Reply #17: You're confusing definition with proof. [View All]

[Bear down under]

To define a miracle as something that happens when God suspends the laws of nature for a purpose of His own proves nothing about whether miracles actually exist.

You are free to argue that no event can fit the definition, either because God has no power to suspend the laws of nature or because He does not exist in any case -- and that miracles are therefore imaginary. But those are arguments brought forward on the basis of the definition, not flaws inherent in the definition itself.

Similarly, imaginary numbers don't exist -- there is no number which multiplied by itself can give a negative product like minus two -- but that doesn't mean that the concept cannot be a useful mathematical tool. Even the objective existence of natural numbers is unprovable; they exist only as abstract concepts in the mind. But that doesn't prevent their being very useful as a way to describe external reality.

As for Beethoven's Tenth Symphony, that is easy to define. It is the symphony that Beethoven composed after the Ninth. That you have never heard it is because (despite his assurances to his publishers) he actually wrote very little of it down and it was left unfinished and unperformable at his death.