Mother Teresa

[Drakona]

Seemingly everyone had stories of what they saw as super-natural events. But I still remember as a younger person, realizing that in the majority of those stories, the miracle wasn't something unexplainable... the miracle was that someone acted in a way that went against the norm and followed the example of Christ. (E.g. It wasn't the coincidence that a church member received some assistance on the exact day they needed it; the miracle was that another person recognized the need, and took their own time/money/skills to fill it.)

It is pretty common for Christians to attribute as miraculous things that can be more reasonably explained by coincidence. It's partly a question of what your probabilistic threshold is. There are folks who think every time the bus comes late on the same day they do, it's a miracle and God did it just for them. And then there are folks who will brush off Daniel 8 as a lucky guess. It's my opinion that the rational path is neither superstition nor skeptecism, but understanding when the probabilities well exceed the expectations.

There are people all over the theological map on this front, as I'm sure you well know. Some folks deny that miracles can occur at all today, while others say that certain miraculous signs are essential marks of salvation. I disagree with both views.

Contrary to the first, my opinion is that the lack of supernatural involvement in the daily lives of Christians is a sign of our spiritual impoverishment. To quote A.W. Tozer,

If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference.

I don't think this is how we were meant to be--slogging along in secular lives, serving a physically impotent God and waiting for a hope far in the future. It is right to emphasize that our salvation is spiritual, but it is wrong to confine our interaction with God to that. Richard J. Foster writes of his study of prayer this way:

I took the Gospels and cut out every reference to prayer and pasted them onto sheets of paper. When I could read Jesus' teaching on prayer at one sitting, I was shocked. Either the excuses and rationalizations for unanswered prayer I had been taught were wrong or Jesus' words were wrong. I determined to learn to pray so that my experience conformed to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words conform to my impoverished experience.

He goes on to detail his experiments, concluding that our poor prayers result from our childish maturity. I agree wholeheartedly.

Contrary to the second, some people develop an indecent fascination with all things supernatural and see them as the ultimate in spiritual experience. But they are not. When this happened to the Corinthians in Paul's day, and they esteemed speaking in tongues beyond all reason, Paul rebuked them and told them to practice love. A single act of charity is worth more than all visions and all knowledge; we are not called to be magicians, but to be righteous and to be free. I do think your emphasis on personal transformation as the true miracle is the right one.

But I really don't see how people can hold the first position at all. You simply cannot read very far in the Christian devotional masters--even the modern ones--and deny the existence of miracles. It's simply too common and too broadly attested.

Testiculese, I don't really want to argue the validity of specific anecdotally reported miracles. You can't share my experiences, and you shouldn't accept my reports since you can't independantly examine them. My point was that miracles don't have the effect on faith that people would expect--using myself as an example. Whether what I observe is real is irrelevant to that point--since I think it's real, it's valid to share my self-reflections on the impact to my faith.

That said, I'll give a brief outline of why I don't think your explanations work in my particular case--just so that you don't feel I've evaded your points.

Either *everything* is a miracle, or nothing is. There no more miracle in childbirth than eating food and going to the bathroom.

Praise God that little Amy was cured of her disease, and praise God that 10,000 people starved to death a few thousand miles away. Praise Jesus your house was spared in the fire that ravaged the town, so praise Jesus the other 29 burned, right?

Miracles everywhere. Or maybe, only the ones you want to see.

I think what you intend to describe is a selection effect sometimes refered to as publication bias. The idea is that only interesting results are published, and sometimes noise is coincidentally interesting. When someone reading the literature sees only the lucky cases, it looks like there's a result when there really isn't.

Here are the features of anecdotal miracles that do not match a publication bias hypothesis:

• For publication bias to work, the more unlikely an event was, the more frequently it should be repeated. In my experience, miracles are only rarely reported publicly, and people generally forget about them quickly. It is not as though the same examples are trotted out again and again--for instance, that story about the lady from high school? To my knowledge, this is the first time I've ever told it. Ever.
• For publication bias to work, things have to be reported in the first place. People are very shy about reporting miracles. They're often highly personal, sacred moments, and on top of that, people are just afraid they'll sound like freaks. At least, where I hang out that's true--there are places where people have the opposite problem.
• Christians are not shy about talking about unanswered prayer. They'll rationalize it, they'll moan about it, and some will say, "Why, God, Why??!" three times an hour.
• With publication bias, we expect many more near misses than hits--and that they get reported to bolster the case. I don't see a lot of near misses at all. You can put this down to exaggeration (plausible from your perspective, but laughable from mine). This is what I was talking about with the bi-modal distribution.

When a Christian begins a sentence with "God told me to . . . " they follow it either with something absurdly stupid or exactly, eerily, right.

50-50 seems a pretty abysmal success rate for Mr. All-Powerful.

Heh, well the obvious implication is that I think the first 50 aren't really hearing from God . There's a lot of innocent tomfoolery out there, and not a little charlatanry either. But that's beside the point. What I was describing was an experience that looks bi-modal to me--lots of far misses and lots of dead on hits. You know as well as I do that chance successes don't generate a distribution like that.

Your Pastor wanted Warhammers and got some. And last Christmas, 5000 kids prayed for a bike and didn't get one. Hmm...not a good ratio.

Actually, given that it was a fairly obscure and specific request (I think even the colors came out right), even given your numbers, the ratio is still good. The critical concept here is one of probabilistic resources. If you win the lottery once and lose a hundred times, you're still probabilistically way, way, way ahead. You have to lose several million times before you're even again.

But your numbers are frankly wrong--and this is where my experience will diverge from yours. If I saw one or two spectacular requests answered a year, a few near misses, a lot of "I guess I can make that mean something"s, and a vast ocean of nonsense and nothingness, I'd be as skeptical as you are. And I understand that give your worldview, you have to believe this is what I'm seeing--and have to persuade yourself that I'm delusional or something. But the fact of the matter is, this is not what I see.

Let's run some numbers on the story I told from high school. Sandy and I had a year to hang out, and she called me once--in the few hours I needed a friend the most. In retrospect, that was the most dramatic moment of that school year, so let's say I'm not fudging the identifying circumstances. The odds on that are 356 to one. And actually, she called in the morning--afternoon wouldn't have been as good. Let's give her 500 to one.

And moreover, she claimed to have been praying and been told I needed to talk.

Had she called at the wrong time, we would have had the following conversation:

Sandy: Hey . . . do you need to talk?
Me: Uh, no, not really. Why?
Sandy: Are you sure? Because I was praying and thought you really might need to talk.
Me: Hmm, that's odd. Well, let me think of something. <<Comes up with something, but it's hardly the event of the school year.>>

For the odds to even out, I would have had to have that conversation 500 times. Or, if not that specific event, similar events. For reference, 500 times between now and then is once every two weeks. So I would basically have to say it was constantly happening.

You know how often I've had a conversation like that?

Never. At least, not that I can remember. Certainly not anything like constantly.

On the contrary, it's the miracles I see once a month or so, and the false positives that stick out like rare sore thumbs. The numbers very, very, very quickly fail to add up.

My ex is a sweet girl who has cystinosis (extremely rare form of Cystic Fibrosis I think). She will die before 35. . . . She believes in God. God skipped over my ex's house to give your Pastor some plastic action figures, and you actually call that a miracle.

I am sorry for your suffering and hers. I realize that figurines and phone calls must look like cheap plastic imitations of miracles when what you wish for is real healing.

Nonetheless, I wish you could hear yourself. What you write reads to me like an argument from anger. There is rational content, but when you examine it, it's weak--it boils down to the idea that God doesn't do big miracles when, by your reckoning, he has every reason to. No one, not even the greatest saint, can tell God when he should act and when he should not; an argument from a reckoning of what he should do is extremely baseless. And in no way invalidates observed small miracles.

It reads to me like an argument from spite or anger. Your girlfriend is every bit as faithful and charitable as my pastor, and if God will give him toys and won't heal her, well then he just can't be any sort of God worth serving. I don't have the space to respond to that here, but in a nutshell, you don't understand how God works; the child may be angry with his parents' decision, but that doesn't mean his parents aren't real and aren't good.

From my perspective, the presence of God is indisputable. The experience is common--virtually universal--in the church. Across denominations and cultures, across maturities and moral backgrounds. 80 year old grandmas, brilliant engineers, and unconventional, skeptical hip hop artists describe the exact same thing. Indeed, its absence for one saint only highlights its reality: she knew what she was looking for, and she knew it was missing.

When we are born, we instinctively have a place in our brains for an "all-knowing, all-loving being". When we are young this being is called a parent, and children naturally and instinctively bond to their parents. What if a large number of people never outgrow this phase, and need to fill this place in their brains with something once they have left their real parents and moved on? In other words, what if this place in the brain remains into adulthood for many people, long after it has served its need, and people feel lonely unless they fill this place with something? Having an "all-knowing, all-loving" invisible friend would be an obvious thing to fill it with. They've been told that there is one to fill it their entire lives by priests and parents. They've all filled their hole with what they were told at 2 years old and up. God being god, should have a hole the he fills, and everyone should know what it feels like. Everyone. Let those that do dismiss it, but it would be there. For Mr. All-powerful, it should be there, and with ease. Mother Teresa should have never had to doubt it.

I'm not quite sure where you're going at the end of the argument--I'm with you up until the last two sentences. But before that, it sounds like you're suggesting that the need for a greater, loving being is one imprinted on us in childhood, part of the same love we have for our parents--and something some of us fill with myth as we get older.

I don't mean to be derisive, but this sort of argument is a Just-So Story. I presented the fact that Christians all share a common experience of the presence of God, and you came up with a story that expains that bare fact. Of course, anyone can do that with anything--how the leapoard got his spots or how the elephant got his trunk. A long story to explain a simple fact--not a whole system of facts, and not a well-tested story--is just a spurious explanation. This is a poor tactic--it doesn't actually demonstrate that the presented fact is invalid; it just sets up a long chain of facts and counter-explanations all waiting to be knocked down like dominos.

But to deal with the story on its own terms, I was arguing that the existence of a common experience reinforces to me that it is real. "Not so," you say, "it could be something inherently human and genetic/psychological." Well, I suppose it could, but given the following common characteristics, that's one helluva subconscious we've all got.

• Unspeakable joy
• Deep peace
• Unusual rational insight: People often percieve answers to puzzling theological or personal problems in a flash.
• Inaccessible knowledge is revealed: The eerie "God told me to . . ." moments are almost always precipitated by prayer in this sense.
• Unusual ethical insight: People discover things they've been doing wrong they had previously been unaware of.
• Unusual self-honesty: People discover lies they have told themselves.
• Unusual ethical character: People stop wanting to do evil and are irrevokably changed in an instant.
• Occasionally accompanied by visions and voices.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You can explain all that--your belief system forces you to. But the Just-so Story usually breaks down--you have to adjust it and tinker with it every time I introduce new details. Instead of a clean, "It's a nurturing instinct", we end up with "Well, I think there's a psychological component and some people are exaggerating and you personally are a little bit delusional and might need to go to a doctor and there's some selection bias and that accounts for about 95% of it at any rate and I can't be bothered with the rest." Instead of one Just-So Story, we have five--and they don't seem any more likely from my point of view than the first did.

