Miracles: Do they still happen ?
The local Interfaith Forum that I belong to discussed miracles the last time we met.
Speakers on the panel set out their own faith position and invited questions from the floor.
We had a Christian and an Islamic Speaker on the subject, and a Reformed Jewish Chair, and it covered some interesting points.
We learned that, from an Islamic Point of View, the Koran itself is considered miraculous, in that it is a Divine Revelation from God, owing nothing to human skill or knowledge. this is very different from the Christian perspective of the Bible that allows a certain amount of the human personality to speak under inspiration. Hence we see that Luke writes a more articulate and elegant Gospel than Mark - for Luke was a highly educated man of his time, and Mark wasn't. Hence, Luke's Gospel uses a wider vocabulary than Mark, who puts his Gospel in simple terms and is somewhat repetitive in his style.
The Koran, or Qu'ran, the Holy Book of the Islamic faith is held to be the highest example of Arabic literature that there is, according to our Islamic speaker, who is an Imam in a London Mosque. No one else has been able to replicate it, and Islam sets forth the challenge that nobody else could write such a book, even today. An interesting point.
The Christian speaker countered by saying that some of the claims made for Jesus in the Qu'ran derive more from the Apocryphal works than the canonical gospels, but also cited the many miracles that Jesus performed to show that He was the Messiah.
Well, I got to thinking " Miracles- do they still happen ? And what sort of miracles would we expect of a wise and loving Deity?"
The Jewish Torah, which is also known as the Pentateuch, are the first 5 books of the Christian Bible, which tradition attributes to Moses.
And I recall that the Fundamentalist Church of my youth was keen to point out that there was a lot of science in the Mosaic Law Code. For instance, anyone who was sick was kept apart from the community for 40 days. We get the word ' Quarantine from the Italian 'quarante'- because in the Italian cities, the rulers noted this Jewish practice and adopted it as a measure against the spread of contagious diseases. Also, a Jewish person was considered 'unclean' if they handled a dead body. And of course, shellfish and pork were off the menu, as they quickly spoiled in a hot climate. 'Divine Knowledge', the Fundamentalists claimed, 'obvious evidence that God was revealing things to His people unknown elsewhere'.
But was it really so marvellous?
Soon after this interesting evening, God took me and set me down in a holy place and showed me many marvels - either that, or coincidentally, I happened to be in the London Hospital Museum and saw how life was like in centuries past when the hospital first opened in the 1700s. Phrase it how you will :)
The fact is that people back then knew nothing of Germ Theory, or Antiseptics. And I reasoned, if there was any sort of God with any sort of compassion and Supernatural Savvy, surely He would have cut His people in on that one?
And what about farming and food production? God told the Israelites to farm the land and leave it lying fallow on the seventh year. Ok, but what about Rotation of Crops ? Again, this came along in more modern times and led to lots more food for lots more people. Statistics bear this out, that the population of Britain rose and the death rate fell, once we got a bit more enlightened, rather than being so religious..
Now, of course , if you are going to have a decent standard of living and a better way of life, it does help if you can read and write and count to ten.... And naturally, God, in His infinite wisdom gave Man not only the ability to talk, but also the art of Writing. For how else did Moses know what Adam and all the Patriarchs had done ? did he not copy down the colophons or documents belonging to each of them in Genesis?
Well, let us look at the Hebrew of the Torah and compare it to modern day English. Note that the Language that god gave to Mankind has no upper or Lower case, no punctuation of any kind in fact.
THE PRISONER SAID THE JUDGE IS A DRUNKEN SCOUNDREL.
Now, children, go take a few commas, quotation marks, and other punctuation marks see how much you can change the meaning of the words. Have some fun with that sentence, and then reflect.
Bear in mind that the Bible in your bookcase has had the punctuation added by the translator, who put it where *they* felt it belonged. Go change the meaning of any text you wish to by tinkering with the punctuation, see how much the meaning can be changed by simply applying punctuation in different places.
Islamic Scholars, BTW, will tell you that even when written down in Arabic,the Qu'ran is not ~really~ the Qu'ran. It only becomes the Word of God when it is spoken correctly. And The Qu'ran has been memorised to the extent that not only the words, but the intonation and inflexions in the text are memorised by the devotees. only then , when read aloud by someone trained in their tradition , does the Qu'ran become Holy Writ. This was interesting, I did not know that. The Qu'ran was written about 600 AD, I believe. And the Prophet Mohammed had got over a lot of the problems inherent in the Hebrew Bible, I have to admit.
