deleted help: Find what your heart so needs - Help.com

“A miracle is an event believed to be caused by interposition of divine intervention by a supernatural being in the universe by which the ordinary operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. The term is derived from Latin word miraculum meaning “something wonderful”.”

But really, miracles are nothing impossible. Miracle is when something what you desperatly need happens even when chances of it to occur are very low.
Are miracles evidence of existance of deity? I won’t answer this. Just try to pray to God when you need him. You will see.

Could be a miracle, could be a lucky break. Thinking of it as a miracle is a lot nicer, because it gives us hope that our prayers are heard and answered.

theresape wrote:
Could be a miracle, could be a lucky break. Thinking of it as a miracle is a lot nicer, because it gives us hope that our prayers are heard and answered.

Indeed. Also miracles doesn’t have to be ‘big’ things. If you ask God for a good day, and you will have one, it will be miracle. It maybe was caused my milion of factors, but eventually your day was good - like you asked for.

Verum Causa wrote:
So when someone drops dead for no apparent reason, that is a miracle too?

You are missing the point. Miracles are good. Death is not good.

Verum Causa wrote:
So when someone drops dead for no apparent reason, that is a miracle too?

I guess it depends on whether someone prayed for that or not.

Praying for death or any harm shall not work - God left us free will for some reason. Responding to such a pray would be interference with basic rights of our existance.

And healthy ppl don’t suddenly die. Find me one person who died but was PERFECTLY healthy in this time(excluding being crushed by truck/dieing in plane crash/etc) and you can continue holding to this argument.

People don’t die without a reason. He might have been poisoned somehow, his body might failed because of all sport he was doing…
You are saying like it was thunder from a sky which killed him…

Anything we don’t currently understand is ‘miraculous’. So, the fact that when I jump I don’t just float off into space… well, we call that gravity. While we know a good bit about how it interacts with things, we still haven’t the faintest clue WHAT it is, what physically transfers gravity. Well, since we don’t understand it fully, right now it’s a ‘miracle’ that I don’t just float off into space. Hopefully within the next year the Large Hadron Collider will exhibit the Higgs Boson (theorized mechanism for gravity/mass transferrence) and it will no longer be miraculous… it’ll be a function of particle physics.

Back in the day, a family being spared from the Plague… miracle. Today we would recognize however that more than likely their survival resulted from hygeinic habits beyond the norm for their time.

When my computer crashes for no apparent reason, I don’t assume that God struck it dead. I just assume that something went wrong that I do not fully comprehend.

Everything happens with a reason. If we can’t find the reason - we think about it in luck/accident case. Even if we find reason, but it happens when we need it - it might be miracle.

Verum Causa wrote:
So what happened to him is just what happened to him? And what happens to things just happens to things?

What alternative is there?

I can’t buy the logic of: “Anything that we can’t understand must be the direct intervention of God”. I get emails all the time telling me that ’so and so wants to have your strong *** tonight’. I don’t know how the emails get there… but I certainly don’t assume that it’s a sign from God that I need to give my strong *** to so and so tonight.

Exaca-tica-ly! Whether an event is positive or negative is fully irrelevant :)
The main point is whether you ascribe the unknown to ’supernatural forces’ or whether you attribute them to ’scientific principles as yet unexplained’.

Me, I pick science. Why? Because I’ve followed the proscribed practicum of several world religions and haven’t ever ‘experienced’ a higher power regarding faith, belief, or communication with the other-worldly.

I belive in science and in God. Yeah, it doesn’t negate each other. In personal life I asked ’supernatural Being’ for help many times, and thing that broke all hypothetical calculations happend. Enough big reason for me. Science is way to discover the world, while faith is way of keeping yourself mentaly fulfilled with knowledge that someone is watching you, someone Who you can trust.

Maybe.
But what if they were caused by a deity?

I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t know if it wasn’t neither.

Here comes matter of faith.

Science is the only way to ‘know’ anything. Anything not based on science is ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ (which truth be told is more powerful than science for many believers).

The only way to ‘know’ whether it is coincidence or not is through experimentation. Write down a list of things to pray for. Pray only for that one thing, for 7 consecutive days. Keep track of which things happen within 14 days of your first day of prayer.

