> The Israelites crossing into the Promised land could be an example of the
> second--where the water was dammed upstream, a phenomena which has been
> observed due to regional earth quakes collapsing river banks into the rivers
> and damming them up. This may seem to take the miraculous out of it, but
> it's still miraculous that a natural phenomena could be so precisely timed
> (it also implies that God gradually & gently rigged the circumstances far in
> advance--no problem for God).
>
Earthquakes are stochastic in nature, so I think you do need a genuine
miracle to get one exactly when you want it no matter how you "rig" the
initial conditions.
> Some miracles fit the spectrum in between. I can't think of any good
> examples.
>
> On the other hand, the survival of Shadrack & co. could only be regarded as
> a temporary suspension of physics.
>
I saw one of those trash TV, "amazing stories" shows where they attempted a
non-miraculous explanation of this and seemed to think that they had one (I
don't remember what it was -- "cold" spots in the furnace, or something).
Dick Fisher wrote:
>
> >Do we require that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was by entirely
> natural causes? What is the scientific explanation of Lot's wife turning
> into a pillar of salt?
>
> I thought the area was volcanically active, hence a catastophy waiting to
> happen. Could Lot's wife have been miraculously hit by a big splatter of
> molten salt (partly because she didn't run for cover fast enough)?
Sure beats Eric von Daeniken's theory of a nuclear attack by aliens. ;{>
Bill Dozier
Scatterer at Large
dozier@radix.net