Hi DA —
Seems you are contradicting yourself.
Possibly.
In the first post you claim that the Divine can change natural law; in the second you are saying a Divine can't change natural law.
OK. Let me try and explain my thinking, possibly using a bad analogy, but if so, perhaps you can see what I'm getting at, even if the analogu's a bad one ... ?
I'm suggesting that God is the architect of the Cosmos, and the laws that determine its governance.
I'm also suggesting there are higher laws, or perhaps I'm saying God can access the source code that underwrites those laws, the code which codes the laws, if you will. My 'very bad analogy' (VBA) is the relation between Newtonian and Quantum Physics. The Newtonian is the natural law, the Quantum is the Divine Will.
So I'm saying that Natural Law is hard on the outside, but soft in the middle. For God to work a miracle does not require the suspension, supression or what have you of the Law, rather a higher authority can work through the law in a way we cannot comprehend.
If a Divine can transcend the rules of this reality to do whatever it wants, seems to me it can make a round triangle.
What would a round triangle look like? You can't picture it because it's logically impossible. It's a paradox.
The same for 'an irresistable force meets an immovable object'. Either the force is irresistable, or the object is immovable, but the two cannot exist simultaneously.
I admit I'm kinda quibbling here.
Hey ... what's a quibble between friends?
This is an interesting set of statements. There is something deeper there that hit me and I have not quite put my finger on what it is yet.
Ah-ha!
For there are a good many people who believe in a God and who also believe that the 'miracles' in the Bible could not have actually happened.
Well on what grounds is dependent upon their reasoning, but there are firm metaphysical principles to say they could and can happen. It's rather about the a priori conditions one sets up. But to asseet they can't happen is an act of faith, really. They can't prove theuy can't happen.
It's more that people see miraculous events as myths and fables rather than an actual event.
The process of rationalisation has been going on a long time. It's only emerged in the last couple of centuries as secularism, but there you have it.
Sort of like Greek myth of Aphrodite being born out of sea foam.
I think the Greek myths deal with something else — they are more investigations into the human condition, the foundations of pasychology, rather than metaphysics or theology.
Not sure I have it nailed down yet, so possibly more to come.
I await with patience ...