You show me a few people with amputated limbs that grow back and I'll meet you at church!

No, you wouldn't. That was my original point. You think you would now, because it happened, but miracles are no different than any other sort of evidence. Honestly, if someone prayed over your ex and she got better? You'd explain it away. Or you wouldn't. You might be impressed for a day, you might show up at church that week. But months would go by and God would make demands of you, and the people in the world that suffer would still be suffering and the things that make God seem so impossible now would still be there. And in the end, nothing would change unless you wanted it to.

I can't be as nice as Testi or Foil... forgive me.

To believe what you see as miracles that you directly attribute to God makes you one of three things. A liar, privileged, or religously delusional and I do not believe your a liar. So, do I think that a God has allowed you and your husband special privilges that he hasn't given to me, my dad, my priest, Mother Teresa, and everyone else I know? No, I do not so that leaves the latter. Your lucky in a way, you overcame a personal barrier and taken it to be the truth which gives you the comfort that I don't see from the people struggling in church.

No, that's not unkind. I usually come out of these discussions with some sort combination of stupid/insane/lying, and I understand--given your viewpoint, you really don't have a choice. Of course, from my viewpoint, I have very good reasons to think your assessment is incorrect.

Oh, and do you really think that the absence that Mother Teresa felt for her entire adult life is evidence that God exists?

In a roundabout way. It's evidence that what she experienced and called the presence of God earlier in her life is at least a real experience and not a pretention. The fact that she could identify it and was forced to find it missing--despite all expectation and with no explanation--is evidence that it is real. She didn't inherently have it, she couldn't conjure it, but she could identify it. Mental illness might have those characteristics, but at least make-believe doesn't.

It's not a sufficient argument for the existence of God, but it does move religion from the "hogwash and baloney" category into the "mental illness" category. Which in my opinion is a good thing. "Mental Illness" is farther from the truth, but lies break down and move farther from the truth when they bump up against reality.

The gospel is inherently polarizing--a Christian is doing things right when everyone considers him an absolute angel or a vile demon or an insane fool. I start to worry when everyone considers him a reasonable, stable fellow of decent character who never says anything upsetting.

[Jeff250]

I would add to publication bias a confirmation bias, which is a type of cognitive bias. Publication bias affects what information you see, whereas confirmation bias affects how you interpret it, except you can't respond to a criticism of a confirmation bias with a sentence beginning with, \"But from my experience...\", since the nature of the criticism suggests that your experience is already tainted. Of course, the criticism can easily be spun around on whoever is making the accusations. But this is why it's important to have things like scientific studies that reduce the subjective elements of human experience as much as possible, since we can easily mislead ourselves when we are talking about subjects like miracles.

Other than that, there are a few things that I'd like to say about miracles. One, it seems to me that \"miracles\" only happen with the improbable, not the impossible. Consider medical miracles. I realize that \"improbable\" and \"impossible\" can be fuzzy terms, especially in medicine, but with something like cancer, the doctor gives you odds of survival, whereas with HIV, you have no odds of survival. This is the distinction I'm talking about, and I think that we can all agree that it's a very real one. So why do we only see \"miracles\" involving things like cancer, but nobody is ever miraculously healed of HIV? It seems like miracle stories are about unlikely events, but they are never about things that we would truly label impossible (like being healed of HIV). This is what we would expect to see if most or all miracles were a phenomenon of bias.

Secondly, I think everyone experiences moments of great serendipity (as well as the opposite) from time to time. I've never thought to attribute that to the divine, though. Human culture has reflected on these moments for quite some time. We have a lot of folklore covering it, and we have some effective words to describe it too. Maybe God is performing miracles for most everyone, but that seems to go against a lot of religious understanding. But this is also what we would expect to see if perceiving miracles was some phenomenon of human experience.

Lastly, I think it was Mobius who would say something like, unexpected things happen all the time, but that's to be expected. Sure, suppose that the odds of your pastor praying for and receiving those plastic toys was 1 in 1000 or whatever. And yes, he would have had to have received 1000 toys that day for his odds to have gotten decent. But if this seems miraculous, then I think it's because you're not looking at a big enough picture. Once the picture is large enough, everything averages out. What's so special about that one prayer that we should focus on it and not the other thousand forgotten and unanswered prayers? At the very least, we shouldn't be putting so much emphasis on any one story of a miraculous prayer. In fact, we should be putting hardly any emphasis at all on any one story if we're trying to make a case for miracles. What we need to analyze is the greater picture. Of course, that's difficult, thanks to biases.

[Foil]

[Note to moderators: I think maybe the discussion of miracles in this thread needs to be split from the original topic about Mother Teresa.]

It's my opinion that the rational path is neither superstition nor skepticism, but understanding when the probabilities well exceed the expectations.

I can appreciate the way you approach it from a logical/statistical perspective, and how you feel your observations don't fit a random-chance/no-divine-intervention model. You're certainly correct that your bi-modal observations of "dead-on unexplainable" and "way way off" phenomenon doesn't fit a random distribution. However, I think you have to admit some bias in your interpretation of the data, just as I have my own bias.

For example, your argument about publication bias was dependent on your observation that Christians are less likely to 'report' miraculous events. However, my observation has actually been the opposite; I grew up in a church culture where I saw people claim self-involved things like their team winning or the traffic light turning green when they got to the intersection as miraculous, on a regular basis. I have family members who talk about everything in terms of divine intervention, almost as if nothing can be attributed to human kindness or evil. I believe true miracles exist, and I believe I've witnessed them, but my personal experience is that God usually works through people and circumstances, not outside them.

That said, I have to admit that my observations aren't unbiased, either. The church and family culture I grew up in heavily influences the way I see things, just as your own background influences your observations. And that's exactly why I'm not sure a statistical/probabilistic approach based on one's personal observation is really convincing.

The approach I would prefer to take is to try to look outside my own observations, to the motivation of the person telling the story about the miracle: Is it selfish, or for attention, or to try to prove something? Or is it truly focused on God's interaction?

God skipped over my ex's house to give your Pastor some plastic action figures, and you actually call that a miracle.

What you write reads to me like an argument from anger. There is rational content, but when you examine it, it's weak--it boils down to the idea that God doesn't do big miracles when, by your reckoning, he has every reason to. No one, not even the greatest saint, can tell God when he should act and when he should not; an argument from a reckoning of what he should do is extremely baseless.
...
I don't have the space to respond to that here, but in a nutshell, you don't understand how God works; the child may be angry with his parents' decision, but that doesn't mean his parents aren't real and aren't good.

I don't think you should dismiss Testi's point so quickly with the "God is sovereign, so we can't be the judge of the value of His choices" argument. You're right, it points back to the question "If God is loving, why is there so much pain?" (recent thread); we both believe in a God who cares but who we have to admit we don't always understand, especially when He allows evil to exist in our world.

However, I think Testi has a valid point about the difference between a soverign loving God who we just don't always understand, and a sovereign capricious God who is capable of caring about action figures but not a person's health. We assume God is the first, a loving God, but the evidence often points otherwise, especially if you include the existence of miracles, because those miracles don't happen for everyone. I think we have to acknowledge that this is probably the single toughest issue for any of us to reconcile, not just Testiculese and Bettina.

You show me a few people with amputated limbs that grow back and I'll meet you at church!

No, you wouldn't. That was my original point. You think you would now, because it happened, but miracles are no different than any other sort of evidence. Honestly, if someone prayed over your ex and she got better? You'd explain it away. Or you wouldn't. You might be impressed for a day, you might show up at church that week. But months would go by and God would make demands of you, and the people in the world that suffer would still be suffering and the things that make God seem so impossible now would still be there. And in the end, nothing would change unless you wanted it to.

Agreed! Even unexplainable things are still filtered through the eyes of the observer. That's why I think it's important to realize that personal interpretation of miracles is often skewed by one's perspective (and that includes me and my sometimes-skeptical perspective).

The gospel is inherently polarizing--a Christian is doing things right wheneveryone considers him an absolute angel or a vile demon or an insane fool. I start to worry when everyone considers him a reasonable, stable fellow of decent character who never says anything upsetting.

Well, my wife probably sees me as an angel, demon, and fool at various times, so I guess I'm okay by this definition.

Edit:

What we need to analyze is the greater picture. Of course, that's difficult, thanks to biases.

Of course, I believe my biases to be the most reasonable and correct, as does everyone else about their own. It's good we have a forum where we can discuss our various perspectives openly.

[Zuruck]

Always liked Mother Teresa...definitely a woman I'd give cab money to after a good railing.

[Kilarin]

we both believe in a God who cares but who we have to admit we don't always understand, especially when He allows evil to exist in our world.
...
However, I think Testi has a valid point about the difference between a soverign loving God who we just don't always understand, and a sovereign capricious God who is capable of caring about action figures but not a person's health. We assume God is the first, a loving God, but the evidence often points otherwise, especially if you include the existence of miracles, because those miracles don't happen for everyone. I think we have to acknowledge that this is probably the single toughest issue for any of us to reconcile, not just Testiculese and Bettina.

Yes, Exactly. It's a tough issue.
I spoke in <this post> about how I feel it all ties in to the story of Job. I'll copy (and slightly modify) two paragraphs from there for those who don't feel like digging back into the 2005 discussion.

My son had a problem with a Lazy Eye. One eye was weaker than the other and would start turning in and pointing at his nose. The Doctor explained that if we didn't fix this, and soon, his vision would be permanently affected. The first step in the treatment was eye patches. Every day, for several hours, my son had to wear a special eye-patch bandage over the strong eye, so that the weak eye would have to work harder and grow stronger. Ever try to explain future benefits to a toddler who only has a vocabulary of a few words? My son wasn't stupid, and he, in his toddler wisdom, knew that sight was GOOD, and every day his daddy was taking away part of his sight for several hours. It was very simple logic that what was happening to him was VERY BAD and there was nothing daddy could do to explain it to him otherwise. And believe me, I TRIED. But he just couldn't understand. It's not that I didn't want to explain, just that he didn't have the CAPACITY to understand. It finally came down to: "I'm your dad, you KNOW that I love you, you are just going to have to trust me."

It was this experience that suddenly started making the book of Job make a whole lot more sense to me. My grandmother died slowly from Alzheimers, in pieces. It's not a pretty way to go. After the brain degenerates beyond recognition, the body starts failing part by part. By the end I was praying that she would just go ahead and DIE so the misery would be over. That didn't seem much to ask for, not even a miraculous healing, just a painless death. And yet it dragged on and on and on before it finally, thankfully, ended. I had a similar experience with my grandfather who died of cancer, slowly. Now I know, I KNOW intellectually, that there are good reasons why God can't step in and interfere every time I want Him to. I have completely rational reasons to trust God and to believe that he has my best interest at heart. Rationally, I understand about free will and choices and sin. But emotionally, I'm just like my son. All I see is that something bad is happening, and it would be SO easy for God to fix it, so why doesn't He? Can free will really be that important? Is it really worth it?

