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FightingFat
Guest
St. Augustine defined a sacrament as “a visible sign of an invisible reality.” He also described a sacrament as a “visible preaching of the Gospel.”
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
How does Augustine’s definition show the actual existence of God? Where is the evidence?
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mardukm
Guest
To believe that something beyond ourselves does NOT exist is something learned - it is NOT natural. What is NATURAL to humans is exactly as FightingFat has stated - to experience the wonderment of “what else is there?”
Have you never seen a child ask “why?” Don’t tell me you have never experienced (or perhaps you have forgotten) the nagging questions of “why” when you were a child! It is absolutely unnatural and artificial for any human being to stop wondering “what else is there?” or to stop trying to grasp the meaning of things around him or her. Ultimately, this NECESSARILY leads to questions about ontology itself, about life, about death, etc., etc… about God.
If pray you have not stopped wondering (or perhaps your presence here indicates you have not stopped
).Blessings,
Marduk
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
That is just not what begs the question means. If we have the major premise that all cats are red and the minor premise that Chindy is a cat, it does not beg the question what exists beyond Chindy and other cats.To believe that something beyond ourselves does NOT exist is something learned - it is NOT natural. What is NATURAL to humans is exactly as FightingFat has stated - to experience the wonderment of “what else is there?”
Have you never seen a child ask “why?” Don’t tell me you have never experienced (or perhaps you have forgotten) the nagging questions of “why” when you were a child! It is absolutely unnatural and artificial for any human being to stop wondering “what else is there?” or to stop trying to grasp the meaning of things around him or her. Ultimately, this NECESSARILY leads to questions about ontology itself, about life, about death, etc., etc… about God.
If pray you have not stopped wondering (or perhaps your presence here indicates you have not stopped
Blessings,
Marduk
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mardukm
Guest
There are many Eucharistic miracles recorded over the centuries. One of the more popular ones is the Miracle of Lanciano (in Italy). It has literally stumped scientific inquiry. Here an observable miracle of transubstantiation (that’s the wrong term, since in this case more than than the substance has in fact changed) has occurred.
Perhaps you can read some books on them, or someone can direct you to some links.
Blessings,
Marduk
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FightingFat
Guest
How do you feel about historical evidence?
I tend to look at Christian history as a temporal flow. Like or dislike the Christian Church it remains one of the facts of our time, and a fact which no intelligent observer of the contemporary scene will wish to ignore. The Church is made up of a living fabric of events from a contemporary society whose dependednce on it’s founder is a permanent feature of it’s continuing existence.
In this respect, it is not like studying an extinct organism, or an archaeologist digging up the remains of a forgotten civilisation. The flow is held in living memories, the remembrance gors back in a living chain. At every service there are present elderly people who, 50 or 60 years ago heard certain words spoken by, or in the presence of, men old enough to be their grandparents; there are young people who, it may be, will repeat them in the hearing of their grandchildren. And so the endless chain goes on. For 20 centuries there has not been one single week in which this act of remembrance was not made, one generation reminding another:
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant sealed with my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.’
Or words such as these.
One of the best illustrations of this continuity of memory within the Church for me is that around and about 200 AD there died at Lyon in France the Bishop of that city, Irenaeus by name, one of the outstanding Christian leaders of his time. It happens that a letter of his has come down to us, addressed to an old fellow student named Florinus from whom he had been seperated for many years. The letter brings up reminiscences of their student days together at the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor. In particular he recalls how they used to attend lectures by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who died about 155 AD at the age of at least 86. He must have been getting on in years when Irenaeus and Florinus heard him. Irenaeus reminds his old companion- and there would have been no point in it if Florinus could not confirm his recollections- how Polycarp used to tell them stories about ‘John, the disciple of the Lord’, whom he had known personally many years before. Iraneaus, then, in France shortly before 200 AD was able to recall at only one remove, a man who had known Jesus intimately. When the Bishop of Lyons brooke bread with his little congregation as a memorial of the death of Jesus, he was not thinking of something he had found (where Kipling’s Tomlinson found his God) ‘in a printed book’, but of something that he had been told by his old teacher, whose friend had been there and knew. That is what the memory of the Church is like. A corporate memory handed down from generation to generation become what we call a tradition. Our knowledge of about the origins of the church and about its Founder, rests primarily on a living tradition, which had its beginnings in the actual memories of those who had witnessed the events and had personal dealings with the principle Actor in them.
I tend to look at Christian history as a temporal flow. Like or dislike the Christian Church it remains one of the facts of our time, and a fact which no intelligent observer of the contemporary scene will wish to ignore. The Church is made up of a living fabric of events from a contemporary society whose dependednce on it’s founder is a permanent feature of it’s continuing existence.
In this respect, it is not like studying an extinct organism, or an archaeologist digging up the remains of a forgotten civilisation. The flow is held in living memories, the remembrance gors back in a living chain. At every service there are present elderly people who, 50 or 60 years ago heard certain words spoken by, or in the presence of, men old enough to be their grandparents; there are young people who, it may be, will repeat them in the hearing of their grandchildren. And so the endless chain goes on. For 20 centuries there has not been one single week in which this act of remembrance was not made, one generation reminding another:
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant sealed with my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.’
Or words such as these.
One of the best illustrations of this continuity of memory within the Church for me is that around and about 200 AD there died at Lyon in France the Bishop of that city, Irenaeus by name, one of the outstanding Christian leaders of his time. It happens that a letter of his has come down to us, addressed to an old fellow student named Florinus from whom he had been seperated for many years. The letter brings up reminiscences of their student days together at the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor. In particular he recalls how they used to attend lectures by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who died about 155 AD at the age of at least 86. He must have been getting on in years when Irenaeus and Florinus heard him. Irenaeus reminds his old companion- and there would have been no point in it if Florinus could not confirm his recollections- how Polycarp used to tell them stories about ‘John, the disciple of the Lord’, whom he had known personally many years before. Iraneaus, then, in France shortly before 200 AD was able to recall at only one remove, a man who had known Jesus intimately. When the Bishop of Lyons brooke bread with his little congregation as a memorial of the death of Jesus, he was not thinking of something he had found (where Kipling’s Tomlinson found his God) ‘in a printed book’, but of something that he had been told by his old teacher, whose friend had been there and knew. That is what the memory of the Church is like. A corporate memory handed down from generation to generation become what we call a tradition. Our knowledge of about the origins of the church and about its Founder, rests primarily on a living tradition, which had its beginnings in the actual memories of those who had witnessed the events and had personal dealings with the principle Actor in them.
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
If this really presents evidence for God’s existence, can you present it directly? What is the evidence? How has it stumped scientific inquiry? How much scientific inquiry has there been into this?
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
Do you take the same uncritical view of the claims of those other religions such as Mormons or Muslims? Do you take the histories of their traditions to be evidence of God and their specific views of God?
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FightingFat
Guest
I have studied the Latter Day Saints beliefs and Muslim beliefs. I do not discern that they contain the same unbroken tradition that the Christian faith contains, nor the same consistant truths.
Church history is often dismissed as peripheral and irrelevant today, but we should never underestimate the power of the historian. ‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’ as George Orwell put it. By spreading lies about the past, dictators and oppressors have successfully deceived their people into following them in the most monstrous crimes. Catholicism is about truth—truth available to all and so it is important that one tries to ascertain an unbiased version of the truth in order to make a judgement on historical situations.
We must not be mislead by an oversimplified version of the evolutionary hypothesis to imagine that because humanity is evolving it is therefore improving, every generation being that little bit brighter, stronger and fitter than the previous one. Our mediaeval ancestors were not hairy brutes—they felt, thought and prayed just as we do. The only advantage we can claim over them is what we learn from them, how we add their knowledge to our own and build on the foundations they established.
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I_Leatherman
Guest
Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin.
Radiocarbon-dated sample not a medaeval fake.
Science Direct.com articlehttp://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=18609f1a9809b6965e4c7c4a67f7a5a3
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mardukm
Guest
Can we move beyond semantics? I don’t think that is the point of your thread, is it? Can you respond directly to what I wrote?
Blessings,
Marduk
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
That is point yet to be established. Or to put it a different way, it begs the question.
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
What specifically do you want me to respond to? I don’t see any direct evidence that you have presented.
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FightingFat
Guest
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Ammonius_Saccus
Guest
Good night. I will check to tomorrow to see if some evidence has been presented.
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thistle
Guest
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VociMike
Guest
Since you are rather agressively challenging the various bits of evidence offered, I think it is only reasonable that you tell us what evidence you would accept before we proceed. What are your criteria for judging if God exists? And why do you believe those are the correct criteria?
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water
Guest
Since you want evidences and facts, here are a few of many evidences where Virgin Mary appeared:
fatima.org/essentials/facts/
sancta.org/intro.html
Since people had seen the appearances of Virgin Mary and great events occured, it is also easy to say there is God.
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JimO
Guest
I’ve read through the thread and have some comments for you to consider. You are asking essentially for scientific evidence that God exist. Well, honestly I don’t have any. There is evidence, but not the kind of evidence you are seeking. The basic problem is that you are asking for physical evidence of the metaphysical. Paranormal evidence (miracles, apparitions, etc.) isn’t acceptable - correct? Personal experiences of the spiritual don’t qualify - correct? Even historical evidence of the life of Jesus Christ is not accepted because you have chosen to accept the assertions of those who have disputed the accuracy of the Bible - right? Even if the Bible is an accurate accounting of what happened, essentially it relies of the personal experiences of people in past history, which I would guess would not qualify as “evidence” either. Finally, you will not accept logic as evidence of God, such as the limited possibilities for the origin of the universe (all is an illusion, matter/energy coming from nothing, matter/energy having no beginning, and God). Or even the fact the it has been shown that the universe had a beginning and the constants in the universe are so finely balanced that they suggest a Creator. You are unwilling to accept any of this as evidence.
Well, what is left? Nothing. Does that mean God does not exist? No. You cannot prove that either. And, I might add, you are no more qualified than me to decide what constitutes valid evidence of God’s existence. You have simply chosen to limit what you will accept to scientific evidence. The problem is that we are not meant to encounter God solely with the intellect. We must approach to concept of God with our whole being (intellect, body, will, emotions, spirit). A scientist who became a Christian once said that in the laboratory he simply could not believe in God, but when he went into the mountains he just knew that God was there.
Given the circumstances we are at an impass. I contend that you are limiting your ability to perceive God because you are engaging only the intellect. I liken it to a blind man who insists that you prove the existence of light. You are not engaging the proper faculties. Even the mathematician Pascal said that the mind is a dead end when it comes to understanding God. I don’t through out the intellect, but Isupplement it with the rest of my being - this is the essence of faith. Faith is not blind, but it weighs ALL the evidence, including paranormal and philosophical evidence. And then, frankly, it comes down to a choice. I’ve examined the evidence and I believe. If I am wrong, then no harm because I am content and at peace. I find no more peace anywhere in this world than I do in a quiet church in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I find peace in other places - the mountains, fishing in the ocean, sitting on the beach, etc., but nothing else gives me the peace I feel in God’s presence and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
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FightingFat
Guest
Nice post Jim!
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