But I also know that the numbers I have on my credit card are referred to as 'Arabic Numerals'. See, the Romans and even the Greeks and Hebrews used letters as numbers. I was 1, V was 5, and X was 10, for example. So 8 was written as VIII. The Arabs had a single figure for each number, and also a sign for zero. But, no, they never got this from Allah, they borrowed it for those godless, idol worshipping Hindus that they met in India. And they found these concepts so useful that they passed them on to us Europeans, along with Algebra and Alchemy and a whole bunch of other stuff we still use today, so we call them 'Arabic Numerals' !
So, there you have it. Most of the stuff that we use today is not given to us by the Hand of God, it is simply a product of Human Ingenuity. Zero, the Principle of Place, the Decimal Point - the foundations of modern mathematics and the very numbers that we use to count - it is all human ingenuity, not Divine Inspiration, that gave these to us.
Iron and steel, never mind aluminium, came first from ancient heathens and pagans - and then from modern day scientists who never consulted the Torah or any other Holy Text to smelt the ores. Cross pollinated crops - bananas, apples, carrots and many more foodstuffs - these are not what God gave us, they were selectively bred from vastly inferior wild stock to produce the things that we eat today.
Antiseptics, Anaesthetics, refrigeration of food - even the humble Zeer pot - these you will not find mentioned or used in any Ancient Holy Book. The Mosaic Law gives us a recipe for making incense for use in the temple, but not one for making soap in the home. What do you think proved to be more useful, more beneficial to the masses of humanity?
Yes, I am a Christian, in the sense that I was raised knowing its traditions. I can accept the idea that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher ahead of many in our time, never mind His own. But if we look for Miracles, the greatest miracle of all is the human brain, and many miracles flow from using it, and not on reliance on holy relics or ancient texts to understand and shape our world. Today, many in Western Society are rich, holding many possessions, but few principles. What the Great Teachers of the past have had to say on ethics and morals should be heeded, even today. But scientific research should accepted as the greatest provider of our well-being.
Speakers on the panel set out their own faith position and invited questions from the floor.
We had a Christian and an Islamic Speaker on the subject, and a Reformed Jewish Chair, and it covered some interesting points.
We learned that, from an Islamic Point of View, the Koran itself is considered miraculous, in that it is a Divine Revelation from God, owing nothing to human skill or knowledge. this is very different from the Christian perspective of the Bible that allows a certain amount of the human personality to speak under inspiration. Hence we see that Luke writes a more articulate and elegant Gospel than Mark - for Luke was a highly educated man of his time, and Mark wasn't. Hence, Luke's Gospel uses a wider vocabulary than Mark, who puts his Gospel in simple terms and is somewhat repetitive in his style.
The Koran, or Qu'ran, the Holy Book of the Islamic faith is held to be the highest example of Arabic literature that there is, according to our Islamic speaker, who is an Imam in a London Mosque. No one else has been able to replicate it, and Islam sets forth the challenge that nobody else could write such a book, even today. An interesting point.
The Christian speaker countered by saying that some of the claims made for Jesus in the Qu'ran derive more from the Apocryphal works than the canonical gospels, but also cited the many miracles that Jesus performed to show that He was the Messiah.
Well, I got to thinking " Miracles- do they still happen ? And what sort of miracles would we expect of a wise and loving Deity?"
The Jewish Torah, which is also known as the Pentateuch, are the first 5 books of the Christian Bible, which tradition attributes to Moses.
And I recall that the Fundamentalist Church of my youth was keen to point out that there was a lot of science in the Mosaic Law Code. For instance, anyone who was sick was kept apart from the community for 40 days. We get the word ' Quarantine from the Italian 'quarante'- because in the Italian cities, the rulers noted this Jewish practice and adopted it as a measure against the spread of contagious diseases. Also, a Jewish person was considered 'unclean' if they handled a dead body. And of course, shellfish and pork were off the menu, as they quickly spoiled in a hot climate. 'Divine Knowledge', the Fundamentalists claimed, 'obvious evidence that God was revealing things to His people unknown elsewhere'.
But was it really so marvellous?