I want an answer, but the answer I get is the same one that was given to Job, and the same answer I gave my son. "There are things on this earth that you don't understand, and I can't explain them to you. You've got LOTS of reasons to trust that I have your best interest at heart, so you are just going to have to trust that the same is true in this case as well".

If God is the omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe, it should not surprise us at all that we don't understand everything he does. The gap between me and an omniscient God is FAR greater than the gap between my son and I. Similar misunderstandings should be EXPECTED.

[Lothar]

Different people have different ideas about what qualifies as a miracle. On one end of the spectrum, you have those who believe every green light is a miracle from God and every red light is a curse from Satan. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who see Jesus feed thousands of people with only a few bits of food and still demand that he show them a sign. I've seen things I would consider miraculous -- people praying for healing who have been healed (my sister's church prayed for her eyes, and she threw away her glasses. I wanted it to be false because I thought her church was a bunch of nuts, but her eyes really did get better.) But then, others have prayed for healing and not gotten it. Kids praying for new bikes do no better than those who ask Santa. I can see why arguments about this sort of \"miracle\" don't get very far -- a little luck, a little bias, doctors or parents working to bring about exactly what you're asking for, and enough others who don't get what they prayed for, and it's easy to write it off as just coincidence.

Talking about \"green light miracles\" and \"Santa miracles\" won't get us very far. But there is one class of miracles I've experienced that I think is very, very hard to dismiss. The \"God told me to\" miracle takes this form:
1) start with a person who worships the same God as I do and is serious about it. (I don't have to agree with them on every theological point. They can be Jewish, Catholic, Fundie Baptist, etc.)
2) They are praying, and receive some sort of message or instruction.
3) They follow the instruction or act based on the information in the message.
4) They see the result. Without fail, it's something impressive.
Growing up, I came from a background that said miracles could happen, but they probably won't since God doesn't work that way any more. But the more I see things of this nature, the more convinced I become that God is specifically acting.

Here's a list of examples:

• (my wife missed some key details in this story when she told it.) A guy walked into my church with a box of warhammer figurines. He said to the pastor \"I was praying and God told me to give these to a church, so I opened a phone book, found the first church listed, and brought these here.\" As it happened, they were the exact color and type of figurines the pastor's son wanted for Christmas, but the pastor couldn't afford because he hadn't been paid in a while due to the church's financial difficulties. (My wife mentioned the pastor praying, but forgot to mention the guy who gave the figurines had prayed and been given such specific instruction.)
• A guy walks into the store, nervously walks up to a lady, and says something along the lines of \"God told me to go to [exact store] and find someone who looked like [good description of her] and give her [specific amount of money], so here you go.\" The guy was obviously uncomfortable -- it's not like he did this sort of thing all the time. It just so happened that the lady was in a rough financial time, and the money was just enough that she could pick up the two things she really wanted and knew she couldn't afford: a winter blanket for her kid and a certain Christmas gift for her husband. (The items, on sale, cost almost exactly the amount she'd been given.)
• Drakona's dad was supposed to be meeting with some friends. They moved the meeting to someplace he'd never been, and nobody called to tell him. He shows up at the house, nobody is there. He prays. God tells him to get on his motorcycle, and gives him turn-by-turn directions to the place. He goes inside, doesn't see anybody he knows, thinks maybe it was just wishful thinking. God tells him to go inside again and look to a specific corner of the place. Way in the back, there's the group. Somebody asks him \"how'd you find us? I was supposed to give you directions but I forgot.\"
• A guy is driving home with the groceries he bought with the last of his money, and is praying as he drives. God tells him to give the groceries to \"that guy\" who he just drove past. He argues with God -- \"no, I'm not giving away my groceries, I need to eat.\" Eventually he decides he'll do what God told him -- only, by the time he gets back to where the guy was, the guy is long gone. No problem -- God gives him turn-by-turn directions to a house where he finds \"that guy\", and gives him some groceries. The guy had been praying for food to feed his family, so that's good, but our first guy now has no money and no food for his own family. The next day at work, a coworker hands him some money and says \"I was praying and God told me to give you this.\" He recounts the above story, and his coworker said \"yeah, I figured it was something like that.\" (Not \"unbelieveable\", but \"I figured\"... because this sort of thing is so common!)
• My wife's story about the lady praying, having God tell her to call, and calling at basically the only time of an entire year when my wife needed to talk to someone.
• One couple prayed separately about how much money to give to the church each week. They regularly came to the same conclusions. One week God told both of them to give away all of their $20 bills. They got all 20s from the ATM, so this was a huge amount of money for them. The next week God told them to give everything that wasn't a 20. They were thinking it wouldn't be much since they'd hit the ATM again, but found they'd broken every single 20. At this point, rent was due in a couple days and they were way short. Out of the blue, the dude's brother shows up, and asks if he still owns some stuff (a chainsaw and I forget what else), and offers to buy them for exactly the amount they were going to be short on rent.
• When I first started posting here, I really annoyed a lot of people. Drakona was among them. We'd chatted a bit, but also remained somewhat distant. One night, we're chatting and arguing and I feel like she's holding something back, so I ask her to be more honest with me. She starts reading a poem she'd written about me titled \"I hate that man\". My inclination was to say \"well f*** you\" and leave, but I had this strong impression that I should stop to pray. I did, and I heard what I can only describe as a booming whisper, which clearly spoke one word: STAY. So I stayed, even though I really didn't want to put up with some b**** on the internet talking about how much she hated me. An hour later, her emotional and mental state completely transformed. You all know how that story ends.

Again, these all follow the pattern of a person who I respect religiously, who is praying and gets some sort of specific instruction, follows through on it, and sees the results. There are no doubt other things that would qualify as miracles, but these are the sort that I think are most impressive and hardest to deny.

A common claim is that these stories are invented, fabricated, or friend-of-a-friend stories that have been exaggerated in each retelling. But the people who claimed to have experienced these things are all morally excellent people, not the sort to invent stories just to look impressive. These were all first-hand stories when I got them, and I can vouch for the character of everyone involved. Even ignoring the stories I got from others, you have one from me and one from my wife.

So maybe the stories are true, but I just need a bigger sample and I'll find they're outliers. Not so -- I've asked around for other people's stories of the same sort, and I've specifically asked for any \"God told me to... but it turned out badly\" stories. I've found the results fall into these categories: (1) \"something totally awesome happened\" , or (2) \"I don't know what happened after I left\"*. You don't have stories where God tells someone to give their blue and white Warhammer 40K figurines to a church, and the pastor's kid wanted green Dungeonscape figurines. You don't have stories where God tells a lady to find the guy in the red baseball cap standing on third street, and eventually she gives up and talks to a guy in a black cowboy hat with a red bandana over on second avenue. You don't have stories where God told someone to go to the store, they went to the store, and it was just a normal grocery trip and then they went home. You don't have stories where God told someone to go to the store, they got mugged along the way, and it really sucked and they try to rationalize it as \"God was teaching me to treasure every moment\". You don't have stories where God told someone something that didn't work out, but maybe he really meant it symbolically, and if you interpret it through the right lens it kinda turns out neat. You don't see near misses, stories that have to be fudged, stories that are only minorly cool, or stories to rationalize away. All you see is correct instruction and clear guidance.

* when Drakona spoke of the bi-modal distribution, she was referring to \"something totally awesome happened\" as one cluster point, and \"treating happy emotion as confirmation from God\" as the other. The specific criteria I laid out require information, not merely a peaceful feeling, so I've already eliminated that cluster point.

So, perhaps it's a mental illness, or a \"God gene\", or something like that. But these reports are coming from people who I know to be well-adjusted, socially functional, intelligent, and so on. These aren't coming from that nutjob on the back of the bus, or from the bipolar lady whose meds got mixed up, or from somebody who's totally wasted and seeing visions. They're coming from people who show no signs of insanity whatsoever, except for the fact that they say God talks to them. And the information and guidance people are receiving is often specific, original, and not something they could've known (or would've done) otherwise. You don't hallucinate turn-by-turn directions that actually get you to where you wanted to be. You don't hallucinate that there's going to be someone wearing a specific outfit in a specific spot at a specific time, and then find the person actually does need exactly the thing you thought they needed. You don't fight an addiction for years, and then hallucinate a voice saying it's over and find that it really IS over. Perfectly sane people don't just randomly hallucinate things that consistently turn out to be true and impressive in even minor details. If all of your \"hallucinations\" turn out to be right, they're not hallucinations.

It's possible to explain my list of \"God told me to...\" miracles away, but in my experience, the end result involves making claims like \"Lothar and Drakona are big fat liars\", \"Lothar and Drakona are the most well-adjusted and articulate CRAZY PEOPLE I've ever met\", and \"Lothar and Drakona suck at math and they don't understand statistics\". Those are incredibly bad arguments, but for some people, they're easier to swallow than \"God exists and sometimes talks to people.\"

-----

To go back to Drakona's original point: given everything I said above, you'd think faith would be an easy thing for me. If I've really been a part of miracles, and really had God give me an order that led directly to me getting married, then believing God would be entirely rational for me. So why do I need faith, when I have evidence? Because faith is not, as Birdseye suggests, \"believing something you don't have evidence for\". Rather, faith is the triumph of reason over emotion. The evidence I have points clearly and undeniably to God... but sometimes I get scared, sometimes I get selfish, sometimes my emotions pull me away from what I know is true. Sometimes my emotions make me ignore things I know are true. Even in the face of the miraculous, I have a remarkable capacity to say \"yeah but...\" and go my own way. Jesus' apostles had the same problem -- they'd see Him feed thousands of people with a tiny amount of food, and the very next day they'd worry about not having enough to eat. As one song puts it, \"troubled times have a way of clouding your memory.\" Forgetfulness, even of miracles, is the greatest enemy of faith.

[Kilarin]

incredible post Lothar.

faith is the triumph of reason over emotion. The evidence I have points clearly and undeniably to God... but sometimes I get scared, sometimes I get selfish, sometimes my emotions pull me away from what I know is true. Sometimes my emotions make me ignore things I know are true. Even in the face of the miraculous, I have a remarkable capacity to say "yeah but..." and go my own way. Jesus' apostles had the same problem -- they'd see Him feed thousands of people with a tiny amount of food, and the very next day they'd worry about not having enough to eat. As one song puts it, "troubled times have a way of clouding your memory." Forgetfulness, even of miracles, is the greatest enemy of faith.

Exactly! misunderstanding the basic concept of what Faith means is one of the biggest problems both inside and outside of the church.

