Water into wine: natural or supernatural?

[Pogo]

Do you need the coats back?

Not yet, she is still trying to figure out why she took it off.

 

[Banach-Tarski Paradox]

Not yet, she is still trying to figure out why she took it off.

Certainly, somebody is trying to figure it out.

 

[Pogo]

Certainly, somebody is trying to figure it out.

Not me, I'm leaving that to the discernment duelists.
Unevidenced assertions at 20 cubits.

 

[John D. Brey]

Well that is rather your bad attitude, you don't care what anybody says or why, you just repeat whatever denial of the day you pick.
Here we have a person who agrees with you on much and you still don't care.

I may agree agree with YoursTrue on this too. It's an interesting question concerning whether miracles are "supernatural" or just natural phenomena that's beyond the ken of existing knowledge?

The problem I would have with miracles being wholly supernatural, rather than simply elements of reality that are previously unknown and non-engaged, is that I don't think God does things willy nilly or on a whim as though he likes to flaunt his downright ornery power. I think he's actually quite humble such that miracles are merely his desire to wake us all up to the paucity of our true insight into the nature of the world as originally created.

I think God would like us to be far more open-minded about the fact that since the fall in the Garden we've been living in a thin sliver of reality under the illusion that our lyin eyes are far more faithful than they really are. With apologies to the Eagles, I think he thought by now we'd've realized there ain't no way to hide our lyin eyes.



John

 

[Yerda]

Your second statement seems out of kilter with your first? If you accept the possibility that spacial locality could be illusory, that space and time are, as Einstein said, " . . . modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live," then the speed of light is an illusion related to how we're designed to encounter the world, rather than something that exists even if we're not experiencing it.

The point is that no information is travelling faster than light. Entanglement doesn't change this.

As in Berkeley's theory that a chair doesn't exist when no one is looking at it, so too, light traveling through space doesn't occur, or exist, if no sentient entity is measuring it through observation. The concept of light traveling through space is a concept in a mind and not an event that exists without minds.

Naturally that's all a difficult pill to swallow for metaphysical naturalists who believe we evolve and adapt to a real and solid world outside of us rather than believing, as Christian idealists like Kant, Berkeley, and yours truly believe, that space and time are constructs of the mind and not elements of a mindless reality.

What we have meant to say is that all our experience is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things which we experience are not in themselves what we experience them as being, nor their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What objects may be in themselves, and apart from all this receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely unknown to us. We know nothing but our mode of perceiving them - a mode which is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared in by every being, though, certainly, by every human being. With this alone have we any concern.​

​

Immanuel Kant.​

These are fun ideas to play with but don't change the facts of our observations. And raise more questions than answers in my experience.

Maybe the world is wholly mental in nature and our bodies and our physical measuring devices are "representations of appearances". Maybe the world is entirely physical but all of our perceptions are still "representations of appearances". There is no way to tease the possibilities apart since all the evidence would look the same under a materialist, idealist, dualist or some other -ist framework.

Even if chairs don't exist when we aren't looking at them, when we look we obtain consistent results. The laws of physics still hold.

As an aside, if you are interested, David Chalmers has a decent paper on idealism that you can find online. Just search for "Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem".

It concludes,

I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible.
Materialism is implausible. Dualism is implausible. Idealism is implausible. Neutral monism is
implausible. None-of-the-above is implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a
boost from the fact that one of them must be true. Idealism is not greatly less plausible than its
main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability
that it is true.

Which I like.

Quantum physics is the most recent example of the poverty of our empirical and logical relationship to reality. I'm not so much trying to use quantum physics to prove that Jesus could walk on water or turn water into wine as I'm pointing out that to even someone as intelligent and savvy as Albert Einstein, quantum physics proves that the world, reality, is far different than what we experience on a daily basis.

