WHY BE XENIAL (WELCOMING) TO SCIENCE AND NOT RELIGION?

Religion despite knowing that science searches for natural explanations even if they seem impossible, even if there seems to be a miracle, claims that science permits faith in miracles.  Some lie that it verifies miracles.

Scientists see some things as inexplicable. Other scientists disagree. When scientists disagree on what kind of God or not exists or indeed if any exists. It follows that it is dishonest of religion to argue, "Science backs our miracles up".
 
You should only believe in a miracle as a last resort when you have eliminated the possibility of lying or mistakes having been made beyond all reasonable doubt.  Science struggles with showing somebody is lying.  Testing them will show unclear results.  So if miracles need people to be sure the witnesses are telling the truth then they are anti-science for science cannot help.

Few of us can be a match for the scientists for it is all so complicated and so generally speaking we can’t know who is right. To know takes a lot of work and thinking.  One thing is for sure every testimony to a miracle comes from a person who knows that most people are going to be vulnerable to perhaps endorsing a miracle that is not true.
 
Some feel that certain things are found in science that are unintelligible to our minds but not necessarily to the mind of God who is smarter than us. Gravity is a noted mystery.

If they come close to calling gravity a miracle then why not say it could be doing the miracles we see?  Who says they have to be direct acts of God?  At least we know gravity exists.

If something that happens is unintelligible these people may say that that opens the door to belief in miracles for they are unintelligible as well. They are more likely to word it as inexplicable.  Unintelligible to us would be okay though as long as you don't mean unintelligible in its strict sense.  So their case becomes that if inexplicable things happen they open the door to miracles for they are inexplicable too.

Not the same thing folks!

It is like saying that if you would steal five pounds you would steal a computer.

The argument does not allow for belief in miracles. It does the opposite. If we think nature is unintelligible/inexplicable that is our problem and not a problem with nature. Miracles are different for they boast that nature cannot understand them. 

There is a total difference between believing that something cannot be understood in principle and that something can be understood in principle but we are just not able to. Read that line again.

Believers might say that science has verified that an event was inexplicable. But no scientist can say it was a miracle for inexplicable does not equal miracle. It only means they don’t know why it happened. Unusual things do happen and we still have much to learn. Science used to say lightning was inexplicable. What happens is a religion tells you that certain inexplicable events are miracles and miracles are evidence that its message is true when all it is doing is assuming that miracles have happened and are from a reliable source like God. It is saying that the inexplicable is a miracle when it seems to have happened to support its theology and is just inexplicable but not a miracle when it does not - this system is sheer fraud and deception for it is rigging the evidence. In that case miracles cannot count as evidence at all and it is a waste of time bringing scientists in to investigate. Religion is only guessing therefore no sensible God would waste time doing miracles just for that! It is all a con.
 
Science is about evidence and assessing it. It is that simple.

When science shows that men are aggressively sexual, it comes into conflict with religion which says that grace from God can address that making it untrue potentially for all men and definitely untrue for those who accept Jesus.  Arguments about miracles are really about how God works on people perhaps in ways that nature cannot explain so that they behave in way that nature cannot determine.  For example, God is not going to make a wafer bleed for show.  It will be used as a trigger for his changing of what is inside you and other people.
 
Miracles pose as evidence for a holy book being written by God or a religion being made by him. Calling miracles evidence and speaking of evidence for miracles is actually window-dressing. Religion and faith do not care about the evidence aspect at all but pretend they do. It makes their rubbish look respectable. The believer accuses the skeptic of miracles of claiming to know evidence-wise that they never happen and that is impossible for you cannot examine all the evidence for everything in the universe. Maybe if a miracle never happened in this universe it could happen in another one. The sceptic might have a problem. Suppose she has. Then it is worse to say that the evidence must show if God loves us and then to say you know there is nothing that refutes that love. That is what the believer uses as the selling point for miracles.  But an argument that is immune to any evidence that it is wrong is no good and is just a scam.  You may as well affirm it as contradict it or just not care either way. Remember that the love thing is core to what a miracle from God is supposed to be about!!  That makes the uselessness of the argument far worse. 

Remember whoever tries to influence you with a claim that cannot be shown false is looking to shine their own ego.  Imagine if you are given a cure for toothache and you are still sore and you are told by the healer that if the cure did not work it was not the fault of the treatment but something else. Perhaps you had a hidden cancer that absorbed the cure instead of the tooth?  So it was effective but was side-tracked and didn't deliver the benefit expected but another one.  That person is also claiming to love you and want your wellbeing.  Two claims are being made.  One of the cure.  The other of the provider's love.

Human nature knows as horrid as it is to prevent anybody seeing that a remedy is in fact fake, it is worse to offer love that depends on blinding you as well to seeing if it is not real.  Such manipulative love is not love at all.  It distorts it.

That is the kind of love that religion has God offering us.

The sceptic is being reasonable.  The believer is not.  Don't say the sceptic is being more reasonable than the believer.  The sceptic is not just more reasonable but the only reasonable one.  Choosing the best of two terrible options makes you reasonable not just more reasonable than those who choose the worst.
 
Miracles are antagonistic to science. Science believes in investigating everything and questioning all things while miracles advocate faith. We are expected to believe in miracles on the basis of science and what science says about human reliability and so on which is a contradiction. There were no scientists to back up any miracles done by Jesus and we are expected to believe in them more than anybody else’s. Even a scientist miracle of raising the President of the USA to life would not matter as much. 

Science has done a lot of harm, think nuclear weapons and so on. But would we really be better off without it? We wouldn’t know about germs and disease prevention. If somebody invents a useless pill that he says cures cancer, science will expose him. But if the person claims that there are invisible forces in the pill that science cannot detect there is nothing one can do to stop him. People who are in remission or who got better normally will think it was the pill did it. People will be fooled, they will be conned, they will be exploited and truth will be put beyond reach for verification will be impossible with supernatural claims. The point is it is better to think scientific than to think supernatural. It’s safer. To present faith as an additional means of knowledge with science is totally fallacious. What faith is this knowledge? Islamic, Hindu, Baha'i?

People say that miracles are unlikely so even if they happen we have insufficient reason to believe in them. Religion can have only one response to this: “How do you know what’s likely?” This reply shows how religion refuses to be self-correcting. Science looks for evidence against its discoveries as well as evidence for them. Faith looks for only the evidence for its claims. It is inherently biased and unfair. It leads to aggression that is aroused by fear.

Suppose religion is right to see a miracle as a loving sign from God. It says miracles are demonstrations of God's love and indications from him concerning what doctrines he wants us to believe. But even if they are, they are far more signs of the presence of the supernatural because God's love and his doctrines cannot be understood or believed correctly without the supernatural stamp. They cannot be signs of the supernatural unless science verifies them as supernatural. But it cannot do that.
 
It makes the best sense to see miracles as nonsense and to see them as unbelievable even if they do happen. They do not make any sense for what we are expected to do with them doesn't.



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