[Foil]

Well, it appears I agree with Lothar & Drakona more than I initially thought. Their examples are the very type of divine intervention that I see as fitting the term \"miracle\". Personally, it's not a stretch for me to believe that God speaks (often quietly, in that \"quiet voice\" the Bible describes); what amazes me and what I consider miraculous is when people listen and follow what voice, even when it seems insane, or when it costs something on their part.

Now, I'm still skeptical of some types of miracle claims, specifically those that are self-serving. As has been said, \"God turned the light green so I could make it to the party on time\" and \"God helped my favorite baseball team win\" are questionable at the very least. I'm also still skeptical of the statistical approach, because my observations don't really match those posted by Lothar & Drakona (for example, I have seen a number of \"misses\" where people mistakenly thought they were hearing from God, typically when people felt they were supposed to give a \"message\" to someone).

That said, I have to give a hearty \"Agreed!\" to the description of faith as the triumph of reason over emotion. Faith in a God who acts in the lives of people isn't valuable because it's counter to science or experience... faith is valuable because it fits what we know about God's character, and it fits what we've seen God do in the lives of people even when our emotions/feelings run counter to it.

[Sedwick]

From my church bulletin:

A Message from Fr. Jim . . .
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
There has been a great deal of focus these past weeks on a newly published book about the life of Mother Teresa, now officially
known in the Church as “Blessed Teresa” following her beatification by Pope John Paul II in 2003. In this book Mother Teresa is
described as a person who a times in her life felt confused, frightened and anxious over feelings of a lack of strength received from
the presence of God in her life. She experienced moments of “dryness” and “torture” over her lack of faith.
Of course, there was immediate criticism from those who reject the existence of God or organized religion. It was “more of the
same hypocrisy” that others who represented God and the Church have demonstrated in the past. I am sure those who expressed
these sentiments no doubt are referring to a man named Peter who first deserted our Lord and then denied Him three times. Or
maybe they are referring to a woman named Mary who wept at the tomb of Jesus because she was convinced that someone stole
his body. Or perhaps those critics are referring to Jesus Himself who cried out as He hung upon the cross, “My God, my God!
Why have you abandoned me?” (The beginning of the words of Psalm 22 which is a Psalm about one’s sufferings ultimately giving
praise to God the Father.)
The truth of the matter is that God never leaves His people. As Jesus hung upon the cross His Father was with Him, which gave
Him the strength to endure human suffering so as to come to the glory of His Kingdom. St. Peter, in his humanity, allows fear to
overcome him for a while. However, Jesus knew this would happen and still chose him to be the head of His Church. Mary Magdalene
in her grief could not comprehend all that Jesus had foretold about His rising from the dead. For Peter and for Mary and for
countless other followers of Christ, including Mother Teresa, there were and are moments of doubt and confusion. There are very
few people, if any, who can say they fully comprehend the workings of God in our world and never experience fear. What is important,
however, is to remain faithful during the times of spiritual darkness. St. Peter did not abandon the Lord; he gave the rest of
his life in service to the Lord. Mary Magdalene did not abandon the Lord; she went to announce the good news of the resurrection.
People can become saints because of what they do during those moments of doubt and confusion. With all of the pain and suffering
that she saw and experienced every day, Mother Teresa could have easily walked away from it all and said, “let someone with a
stronger faith do it.” Instead, she continued to do the work that was asked of her. Mother Teresa did not abandon the Lord. She
was a light for others. She lived and worked for the poor, not only to be an example to other people, but mainly because she cared
for the poor, the underprivileged and the dying in response to Jesus’ call to “love one another, just as I have loved you.” Mother
Teresa’s life was an example of love. And it was this love that became a light for the world to see. It was this love that moved
people so deeply. Mother Teresa once said, “If God has given me all that I have and am, apart from my sins, how much do I dare
keep for myself?” Even in the midst of her “dryness” and torture” Mother Teresa asked herself this question over and over again.
Her answer was demonstrated in the way she lived her life.

[Jeff250]

It's possible to explain my list of "God told me to..." miracles away, but in my experience, the end result involves making claims like "Lothar and Drakona are big fat liars", "Lothar and Drakona are the most well-adjusted and articulate CRAZY PEOPLE I've ever met", and "Lothar and Drakona suck at math and they don't understand statistics". Those are incredibly bad arguments, but for some people, they're easier to swallow than "God exists and sometimes talks to people."

I once had somebody who had 7 years of education in Physics tell me that he believed in astrology. He gave me a similar list of impressive-sounding anecdotes. He was an ethical person, and he was fairly bright too. But what could I say? All I had was his anecdotes. I couldn't examine any of the data for myself. After all, I didn't have a list of astrological predictions made about his life, nor did I have a time line of events that happened in his life. I couldn't really explain anything he said away. So should I have assented to astrology being true? Of course not. I wasn't obligated to explain anything away. There was nothing to explain away. I only had a very small set of selected data available to me.

At the very least, this disagreement has nothing to do with anyone being bad at math or statistics, simply by virtue that there is no math and there are no statistics. There is no data. We have some recollections, and we have some stories, and we have some experience. But none of it is the least bit scientific. It's all tainted, subjective, and frankly all of it seems to disagree.

It has nothing to do with any of us being well-adjusted nut jobs or being liars either. There have been some good theories submitted in this thread as to what the issue could be. Publication bias and confirmation bias were two of them. Let's not be confused into thinking that either of these imply that anyone is crazy. Confirmation bias operates on a more fundamental level than the one we think or choose on. It's largely akin to an optical illusion. We wouldn't say that somebody reporting an optical illusion is bad at geometry or is crazy or is lying. Optical illusions are artifacts of how the brain works. They're phenomena of human experience. In the same sense, confirmation bias is also a phenomenon of human experience. It's just the way things are processed before they reach us.

We have all seen how people who claim to talk to the dead are able to convince their audience that they really are talking to people. I suspect we all know people who believe that astrology works or other nonsense, people who are certainly not dullards. So why should I be surprised, as somebody who doesn't believe in miracles, that some people believe in miracles too?

Here's the part where I get hyper-cynical. God has a history of being a god of the gaps. He's present in misunderstanding. We've gotten past God not being responsible for thunder and not creating the world 6,000 years ago. But I think that God is still persisting in the gaps today. We can scientifically say that nobody will survive AIDS, so it is of no surprise that God does not ever "miraculously" cure anyone of AIDS. Yet, when we are talking about a disease like cancer that we scientifically know can be both survivable and terminal (but not always when), there God persists, performing miracles, simply because we don't yet know why some people survive and some don't. Here's a prediction: When we are able to scientifically understand why people survive cancer and some don't, God will no longer be performing miracles there anymore either. Of course, this will be of no detriment to Christianity. That will go as far to demonstrate that it's God's prerogative when and where to perform miracles. Christianity, the religion that can explain everything but predict nothing.

[Repo Man]

Returning to the the original subject of this thread...

Here's and interesting op-ed on: DEEDS, CREEDS AND MOTHER TERESA'S DESPAIR.

It seems so good! Who could question such sacrificial love? From the world's perspective, few have deserved the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize more than Mother Teresa. Ministering to the "poorest of the poor," she and her "sisters" -- the devoted Missionaries of Charity -- renounced all Western comforts to give themselves fully to the poor, sick and dying.

Yet Mother Teresa's amazing ministry brings a sobering warning, for it illustrates the Church's growing tolerance -- even appreciation -- for interfaith compromise. Her compassionate pluralism fits both the "emerging church" movement and the UN vision for spiritual oneness. In fact, her work provides a perfect model for UNESCO's 1994 Declaration on the Role of Religion.

...The true Gospel clashes with this world system. That's why Chinese and Burmese Christians are persecuted for their faith. That's why Pakistani and Indian converts may reap torture or death -- never a Nobel Peace Price -- for their loving service to the poor! We are fast approaching a time when caring Christian missions will be equated with "intolerance" and "hate."

...She had visions. She conversed with Christ on the Cross. And one of her early confessors assured her that these "mystical experiences were genuine." Soon after that, she started her ministry to the poor, and "Jesus took himself away...."

"Why did Teresa's communication with Jesus... evaporate so suddenly?" asks Time. One of it's hollow answers comes from the atheist Christopher Hitchens. He simply denied the reality of God.

Could Teresa's heart-breaking emptiness be the tragic result of trusting forbidden "gods?" Remember, our Biblical God allows no pluralistic compromise. As the first commandment tells us, "You shall have no other gods...." Exodus 20:3. [Emphasis added.]

[Foil]

I once had somebody who had 7 years of education in Physics tell me that he believed in astrology. He gave me a similar list of impressive-sounding anecdotes.
...
There was nothing to explain away. I only had a very small set of selected data available to me.

At the very least, this disagreement has nothing to do with anyone being bad at math or statistics, simply by virtue that there is no math and there are no statistics. There is no data. We have some recollections, and we have some stories, and we have some experience. But none of it is the least bit scientific. It's all tainted, subjective, and frankly all of it seems to disagree.

I can agree with you there. While I don't think that the value of personal experience is tainted by its subjectivity, I certainly understand that it's not something one can analyze statistically or scientifically. That's the one disagreement I have with Lothar & Drakona here... despite all the intentions, the references to the statistical patterns they observe are based on data filtered through a subjective personal lens. I can appreciate the patterns (after all, my background is in Mathematics as well), but I know enough to know that my own perspective is not a good source of unbiased data, so the patterns I observe can't be treated as such.

Here's the part where I get hyper-cynical. ... We can scientifically say that nobody will survive AIDS, so it is of no surprise that God does not ever "miraculously" cure anyone of AIDS. Yet, when we are talking about a disease like cancer that we scientifically know can be both survivable and terminal (but not always when), there God persists, performing miracles, simply because we don't yet know why some people survive and some don't.

I have to disagree there. In my personal experience (yes, it's subjective and not good for statistical analysis, but it still has value to me), I don't see that dichotomy of divine intervention, between the "explainable" and "unexplainable". In fact, I often see the explainable as miraculous in a way.

For example, take a situation where a doctor treats a patient at his own expense. The end result of the treatment is that the patient is healed. Scientifically explainable? Yes, we know why the treatment was successful. Miraculous? To me, also yes! Simply because as a Christian I see the doctor's compassion as something fundamentally derived from God.

[Behemoth]

The point that this is disputed on a never-ending basis is where you are all failing.

No offense.

[Lothar]

While I don't think that the value of personal experience is tainted by its subjectivity, I certainly understand that it's not something one can analyze statistically or scientifically.

It can be analyzed using statistical and scientific principles. You just have to understand what it is you're analyzing, and the limits and shortcomings of your analysis. You can't measure means, standard deviations, expected values, and so on. But you can study and categorize personal experience, and you can recognize strong patterns within that experience. Jeff250 tried to explain it away (under the guise of not explaining it away) by declaring that "there is no data" and that it's all tainted, but the fact is, you can look at the stories people tell, you can dig deeper, you can ask questions, and you can see how the pattern works out. The data is there, you just have to work to get at it.

