Timeline for What should a rational person accept as a miracle?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 4, 2011 at 16:07 | comment | added | Chad | @user179700 - The word is CAN not will. Just because it is possible to explain it doesnt mean that we WILL ever understand it or be able to explain it. | |
| Aug 3, 2011 at 21:49 | comment | added | user179700 | @Chad I have no clue what you mean. You wrote, “The rational mind knows that everything can be explained.” Then you wrote, "I never said that we would be able to expain it." Is explain not an act? How can one possibly 'know' that everything can be explained if there are things not unexplained? | |
| Aug 3, 2011 at 19:02 | comment | added | Chad | @user179700 I never said that we would be able to expain it. And DI is an explanation. And even if it can be explained that does not mean that we will understand the explanation. The problem here seems to be that rationality is equated to right and irrationality is equated to wrong. You can be rational and be wrong and irrational and be right. | |
| Aug 3, 2011 at 18:02 | comment | added | user179700 | @Chad I get past your “The rational mind knows that everything can be explained.” We know no such thing. In fact, we use terms like “may never understand the Universe”. I do like your point about ‘surrender to the inability’ (Newton did), and your point about how in a created Universe everything is possibly miraculous. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 14:46 | comment | added | Mitch | Oh, OK, I was unintentionally ignoring the part about 'If you can show...'. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 14:38 | comment | added | Chad | @Mitch - As I said, "if you can prove or even show rational cause for belief in the divine intervention" then certianly. However saying it is divine intervention just because we do not have another explanation is not rational any more than saying it is the work of a magical invisible unicorn. Faith does not require rationality. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 14:24 | comment | added | Mitch | 'Process we do not understand' can cover divine/mystical/magical/ESP-like things to the same degree that it covers, say, rainbows. Before Descartes (and really afterwards too), it is somewhat simpler to posit that a benevolent personality 'willed' its existence (paranoia is sometime right for the right reasons (if you're a mob boss). How does gravity work? We know some of its properties scientifically but it's a 'miracle' that it can work at a distance, and it is scientific and rational to ignore the gaps in our knowledge about it to determine other properties. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 14:05 | comment | added | Chad | @Mitch if you can prove or even show rational cause for belief in the divine intervention then certianly. However unless you can show rational cause for that belief that choosing to ascribe it to divine intervention is irrational. It is much more logical(rational) that there is some process we do not understand that is the cause. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 13:51 | comment | added | Mitch | I don'[t think you can unequivocally say 'beyond rationality'. If a miracle is 'a transgression of natural law by divine intervention', then in some sense, the 'divine intervention' is a catchall exception to whatever rules exist so far (the 'god of the gaps', I think is one way of saying it). -That- is not particularly satisfying scientifically (or theologically), but it is rational. | |
| Aug 1, 2011 at 13:39 | history | answered | Chad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |