Miracles in Christianity - how to answer

[KiwiNFLFan]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

[ignoramus]

Hello matey...

Kiwi# 3 enters the forum! The more the better!
(Actually, it's really only 1, because Becc's is just a kangaroo lost in NZ) and the other's Irish if that counts!)

To answer your question, The answer is in the quote "I have never experienced anything supernatural myself".
And you never will ...None of us will...

They're just stories we make up around the campfire ... Every single one of them!

Welcome by the way...

[Fake Messiah]

supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue.

So let's say they discovered it was real flesh and blood so what? Is it from Jesus himself or could it be from some random guy that this priest put it as a humbug? Unfortunately people fake these kind of stuff all the time and even more unfortunate is how gullible people are and want to believe in it, like in Mumbai in India in 2012 when statue of Jesus started "crying" - hundreds of Catholics flocked to worship it and when Sanal Edamaruku discovered that the "miracle" was just a piss and shit (due to bad plumbing) believers got outraged and chased away Edamaruku out of the country, because if he didn't flee they would put him in jail.





So I would advise you to read book by James Randi "Flim Flam" about people that have need to invent these kind of deceptions or at least watch his NOVA documentary Secrets of the Psychics Documentary on youtube or watch few episodes of Penn and Teller Bullshit.

[Amarok]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

Here's csicop's explanation 

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/eucharistic_miracles

Here's another good site . The points to your specific example .

http://www.miraclesceptic.com/lancianoeu...racle.html

---

But let's remember that this is what catholic who believe in said miracle are impressed by 

 

[beepete]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

Hi. I have been involved with many Christians over the last 30 years (as a professing Christian myself). I have heard of many supposed miracles but they have always, without fail turned out to have been witnessed by someone who knew someone and so on and so forth. I have never met a person who I believe has genuinely experienced a miracle (i.e other than so and so was healed from their bad back, cancer and so on, which can all have more rational explanations ). Either God is not in the business of miracles, miracles don't occur, God isn't a reality or perhaps God only demonstrates the miraculous to a very select few. I wonder if the flesh and blood tested by the scientists came from the eucharist - obviously we will never know, but I suspect it is a fraud. Benny Hinn doesn't have a monolply on fraud.

[chimp3]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

Have you ever heard the term "bullshit" before? Doubt is a virtue. Welcome!

[brewer]

Hello and Welcome.

From what I read, it was not science, but a scientist, one guy. One catholic guy, that being catholic, had a vested interest in the miracle being true. 

Don't you think that something potentially this important and affirming for christianity would be tested by a group of scientists to verify accuracy and validity? But no, it's one guy that you have to take at his word. That, my friend, is not science.

[Athene]

Is there a test that can prove that the apparent blood/tissue was in FACT a piece of bread or cracker at one time?

If not, I honestly don't get the fascination.

[Harry Nevis]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

No Eucharistic miracles have happened, let alone tested.  They're just stories for the faithful.

[Brian37]

Hi, I am a former Catholic who has by and large rejected the Catholic religion. However, one thing keeps niggling away at me: miracles.

I have never experienced anything supernatural myself, but I have heard stories of various miracles happening in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One particular kind of miracle that I have no answer for is Eucharistic miracles - the communion bread starting to bleed, or in rarer cases, the bread and wine actually transforming into physical flesh and blood. One such miracle supposedly happened at Lanciano, Italy, in the 7th century. A priest had doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and supposedly the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood which coagulated. Scientists have tested the flesh and blood, which remain to this day, and have found it to be real blood and heart tissue. All the Eucharistic miracles that have been tested have been of blood type AB.

How would you answer these phenomena?

Former Catholic myself, but lets not focus on one religion. The idea of magic leading to the seemingly impossible happening is not a patent owned by one religion. The idea exists in every religion. Even Hindus and Buddhists have their concepts of defying the odds. 

The word no matter the religion is really nothing than gap filling based on selection bias and sample rate error.

Once you consider the amount of death that happens worldwide per year on average, death of every kind, the idea that there is some superstitious power, or human like sky wizard or magical luck in survival it falls apart.

50 to 60 million humans die from everything at every age worldwide on average per year. Humans die stillborn, they die from childhood famine and disease. Humans die in car accidents, home accidents, suicide. We die in natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes. We die from bacteria and cancer. We die from crime and war too.

Low end 50 million over a decade is 500 million deaths worldwide per year. That is 1 billion deaths worldwide every 20 years.

Lets say a jet with 300 passengers crashes and only 1 person dies, they call that a "miracle".

Lets say another jet with 300 passengers crashes and 1 person survives, they still call it a "miracle".

But lets say you are trying to kill a cockroach with the sole of your shoe and it manages to escape, you don't call that a miracle.

Bottom line is, if life survives it survives, if life dies it dies and there is no magic to either. 

This is mere human narcissism in the form of superstition. 

In reality, if you survive a jet crash for example, countless factors went into that. Pilot skill, plane construction and maintenance, angle of impact, and weather conditions. Same countless factors if you die. 

If you die in a hurricane, it merely means you were in the wrong place because of contitions. If you survive a hurricane you were lucky enough to be in the right place because of conditions.

There is no magic going on, no sky hero pulling our strings either way, just like nobody assigns the survival or death of cockroaches to magic or super heros. Humans are not the center of the planet, we are merely one species among many and there isn't any magic or sky wizard manipulating our survival or deaths.

Only we as a species can seek ways to maximize survival and only we can seek ways to reduce risk of death, but death still ultimately gets us, even if it is old age.

But even more absurd are the superstitions of seeing messages in objects. Muslims have their versions of that bullshit too.