We know what it looks like when you draw a mistaken inference due to personal bias. We know what it looks like when you manufacture a pattern through wishful thinking. We know what it looks like when confirmation bias, publication bias, and all manner of other biases are at play.

I suspect, if Jeff250 actually posted the list of anecdotes from his astrologer friend (instead of giving us an anecdote about anecdotes) and we were able to ask him questions, we'd find lots of near misses. We'd find lots of explaining away of data. We'd find lots of fifth-hand stories that had been collected over the years. We'd see exactly the stuff I talked about not seeing in the paragraph that starts "So maybe the stories are true". But, at least within the circles I run in, that's not what I see.

Now, I do need to explain away one thing (which I fully expect to be called on): why is it that Foil has seen so many near misses and such, and I haven't? Simple: he comes from a Charismatic background, where people are expected to experience miracles all the time. In some Charismatic churches, you're looked down upon if you don't "miraculously" begin speaking "unknown" languages. Within that context, there's a strong pressure to appear "spiritual" by experiencing miracles of various sorts. So within that context, we see exactly what I said you should see if the pattern is bad: near misses, explaining away of data that doesn't fit, fifth-hand stories being exaggerated and passed on, and so on. (When Jeff250 says the data "seems to disagree", I suspect this is what he's talking about.)

So, for my "God told me to" miracles, allow me to amend that I've dealt strictly with people who do not have a prior expectation of having miracles happen to them. That's a big piece of what really impresses me. People are praying, with no expectation of anything miraculous or impressive happening, and on occasion God shows up and says "hey, go do this thing" and the thing is so impressive that the only responses I get are "that didn't really happen" or "it doesn't count due to bias." I don't know about you, but I've never heard of bias giving anybody turn-by-turn directions to a place they'd never been before, or giving somebody an accurate description of a person who happens to need exactly the amount of money they were told to bring. (I'm not dealing with unexplained phenomena; I'm dealing with phenomena that are clearly explained by the voice people heard telling them to do things. That's not "God of the gaps", that's "God who speaks".)

[Bet51987]

It seems this thread is constantly being redirected to a miracle thread. I never intended it to be that way but anyway I'm almost finished reading the book.

Mother Teresa's parents were fervently religious and this upbringing sure helped shape her mind. In the beginning, even before she was twelve, she was spoon fed the \"God loves you\" so much that she actually developed an enormous \"crush\" on God, wanting nothing more than to someday be his wife. During her final vows, she mentions numerous times that God spoke to her and referred to her as \"his little spouse\". His instructions were for her to work with the poor and live a life of absolute poverty without any kind of luxuries. On many occasions she slept in barns with the animals because a house would have been too comfortable. He wanted her to suffer pain so she could feel the pain and suffering that He felt on the cross....and she did it all. Her vow was relentless devotion and to \"deny Him nothing\". The more pain she felt, the more the feeling of closeness with Him became. (Opus Dei rings a bell)

When she first wrote to her superior about these \"messages\" from God, Fr. Exem became worried of her extreme views and told her that many of those \"messages\" were not to be taken literally because they could be coming from \"the self\" but she was convinced they actually came from God. Reading some of her letters made me cry. I could feel the loneliness she felt and once in awhile it was so unbearable I had to put the book down and stare at the ceiling until my eyes cleared. Mother Teresa had a one way, very devoted, and very deep love affair with a spirit who was never there to love her back and the let down had to be unimaginable. All through this, she managed to hide it from her people.

She suffered plenty, and although the first years of her love affair was intense, the rest of her life was filled with serious doubts that God existed at all. She kept thinking what Fr. Exam said....about the \"self\". I'm going to finish it this week, hopefully, but her letters are disturbing and depressing.

Lothar, to claim that the miracles and the voice you and Drakona have been so blessed to receive as being \"clear and undeniable evidence\" makes me laugh. To think that you hear and see, and Mother Teresa did not, makes your credibility with me absolutely zero. I find it amazing that no matter how wild your imagination runs, you still get applause. I'm not mad at you. You’re a very good actor. Better than I am in fact. If you can somehow train your voice to sound more like Joel Osteen, instead of the bully voice you use, you could come to my church and stand at the side next to me and sell them like I do, especially after mass when we meet downstairs for soda, coffee, and cupcakes and the seniors always want to talk with you. I think you could win an Emmy.

Oh, and your \"Faith is the triumph of reason over emotion\" is another good one. Mother Teresa was full of emotion...I am too. No wonder \"God\" doesn't talk to us, he rather discuss miracles with cold hearted people who look the other way at the atrocities that make you realize there is no God. Nice going.

Bettina

[Kilarin]

To think that you hear and see, and Mother Teresa did not, makes your credibility with me absolutely zero.

Your argument here seems to be that if God were going to talk to someone, it would have to be Mother Teresa first, or at least high on the list. Despite my being very, VERY protestant, I admire Mother Teresa very much, so I have some sympathy for this position. But, I think there is an important angle here that we need to look at.

Even after reading a good biography of another human, we don't really understand them. We may know a lot more about them than we did before, but we won't be able to understand all of their motives or exactly what drives them in each situation. There is too much about their personality that can't be explained and too many details of their lives that we are missing.

SO, I think it's safe to say that while we have some good insights into Mother Teresa, certainly enough to recognize her as an admirable woman, we don't really understand her completely. Not even close.

And if we can't understand Mother Teresa completely, how can we hope to completely understand the Omnipotent, Omniscient God who created the universe? (We do have to grant His existence for the sake of argument or we can't discuss who He would or would not speak to)

I just don't think we can argue that God is constrained to speak to one person instead of another. We don't KNOW enough to make that call. About God OR the people involved, or the reasons that He chooses for speaking.

You're a very good actor.

This isn't fair, and it really isn't like you Bettina. It's one thing to say that you disagree with Lothar and Drakona about the interpretation of what they have experienced and seen. But you are accusing them of lying when they say that THEY believe it. On what would you base that position? What has either one of them said or done that makes you think they are liars?

your "Faith is the triumph of reason over emotion" is another good one.

How would you define faith? And let's not put it in terms of God, because that is a touchy subject, lets put it in terms of something I think you DO have faith in, your father.
All we are saying is that Faith in your father isn't JUST emotions, it goes way beyond that. Have you ever had a time when you were angry with your father, or where some highly emotional event made you want to doubt him? Faith is the ability to see past that temporary mental turmoil and realize that your father still loves you.

That's all we are saying. Would you disagree with that?

Mother Teresa was full of emotion...I am too.

Emotions are GOOD. We would be crippled without them. But to be ruled by emotions entirely is a bad thing because emotions are not steady, they waver and jump in every direction.
Take marriage for example. A marriage without emotion would certainly be an empty and dreadful thing. However, a spouse who lets themselves be entirely ruled by emotions will soon be divorced or having an affair. Or, as frequently happens, one will have killed the other in a moment of "passion". Emotions are GOOD, but they must be fenced in by reason and will.

No wonder "God" doesn't talk to us, he rather discuss miracles with cold hearted people who look the other way at the atrocities that make you realize there is no God.

If the atrocities prove God doesn't exist, then He can't be choosing the cold people over the ones offended by the atrocities. (Moment of humor here, I'm not insulting you!)

[Jeff250]

I have to disagree there. In my personal experience (yes, it's subjective and not good for statistical analysis, but it still has value to me), I don't see that dichotomy of divine intervention, between the "explainable" and "unexplainable". In fact, I often see the explainable as miraculous in a way.

For example, take a situation where a doctor treats a patient at his own expense. The end result of the treatment is that the patient is healed. Scientifically explainable? Yes, we know why the treatment was successful. Miraculous? To me, also yes! Simply because as a Christian I see the doctor's compassion as something fundamentally derived from God.

I don't mean to say that something being explainable implies that it is not a miracle, but it seems to me (from my experience, and I hope that yours is similar) that the explainable and the miracles overlap. In this thread, somebody being healed of cancer was offered as support for miracles. But people survive cancer. Let me ask you this: Short of a medical breakthrough, do you ever think that you will see God heal somebody of AIDS? If miracle stories were the result of bias and exaggeration and other phenomena, we would expect to hear stories involving people being healed of cancer and other diseases where the probabilities of survival can be awfully low at times. But we would never expect to see anybody healed of AIDS.

(When Jeff250 says the data "seems to disagree", I suspect this is what he's talking about.)

Nice trolling here and throughout your post. If you need any clarification about what I said here or would like to respond to my posts, direct them to me in the future. (You also misquoted me--I never said that the data disagreed. I said that people's experiences disagree. Just sentences before I had said that there was no data.)

giving somebody an accurate description of a person who happens to need exactly the amount of money they were told to bring.

You've already exaggerated the story since you originally told it in this thread. When you originally told it, you said "almost exactly," but now you say "exactly." Given that this is the more recent retelling, I wonder which rendition the readers here would have been more likely to remember if/when they recall it or retell it in the future (assuming they even read the previous post)? This isn't trivial. This phenomenon is exactly the type of thing that contributes to miracle stories.

I don't know about you, but I've never heard of bias giving anybody turn-by-turn directions to a place they'd never been before, or giving somebody an accurate description of a person who happens to need exactly the amount of money they were told to bring.

I have never heard of bias doing any of those things either, but biases and other phenomena do help explain why we hear stories about these things to begin with.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that anecdotes are evidence for miracles, given that what they report is largely impervious to independent analysis. You say that we can find out more by asking the story-tellers, but what, except more of their recollections and more of their version of events? (Or worse yet, more of their recollections of someone else's version of events.) I don't think that it's a coincidence that anecdotes are evidence for miracles, given that what they report is impervious to scientific method. The way to tell if what anecdotes report is real phenomena (and not human experience phenomena) is by controlled tests.

[Kilarin]

The way to tell if what anecdotes report is real phenomena (and not human experience phenomena) is by controlled tests.

While you may be able to subject a particular miracle to scientific tests, I don't think you can test miracles in general scientifically. God is not a divine vending machine, put in certain prayers and get out certain answers. We are promised answers, but those answers are frequently NO. You can't set up rigorous test conditions around whether or not God will answer prayers with a miracle.

I know it's been tried. <link>

"Byrd randomly assigned 393 patients admitted to San Francisco General Hospital’s coronary care unit to either a prayer or no-prayer condition. The first names of prayer group patients, along with diagnosis, condition, and occasional updates, were given to three to seven “born again” intercessors. In the tradition of double-blind drug studies, Byrd kept both patients and staff ignorant of which condition any patient was in. (This is the standard procedure in therapeutic experiments for precluding any placebo effect.)

The results? For six of 26 outcomes, such as the need for diuretics, antibiotics and ventilation therapy, the prayed-for patients did better. The widely publicized conclusion? Prayer works."

