What follows is a short account of the brief history of archaeology, with the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to speak, of the past decade. The critical question of this archaeological revolution has not yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it cannot be ignored. By Ze'ev Herzog.
Did you know that John Adams once called Thomas Jefferson an ATHEIST as part of his negative campaigning efforts? All these years later, that label still horrifies the good citizens of America and has the potential to ruin a politicians chances of becoming President.
There have been a lot of definitions of the word "Miracle." In the pre-scientific biblical past the term "signs and wonders" sufficed. This term referred to the extraordinary actions of their God. But in the Bible everything that happened was due to God's working. The only difference that mattered was whether events were ordinary (that is, occurred frequently, or frequently enough) or extraordinary (that is, didn't happen much, or not at all). For people living in this era anything was possible, so they could even pray for a mountain to be uprooted and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23; Matt. 21:21; Luke 17:6).
[As an aside: What is considered possible has changed with the advance of science. God is doing less and less as science progresses. And so too, believers are asking for less and less. Let that sink in. Rather than making excuses for your deity try reasonably explaining why this trend is the case.]
Based on the above considerations, my definition of miracle is not intended to apply to the period before the rise of modern science, since trying to do so creates many of the definitional problems. I think a good definition of a miracle is that it's a supernaturally caused extraordinary event, one that's scientifically unexplainable by natural processes alone. Any claim that an extraordinary event occurred requires more than just ordinary evidence before reasonable people should accept it. For the evidence required should be commensurate with the type of claim being made. So the more extraordinary the claim is then the more extraordinary the evidence required to accept it.
Ordinary testimony is sufficient to accept many claims of our experience. But when an extraordinary--out of the ordinary--claim is made, it demands stronger testimony, more evidence, and/or stronger evidence for it. Discuss.
I keep hearing a lot of talk these days about religious freedom. Apparently, many American Christians, even though they are in the majority, believe that they're being persecuted. I can't remember a time when atheists made these same claims. Atheists, in America at least, depend upon the separation of church and state to offer them protection. Yet, living as a minority in the Bible belt, I often feel that I'm expected to conform or shut up. And, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm being persecuted, I think that if most Christians were in my shoes, they'd feel deeply offended.
In a recent YouTube interview, evangelist Ray Comfort somewhat surprisingly admitted that certain things in the Bible — things like the talking snake and Jonah and the whale — are “crazy,” and even “intellectually offensive.” This doesn’t mean he’s becoming more enlightened: Comfort fully believes that the stories involved are veridical. However, he has an explanation for why these things happened.
I wish atheists would do their research before claiming I'm "totally wrong" about something. This stuff is quite disconcerting.
He isn’t in the details after all
“This is the day that the Lord has made,” so said the ancient psalmist (118:24), “let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The certainty that God makes things is firmly imbedded in the religious psyche. The apostle Paul was sure he knew what God was like, and the beginning of this wisdom could be found by observing the world: “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Romans 1:20). If you push most people of faith to explain why they believe in God, sooner or later you’ll hear, “Well, this world didn’t just happen. Someone had to make it!” And, of course, Genesis 1 tells how it all happened.
Sometimes we’ll even be reminded of William Paley’s famous 1802 analogy of a watch found on the ground, “while crossing a heath.” Of course the complicated timepiece had a maker, so how can we not see that nature itself—so much more intricate—must have had a maker as well? These days, of course, Intelligent Design crowd is in our face to push the fine-turning argument.
There are quite a few believers out there who argue that the existence of a Creator is obvious to all, and that the only reason atheists deny this is because they don’t want to submit to his authority. For those in this theistic camp — those who, as one might say, don this particular religious attire — God is evident from the world he created. As Romans 1:20 puts it, “his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” Furthermore, this supposedly explains why belief in some god or other is found in every human society.
Atheists, however, reject the Creator because they don’t want there to be divine judgement; they want the freedom to do as they please. Thus, they cannot accept the idea of a higher power with moral demands on them.
There’s as much cultural nonsense surrounding the idea that life is a gift as any other uncomfortable topic that human’s try to explain away in order to feel secure. After all, we came into this world without our consent and certainly weren’t handed a road map. From the first traumatic push through the birth canal, we landed in a situation not of our choosing. I contend that everyone is suffering from some form of PTSD due to the birth process alone, but when you factor in the total randomness of the lottery of birth, the deck really is stacked against many of us.
Atheists have for a long time pointed out that evil makes the existence of a perfect God at least less likely, and theists of course have attempted to explain why that is not the case. One interesting aspect of this debate is that, given the way theists argue, there cannot possibly be any amount of evil that would make their God less likely. Their answers to the problem of evil aren’t designed to account for a particular amount of pain and suffering, but for whatever pain and suffering there happens to be.
The free will defense, for example, says that evil is the result of the choices made by fallen human beings (and angels), and that is meant to explain away terrible things no matter how bad they are. The Holocaust, the Black Plague, cancer, atheism — all of these things and more can be blamed on us rather than on the all-powerful being in charge. (The buck has to stop somewhere.) Or consider soul-making theodicies, which argue that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (and, come to think of it, that even what does kill you makes you stronger). Or the view that it is simply a mystery why God allows pain and suffering, but that there must be some reason which we puny humans are too dumb to understand. None of these explanations attempts to account only for a certain amount of evil, but rather for any amount we might encounter. No matter what evil may befall us, we should remain confident that there is an all-loving God who has a reason for allowing it.
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. Matthew 19:21
Remember those stirring words? They were spoken by Jesus not me. So, don’t kill the messenger, please. I’m only repeating the words of a god. And, oh my, how hard those words hit home when our culture pretty well insists upon the complete opposite. Our standard of success is to live as big as we can. Kings and popes have always done so without so much as a pinprick to their conscience. The masses look upon them with envy. Whenever a common man raises himself out of poverty, he gains instant respect and notoriety regardless of how he managed to accomplish this transformation. We adore the rich. In fact, in the modern world being rich and living a lifestyle of obese opulence is touted as The American Dream. Ha! It doesn't matter that roughly 80% of all Americans are head over heels in debt.
