Miracles

This is in response to Alex's post (NHN). I believe miracles do not exist. Specific events occur in a fascinating order at opportune moments in time, but they are not miracles. If something amazing happens it is because some one did something right. Many look to a god and say that said god was the reason for something. I believe that things will happen if you take the responsibility to make them happen. It does not make them any less amazing for happening if they are explained. It is still incredible that Doctors save peoples lives. In older times people believed in miracles and witch doctors and magic. They would use some ingredients that had "healing properties." These "healing properties" were just correct ingredients that they chose on coincidence and decided to experiment with. Now we have doctors that know what they are doing and how medicine reacts with the human body, but it is amazing nonetheless. As for the question on whether knowing how things work will cause life to be less exciting, my answer is that life will always be exciting. The reason is because there is always room for error. The reason people's lives are so interesting today is because everyone thinks in a different way, and also because people make mistakes. Things don't always go as planned and they never will, and that is why life is so great.

Lying or telling the truth?

This post regards a question I thought of after a class discussion. The Question is "Would society be better as a whole if nobody ever lied?" My opinion on the matter is that it could go either way. On the one hand, criminals would confess to their crimes and no one would be falsely accused. Judgment in court could be fairly passed. Businesses would have to be straight forward with how they plan to operate, and thus would have to try harder and be more fair with their prices. People in relationships would no longer have to worry about cheating, because everyone would tell the truth. On the other hand, if people had to tell the truth all the time, feelings could get hurt. Teachers could get fired for telling their students how much they hate them. The suicide rate in teens could go up, after hearing from their parents that they were mistakes, or that the divorce really was their fault. Governments would not be able to hide things from their citizens, so if something bad happened the population would fall into mass panic. People being more truthful about their feelings of dislike towards one another could result in more fights. I am slightly confused on whether religion would be effected by this or not because according to the coherence theory of truth people believe there is a god/ there are gods because written documents or some other sort of physical evidence says they exist. If people still believe their religions are legitimate, making the world lie-free wouldn't change anything, would it? That is one question I have for you. The other is whether you think the world would be better or not if everyone told the truth?