That’s not a particularly short story, but if you might have noticed in my abbreviated bio on my intro. page, (Introducing Dale Cutler - #3 by AllenWitmerMiller), I am confident of God’s personal interventionist activity into my life. (I keep a log, a ‘field researcher’s notebook’, of empirical evidence of one of his most commom M.O.s.) So you will have to bear with me and try and project into my mindset. That will be difficult for any nontheist, since it is completely foreign to their confirmation bias (we all have confirmation biases, but not all biases are correct ).
Trying to make a long story shorter, not only does God providentially direct my paths and provide my needs, but he also gives me gifts of amazing timing and placing for my enjoyment, as a loving father would give surprise gifts to a beloved child (and I do call him ‘Father’). More development on that is in order, but the mandarin duck is exemplary of one of those.
So the shortened version is that I saw a solitary male mandarin duck in the wild on a gray and chilly day in the middle of November of '04, swimming in the weir pool of the disused Werdinsel mill on the Limmat River in Zürich, Switzerland… Just(?!) the timing of it and me being then and where (and the remarkable nature of the why and when could be expounded upon further.) That duck did knock my eyes out, so to speak!
It’s interesting that one has been in the national news very recently, seen in Central Park, NYC. It was kind of a big deal.
Interesting story. Reminds me of Francis Collins becoming a Christian after seeing a frozen waterfall. Isn’t it a bit arrogant to think that God personally arranges the world so as to create signs for you? What sign do you think is intended by (for?) all the starving children in Yemen?
Please share this “field researcher’s notebook” with us. I am sure we can come up with entirely natural explanations for all of your empirical evidences.
Did Dale Cutler say that there were no natural explanations for what he described? No. Moreover, he likened his experiences to a beloved child receiving gifts from a loving father. Do all gifts from fathers to their children require non-natural explanations? Obviously not.
If a loving God truly provides good gifts for his children, that doesn’t necessarily require a circumvention of natural processes. (That is especially obvious to me because I’m a Molinist.)
No, they don’t. They are physical gifts given with the human emotions of love and affection which are also physical firing of synaptic networks in the father’s brain. The father is a real person with real physical traits like evolved human feelings and emotions.
There were no “gifts from God” Humans over the past 2 million years have created this world that you live in step by step. As we end 2018, we should thank the billions of humans that came before us for building a world that is pretty comfortable and enjoyable for most of us (for a short time of our lives).
You lost me on that one. Are you saying that human emotions like love and affection and the underlying synaptic networks of a brain are non-natural? I would not have expected you to embrace supernatural explanations.
I don’t think any humans created mandarin ducks. Moreover, even though @DaleCutler has not shared the log entries in his book of blessings from God [That’s my description which I think would be appropriate.] I seriously doubt that all of those entries are attributable to things created by people. Yet, even if some of them involve people, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t gifts from God.
I don’t have such a log book but I think I understand what Dale is saying.
But we learned to capture and eat ducks. And then, in some parts of the world to domesticate ducks and create ducks that are our food and pets.
My point is that human imagination and creativity is purely natural and evolved. It is what makes us human. We can imagine all sorts of things and then got on to making it happen. No God is or was necessary in human achievement. And no God is necessary for any of us to live happy, comfortable, meaningful and purposeful lives.
The Bible says (and therefore most Christians believe) that humans are made in the Image of God, and that that explains why God’s attribute of expressing and sharing love is also found within humans. It sounds like you may be saying that love and affection only exist as products of synaptic networks in a material brain. (Am I correctly understanding your statement?)
Yes, love and affection only exist in the brain’s of the people experiencing those feeling. Once the person moves on to other feeling and emotion (or dies) those synaptic networks cease to exist.
I really don’t want to invade Dale’s personal space. He seems like a great guy with his own purpose and meaning to his live. I wish him well and a long happy life. Once I get to know him, I am sure that I will feel a strong emphatic connection with him through the human made communication paths here at PS.
I’m not sure, but I think he is open to the Theia scenario. That could certainly involve an opaque atmosphere, as could the (I don’t remember what it is called) simultaneous generation of the earth and the moon from a single imbalanced accreted mass (that’s probably not well said, either). I never got the idea that Ross suggests that the moon was formed before the earth. Maybe you’re thinking of Theia?
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