But there is just NO WAY that Christians should believe in or support a test like this!!! For one thing, since I'm just praying for first names on a list, what about people with the same first name? When I pray for "Bob with cancer" does every "Bob with cancer" get a benefit? And how did they keep these earnest Christians from sneaking in a prayer for the poor people "not on the list". Or will God only respond if you have a first name?

I BELIEVE in the power of prayer. But you can't try to put God into a lab like this without nullifying the entire experiment. It just doesn't work. It's an embarrassment to both prayer AND the scientific method.

I have seen miracles, but I don't think they are very good for convincing the unconvinced. And for exactly the reasons the sceptics here have pointed out. It's too easy to dismiss anecdotal evidence when you aren't directly involved. And if you are directly involved, you probably don't need convincing.

But I do think there is an exception to that. There is one kind of miracle that I think is VERY useful for attracting people to Christianity.

I had a friend who, while still a Christian, was struggling with doubt, and was especially unbelieving in ANY miracle. During a discussion he once announced that he had NEVER seen anything that he was convinced was an actual miracle. Then he paused for a second, and backtracked saying, "well, no, that's not true, I have seen one"

We, of course, pressed him for what that one miracle was. He simply mentioned the name of a mutual friend of ours. This mutual friend had undergone a conversion experience and turned his life completely around in an absolutely incredible way. The changes in that one guys life were so large and good that it seemed miraculous to my doubting friend.

No, I don't expect that to convince any of you, you don't know the guy. BUT, I do think that this is the kind of miracle that is most useful for getting people interested in God.

[Lothar]

Lothar, to claim that the miracles and the voice you and Drakona have been so blessed to receive as being "clear and undeniable evidence" makes me laugh. To think that you hear and see, and Mother Teresa did not

she mentions numerous times that God spoke to her....she was convinced they actually came from God....Mother Teresa was full of emotion...I am too. No wonder "God" doesn't talk to us

When Mother Teresa says she heard from God, you deny it fervently and make excuses as to why it wasn't real. Then when I say I heard from God, you say I can't because Mother Teresa didn't. It looks to me like there's a mistake in your reasoning.

-----

You also misquoted me--I never said that the data disagreed. I said that people's experiences disagree.

You spoke of the experiences not agreeing; I consider the experiences data. If you can speak of them not agreeing, they're a form of data. Not nice, clean, easy-to-work-with-in-the-lab data, but data nonetheless.

biases and other phenomena do help explain why we hear stories about these things to begin with.

Perhaps bias explains the stories you've heard from other people. Bias is a great explanation for green-light miracles and Santa miracles (which is why I personally don't cite "cured cancer" stories.) But it doesn't explain my list -- why a particular group of people all hear voices giving them instructions that turn out to be right, why they don't have stories of near-misses or bad experiences they have to rationalize, etc.

You say that we can find out more by asking the story-tellers, but what, except more of their recollections and more of their version of events?

If you probe, you can get the following:
- more detailed recollections (for example, was the money in the one example to the penny, or just reasonably close?)
- recollections of "near misses", if they have them
- names of others who were involved, perhaps even others who heard them say "God told me to _____" before they actually did it
- expectations they had before the story in question (like, were they expecting miracles? Were they surprised? Had they been told to expect it?)
- whether they're the sort to see a miracle in every green light, or fairly skeptical about miracles
- other information that might uncover biases in their responses

In other words, you can improve the quality of the data. Like many other real-world phenomena that aren't lab-testable, you gather the best information you can get and see where it leads you. Since the information is all in the form of people's experiences, the best you can do is get the best information possible about their experiences.

You can't do controlled tests, but I think you can identify various forces and factors at play in people's real-world experiences. It just takes some digging, probing, and analysis. You seem to disagree, only allowing for controlled tests. *shrug* In that case, we don't really have common ground to proceed from.

[Kilarin]

instead of the bully voice you use

This has been bugging me and I felt a need to reply to it earlier but couldn't figure out how to say what I wanted to say. But I think I do now.

Sometimes I agree with Shoku, but we also have areas where we are on exact opposite sides. When I get into a religious discussion with Shoku, I SWEAT. He knows his stuff. It's not good enough to just spout of Bible platitudes, you had better be able to quote book and verse to defend your position. And if you can't do at least some minor original language research, you are going to fall behind.

Every time Jeff250 replies to one of my messages my knees start knocking together. He has a very logically organized mind, and if you post something that isn't properly thought out, if there is so much as one tiny hole in the dike of your reasoning, he will blast it wide open and spill out the entire guts of your argument. Very politely, mind you, but the dike will be in ruins nonetheless.

Lothar and I don't always agree exactly on religious issues, but we are most often at least close to the same side in those debates. BUT, on political issues, we can but heads pretty hard. And BOY can that boy think AND do his research. If you mouth off with a "oh, but everyone knows such and such", you had BETTER be prepared to back it up with links and sources or he will smash you down flat. And those sources had better be reliable. And the way you use them had better be logical and reasonable. If you can't defend your position SOLIDLY, he WILL demolish it.

That's just three off the top of my head, but the list of people here at the descentbb who are smarter than me, and better at debating/arguing/researching/discussing/writing/etc than me is a LONG one. I won't try to go through them all. This is enough to present the general concept.

You've fought me in the mines Bettina, you know my skill level. I stink like very few descent players left can stink. BUT, when I go into a mine, I deliberately target the best players. They beat me up. No, that doesn't really cover it, they often totally destroy and annihilate me. BUT, it's the best way to LEARN. Go pick on the tough pilots and try to figure out what they are doing to beat the snot out of you so well. THEY are the ones you want to emulate anyway, so fight THEM.

How does that tie into debates here on the descentbb? Directly, same strategy. When ever I end up on the opposite side of a debate with someone who is really good at it, I end up either having to retract my position (which is good, always good to recognize a mistake and try to correct it), or modify my position to be stronger than it was, or at the very least, learn how to understand and defend my position better. I often take a whipping, but, win or lose, I walk away stronger than I was before.

So yeah, sometimes Lothar (and others) can sound a bit harsh. But that's because debate/discussion is a training ground just like the mines. I do NOT want people to go easy on me in the mines, I won't LEARN that way, I want them to hit me with their best. I don't want folks going easy on me in discussions here on the forum either.

[Jeff250]

Kilarin, you are not the only one who gets flustered debating here.

While you may be able to subject a particular miracle to scientific tests, I don't think you can test miracles in general scientifically. God is not a divine vending machine, put in certain prayers and get out certain answers. We are promised answers, but those answers are frequently NO. You can't set up rigorous test conditions around whether or not God will answer prayers with a miracle.

I think that we can make the situation better than that. We could build upon what Lothar is claiming and hypothesize that when mentally healthy people who are followers of the Judeo-Christian God think that they hear voices from him telling them to perform an action, then, upon performing that action, something more extraordinary will tend to happen than if they just would have otherwise performed that action. It's a longer sentence than I intended, since I tried to plug in all of the caveats at once (many of which are probably still missing), but it's a start. We wouldn't have to reproduce the act of God telling somebody to do something in a controlled environment, but, when that does happen, we can take it from there, recording what the person thinks that God told her to do, record how she carried it out, what happened next, etc. There's still some problems, like setting out how we will scientifically determine if extraordinary events have occurred, how long we will wait, and so on. These might be able to be refined. But it seems like it's a lot better than exchanging stories. What do you think?

[dissent]

..., then, upon performing that action, something more extraordinary will tend to happen than if they just would have otherwise performed that action. ...

Why more extraordinary? Why extraordinary at all?

Why is God to be excluded from the ordinary?

One may not know if an event was "extraordinary" for days, weeks or generations into the future.

[Duper]

there is an excellent example in the Bible as to why faith should not be based on miracles, or miracles being the foundation of your faith. Israel wondered around in the desert with a miracle on a daily basis after leaving Egypt; and they STILL turned away from God. They woke to manna in the ground every morning. More than enough for all 2 million of them. They followed a pillar of fire when they traveled at night and a pillar of cloud by day. Humans forget stuff REALLY easily. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.

If you don't want to see something wonderful, you will not. Mother Teresa continued on what she knew, not how she felt. Her perseverance to continue to Do when it did not seem rational by her perspective; is the miracle.

[Jeff250]

Why more extraordinary? Why extraordinary at all?

That's the connection that's been implied in this thread. When God speaks, something fancy tends to happen. I think that we should put that to the test. This is not to say that this is the only type of miracle or that if these types of extraordinary miracles don't tend to happen, then the more ordinary ones don't either. But, at least from a non-religious person's point of view, the extraordinary are certainly the most interesting kind, since the others can be easily written off. Foil thinks that there's a miracle when a doctor treats somebody without expecting payment, and Duper thinks that a miracle is Mother Teresa's will. We can get increasingly metaphorical and stretch the word miracle to whatever we'd like, but when it comes down to it, it's the fancy ones that are interesting in a unique way.

One may not know if an event was "extraordinary" for days, weeks or generations into the future.

This is also a concern that I also brought up in my post. But, since in Lothar's stories, the fancy part happened almost immediately, we could start out looking within a short period of time, but not rule out a longer period of time if a shorter period of time doesn't work out.

[Bet51987]

This is the last part. I'm finished.

In 1985, Mother Teresa decided to share her darkness to yet another priest, Fr. Albert Huart. Unfortunately, all he could do was tell her to accept the darkness as part of her work because without the darkness, she could not be the source of light to others. This is what Jesus wanted her to do. She began working with AIDS patients and this work really tested her faith. With constant contact with Aids patients suffering the way they did, she never once got accustomed to it and in her letters to Fr. Huart, she often asks him to pray for her because the burden on her soul and her sisters was high. She would sometimes ask \"Where is Jesus\"

(The following part I have a problem with)

On Palm Sunday 1987 as Fr. Huart was praying alone in the chapel, he felt a voice speak to him. The voice said: \"Tell Mother Teresa, I thirst\". He tried asking questions but the voice repeated it twice more. After questioning it in his own mind for several days, he decided it was a message from God to be delivered to Mother Teresa. (how convenient)

When he told Mother Teresa, she asked him \"Did he say anything else\"? and the priest replied \"No, that was all He said\". Although she was hurt and couldn't understand why Jesus would not talk to her directly, she took the message as an instruction from Jesus to comfort Him. To bring Him more souls, and since she would deny Him nothing, she did. From this point on, even though the darkness was as strong as ever, she no longer talked about it, and instead focused all her energy on the sick and the dying.

Her death in 1997 wasn't an easy one. She was in constant pain from a failing heart and the longing to hear from Jesus. Doctors did all they could to keep her pain free but she likened the pain to what Jesus felt on the cross. Through all of this, she never once lost faith in Jesus. She believed right to the end that He was waiting for her despite the cold darkness that was inside. At one point, and smiling, she said \"I think Jesus is asking too much\".

