God is not a...

[Solmyr]

forums.catholic-questions.org/search.php?searchid=25451351

Your link does not work… just like your arguments.

It’s a trump card, to be sure.

It could not even trump Trump… and he is a clown.

Please try to think in the abstract here, Sol. The parallel is not that the father can heal the child.

Yes, it is. If you wish to “drag” God into your argument, you cannot stop “halfway”. Your silly little parable (and it does not merit to be called a parallel) is that somehow God “might” have a perfectly good explanation for NOT preventing the gang-rape and torture of sixteen years old girl, so we, in our ignorance are not qualified to “condemn” God for his non-interference. If only we would have the explanation, we would have to agree and endorse the “non-interference” policy. The polite answer to this is: “baloney”.

The problems with your “parable” are multifold.1) Whether a medical procedure is “necessary” is technology driven. With a properly advanced technology, there is no need for painful intervention.

1. God has “omnipotence”, so whatever “greater good” comes from allowing a gang-rape and torture - which is of course just a pipe-dream - could be achieved without the rape.
2. Your basic argument: “there MIGHT be some reasons if only we knew them” is nonsense. “MIGHT” is not an argument.
3. You also “downgrade” God’s ability to explain things. He could explain the reasons if there were any. It might be necessary to introduce a “crash-course” and enhance our ability to comprehend, but that is just technicality.

All she thinks, if she’s bratty, is, “My daddy is a big meanie!”

And she would be right. Even a human father could take her into his lap, and give her a hug to distract her attention - and God does not even do that. The doctors could give her an anesthesia and she would experience no pain.

The main problem with your little “parable” that you left out the “placeholder” for God. Who is the equivalent of God in your parable? The doctors? The parent? You should really think it through and then drop your little “parable”. It is annoyingly wrong.

 

[Solmyr]

I’ll just stick to addressing the causation issue…

Take the war example. The first problem is that it is describing a negative (losing), but suppose you say it causes the other side to win. Fine. The next problem is that there is a facile attempt to measure something immaterial (gaining a victory) with something material. But some rewording would fix that. OK. The real issue is that there is more to the cause of war being won than the nail… Including all the things that you mentioned. A nail’s absence does not provide a sufficient condition to win a war… You actually have to have a fight.

The point is that there are small causes with huge impacts. I am talking about actual physics, not some navel-gazing “metaphysics”. Your original assertion was that the “cause” is ALWAYS greater than the “effect”. This assertion is wrong. If you need four doses of medication to cure a disease, but you only have 3 of them… the patient will die.

Life is NOT linear. Learn about critical points, where minimal quantitative changes result in huge qualitative changes. And forget about those “efficient causes”… they are not “efficient”.

 

[Bradski]

Study Lourdes, Lanciano, Zeitoun, etc., etc., etc.

Do you know that Mary was wearing a halo at Zeitoun? Maybe she thought no-one would recognize her without a 4th century artistic convention.

 

[e_c]

Having studied a good many of the events you list, I find that there are earthly explanations for all. It was during a period of very deep study into my Catholic faith (cradle Catholic) that I made the leap…though not the one you think I should have.

That is tragic. I hope you can see it differently someday. Give it another try. It seems an awfully long reach that Fatima was a “sundog,” etc. Add ‘em all together, along with Scripture and its authors’ testimony through the shedding of blood.

The point is that there are small causes with huge impacts. I am talking about actual physics, not some navel-gazing “metaphysics”. Your original assertion was that the “cause” is ALWAYS greater than the “effect”. This assertion is wrong. If you need four doses of medication to cure a disease, but you only have 3 of them… the patient will die.

You have made at least two of the exact same mistakes, plus confirmed once again that you are riding the coattails of A. J. Ayer in jettisoning all that navel-gazing metaphysics for “actual physics.” (Though any physicist will tell you about the law of conservation of energy… All you need to do is add the fact that some being remains after the event that is separate from the effect, and there you have a purely physical account of this.) But you won’t bend, and I will never get you to. (Nor will you get me to, BTW.)

Friend, from what I can tell, this site is not doing anything for you. There are certainly better things to do with your time than all this back and forth. Go work in a soup kitchen instead. You are more likely to gain wisdom there than here.