Men like Einstein initially considered many of the proposition proven as true by quantum physics to be far more unlikely than a man walking on water, or water being transformed instantaneously into wine. Nonetheless, Einstein and all the opponents of quantum physics were forced to swallow incredibly unlikely truths just as everyone reading this thread will one day see that those who swallow the blood Christ transformed into wine will rule in the kingdom of God forever and ever amen.



John

The only sensible way to proceed is by raising or lowering our expectations based on the evidence we are able to gather. The day you can come to me with evidence that "those who swallow the blood Christ transformed into wine will rule in the kingdom of God forever and ever amen" I'll raise my estimate of that statement being true.

 

[gnostic]

A miracle (such as turning water into wine) would not happen naturally.

Well, here we’re in agreement…which is rare, especially when talk about the differences of religion vs nature.

 

[gnostic]

I may agree agree with YoursTrue on this too. It's an interesting question concerning whether miracles are "supernatural" or just natural phenomena that's beyond the ken of existing knowledge?

it isn’t beyond any knowledge as to how wine are made, Brey.

People in that region - the Levant, or the entire Near East for millennia before Jesus in the gospel of John. They knew how to make wine, as well as other al beverages (eg beer or ale, mead, etc), and they did so without science knowledge.

What the gospel narrated with this water-wine miracle, is impossible without grapes…PERIOD!

When grapes are ripe, particular species of yeasts will start growing on the skins of grapes. When the winemakers crushed the grapes, juice come into contact with the skins, and therefore yeasts start feeding on the natural sugar in the grape juice. The yeasts turn sugar into alcohol, and when you let the al permeated the juice for a period of time, it will turn juice into wine.

That’s just how it is, even if the winemakers may not anything about the unicellular fungi that grow on the skins.

You try to mix the miracle with some nonsensical yarn about Jesus using quantum entanglement of bringing wine from someplace else to the wedding feast of Cana…

Since space and time are an illusion, Jesus used the entanglement between the water with Chateau Lafite Rothschild of a later time in order to surprise and delight his wedding guests.

…is not only pure speculation, it is speculation that is utterly ludicrous.

 

[Banach-Tarski Paradox]

Have you ever wondered ,Why Water into Wine?
Not Wine into Water!?
or Water into Oil?
Would that prove they were always drunk! ?
Alcoholic , for 5000 thousands years!

Alcohol has long been known to possess spiritual, medicinal, and celebratorial properties.

 

[PureX]

This thread is about whether such a miracle can occur naturally, or whether it is story invented by a person who has no understanding of how wine are made.

Neither.

The event in question is part of a story intended to present the main character is an extraordinary and divinely sanctioned being. So as happens in a great many stories, this character is presented as havng abilities that are beyond the limitations of the rest of us.

 

[YoursTrue]

I may agree agree with YoursTrue on this too. It's an interesting question concerning whether miracles are "supernatural" or just natural phenomena that's beyond the ken of existing knowledge?

The problem I would have with miracles being wholly supernatural, rather than simply elements of reality that are previously unknown and non-engaged, is that I don't think God does things willy nilly or on a whim as though he likes to flaunt his downright ornery power. I think he's actually quite humble such that miracles are merely his desire to wake us all up to the paucity of our true insight into the nature of the world as originally created.

I think God would like us to be far more open-minded about the fact that since the fall in the Garden we've been living in a thin sliver of reality under the illusion that our lyin eyes are far more faithful than they really are. With apologies to the Eagles, I think he thought by now we'd've realized there ain't no way to hide our lyin eyes.



John

Well, that's nice to know. or think about. Thank you.

 

[YoursTrue]

it isn’t beyond any knowledge as to how wine are made, Brey.

People in that region - the Levant, or the entire Near East for millennia before Jesus in the gospel of John. They knew how to make wine, as well as other al beverages (eg beer or ale, mead, etc), and they did so without science knowledge.

What the gospel narrated with this water-wine miracle, is impossible without grapes…PERIOD!

