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Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
Kevin R. Henke:
Hans Georg Lundahl:
Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3
Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three
Real Confirmation : Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere
The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer
At some points, you mix a lot of things, and I must simply dissect your paragraphs and answer sentence by sentence. Or even dissect sentences and answer phrase by phrase.
I define a supernatural act or “magic” as a feat that violates the laws of chemistry and/or physics. Such a supernatural feat could also be called a miracle. For our everyday macroscopic world, the laws of physics would include Newtonian physics for the most part rather than Einsteinian Relativity. The laws of Chemistry are based on atomic theory. Obviously, as our knowledge of chemistry and physics grows, my views of what is supernatural, artificial and natural might change. However, even with the advent of Einsteinian physics, Newton’s laws still widely apply in our Universe.
This was answered by C. S. Lewis in Miracles - a miracle is not a break away from natural physics, chemistry, or biology, but an addition to them.
A physicist - this is probably from chapter 8, "Miracles and the Laws of Nature" starting on p. 87 in the 2012 edition by William Collins, arguably reproducing C. S. Lewis' second, reworked, original edition - a physicist on a steamer is watching the pool balls roll on a table of pool. He can calculate the rolling period of the steamer to perfection (or simply detect it by a watch with split seconds), he can see the movements already ongoing, he can calculate how this will go on, very easily after some time - but he can't calculate whether someone will take up a queue and hit a ball with it. If someone does, the physicist's calculations have been broken, but the laws of movement haven't.
God is richer than the riches He put down in the regular processes of nature when creating.
Demons and stage magicians can give the impression, falsely, that they break the law of physics. I am not entering into the debate here with the Dimond Brothers whether stage magicians do their thing with demonic aid. For the purpose of the present argument, when David Seth Kotkin, stage name David Copperfield, seems to walk on water, it is one and the same whether he does so with natural or demonic aid. Both ways, something other than the water is keeping him above the water. The surface tension 72.8 millinewtons (mN) per meter at 20 °C - has not been enabled to uphold the 60 - 80 sth N per meter (if we can so convert his kg), which would have been breaking Fick's laws of diffusion.
When Christ walked on the water, it wasn't broken either, the N/m in his body ceased to point downwards, because not affected by gravity.
So, at the very outset, you take the wrong view on what the supernatural is.
Other takeaway in CSL's Miracles, you carry around yourself two very clear indications that nature is not all there is - neither reason nor morality can be reduced to matter and energy affected by each other in accordance with laws of physics and chemistry. The "hard problem of consciousness" - to take it from a somewhat different angle - remains hard. We don't just need an intelligent designer who arranged our brains for optimal consciousness, we need (for purposes we take for granted, like refuting or like blaming) something other than just brain arrangements in our consciousness.
I would define a supernatural being as an individual or thing that is capable of performing supernatural acts or has bodily structures that are inconsistent with biology.
These are two very different things.
God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for. Like the example of God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality and like demons keeping the body of David Copperfield above the water, like an adult holding a doll, just the "adult" isn't using hands but will and has no body and isn't visible. Btw, both good angels and demons can readily consider us "immature" - they were created over 7200 years ago and made their mature decision for eternity right after creation, we were each created less than 130 years ago (I presume) and as long as we live, we have time to change, and some do so in the last moment, for better or for worse.
It doesn't make any sense to ask whether this is "likely" within your world view - they are not eventualities arising within the kind of cosmos you play around with. If they exist at all, they refute your world view.
Examples would include gods, angels,
Other types of "gods" than the God of Christianity (or with some approximation as to philosophy rather than full theology, of Judaism and Islam and Platonism and Sikhism as well) are basically comparable to angels.
Just, they are angels with usually no God to create them ...
the Talking Snake,
Christianity doesn't propose snakes or donkeys generally talk. Have a look at Bileam's ass:
[21] Balaam* arose in the morning, and saddling his ass went with them. [22] And God was angry. And an angel of the Lord stood in the way against Balaam, who sat on the ass, and had two servants with him. [23] The ass seeing the angel standing in the way, with a drawn sword, turned herself out of the way, and went into the field. And when Balaam beat her, and had a mind to bring her again to the way, [24] The angel stood in a narrow place between two walls, wherewith the vineyards were enclosed. [25] And the ass seeing him, thrust herself close to the wall, and bruised the foot of the rider. But he beat her again:
[26] And nevertheless the angel going on to a narrow place, where there was no way to turn aside either to the right hand or to the left, stood to meet him. [27] And when the ass saw the angel standing, she fell under the feet of the rider: who being angry beat her sides more vehemently with a staff. [28] And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said: What have I done to thee? Why strikest thou me, lo, now this third time? [29] Balaam answered: Because thou hast deserved it, and hast served me ill: I would I had a sword that I might kill thee. [30] The ass said: Am not I thy beast, on which thou hast been always accustomed to ride until this present day? tell me if I ever did the like thing to thee. But he said: Never.
