{"id":582,"date":"2009-09-21T11:19:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T16:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=582"},"modified":"2009-09-21T11:20:20","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T16:20:20","slug":"not-despite-miracles-but-because-of-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Not Despite Miracles, But Because of Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, a Christian wrote to me and told me that he didn\u2019t think that even if incontrovertible evidence was shown for God, that I would accept it. One of his arguments was that Jesus did lots of miracles and there were still people in his day who didn\u2019t believe even though they saw the miracles happening right before their eye.<\/p>\n<p>I love these types of conversations. I always throw them for a loop when I tell Christians like this individual that one of the reasons why I don\u2019t believe is because of the miracles. Many Christians have a hard time understanding this line of thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it in this way, even the Bible says that Satan can do these same types of magic tricks. The Bible repeatedly warns against any kind of magic except for God-magic. So if Satan can do magic tricks and Jesus can do magic tricks, how do magic tricks support the idea that God is real? Come to think of it, Penn &amp; Teller can do magic tricks too without supernatural powers. I once saw them throw a rabbit in a wood chipper\u2026 okay bad example.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is that Uri Geller can bend a spoon with his mind right in front of your face, but that is really poor reasoning to conclude that Uri Geller is God in the flesh. Think about it, why would God feel the need to show off his divine powers by bending spoons?<br \/>\nIf God was real and was all powerful and could do anything and he really and truly wanted to make his presence known, he wouldn\u2019t need miracles or magic tricks to do it. We would all simply \u201cknow\u201d it intuitively. As a point of fact, we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>People are taught religion often times from an early age. If we intuitively \u201cknew\u201d God, than there would be no reason to teach religion, no reason to proselytize, and no reason for missionaries. Either God doesn\u2019t want everyone to know of his existence or he does not exist. It isn\u2019t that I don\u2019t believe despite the miracles, but rather that I don\u2019t believe in part because of the miracles.<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:0\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=582\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, a Christian wrote to me and told me that he didn\u2019t think that even if incontrovertible evidence was shown for God, that I would accept it. One of his arguments was that Jesus did lots of miracles and there were still people in his day who didn\u2019t believe even though they saw [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[168,9],"tags":[2216,2217,2237,786,2225,787],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}