Blindseeker

Did God decide to become much less impressive in his miracles for some reason?

Well, the short answer is “we don’t know”. My dog does not understand my reasons, because my intelligence is far superior to his. The same way, I cannot understand God, who is infinitely more intelligent than me.

This does not forbid us to speculate and people have speculated for millennia. Maybe God did a lot of miracles because it was the time that the faith was established. In the Gospels, Jesus says that the Pharisees are guilty because they have seen the miracles and they have not believed. Of course, if you claim that you are the Son of God, some miracles come in handy to prove your claim (being the resurrection the ultimate miracle). By contrast, Muhammad was unable to produce miracles, even when he was asked to do to prove that he was the messenger of God (see Qur’an 2:118, 6:37, 10:20, 13:7 – attention! these are Qur’an verses not Bible verses).

But this is only a theory. At the end of the day, we don’t know. We only need to know three things regarding God: 1) God does exist 2) Jesus is the Son of God 3) The Bible and Tradition are the message of God. Anything that is beyond 1, 2 and 3 and is not contained in the Bible and Tradition, the good answer is “we don’t know”. You don’t believe 1), 2) nor 3) so please start with 1) and forget about 2) or 3).

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We have so many different miracle stories from different religious books, like those of the Buddhists or in modern days we have thousands of people witnessing Sathya Sai Baba’s miracles, although it’s easy to see that he was a fraud.

(First, although you didn’t like the tone of MPat, he is right that, as Catholics, we don’t necessarily deny the miracles of other religions. But MPat explained this well and I will not repeat it).

Each miracle case has to be analyzed by its own merits. Saying that all miracle cases are a fraud because many of them are a fraud is a fallacy. The existence of counterfeit notes does not mean that all notes are counterfeit. You have to analyze any miracle (from Christianity or from any other religion) by its own merits.

For example, when Muhammad was asked to produce miracles, he said that the Qur’an is enough miracle. This is something that we can investigate. Is the Qur’an miraculous? Spoiler: the Qur’an is a f___ mess, even in the grammar, let alone in the content. But you have to investigate the Qur’an by its own merits.

You can investigate more Christianity than any other religion because the resurrection is a historic event that can be investigated by historic method. If Muhammad spoke with the angel in a cave or Buddha achieved Enlightenment under the tree, there was nobody there (except Muhammad or Buddha).

But, as I said, this is putting the cart before the horse. If you don’t know if God exists, why should you investigate if Jesus is the Son of God? If you don’t know if the Amazons existed, why should you investigate who the Queen of the Amazons was? It makes no sense.

Peace and all the best.

[quote=“Blindseeker04, post:127, topic:580585”]
I didn’t say that because one is a fraud the other is too. I’m saying that you can’t establish the real one with similar levels of evidence that the fraudulent one has
[/quote] Sure you can…

It requires FAITH – of which e.g. such as the Jewish Leadership who rejected Jesus – do not possess.

IMHO – You evidence a complete void of understanding of what FAITH is…

You parrot the same inappropos ‘argument’ w/o realizing that it’s completely N/A

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I forgot to say one thing and it is getting late. Blindseeker, do not waste your life looking for a convincing case (as you define “convincing”), since there is none.

I think the existence of God is completely proven. Let say 100% of certainty (but you have to study the arguments: modern argument, thomistic arguments, etc). For me, the modern arguments have a 99.99% certainty (of course, this is a way of speaking) but the thomistic arguments have a 100% certainty.

But Christianity does not have this amount of evidence. These things cannot be quantified but, if you have not prejudices against the supernatural (you say that you don’t have but I am not that sure), the certainty is about 70%. This gives you a lot of room to doubt, if you are the doubting type (like me).

This is why faith is necessary. If we could prove Christianity like the Pythagoras theorem, we would not need to believe. We have to make a leap of faith (going from 70% certainty to decide to live as Christian). I did a leap of faith when I married. I could not be 100% sure that my wife loved me and that the marriage was going to be successful. But I had enough evidence to try it. Of course, many men got burned in divorce and all of them married thinking their marriage was going to be great. But each man must assess the evidence by himself.

Why should you waste your time looking for something that is not going to convince you? Whether you decide to be a Christian or a non-Christian, this is a complete waste of time. It is better to enjoy life.

What makes the Christian historical claim more credible? And all I’m getting is general answers about the possibility of miracles.

Read “Cold case christianity” by Warner Wallace and all these books

apologeticsguy DOT com SLASH 2011 SLASH 04 SLASH best-easter-books-resurrection SLASH.
(replace DOT and SLASH, since this editor does not allow me to write links)

We cannot explain a book in a combox. And, if we summarized it, it is not convincing enough.

Then, after reading the books, if you think the case is not “convincing”, you can rest in peace and forget about this topic.

Good bye, peace and all the best.

Blindseeker, now I see you are disingenuous. if you wanted to study molecular biology, you would use a book. Nobody owes you anything. If you don’t want to read a book, stop wasting our time. I don’t care if you believe or not. It’s your problem. My problem is not getting late.