I left the army in 1983 and went to work for a fellow that had a little shop that built backyard storage houses and decks. I’ll never forget the man. He was a fiery little fellow named Tom. Tom wore a neck brace. The result of an auto accident years before and he was unable to turn his head at all. He wasn’t able to do any building, but he could sure keep his crew fired up. Several months after I went to work for him, he began dating a movie star gorgeous woman that was a Christian and he began going to church with her…. At the time I had no interest in church. My interests were girls, guitars and beer. Not always in that order. I clearly remember the weekend that they left together to go out of town to go to a revival by a minister named Kenneth Copeland. I was left with my instructions and thought nothing of it. When Tom returned early the next week, his neck brace was gone and Tom was a different man. He was immediately fully active, bubbling forth with energy and worked circles around the rest of us. Tom did not hesitate for one second to tell anyone that would listen that he had been healed at this revival and we had better learn to keep up with his newly found energy. I left his employ not long after that to chase my rock & roll dreams. I have often thought I might try to look him up to check in on him but never have followed through. Nobody on this earth could tell Tom anything other than he was touched by the hand of God at that revival. And they weren’t just words. They were his conviction. We often hear of miracles and having been a Christian man for almost thirty years I cannot say I have ever personally witnessed or been touched by anything that I would call a miracle. But old Tom has always been in the back of my mind as a walking and talking recipient of what he was fully convinced was a miracle. So what say you? Do miraculous events take place in our world? Or are we hoping so deeply for miracles in an unforgiving world that we conjure them up out of our deep need to believe in something greater than ourselves?
I believe there is a bit of both. There are quite a few people hoping for something that is unlikely to happen. However, there are also unexplainable cases-like the one you just described. Maybe the answer was that he met the right therapist who was able to help him. But even then, something outside his normal grasp pushed him towards the solution.
Wow MD, this is one very difficult post for me to figure out how to respond to, but I'll do my best, as simply as I know how. We all have experiences in our past which form our beliefs, but none of us have had all of the different experiences that humankind has had in aggregate. As with alien lifeforms, I have no firsthand experience with miracles, but I believe in them because I have no basis for not believing in them. Simply put, we don't know what we don't know.
Simply because some folks don't understand something, they will call it a miracle. I don't know what happened to this guy, but I am a long way from calling it a miracle. This belief in miracles has been with us since the dawn of mankind. We have explained many miracles away simply by investigating the circumstances and determining the cause and effect. There are always those that will take credit for a what was perceived as a miracle. There are always those that really want to believe in miracles. They two groups were meant for each other.
Well, Joe. That was mighty flippant even from you…. The entire history of mankind is marked by understanding what we believed were miracles before we had an understanding of what we were truly witnessing. In my mind it is a true miracle that the moon orbits the earth in a manner that was perfectly set in motion to nurture life on this spinning rock…… Truly our education and understanding has leapt forward light years in the last century…… But have we reached the point that we believe that we understand all things now? Why can’t miraculous events happen that we haven’t reached the ability to understand yet?
Are we so self absorbed now that we refuse to think that something could possibly be greater than ourselves?
No, not magic Sky Daddies . . . just magic Fry Daddies, although I do wish you were merely a sticky figment of my imagination, sort of like gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe . . . just can't shake it!
You're saying the same thing I am saying. Once we learn the truth behind something, we generally stop thinking it was a miracle-at least some of us do. No one ever said that we understand everything. In fact, science is in the process of explaining much of what some considered miracles and that is what doesn't sit very well with the true believers. Those people that want to call everything they don't understand a miracle, and they don't understand a lot because they want to believe in miracles and magic beings. Miracles are just fantasy. The miracles in the bible are just allegory. Many things happen that we don't yet understand but calling them miracles to prop up the idea of sky daddy is never going to increase our understanding of them. Once something is declared a miracle, the idea that you can investigate it becomes blasphemy. If you want to believe in miracles, knock yourself out. I'll simply raise one eyebrow and back away slowly. Don't you find that all cultures sort of personify the idea of God in their own image? I mean, why is God, Jesus, and any other biblical character whitewashed to look like Northern Europeans? Why did the Egyptian Gods look like Egyptians? Why did Norse Gods look like Norsemen? Isn't it just possible that God didn't create us, we created God? Maybe that was the real miracle.
Maybe you just reinforced what I'd written previously. That religions were largely created by the insightful to rein in the indulgences of the unrestrained.
When I wrote that some months ago it was my evidence-based opinion, and it remains so. Mankind worships many different deities, and mostly ascribes to them the desire that we all treat each other respectfully. In every instance, concrete evidence of the deity eludes us. "That religions were largely created by the insightful to rein in the indulgences of the unrestrained" certainly seems to me the most plausible of explanation of all. Absent proof that deities do exist or do not exist, for you to ask that I support my opinion with a sliver of evidence is just being plain argumentative. My opinion stands, and I doubt you can come up with any better explanation.
I agree. It is your opinion. That's all I am saying. Your opinion is tainted by the beliefs that you were indoctrinated with to the point that you are presenting them as facts. They are still just your opinions absent of proof. I would just like to see the proof you have of this statement, That religions were largely created by the insightful to rein in the indulgences of the unrestrained. It seems to me that you are touting history here without supplying any proof. History actually happened. Can you prove that religions were largely created by the insightful to rein in the indulgences of the unrestrained.
Does evidence of a higher power count, when I am still vertical and present, despite and in contradiction to, your heathen desire that this not be so?
Driving across the state and this comment stays burned into my mind….. Just been thinking that calling my God a “sky daddy” is much akin to me stating that higher education is simply a platform to indoctrinate young minds into the way popular current culture feels they should think….. Were I to make that comment (and I have not), it would be little more than rabble rousing on my part…. Just sayin’…
It is a worthwhile exercise (for me) to contemplate a world without a conscious or subconscious belief in any higher power. Humans do not have the absolute discipline and self control to exist in such a world. The absence of a conscious or subconscious belief is the very soul of Chaos.
JN is myopically focusing only on the understanding of what is and what isn't, and not on the benefit of belief in something that may or may not be real. Wrong? No. Short-sighted? Yes, absolutely.
Would like to see more coverage of research into how people manage to undergo a belief system change to live free of superstitions. Too many of the social obstacles we run into are caused by belief in the supernatural.
I can help you. The research already exists. Visit and live in China, Japan, Vietnam, or South Korea, then visit and live in North Korea. Your are welcome.
Obstacles? My house of supernatural belief feeds on average twenty hungry/displaced families a week. The grounds host little league baseball teams entirely free of charge or any supernatural impositions. We also host the largest frisbee golf course in the area. Again always open and free of any constraints whatsoever……. I suppose you would argue the government could do a better job of offering all those facilities? Well, it took the government a week to get water into New Orleans after Katrina…… I think my little house of supernatural belief doesn’t host any social obstacles at all.