Next, after gaining a record of how often 7 days of prayer works over a 14 day stretch… go through the same list of things that you prayed for. This time do not pray at all, just rub a lucky rabbits foot and wish for what you want to happen. Wish for 7 consecutive days, keep track of which happen within 14 days of the first day of wishing.

One thing to be careful about… make sure that what you are praying vs. wishing for is repeatable. Thus if you pray that person x falls in love… it is unlikely that you can wish it to happen as they are already in love. Also, when repeating a prayer/wish be certain the scenario is as close to exactly the same as possible I.E. you can’t pray for person a to be healthy, and then wish for person b to be healthy… since they are different people and have different immune systems/diseases, the results wont reflect actual prayer/wish power.

Things to test with prayer vs. wishes:

1) Pray/wish that a bird will land on your windowsill and peck on the window during the middle of the day. (be certain to spend the same amount of time in the room with both experiments to keep the chances of this randomly happening the same).

2) Pray/wish that you will find a $1 bill ‘magically’ in the bottom drawer of your dresser.

3) Pray/wish that your white socks will turn blue

4) Pray/wish that your shoe-laces break (again keep in mind the 14 day rule… results are only valid within 14 days of the first day of prayer/wishing.)

5) Pray/wish that you roll a 7 with a pair of dice 3 times in a row (be fair… only roll the dice once each day for the 7 days of experimenting. No re-rolling, count the dice as they lay wherever they end up.)

Great discussion you got going here, Verum Causa. I’m kind of jumping in the middle of your and Overlord’s discussion, but I agree with Overlord. This is totally a matter of faith. No one will ever be able to “prove” from a scientific standpoint that there is a diety OR that there is not. After all, very few things have been proven under scientific standards. I was reminded of that last night when my daughter asked me to quiz her in biology, and one of the questions was about the “cell theory,” which states that all living things are composed of cells and cell products. Under science, this is still a theory, because of the strict measure of proof required. Matters of spirituality will never be able to be proved under this standard. After all, wouldn’t you admit that you also have “faith” that there is no diety?

Coalesce, you can’t pray for things which are sensless. Prays are for things bit more justified. And seriosuly, what would be point of making your socks go blue? Rather try asking for something that can be useful for anyone.

Verum: blind faith is one of worst things that can happen to human. Faith is not about blind belief in God’s will. We should firstly examine matter from side of science, and than fulfill it with deity. Blind faith is same dangerous for mental health of person as living without any faith.

Interesting. . .but I doubt that very few persons who believe in God would say that all vehicle deaths were “chance, fate, luck, or the will of God.” Most of us understand that God gave us a brain, and expects us to use it. Using your example, He expects us to use appropriate safety precautions such as checking road conditions, using chains, and using seat belts. He expects us to look at things such as vehicle accidents to see how those deaths could have been prevented. Frankly, that’s one of my biggest problem with Christian Scientists is because God gave us the knowledge of the medical field to use to heal our bodies. Ignoring that knowledge and stating that you will rely solely on God to heal is folly, and I would go so far to say it’s disrespectful to God.

So, my approach to your example is to combine the views in the scenarios. For example, under scenario 4, I would thank God that her life was spared, but I would also want to know how and if it could have been prevented at all through safety measures. My faith coexists with my efforts to make things better through my own efforts. I live with faith, but I certainly do not assume that there is nothing I can do to prevent bad things from happening.

Also, I want to thank you for using such a respectful tone in your discussions on the topic. That’s not always the case with some - I’m afraid this type of topic often brings out the strident and obnoxiousness from BOTH sides, which is regretful since I think it’s great to discuss these things.

I’m afraid that I got tons of work to do, and I have to focus on it. Thank you for fair conversation, I hope to continue it somewhen. :)

of course not….miracles or no miracles….God exists….

… or not.

Verum Causa wrote:
So when someone drops dead for no apparent reason, that is a miracle too?

“In God’s eyes there is no such thing as an untimely death, even though in our eyes it certainly doesn’t seem that way,”

I don’t think so. with miracles and no miracles…..no questions about that….God exists in the hearts of man.