Seing Clearly

[Light Storm]

It's not something any of us ever put much thought into. Sometimes we see a blind person and we see a disability. Those people have often times accepted their disability and learned to live with it. As an advantage, often all their other senses become enhanced to help them make sense from their environment. The sound of rain may not mean much to us, but to a blind person it may description of the space around them.

 

Babies take months to develop their sight. Sight will gradually develop over the first year. The development is sight is just as much as a milestone in early development as grasping, sitting, rolling over, crawling and walking. Our brain needs time to wire familiar images with one another. At 1 month, an image of a bottle is just other colours in a kaleidoscope of the world around us. It's only as our brain understands the definition of objects around us can it begin to connect the dots of what's what. Much like walking/grasping ect, sight is something we really take for granted.

 

Now what happens when we cure the blind?

 

Advances in technology have come as far as allow us to do just that. However cases like in the essay "To see and not see" by neurologist Oliver Sacks show that blindness can not be cured like hitting a light switch. The brain has wired it's self to understand it's world being blind. To introduce sight only switches on the brains ability to see light. The brain it's self will have no memory or understand of what it means. It would be painful, and it would feel like an attack. To be able to see for the first time, would make as much sense as the world around a new born baby. In the few cases where people have re-gained their sight, the patients have found the experience to be deeply disturbing.

 

The movie "At First Sight" was based on that same essay which also sparked the play "Molly Sweeney" which won several outstanding awards.

 

In the bible, Jesus and his disciples enter Jericho and form a crowed of people around them. A blind begger on the street corner calls out to Jesus for help. Jesus calls him out to him, and in front of everyone Jesus healed his sight. The man was cured and had no side effects from being blind.

 

Ref: Mark 10:46-52

 

What is more likely.... Jesus healed the blind with a say so... or It was a lie, a stunt performed like an ancient magic trick that has been documented for the ages. We see some pretty interesting magic tricks, and some of the best ones are created by planting actors as spectators.

[Marat]

Was the man blind from birth or had he just gone blind recently, say from cataracts, which I assume was the most likely cause, given that that is the major cause of blindness in non-technological societies today. If the man had not been blind from birth, then there would have been no problem of re-wiring his brain to interpret visual images.

 

Generally, though, the Bible miracles are burdened with many logical problems. For example, could Christ be charged with being cruel for having decided just to cure some people but not others, which must have made those not cured feel rejected and denied an opportunity almost within their grasp? Also, the notion that someone tells people an implausible, magical story about his interpretation of the meaning of the universe and then, as the crowd shuffles away, muttering to itself in disbelief at the inadequate tale, the speaker shouts out, "Hey wait, look! I can pull a rabbit out of my hat, pull a coin out from behind your ear, and saw a lady in half -- that must prove that my story is true and that I'm the Son of God!" seems utterly childish in its attempt to substitute a magic show for a convincing argument.

[Brainteaserfan]

Was the man blind from birth or had he just gone blind recently, say from cataracts, which I assume was the most likely cause, given that that is the major cause of blindness in non-technological societies today. If the man had not been blind from birth, then there would have been no problem of re-wiring his brain to interpret visual images.

 

Generally, though, the Bible miracles are burdened with many logical problems. For example, could Christ be charged with being cruel for having decided just to cure some people but not others, which must have made those not cured feel rejected and denied an opportunity almost within their grasp? Also, the notion that someone tells people an implausible, magical story about his interpretation of the meaning of the universe and then, as the crowd shuffles away, muttering to itself in disbelief at the inadequate tale, the speaker shouts out, "Hey wait, look! I can pull a rabbit out of my hat, pull a coin out from behind your ear, and saw a lady in half -- that must prove that my story is true and that I'm the Son of God!" seems utterly childish in its attempt to substitute a magic show for a convincing argument.

 

The man was blind from birth. John 9:1

 

Chapter 9

 

1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

 

Healing people from birth defects, raising the dead, healing the sick and making 11/12 of his closest friends die for what they knew was a magic trick? These guys wouldn't have been willing to sacrifice their lives for a magic trick. 1 or 2 might, but 11/12? And, the remaining one was put in a vat of boiling oil. By a miracle, he survived, so they banished him instead.

 

I believe that not only did Jesus heal him, he gave him the instant ability for his brain to interpret the signals. If it was a breakthrough in ancient science and he wasn't the Son of God, then I would expect that the sight would have not been there right away. I think that his ability to completely heal this man instantly is another proof that Jesus is the Son of God.

