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Old 09-22-2004, 11:33 AM   #93 (permalink)
asaris
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Location: Washington, DC
Quote:
Originally Posted by adysav
I don't understand how you can so easily dismiss thousands of years of observation of the natural world, found to be consistent a million times over, yet you can take the words written in one book as being absolute and unwavering truth.
I would take what you read in the Bible with a pinch of salt, the only other place in the world where the laws of nature are broken is the fantasy section at the library.
First, you should note that I'm not trying to prove that Christ's miracles happened. Sure, I believe that they did, but that's not what I'm trying to prove. All I'm trying to prove is that they're not logically impossible.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that what you are arguing is that logical impossibility is co-extensive with natural impossibility; that is, that everything that is impossible according to the laws of nature is impossible according to the laws of logic, and vice versa. This seems to me to be an improbable position. Drawing a round square seems to be a different order of difficulty than walking on water. But even if you're right, there's still an epistemological problem.

We just aren't sure about what the laws of nature are; we think we have some idea, but of course, people have thought that in the past and been shown to be wrong. Some things that were impossible under Newtonian physics are possible under Einsteinian physics, and so it might be the case that some things impossible under Einsteinian physics turn out to be possible under some new physical theory. In fact, if I understand the theory (and, not being a physicist, I could be wrong), walking on water is in fact possible. Sure, it's very, very, very unlikely. But it's possible.
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