What does bishop Challoner say about this?
[28] "Opened the mouth": The angel moved the tongue of the ass, to utter these speeches, to rebuke, by the mouth of a brute beast, the brutal fury and folly of Balaam.
In other words, donkeys have no speech capacity in themselves. Neither do snakes.
Just moving the tongue around would not suffice for the kind of acoustic modifications of air breath and the tones of vocal chords that make up speech, but these modifications would be well within the capacity of an angelic being.
fire-breathing dragons,
I think Kent Hovind gave a good reply when referring to the bombardier beetle. Yes, Leviathan is described as fire-breathing, so he dealt with it on a seminar on Job (morally not as great as Moralia in Job by St. Gregory), and the explosions coming out from the bombardier beetle would kill it - if they happened inside the head of it. Two liquids are emitted separately and join when coming outside the organism, and then explode. Same would be the case with things catching fire when coming out of a dragon's (or leviathan's) nostrils. Hovind mentioned more than one dino that had cavities above the nose, and these could have held liquids meant for such combustion.
and trees that produce fruit that can increase lifespans and mental abilities with one bite.
If God can make the mass in kg have no N/m down to gravity of earth, He can endow biology with such clearly more than biological qualities as well. Again, it is not the chemistry of the fruits that will have these effects.
Also, if a “prophet of God” actually and demonstrably turns lead into gold in violation of the laws of chemistry
Transsubstantiation miracles don't defy chemistry, since a tacit assumption in all natural chemical process is, God is not changing things directly - but sometimes He is.
Lead and gold are badly chosen, but Paracelsus seems - seemed - to have turned a copper penny to a gold coin in Vienna. Not sure whether it was real gold or a demonic sham (he had, they said, a contract with the devil, which he managed to wheedle himself out of without losing the benefits). I don't count him as a prophet of God. It could be a parodic twist to his real reputation too. I do believe he helped out a host - or the tale could be a parody of real legends to discredit them, if it was produced in the Enlightenment:
Die Sage, dass der berühmte Arzt Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) hier 1538 geweilt und eine schlechte Münze in ein Goldstück verwandelt habe, taucht erst im 18. Jahrhundert auf und wird in der Wiener Publizistik seit 1837 auf das Haus bezogen (Inschrift).
https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/K%C3%BCssdenpfennig
Translating : the legend that the well known physician Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) should have rested here and and turned a bad coin into a piece of gold only appears in the 18th C. and is in the Viennese journalism taken to refer to this hous - Küßdenpfennig - since an inscription in 1837.
In the 18th C. freemasons could have been eager to smudge the world of legend, and for that reason have planted a fake one. You are aware Joseph Smith was a freemason?
or levitates against the law of gravity,
As explained: levitation does not go against the law of gravity, it either excepts certain matter in and around human bodies from it (in case of God's miracles at walking on water and Ascension) or simply adds an invisible support (cfr the demonic version of how Copperfield does a trick).
I would accept that as evidence of the supernatural, and I would have to recognize that this individual has real supernatural abilities.
Well, the problem is, if you need to see a certain phenomenon with your own eyes, you probably are in reality denying it. I can accept people have been shot in Ukraine, recently, and I have never seen a man shot to death with my own eyes.
Unlike other secularists, I’m unlikely to move the goal posts to redefine a truly verified miracle, if it ever occurs, as part of a new still totally naturalistic worldview.
If Enoch and Elijah turn up in our time, take it up with them. I'm here to argue historic facts, how likely they are in a world view where miracles and the supernatural are in principle possible, not to prove miracles natural events.
So, from what we know about the intelligence and the inability of snakes and other reptiles to speak, if a snake starts having a conversation with me and other witnesses, I would have to change my skeptical views of Genesis 3.
Not the point. My advice - if a snake does so, don't answer, but get away. Eve's conversation was not exactly lucky for any of us.
We also don’t expect the fruit of trees to immediately and substantially increase the mental abilities and lifespans of humans beings with just one bite. If science verifies that such trees exist, I would again have to reduce or even eliminate my skepticism of Genesis 3.
