Thread: Believe in miracles and you'll believe they happen

Just as I have written at the bottom of my post.
I will see it when I believe it.

I don't truely think these are miracles. They are heavily influence people who are so condition to they see what they want to see.
There are usallly so engrossed in their beliefs that in manifests into greater things.
Much like the other topic you & I were discussing.
People who believe in Gosts see them. People who don't, don't.
So do they show themselvs to the believers?
I would give our consistant misperceptions and our capabilty to enlarge our capacity to engross our imagination a more likey scenario.

perception creates reality man... remember there is no spoon, they just think there is

Wake up to reality, man.

Conditions, conditions...and more conditions.

A teacher of mine once said a long while ago in the course of a history class (and I remembered this particularly well): one's faith rises when circumstances are bleak and weary, and drops when one's life turns for the better.
Shortly put: belief is there when it's needed. That is a result of observations and logical deductions I've made, indeed.

That's an excellent observation, Merlock. I knew that I would like most of your posts!

I think that fluctuation of belief is true for a lot of people. However, I think I have met one or two whose beliefs are strong - usually belief in themselves - even in successful times, which helps to speed them on to even more wild success. They don't appear satiated.

Economists debate something called "diminishing marginal utility of money income," which states that each dollar you earn, after a point, is valued less than the dollar earned immediately before that one. Even further, they debate whether or not these measurements of utility are comparable across people, despite the fact that they are nigh impossible to measure in the first place. For example, that an extra dollar earned by Warren Buffet would not be worth as much to him as an extra dollar earned by a grocery bagger. These two assumptions essentially underpin our society's justification for redistribution of income, although it is well known amongst economists that this is far from measurable fact. Who's to say that Warren Buffet doesn't utilize every single one of his dollars the same, or that you don't for that matter? Personally, i think that only you can say for you.

Very interesting point. That is definitely a topic. It makes me so angry that children aren't exposed to it and therefore don't discuss it in elementary education. Some people take it as a matter of fact that diminishing marginal utility of money income is true for everyone, but the very people who do not take it as true are likely to have all the money!

Sorry. What a tangent. Just a hugely interesting social question for me.

Ethan Allen (1738-1789)
American Revolutionary

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.
-- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784)


It's as if the dead are posting in this forum and I am channeling them. Only better.

You know, this reminds me a lot of my "Being Open Minded" thread. In there, my main concern was that something like this could happen to an observer trying to be scientific. ie. in trying to investigate something with personal experience, one comes to believe that it is possible (which in some cases, belief may be a requirement for "success".), further causing the delusion that it has actually happened...

Essentially, while I'm sure that this isn't the explanation for every reported paranormal phoenomenon, it certainly does seem quite possible. Personally, I'm inclined to think that belief in something makes it infinitely more likely that such a thing will be percieved to occur.

Now the interesting aspect of this is the issue of the "placebo effect". I personally think that belief in something can cause extrordinary (but still not "impossible") things to actually happen. We don't fully know just yet what the mind is really capable of...

Yeah, Khaz, your thread prompted me to read up specifically on atheist literature.


The placebo effect is just a blanket term to describe the healing of illness due to causes other than the medication being tested. It could be anything - exercise, diet, a chance encounter with some chemical, who knows.

I've wrestled with the concept regarding the paranormal also, and its extrapolation into there is unwarranted.

Say I go outside and try to control the wind with "aerokinesis." I do two trials, one where I hold up my hand and another where I don't. And it just so happens that the wind moves both times, whether I hold my hand up or not. Theory says it should work with my hand extended because that's what it's like in the movies. That means there's a kind of placebo effect happening when I don't have my hand up. Except that this whole thing is potential bullcrap, because I don't know if was I who moved the wind in the first place or if it was... well, the wind.

There's no evidence for it outside of a biological testing setting. It's definitely important for our continued understanding of health. Our medical culture is too centered on illness, when in reality there are probably a lot of complex automatic cures taking place in people when they simply do things like a lead a healthy lifestyle, mentally, physically, socially and emotionally. The health care industry has not matured enough to serve us in those combined areas. Holistic medicine is characteristically naive.

Sure, some people who go to Deepak Chopra's center cure themselves of cancer, but what about those that don't? Can we immediately say that they were just not doing the paranormal stuff correctly? Absolutely not - not unless we claim to have a mastery of what that paranormal stuff is and, if we did, it probably wouldn't be paranormal.