[Marat]

You can't count ancient stories from a gullible age in which everyone was disposed to believe in gods and monsters as reliable accounts. After all, 10,000 people in the Roman Colosseum witnessed, according to historical records, a Roman Emperor fly over the stadium. Modern historians explain this away as having been performed by some trickery, probably involving the many ropes used to extend and retract the awnings over the Colosseum, but why not take this also as a genuine miracle, especially since most of the Roman Emperors were regarded in their own era as gods?

 

So there are really two problems with the 'witness' theory of Bible miracles. First, the only evidence we have for witnesses having believed in the miracles reported in the Bible is the description of the responses of people described in the same text, which is an ancient text filled with fantastic and mythological stories, so it is probably not worth being regarded as a genuine historical source. Second, even if the stories of the witnesses' response to the miracles is true, they were superstitious people in a age disposed to believe in magic and miracles, so they could easily have been duped. That is the view Christians take of the witness responses to the miracles of the Ancient Greeks, Muslims, Zoroastrians, etc., so why exempt the Christian stories from this same scepticism?

 

For example, the Ancient Greek historian Pausanius reported many facts about ancient temples, graves, and religious practice which modern archeologists and historians have confirmed to be completely accurate. However, the miraculous events associated with ancient religion he reported, such as his experience in the cave of one mystery religion, are simply scoffed at.

Edited June 5, 2011 by Marat

[John Cuthber]

The third option "this didn't really happen" is missing from the poll.

[Brainteaserfan]

The third option "this didn't really happen" is missing from the poll.

 

While I agree, and that is a particularly important one, a multiple choice poll will never have every possible choice. That is the point of the thread, you can give your beliefs even if they aren't choices in the poll.

 

So few people have voted, the outcome is almost useless.

[Light Storm]

The third option "this didn't really happen" is missing from the poll.

 

 

Truth begins in lies

 

 

[John Cuthber]

Is this statement

" a multiple choice poll will never have every possible choice. "

A true

B false

C meaningless

D none of the above.

Edited June 6, 2011 by John Cuthber

[Brainteaserfan]

Is this statement

" a multiple choice poll will never have every possible choice. "

A true

B false

C meaningless

D none of the above.

You are right, I admit defeat!

 

"None of the above" would be better than "this didn't happen" IMO.

 

You can't count ancient stories from a gullible age in which everyone was disposed to believe in gods and monsters as reliable accounts. After all, 10,000 people in the Roman Colosseum witnessed, according to historical records, a Roman Emperor fly over the stadium. Modern historians explain this away as having been performed by some trickery, probably involving the many ropes used to extend and retract the awnings over the Colosseum, but why not take this also as a genuine miracle, especially since most of the Roman Emperors were regarded in their own era as gods?

 

So there are really two problems with the 'witness' theory of Bible miracles. First, the only evidence we have for witnesses having believed in the miracles reported in the Bible is the description of the responses of people described in the same text, which is an ancient text filled with fantastic and mythological stories, so it is probably not worth being regarded as a genuine historical source. Second, even if the stories of the witnesses' response to the miracles is true, they were superstitious people in a age disposed to believe in magic and miracles, so they could easily have been duped. That is the view Christians take of the witness responses to the miracles of the Ancient Greeks, Muslims, Zoroastrians, etc., so why exempt the Christian stories from this same scepticism?

 

For example, the Ancient Greek historian Pausanius reported many facts about ancient temples, graves, and religious practice which modern archeologists and historians have confirmed to be completely accurate. However, the miraculous events associated with ancient religion he reported, such as his experience in the cave of one mystery religion, are simply scoffed at.

So, if you were God, what would you do to prove that you were God? He supposedly raised the dead, made the blind see, healed the lame, and healed lepers.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Brainteaserfan

[Marat]

I think a more sophisticated way for God to have communicated his message, rather than the rather clumsily mythological technique of ensouling a person, would have been to inscribe on the consciousness of every person a sense of divine love, which the person could then either discover for himself through his own goodness or not. That would get rid of a thousand complicating and diluting factors, such as the historical transformation of his message, the problem of the correct understanding or translation of his message, the impossibility of testing at such a great historical distance the genuineless of his prophet, the corrupting influence of church transmission of his message, the inaccessibility of the message to people living in Tibet, the unfair differential in the saving of people near Jerusalem or along the routes of cultural dispersion from Jerusalem, or those living before 30 A.D., etc.

 

But making the availability of the message purer through some more sophisticated method such as suggested here would require a modern mind. Unfortunately, the people who invented the story didn't work out all the complications with the proper transmission of the message, and instead they were satisfied with a rather poor solution.