Great discussion, still watching, but just had a thought...the Roman imperial cult (and I think Pierre Hadot suggested this decades back) offered a template for so much of how Christianity presented, and continues to present, a prayer relationship with a deity. The deified Roman emperor was a god to whom everyone in the empire, if denied local justice, was entitled to appeal - and he could, and often did, answer people's requests (Vespasian, if we're to believe accounts, actually performed curative miracles). This was a god who was really active in the world on a daily basis, and with whom everyone in the empire was entitled to have a kind of parasocial - or, to reverse-Protestant-code it (and perhaps not even anachronistically: the early Protestants certainly aimed to revive 'primitive Christianity') 'personal' - relationship.
Imma be real, although i find it successful, i find the Bayesian approach to arguing for god soy and cringe. Basically everyone who approaches God via that method always lands on some very cringe models of God due to being so separate in methodology from historic saints and theologians.
Also, just wanted to ask if Noah and others, in regarding some 'modern' miracles as well attested and therefore as good evidence, also credit the very numerous ones claimed throughout Christian history - including the cures apparently achieved through relics of saints, etc? Is it the relative recency of the Barbara Snyder event (although, you might say that the 1980s are as distant from our time as the 1880s), or the 'scientific' standing of the witnesses, which affords the event its evidentiary authority?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just very curious. I'm reading Anthony Grafton's new book:
'In 1430, Augustinian friars brought the relics of Saint Augustine’s mother, Monica, from Ostia to Rome. When her body entered the city on Palm Sunday, according to a humanist devoted to Monica, Maffeo Vegio, demoniacs were freed from their devils and lepers cleansed of their disease. Joyous crowds gathered. Monica was temporarily laid to rest in the now-vanished church of Saint Trifone in Posterula, which belonged to the Augustinian order. Miracles continued. The blacksmith who crafted the ironwork for her tomb had his sight restored, and his wife, after praying at the tomb, conceived a child...' Anthony Grafton, Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (pp. 22-23).
Grafton describes how some medieval scholars described the appearance of the constellation Virgo, the stars appearing to show the Virgin Mary seated and feeding baby Jesus - which reminded me of Miles's thought-experiment of the 'Gospel of John' appearing in the sky - but that others, such as Nicholas of Cusa, were horrified by this crude kind of 'evidence': 'Nicholas...winced when he saw diabolic means [astrological imagery] used to celebrate the Virgin' (p. 29).
Based post full of Correct opinions, especially that everyone should join us for Reason and Rationality!
Great discussion, still watching, but just had a thought...the Roman imperial cult (and I think Pierre Hadot suggested this decades back) offered a template for so much of how Christianity presented, and continues to present, a prayer relationship with a deity. The deified Roman emperor was a god to whom everyone in the empire, if denied local justice, was entitled to appeal - and he could, and often did, answer people's requests (Vespasian, if we're to believe accounts, actually performed curative miracles). This was a god who was really active in the world on a daily basis, and with whom everyone in the empire was entitled to have a kind of parasocial - or, to reverse-Protestant-code it (and perhaps not even anachronistically: the early Protestants certainly aimed to revive 'primitive Christianity') 'personal' - relationship.
Imma be real, although i find it successful, i find the Bayesian approach to arguing for god soy and cringe. Basically everyone who approaches God via that method always lands on some very cringe models of God due to being so separate in methodology from historic saints and theologians.
Yes. Analytic theology is not how the saints and mystics thought about God. It’s category error after category error much of the time
I will be attending the summer program for the sole purpose of sniping you with spitballs from the back of the room
The instructors are protected by a plexiglass wall
I will bring my high-caliber metal straw to penetrate the plexiglass.
I will just kill you
Oh. Okay.
Now go back and like the post.
Does Princeton know you have been threatening the lives of prospective summer camp students?
Also, just wanted to ask if Noah and others, in regarding some 'modern' miracles as well attested and therefore as good evidence, also credit the very numerous ones claimed throughout Christian history - including the cures apparently achieved through relics of saints, etc? Is it the relative recency of the Barbara Snyder event (although, you might say that the 1980s are as distant from our time as the 1880s), or the 'scientific' standing of the witnesses, which affords the event its evidentiary authority?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just very curious. I'm reading Anthony Grafton's new book:
'In 1430, Augustinian friars brought the relics of Saint Augustine’s mother, Monica, from Ostia to Rome. When her body entered the city on Palm Sunday, according to a humanist devoted to Monica, Maffeo Vegio, demoniacs were freed from their devils and lepers cleansed of their disease. Joyous crowds gathered. Monica was temporarily laid to rest in the now-vanished church of Saint Trifone in Posterula, which belonged to the Augustinian order. Miracles continued. The blacksmith who crafted the ironwork for her tomb had his sight restored, and his wife, after praying at the tomb, conceived a child...' Anthony Grafton, Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (pp. 22-23).
Grafton describes how some medieval scholars described the appearance of the constellation Virgo, the stars appearing to show the Virgin Mary seated and feeding baby Jesus - which reminded me of Miles's thought-experiment of the 'Gospel of John' appearing in the sky - but that others, such as Nicholas of Cusa, were horrified by this crude kind of 'evidence': 'Nicholas...winced when he saw diabolic means [astrological imagery] used to celebrate the Virgin' (p. 29).