(urth) Information, etc.

[Jeff Wilson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> On 4/11/06, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>The religiously dangerous course to take is to say that God
>>*can't* violate the laws of nature, and some have taken it. The
>>course that has seemed safer to others is to say that God can,
>>but *won't*, violate the laws of nature for whatever reason - usually
>>because of his benevolence towards us, sometimes because of
>>his rationality, etc.
> 
> 
> Actually, this is (from the Catholic perspective) quite a dangerous
> course also, in that it denies miracles, and the Christian (and so
> Catholic, and, I presume, Wolfe's) faith is _based_ on miracles,
> from the Virgin Birth to the Resurrection, not to exclude (at least
> for Catholics) ongoing miracles such as the limited infallibility of
> Popes and the transubstantiation of the Host in the Eucharist.

I think Chris is probably thinking more along the lines of Aquinas, 
whose limits to God's power to do the impossible were more about the 
ability of humans to construct paradoxes, prefiguring Godel's Theorem.

As for miracle-based faith, IIRC the only overt miracle formally 
required for Christian belief is Christ's Resurrection. Papal 
infallibility and the incidental qualities of the Host are not 
observable or falsifiable.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >