(October 25, 2010 at 12:44 pm)Thor Wrote: Your reply makes sense if Christians believe that "holy water" is merely symbolic. It's my understanding they truly believe that the water, once blessed, has magical properties such as healing powers. Am I wrong?
Nope, they do not actually believe that a priest says a few words to a bowl of water and then uses it to cure cancer. That simply does not happen. In the New Testament, when Jesus uses water to cure people, the water is again just a symbol, Jesus is the one doing the mumbo jumbo.
A few hardcore Christians actually do think the act of drinking the water in some of the holiest sites (most famous is Lourdes where mary is said to have appeared) possesses some healing power, but even then it's not the water itself that is magic, it is the act of drinking it, being in communion with the Virgin Mary, that carries a significance.
See, most Christians are not crazy. For the most part (by that, all the ones i know, and that's quite a few), they believe in a vague idea of afterlife, they may attribute some of the best coincidences in their lives to miracles, and some, quite rare (less than 10% in my country, France), go to Church an hour a week and that's the only time they think about religion at all. Out of the 168 hours in a week, they spend about 1 on God. The other 167 they are exactly the same person as you or me.
