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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:00 pm
(This post was last modified: October 27, 2017 at 3:07 pm by FatAndFaithless.)
(October 27, 2017 at 2:51 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I've been looking into the case of the Brazilian man with the brain abscesses and I find it is much more convincing. Have you looked into it?
https://thewire.in/18318/in-search-of-mo...in-brazil/
I mean, I haven't looked into every miracle that the Catholic Church recognizes because I don't have the time or inclination since so many times the 'evidence' is so similar. From that article, the grand conclusion is that the doctors don't understand how the patient recovered like that. The article writers then say " So, in the opinion of the doctors, it was a miracle." - which is a little disingenuous since the doctors didn't say that, they simple stated they don't know. The doctor that DID claim it as a miracle is a practicing Catholic. These little red flags aside, this still gets to my main, overarching problem with miracle claims - namely that the fact that we don't have an explanation for something now does NOT mean we can suddenly turn to something supernatural that we understand even less about, and claim it as the cause. How do we determine that the group of priests and doctors exhausted every possible other explanation? What mechanism or line of evidence did they have explicitly tying this event to Teresa's spirit as a necessary cause? It's essentially saying "we can't think of anything else at this point, let's go with God (or spirit of a saint, etc) as the cause."
The only concrete facts that we have in this case is that a very sick man got better unexpectedly, against the predictions of his doctors. I won't say this happens "all the time," but there are plenty of cases like this that are not able to be explained at the time (though that doesn't stop religious institutions for using them for their own ends..many of whom are not Catholic). Pointing to a lack of an explanation as evidence for another explanation is just something I find extremely flimsy and irrational.
You can find medical miracle stories like this that all point to different sects of different religions with different Gods. A miracle accepted by the Catholic church that isn't demonstrably different or more genuine in any discernible way (besides the names of the gods/spirits/souls being invoked) than any other claimed miracle, with no greater amount of better evidence, is no more convincing to me.
Also, damn font formatting again.
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:09 pm
You mean you haven't investigated the church confirmed miracle of a man having flown around a cathedral five times? Perish the thought. 
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:16 pm
(October 27, 2017 at 1:42 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: (October 27, 2017 at 1:41 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Yeah if they truly believe this was a miracle and the medical records back that up, it seems they'd release them to the public with Monica Besra's permission.
And it's not like I can ever make the claim "there was absolutely no intervention by the spirit of Mother Teresa"...because I don't know how on earth I would provide evidence for that. I just find their purported explanation really unjustified.
An important point, even though it remains to be shown that anything 'supernatural' has ever occurred. There are no uncontroversial cases of which I'm aware.
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:18 pm
(This post was last modified: October 27, 2017 at 3:20 pm by FatAndFaithless.)
(October 27, 2017 at 3:16 pm)Whateverist Wrote: (October 27, 2017 at 1:42 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: And it's not like I can ever make the claim "there was absolutely no intervention by the spirit of Mother Teresa"...because I don't know how on earth I would provide evidence for that. I just find their purported explanation really unjustified.
An important point, even though it remains to be shown that anything 'supernatural' has ever occurred. There are no uncontroversial cases of which I'm aware.
I don't know how anyone could prove that the 'supernatural' exists at all. Our ability to investigate things scientifically is pretty much by definition bound to things that we can measure, test, manipulate, and act upon. I'm happy to be shown such a mechanism, I just have no idea what it would look like. So far peoples' best mechanisms seem to be "we can't think of anything else" or "science can't explain it".
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:27 pm
Yeah, it has always seemed to me an impossible category to make sense of or justify attributing as a cause for anything. Really you would need something like the wizard of Oz to wave away the appearances we call natural and demonstrate an ability to render as real or unreal anything at all. Too weird and in the absence of an uncontroversial instance the entire category is suspect.
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 3:52 pm
I am still not sure why god doesn't talk to most Northern Europeans.
It's the world wars, isn't it....
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 6:13 pm
(October 27, 2017 at 9:44 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I do believe there have been instances of miracles, yes.
Name one. Give us just one documented proven case of a miracle.
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 6:16 pm
(October 27, 2017 at 6:13 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote: (October 27, 2017 at 9:44 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I do believe there have been instances of miracles, yes.
Name one. Give us just one documented proven case of a miracle.
I already gave one miracle I believe in. And I never said anything about it being "proven". The supernatural can't be proven.
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 6:29 pm
(October 27, 2017 at 3:18 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: (October 27, 2017 at 3:16 pm)Whateverist Wrote: An important point, even though it remains to be shown that anything 'supernatural' has ever occurred. There are no uncontroversial cases of which I'm aware.
I don't know how anyone could prove that the 'supernatural' exists at all. Our ability to investigate things scientifically is pretty much by definition bound to things that we can measure, test, manipulate, and act upon. I'm happy to be shown such a mechanism, I just have no idea what it would look like. So far peoples' best mechanisms seem to be "we can't think of anything else" or "science can't explain it".
That's easy, just do the rice experiment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1UdgEKDw7c
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RE: What would you do if you found out God existed
October 27, 2017 at 6:39 pm
(October 27, 2017 at 6:29 pm)Captain_Nemo Wrote: (October 27, 2017 at 3:18 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: I don't know how anyone could prove that the 'supernatural' exists at all. Our ability to investigate things scientifically is pretty much by definition bound to things that we can measure, test, manipulate, and act upon. I'm happy to be shown such a mechanism, I just have no idea what it would look like. So far peoples' best mechanisms seem to be "we can't think of anything else" or "science can't explain it".
That's easy, just do the rice experiment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1UdgEKDw7c Is this a joke?
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