Soon after this interesting evening, God took me and set me down in a holy place and showed me many marvels - either that, or coincidentally, I happened to be in the London Hospital Museum and saw how life was like in centuries past when the hospital first opened in the 1700s. Phrase it how you will :)
The fact is that people back then knew nothing of Germ Theory, or Antiseptics. And I reasoned, if there was any sort of God with any sort of compassion and Supernatural Savvy, surely He would have cut His people in on that one?
And what about farming and food production? God told the Israelites to farm the land and leave it lying fallow on the seventh year. Ok, but what about Rotation of Crops ? Again, this came along in more modern times and led to lots more food for lots more people. Statistics bear this out, that the population of Britain rose and the death rate fell, once we got a bit more enlightened, rather than being so religious..
Now, of course , if you are going to have a decent standard of living and a better way of life, it does help if you can read and write and count to ten.... And naturally, God, in His infinite wisdom gave Man not only the ability to talk, but also the art of Writing. For how else did Moses know what Adam and all the Patriarchs had done ? did he not copy down the colophons or documents belonging to each of them in Genesis?
Well, let us look at the Hebrew of the Torah and compare it to modern day English. Note that the Language that god gave to Mankind has no upper or Lower case, no punctuation of any kind in fact.
THE PRISONER SAID THE JUDGE IS A DRUNKEN SCOUNDREL.
Now, children, go take a few commas, quotation marks, and other punctuation marks see how much you can change the meaning of the words. Have some fun with that sentence, and then reflect.
Bear in mind that the Bible in your bookcase has had the punctuation added by the translator, who put it where *they* felt it belonged. Go change the meaning of any text you wish to by tinkering with the punctuation, see how much the meaning can be changed by simply applying punctuation in different places.
Islamic Scholars, BTW, will tell you that even when written down in Arabic,the Qu'ran is not ~really~ the Qu'ran. It only becomes the Word of God when it is spoken correctly. And The Qu'ran has been memorised to the extent that not only the words, but the intonation and inflexions in the text are memorised by the devotees. only then , when read aloud by someone trained in their tradition , does the Qu'ran become Holy Writ. This was interesting, I did not know that. The Qu'ran was written about 600 AD, I believe. And the Prophet Mohammed had got over a lot of the problems inherent in the Hebrew Bible, I have to admit.
But I also know that the numbers I have on my credit card are referred to as 'Arabic Numerals'. See, the Romans and even the Greeks and Hebrews used letters as numbers. I was 1, V was 5, and X was 10, for example. So 8 was written as VIII. The Arabs had a single figure for each number, and also a sign for zero. But, no, they never got this from Allah, they borrowed it for those godless, idol worshipping Hindus that they met in India. And they found these concepts so useful that they passed them on to us Europeans, along with Algebra and Alchemy and a whole bunch of other stuff we still use today, so we call them 'Arabic Numerals' !
So, there you have it. Most of the stuff that we use today is not given to us by the Hand of God, it is simply a product of Human Ingenuity. Zero, the Principle of Place, the Decimal Point - the foundations of modern mathematics and the very numbers that we use to count - it is all human ingenuity, not Divine Inspiration, that gave these to us.
Iron and steel, never mind aluminium, came first from ancient heathens and pagans - and then from modern day scientists who never consulted the Torah or any other Holy Text to smelt the ores. Cross pollinated crops - bananas, apples, carrots and many more foodstuffs - these are not what God gave us, they were selectively bred from vastly inferior wild stock to produce the things that we eat today.
Antiseptics, Anaesthetics, refrigeration of food - even the humble Zeer pot - these you will not find mentioned or used in any Ancient Holy Book. The Mosaic Law gives us a recipe for making incense for use in the temple, but not one for making soap in the home. What do you think proved to be more useful, more beneficial to the masses of humanity?
Yes, I am a Christian, in the sense that I was raised knowing its traditions. I can accept the idea that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher ahead of many in our time, never mind His own. But if we look for Miracles, the greatest miracle of all is the human brain, and many miracles flow from using it, and not on reliance on holy relics or ancient texts to understand and shape our world. Today, many in Western Society are rich, holding many possessions, but few principles. What the Great Teachers of the past have had to say on ethics and morals should be heeded, even today. But scientific research should accepted as the greatest provider of our well-being.