When grapes are ripe, particular species of yeasts will start growing on the skins of grapes. When the winemakers crushed the grapes, juice come into contact with the skins, and therefore yeasts start feeding on the natural sugar in the grape juice. The yeasts turn sugar into alcohol, and when you let the al permeated the juice for a period of time, it will turn juice into wine.

That’s just how it is, even if the winemakers may not anything about the unicellular fungi that grow on the skins.

You try to mix the miracle with some nonsensical yarn about Jesus using quantum entanglement of bringing wine from someplace else to the wedding feast of Cana…



…is not only pure speculation, it is speculation that is utterly ludicrous.

 

[YoursTrue]

Neither.

The event in question is part of a story intended to present the main character is an extraordinary and divinely sanctioned being. So as happens in a great many stories, this character is presented as havng abilities that are beyond the limitations of the rest of us.

That the event is part of the narrative of a human being demonstrating extraordinary powers is certainly something I'd agree on.

 

[gnostic]

Neither.

The event in question is part of a story intended to present the main character is an extraordinary and divinely sanctioned being. So as happens in a great many stories, this character is presented as havng abilities that are beyond the limitations of the rest of us.

That’s what I would call embellishments.

 

[PureX]

That’s what I would call embellishments.

George Washington never told a lie, and threw a dollar coin a half-mile across the Potomac River.

Such 'embellishments' are symbolic. Because mythology is about conveying cultural ideological imperatives from one generation to the next. They are not historical documents even though they are often resented in that manner. They are symbolic representations of cultural ideals. Factuality is simply not a pertinent issue.

 

[John D. Brey]

George Washington never told a lie, and threw a dollar coin a half-mile across the Potomac River.

Such 'embellishments' are symbolic. Because mythology is about conveying cultural ideological imperatives from one generation to the next. They are not historical documents even though they are often resented in that manner. They are symbolic representations of cultural ideals. Factuality is simply not a pertinent issue.

In most cases this is historically true. But the Gospels are unique. They're the proof that all the previous mythological embellishments, though merely symbolic (virgin born sons of God, etc.), have a factual/historical signified that they're sign-language attempting to predict. The Gospels are what's signified by the merely mythological.

. . . the Fathers were right in fiercely defending the dogma of the Incarnation. From the point of view of the history of religions, the Incarnation represents the last and most perfect hierophany: God completely incarnated himself in a human being both concrete and historical (that is, active in a well-defined and irreversible historical temporality) without thereby confining himself to his body (since the Son is consubstantial with the Father). It could even be said that the kenosis of Jesus Christ not only constitutes the crowning of all the hierophanies accomplished from the beginning of time but also justifies them, that is, proves their validity. To accept the possibility of the Absolute becoming incarnate in a historical person is at the same time to recognize the validity of the universal dialectic of the sacred; in other words, it is to recognize that the countless pre-Christian generations were not victims of an illusion when they proclaimed the presence of the sacred, i.e. of the divine, in the objects and rhythms of the cosmos.​

​

Professor Mircea Eliades, The Sacred and the Profane.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

it isn’t beyond any knowledge as to how wine are made, Brey.

It isn't beyond an aborigine's knowledge how you contact someone on the other side of the river: you yell at the top of your lungs. But pulling out an I-phone and contacting someone on the other side of the planet is miraculous to an aborigine.

We're all aboriginal in relationship to one Jesus of Nazareth. We can make wine with grapes just as the aborigine slated to round up the troops has good lungs. And just as the aborigine with good lungs isn't even close to being able to perform or grasp contacting someone thousands of miles away ----that's impossible to him ---- we can't perform or grasp the act of turning water into wine instantaneously and without grapes.

Nevertheless it has occurred. You can count on it. Really, factually, historically. The rub is just trying to find out what kind of genie bottle we must possess to perform the miracle over and over again until it becomes science and not miracle?

Peter walked on water until he realized it was miraculous and therein fell into the water of his own lack of faith. Some never have faith to lack and are thus lackeys of this profane and illusory world guarded over and protected by the principalities, powers, and god, of this fallen world.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

What the gospel narrated with this water-wine miracle, is impossible without grapes…PERIOD!