Do you know that Mary was wearing a halo at Zeitoun? Maybe she thought no-one would recognize her without a 4th century artistic convention.

Shoot, there goes everything…?

As far as art is concerned, maybe it took some time. As far as Scripture is concerned, this is an old phenomenon. At least as old as Moses.

She could have worn a fruit hat and carried a guitar, it remains naturally inexplicable.

 

[Solmyr]

You have made at least two of the exact same mistakes, plus confirmed once again that you are riding the coattails of A. J. Ayer in jettisoning all that navel-gazing metaphysics for “actual physics.”

I have nothing against even navel-gazing metaphysics as long as it tries to expand our horizons. It is just like a new hypothesis, which might be useful to explore. BUT, a metaphysics which is contradicted by our actual knowledge of actual physics is not worth the price of the paper it is written upon. Remember the hypothesis of “ether”.

Though any physicist will tell you about the law of conservation of energy…

The “law” of conservation of energy is based upon observation, and it is accepted as a fundamental principle. But it is not “carved” in stone, no matter how fundamental it might be. It will be abandoned in a heartbeat IF a counter-example will be found… which is unlikely, but not impossible.

Friend, from what I can tell, this site is not doing anything for you. There are certainly better things to do with your time than all this back and forth. Go work in a soup kitchen instead. You are more likely to gain wisdom there than here.

Actually it provides some entertainment. When I saw your first comments, I was hopeful. Maybe I found someone with whom I can have a fruitful conversation. But my hopes are diminishing now. Too bad, so sad.

 

[Bradski]

. As far as Scripture is concerned, this is an old phenomenon. At least as old as Moses. She could have worn a fruit hat and carried a guitar, it remains naturally inexplicable.

I think that you’re missing the point. Slapping a few extra brush strokes onto a painting to show a halo, thus indicating who in the picture was to be considered holy and not one of the proletariats, is a medieval artistic convention as far as Christian iconography is concerned (borrowed from Greek and Indian artists and who knows who else).

Mary didn’t actually have a halo. If she appeared to anyone, there would be no halo. They don’t exist. They are a figment of someone’s artistic imagination. But when you look at any photographic examples of Mary’s roof top appearances in Zeitoun, someone has added a halo. Because that’s what they thought people would expect to see.

You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you…

 

[BobCatholic]

Then you are just being stubborn. God smacks the world in the face with miracles, apparitions, etc. Read the lives of the saints. Study Lourdes, Lanciano, Zeitoun, etc., etc., etc. If you come to it without a preconceived idea that God doesn’t work in Creation, you will be utterly convinced that He does.

I believe God does work in creation. But there’s the catch - the work has to be within his Will. This is the “gotcha”, the catch, the fine print, the terms and conditions, the policy.

Not in God’s will? Game over, nothing happens.

So if God wills it he’ll do it. Completely up to him. No amount of prayers that ask for something not in his will, will ever work. They will be summarily ignored.

 

[Lucretius]

I think that you’re missing the point. Slapping a few extra brush strokes onto a painting to show a halo, thus indicating who in the picture was to be considered holy and not one of the proletariats, is a medieval artistic convention as far as Christian iconography is concerned (borrowed from Greek and Indian artists and who knows who else).

Mary didn’t actually have a halo. If she appeared to anyone, there would be no halo. They don’t exist. They are a figment of someone’s artistic imagination. But when you look at any photographic examples of Mary’s roof top appearances in Zeitoun, someone has added a halo. Because that’s what they thought people would expect to see.

You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you…

The Saints do shine like children of light. Jesus Himself did at the Transfiguration.

But, even if your argument is true, it doesn’t affect the validity of the miracle: visions tend to work with what the person is familiar with, otherwise the person receiving the vision won’t understand. Would Jesus speaking in Aramaic to a 15th century nun in a vision make it easier or harder to help her understand him, even though Jesus would have never spoken Italian during the first century? We are all empirists, correct?

And even if we take everything you intend the argument to mean, you haven’t actually explained the miracle

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[oldcelt]

That is tragic. I hope you can see it differently someday. Give it another try. It seems an awfully long reach that Fatima was a “sundog,” etc. Add ‘em all together, along with Scripture and its authors’ testimony through the shedding of blood.

