Miracle and Metaphor

A response to Joness105639.

The miracles promised in the Bible -- indeed described in the Bible as an integral aspect of believers' lives -- don't seem to happen. Why not? Also, a challenge regarding the purported use of metaphor in Mark 11:23.

Links:

Joness's video—

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhV5JN5fXBo

My video "More About Those Questions for Intelligent Christians"—

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUEiwutJJ-8

My video criticizing Zkueker88's attempt at answering the ten questions --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3CWkr4VT4A

My "Jesus said it, but he didn't mean it" video—

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMRyqmAnfEo

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Jesus
• God
• Bible
• Spirit
• miracles
• apologetics
• hermeneutics
• exegesis
• questions
• intelligent
• Christians
• atheist
• gospel
• Mark

[pbhs07]

if i was still a believer and watched this video -- it would have definitely made me think for a good long while on the basis of my faith.

[ProfMTH]

@pbhs07 Thanks.

[nepistepa]

Part of any putative success of this argument would rest on the predicate that the arguer knows how Biblical verses are to be interpreted today, whereas most Christians would believe that they are reliant on the Holy Spirit. For example, Matthew 12:38-39 has Jesus deliberately refusing to perform a miracle & this is not the only Biblical example of Divine unwillingness to be subject to human assessment. So which is the right Biblical argument, the one that suits the atheist or the Christian?

[nepistepa]

Your claimed inability to think of a non-literal application of the "faith can move mountains" teaching seems unimaginative at best, small-minded or disingenuous at worst. Perhaps it's your generation: Johnnie Ray and the Four Lads had fair success in the pop charts expanding this metaphor even into the romantic sphere in 1952, which gives at least one pointer to how widely it can be applied!

[Pilotwing64]

The mountain is the metaphore for the homo-secular adjenda.

Case closed!

[TimJMorrison]

I can understand perhaps being a vanilla theist because you can't disprove god empirically and you might have lower standards than me for what you would call a god.

But how do you go from "you can't disprove god" to "the bible is true and not this other book about gods... neither of which can be proved or disproved at all.".

[TimJMorrison]

All the bits about god and jesus being real are metapors for eating LSD.