make progress by focusing on the proxy.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Quinquireme:
You might like to read "The Meaning in the Miracles" by Jeffrey John, which deals specifically with Christ's miracles as described in the Gospels. This was a real eye-opener to me, since it revealed hidden layers of meaning relating to Jewish history and OT culture, and shows how Christ comes out of and fulfils that tradition. My Theology teacher put me on to it. I find it actually more fascinating to understand these hidden meanings (and not necessarily believe Christ really performed the miracles) than just to think "Wow, did he really do that?" like some pre-Derren Brown figure.

I second that - brilliant if somewhat outdated book.

I am not really interested in whether miracles happened. What is more interesting is the 'meanings' for us today.

Posted by Quinquireme (# 17384) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Quinquireme:
You might like to read "The Meaning in the Miracles" by Jeffrey John, which deals specifically with Christ's miracles as described in the Gospels. This was a real eye-opener to me, since it revealed hidden layers of meaning relating to Jewish history and OT culture, and shows how Christ comes out of and fulfils that tradition. My Theology teacher put me on to it. I find it actually more fascinating to understand these hidden meanings (and not necessarily believe Christ really performed the miracles) than just to think "Wow, did he really do that?" like some pre-Derren Brown figure.
I second that - brilliant if somewhat outdated book.

Outdated? 2002 I think

I am not really interested in whether miracles happened. What is more interesting is the 'meanings' for us today.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:

quote:
Well, it depends on what you mean.

I'm really talking about miracles that act as signs, hence my term "obvious" miracles, maybe not such a good one. So it would not include sacramental action.

quote:
And I continue to be suspicious about this. The mode seems wrong to me. . .

Maybe it is the case that you approach the NT source documents in a way essentially different from me. Until I am satisfied of the truth of the gospels I cannot ask any questions about the deeper significance of them and I suppose I do view truth here as factuality, as a reporter would. If that is wrong headed then I need a lot of rethink.
Possibly miracles are a proxy, if so they are a proxy for "can I fit belief in Jesus within an essentially rationalist world view". And I know that's vague unless I define rationalist more closely. Maybe that's what I'm really debating. If you take the current rational zeitgeist, you are saying that you do not think the reality of the universe is really different from what I experience. If you accept the NT as it stands, it is clearly quite different, with the difference hidden from view most of the time.

Leo:

quote:
I am not really interested in whether miracles happened. What is more interesting is the 'meanings' for us today.

This is a real blind spot for me. I'd like a worked example, because I cannot see how there is a deeper meaning in something that did not happen. I think sometimes I'm a non-fundamentalist with a fundamentalist mindset. Not good!

[ 30. January 2013, 16:26: Message edited by: anteater ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
What's really unhelpful to those struggling with doubt in this way is the whole business of reciting creeds, the requirement for public commitment to beliefs as a condition for membership.

The Apostle's and Nicene Creeds which we are required to recite are as interesting for what they do not say as for what they do. For instance, the only miracle they mention is the Resurrection. They do not require us to believe, e.g. that Jesus made water into wine. But apparently, unbelievers have not been the only ones who had a problem with this story. What mental image of Jesus would provoke Swinburne to sigh, "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean: the world has grown grey from Thy breath"? Apparently too many preachers he knew balked at an implication that Our Lord approved of good food and drink. (One handbook even advised that the only question a preacher should discuss was the size of the water jugs.) So would we and the world be better off without this passage? Call me skeptical [Biased]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I'm really talking about miracles that act as signs, hence my term "obvious" miracles, maybe not such a good one. So it would not include sacramental action.

Miracles that act as signs is a rather good description of sacramental action. May I suggest that you meditate on Mark 2:1-12 though?

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Maybe it is the case that you approach the NT source documents in a way essentially different from me. Until I am satisfied of the truth of the gospels I cannot ask any questions about the deeper significance of them and I suppose I do view truth here as factuality, as a reporter would. If that is wrong headed then I need a lot of rethink.

Indeed. Let me put it this way: Is it wrong to read the NT in order to find information about the structure of government in the Roman world, in particular in and around 1stC Palestine? Certainly not. These are primary textual sources and they contain quite a lot of historically interesting and potentially unique information. Would that sort of study lead to conclusions about God, how to live a good life, etc.? Hardly. Arguably, such matters would be a distraction to the task at hand, namely trying to find out about ancient governance.

I do not have much time for postmodernism generally, but the one thing they did get right is their critique about texts and their meaning. It is just not the case that a text sort of stands for itself, dispensing its true meaning to anyone who merely reads it with an open mind. A text rather interacts with the reader, his knowledge, his intentions and his culture, and what it conveys to that reader depends crucially on that process of interaction.

So if you approach the gospel as a "BBC reporter", then you will find "BBC reporter"-style truths in it. Or falsehoods, as it were. Your eyes will however not be opened in a religious sense by that, even if you actually came to think that the miracles happened in a "BBC reporter" mode of thinking. The door will open, but only if you knock on it. You can't stare it down.

What I'm saying is this: Think about the spiritual (religion). Think about life (philosophy). Think about goodness (morals). Have these deeply and strongly on your mind, independent of the gospel. Indeed, go and read and listen and pray and meditate and talk to people and whatever else may get you into that mode. And then return to reading the gospels. Come not as the "BBC reporter", but as one of the three wise men. Then I believe you will find that the meaning of "this miracle happened" is different to you. Not that the facts have changed (it did, or it didn't). But you have changed. And I think you will find that what you consider to be terribly problematic now isn't so terribly important then. Other things will be.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:

Thanks. I'll try.

Wish me luck (as Calvin would say!).

Possibly to be continued but not immediately in this thread.

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