It was a very sad book and I will never read it again as long as I live. The letters were very deep and full of pain and I felt lowly just reading them. I'm not a worldly person and I stick pretty much to my town so I don't know what goes on in missionarys but I can't imagine anyone else in the world with more empathy than her.

Bettina

[Bet51987]

SO, I think it's safe to say that while we have some good insights into Mother Teresa, certainly enough to recognize her as an admirable woman, we don't really understand her completely. Not even close.

No, it's not safe to say because you’re treating her too lightly. Her letters were highly emotional and truthful. Maybe you should read some of them so you can feel her like I did. It was a highly emotional read.

You're a very good actor.

This isn't fair....On what would you base that position? What has either one of them said or done that makes you think they are liars?

They are not liars. They’re just caught up in a lie that they perceive to be the truth. I see it in their presentations. First come the long intelligently sounding posts followed by the climax. I do it in church right before I hit the high note. I put my arms out in front of me and hit it. The tears are real, but the rest is just show and thats what I see in these posts... the miracle build up, followed by "The evidence I have points clearly and undeniably to God".

your "Faith is the triumph of reason over emotion" is another good one.

How would you define faith? And let's not put it in terms of God, because that is a touchy subject, lets put it in terms of something I think you DO have faith in, your father.
All we are saying is that Faith in your father isn't JUST emotions, it goes way beyond that. Have you ever had a time when you were angry with your father, or where some highly emotional event made you want to doubt him? Faith is the ability to see past that temporary mental turmoil and realize that your father still loves you.

At one point in my life I blamed him for something, then blamed myself, but I never once doubted his love for me. Never. Its mutual and never needs to be tested. Another time he heard those fwords and banned me from playing Descent but I knew he would eventually let me, and he did. Faith doesn't apply here because faith in the religious sense is one sided. Its things hoped for. My dad is real.

No wonder "God" doesn't talk to us, he rather discuss miracles with cold hearted people who look the other way at the atrocities that make you realize there is no God.

If the atrocities prove God doesn't exist, then He can't be choosing the cold people over the ones offended by the atrocities. (Moment of humor here, I'm not insulting you!)

I was being sarcastic. The atrocities and suffering I see is why I see no God. Go visit a children’s hospital like I mentioned one time before and you will see what I mean. Some live, some die, so who does the miracle go to. Although I only pushed a cart full of towels from room to room, I only lasted two weeks.

Lothar, to claim that the miracles and the voice you and Drakona have been so blessed to receive as being "clear and undeniable evidence" makes me laugh. To think that you hear and see, and Mother Teresa did not

she mentions numerous times that God spoke to her....she was convinced they actually came from God....Mother Teresa was full of emotion...I am too. No wonder "God" doesn't talk to us

When Mother Teresa says she heard from God, you deny it fervently and make excuses as to why it wasn't real. Then when I say I heard from God, you say I can't because Mother Teresa didn't. It looks to me like there's a mistake in your reasoning.

No mistake. If you read my post you would find the sentence "She kept thinking about what Fr. Exem said....about the "self".

She began to question whether the voice really came from God because the "God" she heard early in her life, and very briefly, would not talk to her anymore. I have to wonder why a God would want one of his wives to live a life of such brutal poverty, pain, and suffering, and who for most of her life, gave her the feeling of utter abandonment... and yet has no problems talking to you.

Bettina

[Tunnelcat]

Maybe life on this earth is in actuality, Hell, and we have to prove ourselves worthy, be kind to others, help those less fortunate and follow faithfully the footsteps that God encourages us to make to in order to transgress into heaven.

Mother Teresa surely passed all her trials here on earth, far more than most human beings would have done. Maybe God wanted her to have a solid faith in what she was doing, not constant reassurances later in life that she was on the right path. God just steered her in the right direction at the beginning.

HE didn't abandon her, HE was silent because HE approved and no communication was needed to test her faith. She was stalwart and unwavering. Bless her.

[Kilarin]

No, it's not safe to say because youre treating her too lightly.

How am I treating her LIGHTLY by saying that she was too deep and complex an individual for anyone to fully understand just because they read some of her letters?

Maybe you should read some of them so you can feel her like I did. It was a highly emotional read.

I probably will, and I'm certain I'll be touched and moved. I'm just also certain that, despite the intimacy of the letters, there will be even more to Mother Teresa beyond them.

They are not liars. They're just caught up in a lie that they perceive to be the truth.

Then they aren't pretending.

I see it in their presentations. First come the long intelligently sounding posts followed by the climax. I do it in church right before I hit the high note. I put my arms out in front of me and hit it. The tears are real, but the rest is just show and thats what I see in these posts... the miracle build up, followed by "The evidence I have points clearly and undeniably to God".

It sounds like a case of projection here. Because you are pretending does NOT mean that everyone else is.

I don't believe in astrology. Not one bit. But I ALSO don't believe that everyone who champions astrology is pretending. Some of them, many of them even, are fakes. They are liars and pretenders and they know it. But there are also those who, while I believe them to be mistaken, are certainly sincere in their belief. Without some very good evidence, it's not reasonable to lump people into the pretending category when there is no reason to believe they are not sincere.

There's still some problems, like setting out how we will scientifically determine if extraordinary events have occurred, how long we will wait, and so on. These might be able to be refined. But it seems like it's a lot better than exchanging stories. What do you think?

And, in order to work, it would absolutely require that every "impression" received be recorded BEFORE it is acted upon. Otherwise, we could never eliminate the possibility that the person only remembered being "impressed" after something remarkable happened, or that there were a dozen "impressions" that week, but only the one that amounted to something was remembered.

I believe in miracles, I just don't think you could EVER set up a reasonable testing criteria for this.

HE didn't abandon her, HE was silent because HE approved and no communication was needed to test her faith.

Good point. It's actually a completely valid theory that Mother Teresa was not receiving direct communications from God because she didn't need them. Perhaps Lothar, being not as far along in his walk as she is, needs more instruction.

[Jeff250]

And, in order to work, it would absolutely require that every "impression" received be recorded BEFORE it is acted upon. Otherwise, we could never eliminate the possibility that the person only remembered being "impressed" after something remarkable happened, or that there were a dozen "impressions" that week, but only the one that amounted to something was remembered.

Definitely, that would be the point of the experiment. But I don't see this as in itself being problematic. I mean, how often do you think that you hear God giving you a command? Or is this something that typically is decided after the fact? It seems like that it would be easy to write down what God had just commanded you to do, unless this is something that is happening all the time (or something that really is decided after the fact). I mean, if you really thought that God had just spoken to you, giving you a command, then writing it down would seem like a prudent thing to do anyways!

This gets us so far. We still have to deal with confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecies and phenomena of human experience of that sort when we are deciding whether or not anything all that extraordinary happened when you did what God commanded. We could record every event of every day. But maybe this would be simpler: if God told you to give $16.54 to a scruffy man in a green-white striped polo at the supermarket, write that down, show it to an atheist friend of yours, and take him with you to the supermarket. At the very least, your atheist friend will call you out if the guy's polo wasn't really striped or if you think God had said something that wasn't already written down or if he only bought $16.54 worth of items because that's how much money you gave him. Plus, if something miraculous really does happen, then you'll have a great proselytization opportunity.

[Bet51987]

No, it's not safe to say because youre treating her too lightly.

How am I treating her LIGHTLY by saying that she was too deep and complex an individual for anyone to fully understand just because they read some of her letters?

Because your statement is pointless. You haven't read the book or her letters yet your "convinced" there is more. She was completely honest and open in her letters about everything and held nothing back from any of her superiors. If you think there is more to it, then show me.

Maybe you should read some of them so you can feel her like I did. It was a highly emotional read.

I probably will, and I'm certain I'll be touched and moved. I'm just also certain that, despite the intimacy of the letters, there will be even more to Mother Teresa beyond them.

I would be interested in a link. I would like to learn more about her.

They are not liars. They're just caught up in a lie that they perceive to be the truth.

Then they aren't pretending.

I'm trying to be as nice as I can with labels.

I see it in their presentations. First come the long intelligently sounding posts followed by the climax. I do it in church right before I hit the high note. I put my arms out in front of me and hit it. The tears are real, but the rest is just show and thats what I see in these posts... the miracle build up, followed by "The evidence I have points clearly and undeniably to God".

It sounds like a case of projection here. Because you are pretending does NOT mean that everyone else is.

I don't believe in astrology. Not one bit. But I ALSO don't believe that everyone who champions astrology is pretending. Some of them, many of them even, are fakes. They are liars and pretenders and they know it. But there are also those who, while I believe them to be mistaken, are certainly sincere in their belief. Without some very good evidence, it's not reasonable to lump people into the pretending category when there is no reason to believe they are not sincere.

It goes both ways. I too, need very good evidence.

Bettina

[Kilarin]

You haven't read the book or her letters yet your "convinced" there is more.

Yes I am. And I'm actually kind of surprised that this would be a point of contention.
Other than the most absolutely shallow excuses for persons, human beings are very complex. You can't learn everything about them in one book. You couldn't learn everything about them in a hundred books. I've been living with my wife for over 20 years now, and I'm STILL learning about her.

From your review, it sounds like this is an incredible book and that Mother Teresa really pours her heart out in these letters. I'm anxious to read them myself. I've put the book on my wish list based on your review alone. BUT, yes, I'm 100% convinced that after reading the book, there will still be much about the incredible person "Mother Teresa" that I will not know.

I'm just also certain that, despite the intimacy of the letters, there will be even more to Mother Teresa beyond them.

I would be interested in a link. I would like to learn more about her.

An Amazon search for books about Mother Teresa comes up with 155 results. And she's credited as author on 123 books.

Many of those are repeats, earlier editions, and even some outright misses. But still, there are a LOT of books about Mother Teresa. I don't know how accurate they are, or if any of them can hold a candle to "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light", but I imagine many of them add details and depth to our understanding of this marvelous woman. Especially books like Mother Teresa: In My Own Words which appear to consist entirely of material she wrote herself.

The book you just read is PROOF of that concept, because even if you had read all the books about Mother Teresa that were published before this one, there were more insights into her character to be discovered in THIS book.

BUT, I believe that even if I read ALL of these books, including "Come Be My Light", I would not fully understand Mother Teresa. She lived for Eighty Seven years. Eighty Seven FULL years. It didn't consist of endless days of sitting in front of the T.V. or playing Nintendo, but of doing, thinking, being, and growing. I am not in any way attempting to insult the book you read, the letters Mother Teresa wrote, or the experience you had reading them. But one book can not encapsulate all of a human life. It just can't.

They are not liars. They're just caught up in a lie that they perceive to be the truth.

Then they aren't pretending.

I'm trying to be as nice as I can with labels.

It's not any nicer to say someone is pretending than to just say they are liars, or insincere frauds. They mean the same thing in this context, and we all understand that. If you are going to say someone is lying about their sincerity, then you should have good evidence to back that accusation up. Please note, I am NOT saying you shouldn't argue against their points, as far as that goes, go for it! But to slam them with "You are pretenders" is uncalled for.

