What I don't understand is why any Christian would waste time and effort going to the mat over latter-day miracle claims, in the first place.

Hell, if the name of the game is prostituting one's reason in an ignoble cause, there is plenty for the busybody apologist to do just defending his/her belief in the Bible narratives and their resulting theology. If one is halfway clever about it, there is even a sort of living to be made putting lipstick on that moribund pig and prancing for the rubes.

Fatima? Who fucking cares?

(August 7, 2017 at 2:18 pm)pabsta Wrote: What a lame argument. <snipped for brevity>

Your whole life is lame.

(August 7, 2017 at 4:35 pm)pabsta Wrote: Similar to the case with Fatima, no one can explain the claims by Bernadette or the healings that have been happening ever since.

As the ability to diagnose medical conditions improves, the authenticated miraculous healings of Lourdes unsurprisingly starts to vanish.  There have been absolutely zero recorded cases where someone who lost a limb regenerated that limb by going to Lourdes.    If the waters at Lourdes had true medical value you would see physicians prescribing it, and pharmaceutical companies attempting to make money off of it.  You don't see this, however. 

My mother is a Doctor (an Internist to be specific) and raised Catholic, and she said that such miracle cures can be easily explained by any number of things including by not limited to misdiagnosis, the placebo effect, treatments starting to take effect, or simply people diagnosing themselves and having nothing actually wrong with them.

Lol your analogies continue to fail pasta . This is not like a crowd pointing to a culprit . It's more like the whole worlds in one spot . And one small faction says they saw a bank robbery . Others saying it was a bank deposit .Some come to believe it's a bank robbery for irrational reasons . And people further from the crowd say they saw something vague.  Others in front with the bank robber faction saying they saw nothing. And the vast majority of people present saying they saw nothing . And countless security camera's on every entrance and exit seeing nothing strange. And then a group of the robbers friends do a fake investigation and some corrupt newspapers run the story. And an unbiased investigator does one later and finds only confusion between witnesses . And the chief advocate in the crowd sees nothing and later is demonstrated to be a fraud even according to her own parents . I could go on .

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As for the healing show me a man growing his arms back then .Oh wait god does not feel like it.

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Quote:no one can explain the claims by Bernadette or the healings that have been happening ever since.

Really skeptics dictionary thinks they can

http://www.skepdic.com/lourdes.html

http://www.skepdic.com/miracles.html
Plus this is an argument from ignorance

(August 7, 2017 at 3:16 pm)pabsta Wrote:

(August 7, 2017 at 6:50 am)Mr.wizard Wrote: [quote pid='1598297' dateline='1502070773']

[quote pid='1598038' dateline='1502032570']
 Of course, every rational human being asks themselves the questions you mentioned. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to answer those questions because only God could know the answers. But these questions don't take away from the fact that an incident certainly occurred that was beyond what any human being could do.

It doesn't matter if an incident occurred that no human being could do, that doesn't mean god did it. "God did it" is not an answer, you haven't even established it as a possibility until you can establish that this god actually exists.  You also must establish the fact that an incident occurred, which in the case of the sun moving around sky you have not done. You keep wanting to use that 70,000 person figure as your evidence, but you ignore the fact that the same sun was visible to millions of people who didn't see anything.

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Man, I really butchered that reply, it was directed at PABSTA.
[/quote]

Can you predict an event months ahead of time to exact location and time of day? Of course not. If someone does, the supernatural must be involved. As for the incident actually occurring, I've already posted the text from the newspapers the following day. They were in no hurry to print those articles because they were both known to be anti-religious newspapers. And I already gave samples of testimonials of people who saw the event remotely.
[/quote]

Since you can't prove that the supernatural exists I don't see how you can make the claim that its necessary for anything. 

Why do you put so much stock in the testimonials from the people who said they saw it, you do realize that you wouldn't actually have to be in that town to witness the sun move, right? If you realize that, then you must recognize that there is a far greater number of people who didn't see the sun move, why are they discounted? Your also not only ignoring everyone who didn't see the sun move on that day, your also ignoring the science and what we know about the sun and the earth's orbit.

Ramen.

As for the claims the newspapers were anti religious you have yet to provide evidence of this . And we have evidence to the contrary that they were pro religious . The claim that people saw it remotely is debunked by the fact that none saw the actual event of the sun dancing . And people who were in the immediate area didn't see anything. And all mr wizard said.

Mr.wizard



It doesn't matter if an incident occurred that no human being could do, that doesn't mean god did it. "God did it" is not an answer, you haven't even established it as a possibility until you can establish that this god actually exists.  You also must establish the fact that an incident occurred, which in the case of the sun moving around sky you have not done. You keep wanting to use that 70,000 person figure as your evidence, but you ignore the fact that the same sun was visible to millions of people who didn't see anything.

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Man, I really butchered that reply, it was directed at PABSTA.

Can you predict an event months ahead of time to exact location and time of day? Of course not. If someone does, the supernatural must be involved. As for the incident actually occurring, I've already posted the text from the newspapers the following day. They were in no hurry to print those articles because they were both known to be anti-religious newspapers. And I already gave samples of testimonials of people who saw the event remotely.
[/quote]

Since you can't prove that the supernatural exists I don't see how you can make the claim that its necessary for anything. 

Why do you put so much stock in the testimonials from the people who said they saw it, you do realize that you wouldn't actually have to be in that town to witness the sun move, right? If you realize that, then you must recognize that there is a far greater number of people who didn't see the sun move, why are they discounted? Your also not only ignoring everyone who didn't see the sun move on that day, your also ignoring the science and what we know about the sun and the earth's orbit.
[/quote]


I give you credit, Mr. Wizard, for coming up with some good and logical questions throughout this discussion - better than most others I have seen on here. You must realize that the author of the book, "Meet the Witnesses", when gathering data for his book, placed an ad in the newspapers around Fatima to gather his testimonials, and he also contacted people in the US who immigrated since. If he spoke with people in other countries and they said they didn't see anything, that doesn't mean that the incident didn't happen either. I am not claiming the sun ACTUALLY spun, or ACTUALLY hurled toward the Earth, I'm simply pointing out that that was what the people thought when you read their testimonials. SOMETHING happened without a doubt, and that was the best way they could describe it.

As for the existence of the supernatural, that's a no-brainer. Go tag along with a paranormal investigator a few times and you will become a believer VERY quickly. It will scare the living daylights out of you. I personally know many people have been involved and it is NO joke. If you think I'm kidding, call one up and ask if you can go along. Seriously.

(August 7, 2017 at 7:56 pm)pabsta Wrote: As for the existence of the supernatural, that's a no-brainer. Go tag along with a paranormal investigator a few times and you will become a believer VERY quickly. It will scare the living daylights out of you. I personally know many people have been involved and it is NO joke. If you think I'm kidding, call one up and ask if you can go along. Seriously.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It was worth a good yawn. Now what?

Then explain why there are ex paranormal investigators . So your proof of the supernatural is an antidote of a friend of a friend . While if that's valid I know lots of skeptics that have done just that . And there still skeptics .

Then there is this


http://www.skepdic.com/paranormalinvestigator.html