Genesis 3 is a piece of history. Real or at least fake. History is verified historically, not scientifically, at its most basic, since science cannot verify whether only scientifically verifiable phenomena exist or occur. As well as because science cannot foresee history.
Until I actually have definitive evidence of the supernatural, I will not say that miracles are impossible. However, I will automatically classify any supernatural claim as highly unlikely; this would include the Talking Snake of Genesis, as well as the claim that Romulus was born of a virgin.
"Virgin" in this context means vestal. Roman pagans did not attribute a Virgin Birth to Rhea Silvia. The claim that she was impregnated without visible human agency is possible if there is the demonic, and St. Augustine considers this a possibility (though for some reason, he overlooked it when discussing Genesis 6).
Again, I’m not saying that miracles and supernatural beings are impossible, but I’m saying that they’re highly unlikely until we get good evidence for them.
There are precisely two reasons to consider something as "highly unlikely" - either it goes against your world view (which if so is not really agnostic) or you pretend that the historic evidence has not shown that such things happened elsewhere and at other times. This is somewhat disingenious, if you believe the historicity of Alexander (as I do), see here:
After only a few days crossing the sands, the party ran out of water and were only saved by a sudden violent rainstorm, interpreted by the expedition historian Callisthenes as divine intervention. Their sojourn was then interrupted by one of the regular terrifying sandstorms sweeping up from the south to obliterate any recognizable landmarks, and with the track indistinguishable from desert and the landscape featureless as far as the eye could see, the guides employed for the journey were soon lost. Mindful that hostile Persian forces of Cambyses had been obliterated in exactly the same circumstances in their attempts to reach Siwa two centuries before, his companions had been unable to dissuade Alexander from undertaking the perilous journey. “Fortune, by giving in to him on every occasion, had made his resolve unshakable and so he was able to overcome not only his enemies, but even places and seasons of the year” says Plutarch. And indeed, disaster was once again averted when two black ravens miraculously appeared, Alexander exhorting his colleagues to follow them as they must have been sent by the gods to guide them. Callisthenes records that the ravens limited their flight to accommodate the party, even cawing loudly if their charges deviated from the correct path. Ptolemy says that their guides took the form of two snakes, and whilst unsure which, Arrian confesses that “I have no doubt whatever that he had divine assistance of some kind”.
Posted by The World of Alexander The Great on August 14, 2012
https://theworldofalexanderthegreat.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/alexander-the-great-in-egypt/#more-1465
Since Hellenism was part of praeparatio evangelica, I think Alexander was helped by God.
I have yet to see any definitive evidence of any supernatural event or being, but I’m open-minded as long as my standards are met. I will not lower my standards for any religious, political or other agenda.
Will you "lower it" confronted with the fact that your "standard" is not consistent with how we have historical knowledge?
...
In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops.
How much of the stories can you go through and consider the "evidence as non-existent"? I'm talking of Bigfoot and Nessie, now.
The Cyclopes have two appearances in Greek "mythology" which is a mixed bag. As said, there is a difference between "divine myths" (generally not to be believed by a Christian) and "heroic legend" (generally so to be believed, unless there are specific reasons against it, like Hercules bringing up Cerberus from Hades - though he could have shown "Cerberus" as a demonic apparition just claiming to have been there, or deluded he had so been). One of them involves the overthrown of Kronos by Zeus and is therefore "divine myth" - as little as Genesis 1:1 to 1:26 visible to men without revelation (or invention) and can be dismissed. The other is in the mouth of Ulysses, who was (as displayed on the supposed occasion) not always truthful.
But let's take "cynoscephaloi" ... I think the real key is that the dog breed molossoi look like pit bulls, and these are slit eyed. Not sure if St. Christopher was a gook** or had hairy face (I tend to identify him, before his conversion, with Clodion, ancestor of Merovingians).
Claims for their existence are either based on personal testimony or ancient written records, which, so far, have been untrustworthy.
And so far, your record for dealing with ancient records, is not ultramarvellous. I recall you took up the land bridge to Tyre, and both McDaniel and your references in the essay show, no, this can not be used to show Alexander lived.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Thursday after Quinquagesima
3.III.2022
* Bileam is in Greel and Latin and in traditional Catholic Bibles Balaam. ** Dear readers from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia - I hope you take no offense, I was actually comparing you to a saint! And those from Indochina, sorry, not my fault some excesses by people using the word has left you bad memories.
Publié par Hans Georg Lundahl à 04:21
Libellés : Kevin R. Henke
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