Do you understand the difference in what I'm saying here? I'm NOT objecting to you telling Lothar and Drakona that they are WRONG when they believe in miracles. I'm objecting to you telling them that they are insincere when they say they believe in miracles. There is nothing I have seen to imply they are in any way insincere in their beliefs. If you have evidence that they are, please present it.

It goes both ways. I too, need very good evidence.

And this is what makes me nervous that I'm miscommunicating. If you are saying that you would need very good evidence to believe in miracles, I'd certainly agree with you and applaud you for it. BUT, that was not what I was talking about at all. I was talking about saying people are insincere without good evidence. And if you were replying to that, it SOUNDS like you are saying that you would assume they were liars unless they presented very good evidence that they were sincere. Which doesn't make sense to me. Would you mind clarifying?

[Bet51987]

Kilarin...

I agree with you. There are lots of books about her life and her work, but my post was about the \"darkness and emptiness\" that she described in her letters and I don't believe you will find anything more in your search to change the outcome since the letters were written by her.

Also, if you want me to say they are liars, I won't do it unless you consider storytelling a lie. In that case, I'm the biggest liar of all. I just do not believe them for the reasons I gave and if you want to talk in a PM I will do that.

Bee

[Kilarin]

my post was about the "darkness and emptiness" that she described in her letters and I don't believe you will find anything more in your search to change the outcome since the letters were written by her.

Ah! The light dawns. Miscommunication on my part again, as so frequently happens.
I did NOT mean to question whether Mother Teresa had felt darkness and emptiness when searching for God. It's an experience common to all Christians. The descriptions from the letters sounds like she experienced this more deeply and darkly than many, but it's still not something that actually surprises me.

I was trying to make a point about us not understanding, and not even being ABLE to understand, exactly why God speaks in certain ways to some people and not to others. We don't know the entire story behind these situations. For example, it could be that, in a situation similar to Job's, this was a trial, a test to show the universe that God's great followers will continue to follow, even when they can not feel his day to day presence. It could have been for other reasons way beyond our comprehension. Once you assume an Omnipotent and Omniscient God, you MUST assume that there is much more going on that He knows and you don't.

Anyway, the flaw was in my communication, and I apologize for it.

how often do you think that you hear God giving you a command? Or is this something that typically is decided after the fact?

For me, I've never heard anything so obvious as a voice inside my head. I have been impressed at times. Sometimes acting on that impression had resulted in things that I would certainly feel confirmed the impression came from God. At other times, however, no obvious feed back occurred. Which could mean that the impression was just a whim, or could mean that the results were not something that would reveal itself immediately (if ever).

I have no doubt that I have experienced the miraculous in my life. But I don't believe that anything I have experienced would convince anyone who wanted to doubt. I have friends who have experienced miracles much more marvelous in nature than I have. This does not shock or upset me, God deals with different people differently. BUT, I think that if you tried to "test" for these miracles, the results would end up ambiguous. God doesn't fit into a lab very well.

To put it most bluntly. The Bible is FULL of situations, old testament and new, where God worked great miracles right in front of people and it did not convince them. I find this consistent with what I see in real people, including myself, all the time. We often believe what we want to believe, and can explain away any facts that simply don't fit into our desired world view. There is ALWAYS wiggle room.

SO, I find attempting to use miracles to convince atheist that there is a God to be a waste of time. The miracle is the change that Christ can work in someone's life. And if you don't get to know Him, nothing will convince you. To quote directly:

Luke 16:31: And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

[Jeff250]

BUT, I think that if you tried to "test" for these miracles, the results would end up ambiguous. God doesn't fit into a lab very well.

I outlined a pretty fair test. When you think you hear God commanding you to do something, write it down. Then let an atheist know and bring her with you when you do it. Then compare notes when everything is done. At the very least, there will be two sides to the story, but she might have some insight as to what really happened that escaped you. Granted, it might not always be practical, like if you think that God has commanded you to do something with some immediacy, but it seems like that it would be practical a large amount of the time. If you're seriously interested in seeing whether or not there's any truth to the idea that God is commanding you to do things that result in some extraordinary events, you'll put it to the test by doing this or doing something like it. But if your gut or intuition or personal collection of anecdotes is good enough to convince you, then this won't be necessary.

I think that there's a certain vice in attributing to a God things that he wasn't really responsible for anyways. I think that this is something that you should be more concerned about than you are.

To put it most bluntly. The Bible is FULL of situations, old testament and new, where God worked great miracles right in front of people and it did not convince them.

It's unfortunate that the theory that, if miracles of biblical proportions were happening to today, then we wouldn't think they were miracles, depends on us already assuming miracles are happening or have happened of biblical proportions.

[Kilarin]

I think that there's a certain vice in attributing to a God things that he wasn't really responsible for anyways. I think that this is something that you should be more concerned about than you are.

I'm not concerned about it because I don't base my religion on miracles.

I am QUITE certain that things have happened to me that I was convinced were miraculous, that, in actuality, were not. I'm also certain that many things I attributed to chance were actually miraculous. It doesn't matter.

If you're seriously interested in seeing whether or not there's any truth to the idea that God is commanding you to do things that result in some extraordinary events, you'll put it to the test by doing this or doing something like it. But if your gut or intuition or personal collection of anecdotes is good enough to convince you, then this won't be necessary.

But I'm NOT trying to prove miracles. My assumption that there is a God is not based upon that kind of miracle. If you have already assumed from other grounds that there IS an omnipotent omniscient God who created the universe and is still interested in it and affecting it. Then the possibility that there will be the occasional miracle is wide open. But whether or not you can correctly identify each case has no affect upon the original grounds for your assumption of a Deity.

And that's one reason I have NOT jumped into this debate on the side of trying to prove miracles. I don't think it's at all important. I don't think it's generally possible. And I don't think it would do any good if you could.

It's unfortunate that the theory that, if miracles of biblical proportions were happening to today, then we wouldn't think they were miracles, depends on us already assuming miracles are happening or have happened of biblical proportions.

Point. But the argument is still consistent with everything we know of human nature.

Consider: suppose you did your experiment, and it worked! You have verifiable and repeatable results that Christians get "insights" that lead to extraordinary events. So, have you proven the existence of God? OR, have you simply opened up the hypothesis that certain elements of the population have very rudimentary ESP. And that these people are naturally attracted to each other because of that unconscious brain communication. They may be particularly vulnerable to meme's because of it. And, so, they end up congregating together in churches and discussing all of the miracles that "God" has wrought for them. Never knowing that the miracle is built into their own DNA. This would, of course, tie directly in to the "God gene" research.

If you don't want to believe in God, no miracle is going to convince you. There will always be an alternative explanation. It was Aliens, Giai, a disturbance in the force, whatever.

And as for Christians: A miracle may attract someone to the faith, but if it remains the sole foundation of their faith, then their faith is likely to crack and fall at the first serious trial. They need better ground for believing than something that, according to our own faith, can be duplicated by charlatans or Satan.

[Bet51987]

I was trying to make a point about us not understanding, and not even being ABLE to understand, exactly why God speaks in certain ways to some people and not to others. We don't know the entire story behind these situations. For example, it could be that, in a situation similar to Job's, this was a trial, a test to show the universe that God's great followers will continue to follow, even when they can not feel his day to day presence. It could have been for other reasons way beyond our comprehension. Once you assume an Omnipotent and Omniscient God, you MUST assume that there is much more going on that He knows and you don't.

Dads working on my room so I had to put off replying about this kind of subject. I also left you a PM.

So, God felt he had to test one of his many wives??? So brutally shunning her for over 50 years??

I also view the story of Job differently. While you look at the test God wanted to show Satan, and how Job was given a new family in the end for being good, I never got my mind off of Jobs old family and how God chose to allow Satan to kill them... for a test.

While you see a loving, caring and compassionate God, I see nothing but a brutal story.

Bee

[roid]

that always bothered me too. i write it off now as a Patriarchal thing: \"Women are objects and expendable\". Job's rich now, he can buy all the women he wants. oooooh yeah

[Kilarin]

So, God felt he had to test one of his many wives??? So brutally shunning her for over 50 years??

Assuming Christianity to be true, then God's own son died under brutal torture crying out "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

So yes, it's entirely consistent with Christian doctrine.

In 2 Co 12:7-10 Paul says that he was given a "thorn in the flesh" (Some form of unspecified disability or problem). He prayed three times for this problem to be taken away. Paul had prayed for others and all kinds of miracles had happened, even the dead had been raised to life, but when he prayed for this one thing for himself, the answer was no. He also got a why, which is nice, because we often don't get the reason why, just the no. But in this case, Paul was told that the problem needed to remain to help him avoid being tempted by pride. Which makes perfect sense once you think about it. Paul was certainly in a position that would be likely to go to ones head.

Mother Teresa was in a fairly similar position. She was considered a saint by many even before she died. It would certainly be conceivable that God didn't speak to her directly for the same reason he left Paul with a "thorn in the flesh". I'm not saying that WAS the reason, just that it would be one possibility.

My point here is NOT to try and convince you that God exists. There is nothing here that would do that. It's just to make clear that Mother Teresa saying that she couldn't feel God's presence directly is not going to threaten any Christians faith. It's not inconsistent at all with our doctrine.

I never got my mind off of Jobs old family and how God chose to allow Satan to kill them... for a test.

This world stinks. I'm with you. And, quite frankly, if I had been Job I'd be mad as hops about it. But then, so was Job. But we have a different perspective than God does. God is looking at things long term. Whether you die today, or in 60 years, is hardly a big issue if it's God's plan to have you live forever. On this side of time, we have a hard time seeing it that way. It's like little kids who think that if they don't get what they want in the next two minutes they'll DIE, trying to understand grownups who are explaining that waiting one day is no big deal.

i write it off now as a Patriarchal thing: "Women are objects and expendable". Job's rich now, he can buy all the women he wants. oooooh yeah

Job only had one wife, and she lived.
She only shows up in the story for one quick verse, and in that one she doesn't come out to favorably. You've got to wonder if it didn't go through Job's head: "Geesh God, you took my oxen, asses, sheep and camels, almost all of my servants, and all of my kids. BUT, you left me with my wife?"

It was right after that that he went into his big "There ain't no justice" speech.

[Jeff250]

If you don't want to believe in God, no miracle is going to convince you. There will always be an alternative explanation. It was Aliens, Giai, a disturbance in the force, whatever.

There would always be those who would always try to explain it away no matter what. But that doesn't make the experiment worthless to everyone, just those who would always try to explain it away no matter what.

[Kilarin]

But that doesn't make the experiment worthless to everyone, just those who would always try to explain it away no matter what.

Valid point. Good luck setting the experiment up. I'm still HIGHLY skeptical about it's working.