To sum, I think Kim said it best in one of these threads. I'm paraphrasing. "Don't go into something believing it is crap. Emotion has no place in the observation. For me, Emotion gets to come out and play at the wildass party you throw afterwards."

Okay, maybe I'm not paraphrasing and I keep a small stack of KP quotes nearby at all times.

Originally posted by Ex Nine
Ernest Renan (1823-1892)
French historian

\"No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them.\"
-- The Life of Jesus (1863)

As quoted from www.positiveatheism.org


That is, after all, exactly what the spiritualists and occultists tell us. Believe in miracles and you will think that you see them happening. Absolutely spot on. Atheists concur.

this historian quoted was a Free Mason. And then again, whenever has a French Intellectual ever flinched from lyijng if it would help him to score a polemic point?

We have plenty of instances of Modern Skeptics witnessing miracles. The greatest instance was in 1917 in Portugal, then in the throws of a secular Socialist Revolution well after over 200 years of Intellectual Influence from the Skeptical French Enlightenment, that is, such thinking as we see in the above mentioned French Historian. What we had in Portugal in 1917 was the Most Spectacular Miracle in Human History. After some six successive Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, in Fatima Portugal, once each month, in October occurred the cresendo with the Miracle of the Sun. 75000 People witnessed it in the Field of Fatima, but it was observed over 500 Square Miles by people who had not intended to be involved. many of the people who witnessed the miracle had been intellectual atheists, of deep European Anti-clerical tradition who had gone to hoot and deride the superstitious old ladies who would believe such 'rubbish'. yet they themselves witnessed what had happened. It all quite let the air out of the Portugese Socialist Secular Revolution.

Lourdes France likewise has a scientific community that believes in miracles, and this in the very land of Voltaire and Diderot -- the Stronghold of European FreeMasonary. The Organization of Doctors started out to debunk the Miracles of Lourdes and ended in being the Organization which certifies them.

One famous Atheistic Miracle involves a Jewish Atheist of Paris who published articles ridiculing the so-called Miraculous Medal which was coined in Paris of the 1830's, perhaps during some of the most Skeptical Years in French History. Indeed, during the Revolution of 1830 Citizens were receiving Community Awards for having murdered Bishops and Priests. Anyway, on a dare, this particular Atheist consented to wear a copy of the Miraculous Medal around his neck for a stated period. As coincidence would have it he went with a friend to keep a meeting at the Notre Dame. Waiting in one of the side chapels, suddenly the entire Cathedral disappeared and he found himself in an open meadow where he had an audience with the Blessed Virgin Herself who had come to vindicate Herself and Her Medal. this Atheist subsequently went through all the trouble to convert to Catholicism and become himself a Priest.

So, that French History was writing in 1892, was certainly entirely full of crap. Any educated person should really know better, or must be intentionally lying.

1863 actually.

Secularism was and still is in its youth. I don't expect people to just drop everything and say they don't believe in miracles. They will no doubt be tempted to believe in them again.

Incidentally Leo, I don't think those are miracles. I know what's possible without the use of a miracle, and those events are pretty tame. If God is as big a guy as we say he is, I'm going to be looking for something a bit larger than a district of Portugal. Something larger than Portugal actually. I'm also going to be looking for something a bit longer than a momentary vision. Something that lasts longer than any human life span would be good. Jesus wasn't even around for a measily three and a half decades.

"it is not the belief in miricals which brings fruit from them, it is faith in them"

cd

cd27, have you seen this yet? It's free.

http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23152

ah...no i have not. thank you for this. i will study it deeply.

cd

I think there is truth in that if you believe in something it will happen.

It is scientifically proven that optimists live longer than pessimists.

I you believe you can succeed in something you are more likely to succeed in it than if you don't believe. You will never go to the lengths required to make it happen if you don't.

I don't believe miracles don't exist. I believe there could be a scientific explanation if only science had progressed to such a level as to comprehend it. But western science hasn't discovered everything - if it had we'd already be colonising other planets and we'd have the cure to all diseases.

A miracle is basically an occurence we don't understand. So naturally, once we understand the paranormal, it's not exactly paranormal anymore