[q]
Then we must concede that science cannot fully explain it. So if it's impossible to fully explain the natural universe, how can we hope to explain the supernatural?
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That's not actually what I said. What I said was that in order to explain such a thing, we don't need to explicitly model the entire universe but a sufficient subset of knowledge.
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Fair enough. But those characteristics, because they have a supernatural cause, will not be explicable by a natural cause.[/q]
That would depend upon the method of action. A truly supernatural cause would be indistinct from natural action, random or otherwise, because an observable miracle or 'divine act' is surely defined by observability.
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No; you're confusing "science currently doesn't know the answer" with "science cannot know the answer". Granted, it's not always easy (especially from a subjective viewpoint) to tell the difference, but the difference is there.[/q]
And you're assuming science cannot know the answer, which is an equally subjective viewpoint. The difference is, the former encourages active questioning and advancement to push towards that answer. The latter deters it by making the act of learning and exploration inconsequential.
[q]
The context of that passage is not a mathematical treatise; it's a description of temple artifacts. Strict accuracy wasn't needed; 3 is an acceptable "rounding off" of pi.
That passage isn't even making a proclamation (e.g. "Thus saith the Lord: The measurement round a circle shall be exactly thrice its span"). It's describing something a certain person did.[/q]
'And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about. ' I believe is the quote. This is the specification for the Great Temple of Solomon IIRC, which raises an interesting question as to why you would use a value known to be wrong as an engineering specification? Moreso, the point is that you cannot take the bible literally in this case; in order to accept it as true, you need to twist and rationalise it in some way, making assumptions about the meaning of the passage. As written, it is wrong. Only by interpreting it as an acceptable margin of error, or rounding, etc, can you square it with both what is known now, and what was known then (the Babylonians, for example, had pi to something like the 3rd decimal place).
[q]Well, over the internet is a far cry from seeing it in person. [/q]
Seeing it in person is a far cry from empiracal evidence. St. Elmos fire would be a divine manifestation if seen in person.
[q]He's a full-time missionary - his stories are about the only thing he can sell. He still has to make a living.
And if he was just a shyster looking to make a quick buck, why on Earth is he doing it in a third-world country? There's no shortage of televangelists willing to defraud Americans out of their cash, for example. Why go to Zaire?[/q]
He can cite millions of people seeing it, and say 'look, here's some documentation and believers', then flog a tonne of books. Being in Zaire (now DRC) would mean that it's easier to do it away from scrutiny, and a lot easier to get round tricky red tape - it's a country synonymous with corruption. It's also a country which is in a key area for missionaries (one of the few growth areas of Christianity IIRC, as the developed world tends to lapse), and one where - without wishing to sound insulting - decades of instability and conflict (and the resulting infrastructure damage) would leave a population both undereducated and more desperate for hope.
I mean, I'm pretty sure there are a hell of a lot of missionaries who don't need to release 12 books or so to live or do their job.
[q]
What sort of personal stake do I have in telling you this? [/q]
To go against it would be raise issues of your belief. If you take my position, where religious belief is a method of self-rationalisation enforced by societal status benefits, the last thing you'd want to do - subconsciously - is to leave it unjustified. You'd feel obliged to defend your position, same as I feel onliged to reply and actually try and cite some justification. It's a sort of feedback loop; without debating the veracity of a particular miracle or not, you want to believe in miracles because seeing miracles reinforces your belief, so you become more likely to see miracles. Is the sun coming up every day ultimately a miracle, or ultimately just physics? We all have our opinions.
It's like you say below with the whole 'open your eyes' or whatever type thing. Once you believe, you don't want to turn against what is a nice psychologal bulwark (this goes both ways, of course, and I'm not going to do a Kazan and say you're delusional or some ****e, because it's impolite and arrogant to make that presumption).
It's psychologically complex; where you see some miracle that reinforces your faith, I see something with logical holes that reinforces my doubt. It's highly subjective, no doubt. But I'm not going to assume I'm automatically right, that my view should be held higher than yours, and I'd ask you do the same and not assume that what you believe, no matter how right it feels to you, is right for everyone or anyone else.
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Well, compare that to people who try a diet for three days with no observable results and conclude it doesn't work. Or, if you thought there was buried treasure in your backyard, would you dig a few holes and conclude it wasn't there? Instant gratification nowadays has dulled us to the things that actually require hard work. [/q]
Strangely, it's the 'hard work' of observational results that convinces me there is no justification for organizaed religion beyond the socio-political. You can self-justify it by twisting round the Bible and God to explain the duality of interventional miracles and bad things happening to good people, but you have to want to believe in that justification in the first place. I see holes. That doesn't make me blind, it means I look differently. Not less. differently.
