Re: Are the New Testament miracles plausible?

Bill Samuel wrote:
> By definition, miracles are things that happen that we can't explain
> by regular naturalistic means.  So one would expect that many
> contem****ary educated people in industrialized societies would find
> them implausible.
> 
> In fact, miracles continue to happen (as Jesus foresaw).  They are
> noted more often in societies that are less industrialized where the
> expectation that everything will have a clear, scientific explanation
> is not so rooted.

     In other words...where they are not scrutinized so closely for 
fraud.....


> 
> I do believe many miracles happened with Jesus.  My view on the
> Gospels is that these are attempts to show who Jesus was, not simple
> recitations of events as they actually occurred.  That is sup****ted by
> the fact that the early church accepted four different Gospels, and
> didn't seem to be bothered that there were some details different in
> them.  I look upon it more like today a great person's life might be
> pictured in 2-hour movies (a gospel can be made into a 2-3 hour
> movie).  Obviously one can't include most of the facts in the person's
> life (Luke in fact explains that in his gospel), but you capture the
> essence of it by picturing some actual events, concatenating multiple
> events into one that gives a picture of what kinds of things happened
> in the person's life, make up incidents which carry elements of actual
> events but better serve to tell the story, etc.  So I don't know that
> all the miracle stories in the NT are exact descriptions of actual
> miracles, but I think they accurately show what kind of miracles
> happened with Jesus.

   I'm somewhat reserved in this area, as an atheist, but I'm open to
   the possibility of miracles. The thing that concerns me is, are they
   authentic, and how does a society keep the real frauds from attempting
   to beguile innocent peoples ?