Posted by Ex-Instructor on August 14, 2002 at 09:01:48:
In Reply to: Re: Humility and Respect. posted by ? on August 14, 2002 at 08:19:37:
I don't think your purpose is to get my goat. I'm rather enjoying these conversations. It seems that your questions have moved away from 'does God exist' to more of, 'how could he do that'. That's cool.
I cannot say what the mindset of the individuals were in biblical times with regard to miracles. I can tell you that the people that believed in Christ (in the beginning) had everything to lose by doing so. They were all Jews, and all of them were espressly forbidden to worship false idols. They risked death (and many of them were martyred) for their belief in Christ. Saul (who is known as Paul) publically mocked and ridiculed the Christians. As a Pharisee, he made it his business to have them punished and arranged for many of their deaths. He travelled far and wide to do this. Then, on the road to Damascus, Jesus Christ revealed himself to Saul, and Saul believed. If that's not miraculous, I don't know what is.
The other miracle I'd discuss is 'us'. Human life is pretty miraculous. It seems to me that if you look at the evolutionary scale, we are so ridiculuously far advanced (intellectually, anyway) over other creatures, that this type of quantum leap seems difficult to imagine through mere chemical interactions. I happen to have a background in biology, and while I do believe in evolution, I do not believe in self-deterministic evolution. Fortunately for me, I've come to the realization that I'm not 'only natural'.
So, we've explained why God created evil, but now you want to know how. I think it's relatively simple. He's God. God can do just about anything he wants to do. Look at it this way. Your question is, how can God create something that he himself cannot do? I'll give a couple of examples.
First, I can't fly. But, I can build an airplane to fly in. Thus, I can extend the realm of capabilities. I also can't add up 10,000,000 numbers in my head. But I can build a machine to do it. In the same vein, God can't die (at least not for longer than 3 days....). Yet, we die. His creatures are fully capable of dying. God cannot cease to exist - yet the bible states that we can be made to cease to exist. There are a lot of thing that we cannot do that we can create. Ideas are even easier. The human mind can fathom infinite wonders that are uncreatable - should not God be able to fathom infinitely more?
That's my thought on it.
Oh, as far as, 'how can you get iron from a rock if there was not iron ore in it' - I'd just say, 'how can you create wine out of water' or feed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish? God is wonderful.
*; =qq(