Friday

I have to get Res's beau off of the top of the page, so time for some random musin's.

Nate bashed Augustine on his blog. I would guess rightfully so. I got off into the deep woods on that discussion talking about good and evil. I claim no infallibility on this, but I suggested that evil doesn't really exist as a thing on its own. To use a word picture, darkness doesn't exist, it is merely the absence of light. Darkness is not a different kind of energy, it is the lack of light energy. Evil is the absence of good. Scripture says God is light.

If evil exists, then it was created by God. To use another word picture, if good is a green light, and evil is a red light, then whoever is responsible for shining the red light is responsible for evil. Thus we come to free will. Some say that we have no free will, and everything is directed by God. He is shining the red light. If this is the case then Augustine would have been right. Nate is wrong then in this case because nobody can accuse God of being evil, because whatever He does is good. This is because He defines good. I believe we have free will, so God is not responsible for the bad things we do, we are.

Now, if evil is simply the absence of good, then you can't blame God when evil happens (not that you can blame Him anyway). Yet another analogy: A fire that kills a dozen people is evil, in that it is not good. But the firemen are not evil, if they were not called to put it out. A passerby is not evil if he doesn't put it out, as he has no responsibility to do so. In order for God to be guilty of evil in this case, He must be shown to have a responsiblity to stop evil. Does He? I don't think He does, as He is sovereign we have no right to require it from Him. Heaven let your light shine down!


Then there is Difster. Difster doesn't think that a miracle is a violation of physics. He says instead it is an event we can't explain. When Jesus walked on the water, he wasn't violating any laws of physics. Well, why not? Why can't the One who created the forces of nature manipulate them as He pleases?

Take your average dead person. I have never seen one come back to life. It just doesn't happen. Jesus brought a Lazarus back to life after he was dead 4 days. Now, If Jesus didn't manipulate the laws of physics, then Lazarus came back to life spontaneously. You can't give Jesus any credit for this miracle if He took no active role in it.

Take another example. If someone fires a armor piercing bullet at me, and I see it come to a stop in front of me, and then accelerate away from me, this would be a miracle wouldn't it? The bullet cannot violate the laws of physics. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force. So that bullet should have hit me. But then we find out that Difster has placed a very powerful Wile Coyote magnet along the bullets path. The magnet applies a force to the steel core of the bullet and stops it, and then pulls it back away. So the bullet was obeying the laws of physics all along. And it wasn't a miracle. That is the important part. If a miracle is only something that can't be explained, as soon as you explain it, it is no longer a miracle.

A miracle by definition is a supernatural event, an event that cannot be explained. If you explain it, it is not a miracle.



So, now just how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?