What they considered miracles was different from what we consider miracles.
And so our view of religion should change to match, imo.
But God is omnipotent; there are so many different miracles He could perform to make us believe. He has shown that He isn't averse to showing miracles to prove He exists, so the question still stands. Many are still basing morality on the Bible, a book several millenia old, so why do we need to change our views?
What they considered miracles was different from what we consider miracles.
And so our view of religion should change to match, imo.
Many are still basing morality on the Bible, a book several millenia old, so why do we need to change our views?
Simpsons episode go!
[Image: http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/homervslisaandthe8thcommandment1_thumb.png?w=512&h=384]
If you remember that episode, Lisa learns about the ten commandments while Homer pirates cable. There's a short scene where Moses comes to deliver his message while incarnations of the cast walk around committing sins as if it were nothing.
The question is, based on what I was saying before, do you think that absolute proof of his existence would make humanity better?
Morals are often attributed to religion because God supported these in a time when there was very little of it. Sure, we aren't perfect today, but I don't think we're in the same state as the past. Perfection isn't really possible (reinsert the Free Will and the Light/Dark Arguments here).
There's a difference between guiding and forcing. In the past, His actions were to direct us on the right path, while today an action may instead force us be a certain way.
Also, based on our logic (that we shouldn't believe in God because He hasn't done any miracles for us) the future people won't believe in God either. God would have to keep on making more and more miracles.
Should God have to continuously perform miracles just for Humanity to believe in Him?
What and how do both of you mean by changing views?
How is guiding the people of yesteryears on the right path any different from doing so in the present?
Kazuni probably means changing our view of no proof, no God.
We more or less are on the right path already, even if we stray from it now and then.
If some extremists go and do stupid things like crash airplanes into towers, most of us know it's bad and will react to it. We get back on the path by ourselves, we don't need God to nudge us anymore. And (before somebody brings in the SSM debate), we aren't past that obstacle yet so you can't say we aren't guiding ourselves. As said, more people including the religious are warming up to the idea.
The purpose of these miracles was to convert people to the side of God, but what you're referring to is human conscience. It seems that good people that don't believe in God still go to hell, so how are we on the right path?
So then you're again saying that God should do things for us. "Only believers go to Heaven, so He should make us believe."
How is that different from "Only those who don't sin go to Heaven, so He should make sure we don't sin."
It all lies in how much you think He should do for us.
Personally, I think that less guidance from Him promotes more spiritual/soul development. As I've said before, I don't believe that any action would make us better, if anything it may make us worse or limit our freedom. - coming from an agnostic theist.
The main question is, why then, not now? Why were those people worthy enough to be shown pretty amazing miracles while we aren't treated to the same thing?
As science has broken down phenomena to worldly mechanics, societies that embrace scientific rationalization have become more and more secularized. In ancient days a burning bush might have been an otherworldly message and a fearsome lightning storm could have been interpreted as heavenly judgment. Now that we have technology from science, they're merely caused by changes in the weather.
Today, there is clearly a negative correlation between a country's level of religious belief and it's level of technology (i.e. higher values in one area mean lower values in the other). Do you think that the religions correlating to lack of technology are miss-understandings of phenomena? Personally, I'd say that they are.
What I'm saying is those weren't exactly amazing back in the day. People would attribute it to all manner of things since they didn't know that such an event was really impossible. Even when they realized it, it was attributed to any number of gods. In addition, they were all contained. Even the miracles that left little room for doubt weren't heard around the world for a while and even then there was no video to prove it. There was never a miracle that gave the whole world no choice but to believe save maybe the flood...but...lol
I'm not sure if you understood what I was saying because I can't quite place the prompt for this response. I think we're saying roughly the same thing.
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How amazing it was back then seems like a pretty relative statement since we don't know their mindset from back then, though I'm pretty sure people were either awed or scared ****less by the things He did because they didn't know what was going on. If you have a prophet perform an unexplainable miracle and saying that so-and-so miracle is a work of God, I'd believe that back then, that it was the equivalent of a fact. The Bible seems to state that these people were almost instantly converted, except for the haters. Even then, God was even willing to work his powers on some haters, like Saul, who was forced to believe after losing his sight.
Well, word of these miracles didn't spread much farther than the areas near Europe and the Middle East because there were large geographic barriers. Aside from Jesus, I don't think any of the other people spreading the word of God were able to walk on water or fly across mountains, although word of mouth was a pretty big thing back then. Jesus's arrival to towns were usually anticipated hours or days in advance.
I originally planned to type a more descriptive response, but I decided to condense it down since I was sleepy and lazy. What I was leading into was a question of perceptions, eventually leading into a question of the validity of the perception of people back in early times. From the general standpoint of a modern day scientist, yesterdays prophets would be today's schizophrenics. Couldn't it be said that certain biblical accounts may have been recorded by people who would've been today's schizophrenics because, back then, their stories were just crazy enough to be true?
Well, just from my understanding of the spread of the religion, most people didn't accept it, but it was wide spread in small groups. It bloomed once the Roman Empire stabilized the religion in 380 AD, which is well after any of the original accounts. Maybe time and the religion's endurance made it all the accounts more believable.
Imagine if something irrefutable happened today~ It wouldn't just be the immediate crowd that saw it but likely the whole world. Or perhaps what if such things are happening but no one believes them without solid proof. It's just not the same playing ground. In Samuel 3:1 it says ' ...In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.' This suggests that there are times when we're not going to see many displays of power.
That's part of the point I'm trying to make. Nowadays it'd be everywhere, instantly, and everyone can 'fly over mountains' and traverse water. Either that or it'd be written off with some sort of natural explanation. Word of mouth is slower and not as convincing as a video taken on a cell phone.
The number of Christians in the world is quickly becoming outnumbered by the number of those in other religions. Wouldn't God view this as alarming? Unless you can get into heaven just by being an upright person, then we can all get along.
But why does God need to stick to the same miracles, since He is omnipotent? At the very least, a miracle clearly orchestrated by God would set the stage for more discussion in His favor, since modern communications would facilitate the spread of that occurrence throughout the world. I don't feel that it would be just to sentence a person to eternal damnation until that happens, but that's just my opinion.