. . . My great great grandfather passed down that in a discussion with your great great grandfather, he, your great great grandfather, said: "What you're predicting about landing a man on the moon is impossible without a miracle . . . PERIOD!"



John

 

[Pogo]

In most cases this is historically true. But the Gospels are unique. They're the proof that all the previous mythological embellishments, though merely symbolic (virgin born sons of God, etc.), have a factual/historical signified that they're sign-language attempting to predict. The Gospels are what's signified by the merely mythological.

. . . the Fathers were right in fiercely defending the dogma of the Incarnation. From the point of view of the history of religions, the Incarnation represents the last and most perfect hierophany: God completely incarnated himself in a human being both concrete and historical (that is, active in a well-defined and irreversible historical temporality) without thereby confining himself to his body (since the Son is consubstantial with the Father). It could even be said that the kenosis of Jesus Christ not only constitutes the crowning of all the hierophanies accomplished from the beginning of time but also justifies them, that is, proves their validity. To accept the possibility of the Absolute becoming incarnate in a historical person is at the same time to recognize the validity of the universal dialectic of the sacred; in other words, it is to recognize that the countless pre-Christian generations were not victims of an illusion when they proclaimed the presence of the sacred, i.e. of the divine, in the objects and rhythms of the cosmos.​

​

Professor Mircea Eliades, The Sacred and the Profane.​

John

Special Pleading.

 

[John D. Brey]

The point is that no information is travelling faster than light. Entanglement doesn't change this.

Aspect's experiment was the first quantum mechanics experiment to demonstrate the violation of Bell's inequalities with photons using distant detectors. Its 1982 result allowed for further validation of the quantum entanglement and locality principles. It also offered an experimental answer to Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen's paradox which had been proposed about fifty years earlier. . . It was the first experiment to remove the locality loophole, as it was able to modify the angle of the polarizers while the photons were in flight, faster than what light would take to reach the other polarizer, removing the possibility of communications between detectors.​

​

Wikipedia.​

The statement above shows that when science verifies elements of reality that aren't amenable to the logic upon which even our semantics are based, our language falls short of an accurate description of the new and problematic reality. The statement above implies that communication can't occur between the entangled pair since that would be faster-than-light communication. Nevertheless, thumbing reality in our faces, the entangled pairs break one of the laws, and the logic, upon which our language is based: communication must traverse space, and do so no faster than the speed that light traverses space.

Since our language and natural means of reasoning are firmly ensconced inside classical physics, we're forced to say the entangled pairs that clearly communicate at speeds faster than light, don't. Our language, and thus our epistemological security, would lose their traction if faster-than-light communication must be accepted, and thus, since we can't have that, we use our language to say that the entangled pairs don't communicate faster than light. They do something else. And we use convoluted and confusing language to confuse ourselves into believing what can't be, within our understanding of the world, isn't.

Nevertheless, the Aspect experiment showed that if one of the particles in an entanglement is manipulated by scientists, the other particle in the entanglement immediately gets the memo ---instantaneously--- even if it's light years away. That requires some form of communication between the particles. Which since it's not possible according to the logic and understanding upon which our whole version of reality is based, well, lets start out by using normal language to say it's impossible otherwise the letters and phonemes of our words might start interacting in ways that no one has ever suggested as a possibility except the mystics of Hebrew kabbalah or perhaps a mystical writer like Nikos Kazantzakis.

​

You open the prophets and your eyes are able to see nothing but the letters. But what can the letters say? They are the black bars of the prison where the spirit strangles itself with screaming. Between the letter and the lines, and all around the blank margins, the spirit circulates freely; and I circulate with it and bring you this great message.​

​

Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, 101-102.​

John

 

[paarsurrey]

Nobody else can know all the ins and outs of a thing except the creator of it, so whatever He says/said about a thing, that is only " natural", right?

Regards
________
"creation out of nothing" is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act."

Creatio ex nihilo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org