PLAYER57832 wrote: Gotta disagree with you in part, here.
First, a lot more things are predictable to people who are truly observant than we westerners tend to think. Example... did you know that few or none of the boat people died in that last big typhoon that killed so many?(cannot remember their tribal name, but they have lived on boats for generations in that area) They knew the signs.
BUT, also, according the Chaim Potok, among others, it would not necessarily have to have been those 9 rare events. The Sea of reeds is apparently fairly shallow, particularly during certain predictable tidal events. Further, the Jews would have been on foot, while the Eqyptians were in Chariots with horses. It is quite possible for people to walk where chariots would sink.
I see your point. I'm not really presenting miracles as evidence of God's existence, though. That's a matter of faith and predictably those who believe in God attribute miraculous happening to him. Those that do not, don't. Both may have been eyewitnesses to the occurrance, and interpret it's causes in very different ways.
Instead what I was going after was the validity of the claim that believing in miracles was precisely the same thing a believing in "magic". "Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic in the estimation of any sufficiently primitive observer" (I completely forgot who said it but it wasn't me originally). To write off miracles as impossible is to not observe the human condition very keenly. To deride them as "magic" is to either intentionally or unintentionally misunderstand both terms.
For me, a miracle looks something like this. I'm at a concert with friends and we're happy sitting back in the table's section with our pic-nic and wine coolers. We find that somebody in the group has three floor level tickets. We decide, as anyone might, that we'll go back to the nosebleed section and make somebody's night. At random, a friend and I pick a girl who's sitting alone and give her the tickets. Nothing special here at all, right? We decided to share something we didn't need. It's simple kindergarten morality here. The girl is stunned and say's "thank you"; we say, "you're welcome", then turn and head back to the picnic and merriment.
The next we see of the girl, she comes up to the table and says "thank you" once again, but this time tells us that we gave three tickets to a person who was there with two other people. Here husband and her brother. She then informs us that it really meant a lot because this concert was a last outing for them because they didn't expect her brother to live much longer. He was dying of kidney failure. It was our turn to be stunned.
It is certainly, as you put it, up to interpretation. Perhaps it was entirely random chance and perhaps we were lead to it. Not that my intentions were anybody's but my own, but that those intentions were guided to an area where they would be very keenly felt. Is it magic? Absolutely not, we didn't consult a Ouija board or use a divining rod; we just got off our slightly tipsy butts and walked a few hundred feet back to the most likely recipient we found. Is it evidence that God exists? No. Is it evidence that something can be termed a miracle that has nothing to do with magic? Yes.
PLAYER57832 wrote:But, I fully agree with your basic premise. WE, today like ot draw nice, neat distinctions between science and miracles that ancient people might not have. THAT might be the biggest reason why miracles "don't occur" today.
AND, sort of like the "chicken and egg" -- Did God tell us to do this because it is good for us, or do we say God tells us because on some level our teachers know it is good for us? ... it is a question without a real answer. It is a matter of belief.
I'd disagree that miracles don't occur. I think that rather they occur quite frequently. I, however, tend to see them as those times in which something more seems to be behind my actions. I've never turned a staff into a snake, and I'd probably be as skeptical as anyone else about the sight. I have awakened early on a weekend morning (quite uncharacteristically); gotten fully dressed in a big hurry; sat down on my bed wondering what was going on only to have the phone ring because my brother was terribly upset and needed me right then.
These are wild coincidences that we are free to interpret anyway we see fit. One would expect that everyone feels their own interpretation is the correct one. One would not necessarily have much to base a claim of lunacy of primitive backwardness on here though.
), I'm just curious.
There is no GOD. 
It may be even lower at CC. 
