Miracles

Post Reply New Topic

No. Hume expressed no opinion or judgment on the bending of light around a massive body, pro or con. He never mentioned it once in all his writing. Not once. By the way the wave theory of light displaced Newton's particulate theory of light after the experiments of Thompson in the early 1800s. Hume died in 1765, so the only theory of light he would have been inclined to accept in his time was the Newtonian theory, which is that light is a particle. Hume's interest was in epistemology and the establishment (or disestablishment) of causes being a necessary connection between event types. Hume also had things to say about how people reach moral judgments and about the veracity of religion (Hume was a skeptic and pretty near being an atheist).

ruveyn

I give up. This is me giving up. Watch me. I surrender. If you can't be bothered reading properly, I give up.

By the way, Descartes assumed light was a wave. So did Hooke, and Euler. And that's just from wikipedia. And I changed my example to James Clerk Maxwell's time anyway. I didn't say anything about Hume's opinions on light in my corrected example.

Bye now.

Since light behaves on different occasions as either a wave or a particle (as does the electron and other basic particles) I wonder what this discussion is about.

NOT TRUE.


Many claims of miraculous things have been successfully debunked using the scientific method. Once you tighten the controls, the effect disappears. If someone can make my car levitate 150 feet in the air for 5 minutes WITHOUT any kind of mechanical lifting device such as a crane and then have it fall under the influence of gravity and land perfectly on its wheels without ANY damage before my very eye, THEN I'll believe in miracles! Ive seen magicians do some things that look pretty amazing, but the thing is, its all an ILLUSION. If you have hidden cameras you can actually see for yourself how its done.
You're trying to philosophically argue something but unless you can come up with an experiment that we can do on our on time that produces a miracle OR show us using a live demonstration you shouldnt expect us to take any of this sh*t seriously.
Its a lot like claiming that there's a 60 foot purple dragon in your house and refusing to let us come and see it; but then coming up with rhetorical arguments to cast a reasonable doubt on any skepticism people might have about it.

This was not known in Hume's time. When Hume wrote, the accepted theory of light (in Britain, anyway) was Newton's account. On the Continent Huygen's theory that light was a longitudinal wave had more currency.

ruveyn

When someone experiences a miracle, the first reaction people have is to try to explain it away.
Once they realize that it is unexplainable, they no longer wish to think about it. It is unwise to believe in things when there is no evidence as it is also unwise to not believe something when we are given evidence. Many people claim to have experienced miracles and have interesting stories to tell that defies explanation. There will always be people who will refuse to acknowledge the obvious just like there will be debunkers of evolution who will pay a million dollars for anyone who can prove this theory. It's still a theory? How can that be...

Why aren't miracles being given serious investigation? I'm sure there is a rational way to explain how a miracle can be performed. There must be a separate set of laws for this phenomenon that we are unaware of. For example, we probably shouldn't expect to live forever in our current human body (and we would be much happier if we didn't cling to it so much). But, I think there is a mind/body connection in which "miracles" can occur.

I have NEVER experienced or even been affected by something that explicitly violated the laws of physics(which govern chemistry, biology, and geology too ). 1000 years ago if you claimed that something was a miracle people would take you seriously without question and if you tried to figure out how the Universe works you could be condemned to death by the church. So in conclusion, those who believed in magic and miracles were overtaken and sometimes wiped out by those who believed in science and applied it to the development of technology.

Isn't it ironic how we always come full circle and still seem unable to learn from our mistakes.

Christianity in particular and probably other religions as well accept miracles as reality. That they do is a clear indication of their state of mind.

And for good reason. "Miracles" are natural events we don't yet understand.

ruveyn

Sand, if you have such a such a sound mind, then why are you always arguing with "crazy" people on the internet instead of doing something else that normal people typically do on a weekend?

And Haliphron, just because you never experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If you have never been in love you can't dismiss it altogether because many people claim that they have experienced it. Of course you can argue the validity of their experience all you want, but in the end you won't know until you have experienced it. Until then, I think it is most wise to listen to other people's stories with an open and strong mind. If you can't explain it, try harder and don't just think they are lying automatically because it is too hard to try to understand or worse, if you do understand it, it will shatter your worldview. Oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! !!

Being open minded is NOT the same thing as accepting something as fact just because someone else CLAIMS to have experienced it or that it exists. Im open to new ideaas but will Not accept anything as Truth until it can be experimentally DEMONSTRATED. The rational model really seems to work the best and get the best results. Because the reason why we're talking to each other over the internet is the fault of rational people who valued critical thinking and followed the scientific method. IT WORKS!! ! And the reason why I consider it to be the best is the amazing fact that it works EVEN if you "dont believe in it". The results you get are independent of the assumptions and expectations of the observer.

I agree.


also agree with this, whatever reality is, a seeming unusual event intepreted as a miracle would be already part of it.


well, we often interpret such miracles according to our limited knowledge, perspective and experience, so yes likely they would be both probable and improbable, wether they do violate known laws of physics or not is something under interpretation and interesting to wonder about, given that the issue about these known laws of physics to be human concepts and interpretations of our subjective perceived reality.

well, it seems to me that burningviolin does have a point, and well, before quantum physics, I believe the mere concepts within quantum physics would have been rejected before its time and considered unscientific, I think it would even be considered to be something mystical, thus rejecting it. And about Einstein's relativity, well, before that, newtonian physics were considered to be how the universe works, Einstiein proved otherwise, expanding our knowledge on it, given this, I can see his point to be valid to the case.

The issue about miracles is more due to the lack of knowledge of certain phenomena and given that it goes beyond what it is known, it would be considered as such, until an explanation and answer to this phenomena is found, tested and explained, it will no longer be considered as a miracle but something natural, from an empirical perspective, and given this, such "miracles" may do actually exist.

What does a normal 83 year old do on a weekend? Should I try to pick up neat looking females with fascinating behinds? At my age I can neither afford the efforts nor have the ghost of a chance to convince girls I am worth their attention nor can efficiently carry out the physical acrobatics of a successful conquest. Should I do idiotic crossword puzzles or read murder mysteries or watch the stupidest TV shows devisable by commercially oriented idiots with no sense of humor or reality? Should I go to the movies and watch some macho hero destroy a good percentage of Detroit's productions in order to indicate how adept some character might be in causing millions of dollars of damage to city streets and innocent bystanders to catch a sadist idiot? No, I'd rather observe the huge percentage of idiocy prevalent in humanity and educate myself on how deserving the coming dark ages will be to people who cannot look carefully at the world and stop indulging themselves in vicious childish fantasies.

In other words, you want to feel smarter than everyone else.

It must be a comforting feeling.