You have made at least two of the exact same mistakes, plus confirmed once again that you are riding the coattails of A. J. Ayer in jettisoning all that navel-gazing metaphysics for “actual physics.” (Though any physicist will tell you about the law of conservation of energy… All you need to do is add the fact that some being remains after the event that is separate from the effect, and there you have a purely physical account of this.) But you won’t bend, and I will never get you to. (Nor will you get me to, BTW.)

Friend, from what I can tell, this site is not doing anything for you. There are certainly better things to do with your time than all this back and forth. Go work in a soup kitchen instead. You are more likely to gain wisdom there than here.

Shoot, there goes everything…?

As far as art is concerned, maybe it took some time. As far as Scripture is concerned, this is an old phenomenon. At least as old as Moses.

She could have worn a fruit hat and carried a guitar, it remains naturally inexplicable.

Simple photographic analysis debunks this apparition. Maybe that why it is not an approved apparition according to the Roman Catholic Church.

John

John

 

[Bradski]

…visions tend to work with what the person is familiar with…

Badda bing. You’ve got it. People see what they think they should see.

I was discussing Zeitoun with a guy on another forum some time back. We went into it at some detail. Considering the number of appearances and that it only happened 40 Years ago and millions are meant to have seen it, it should be one of the most photographic events in history. Correction: THE most photographed event in history.

But there are just a few floating around that purport to show Mary. I posted one and bent over backwards to say that I guess people may think it looks like a kneeling figure and that it could be interpreted as someone praying. But surely…

He went on to point out the features of the ‘apparition’, noting a halo, the prayerful attitude, the shape of her cloak. Surely I couldn’t deny that these aspects could be seen. I was denying the obvious. So many people couldn’t be wrong.

But oops. My bad. I had posted the wrong picture. It was just an out of focus picture of some fireworks.

 

[Lucretius]

Badda bing. You’ve got it. People see what they think they should see.

This principle can be used to dismiss anything you want, including the sciences.

For example, what if I constructed an argument, based on the psychological reports regarding comformation bias (often used by people to dismiss religion), for the purpose of dismissing evolutionary theory, because, as we all know, those professor are seeing patterns in the fossil record that just aren’t there

I was discussing Zeitoun with a guy on another forum some time back. We went into it at some detail. Considering the number of appearances and that it only happened 40 Years ago and millions are meant to have seen it, it should be one of the most photographic events in history. Correction: THE most photographed event in history.

But there are just a few floating around that purport to show Mary. I posted one and bent over backwards to say that I guess people may think it looks like a kneeling figure and that it could be interpreted as someone praying. But surely…

He went on to point out the features of the ‘apparition’, noting a halo, the prayerful attitude, the shape of her cloak. Surely I couldn’t deny that these aspects could be seen. I was denying the obvious. So many people couldn’t be wrong.

But oops. My bad. I had posted the wrong picture. It was just an out of focus picture of some fireworks.

How many cameras were in 1950’s Egypt? How many Muslim people were interested in taking pictures? I suspect that the town was and still is in poverty too…I don’t know if I woudl expect a lot of cameras, and the photographs we have seem like the kind you would find in a third world country during the '50s.

I’m not familiar with the miracle, and neither am I with the context in which it happened…but with what I do know, giggle I can point out that you might be seeing only what you think you should see

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Bradski]

I’m not familiar with the miracle, and neither am I with the context in which it happened…

I think that sums it up. The Virgin Mary made numerous appearances not a generation ago to millions of people and…you are not familiar with it. Is that in any way credible whatsoever?

And by the way, it was the late sixties. A year before the moon landing. We’re not talking the Dark Ages here. They had the technical ability to put men on the moon but climbing up some stairs onto the roof to check things out was beyond anyone. Or rather, those who might have done so looked at the crowds turning up in a non-descript part of a small Egyptian town, no doubt bringing in a lot of money to the local economy and thought…hang on…do we really want to look into this in too much detail?

Naturally, these type of events started happening soon after in other towns as well. Someone realised that you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

 

[PRmerger]

And she would be right. Even a human father could take her into his lap, and give her a hug to distract her attention - and God does not even do that. The doctors could give her an anesthesia and she would experience no pain.

And yet no human father demands anesthesia for his daughter’s kindergarten immunizations.

And if you did, you’d be considered a ding dong. (And rightly so.)

All good human fathers permit their child to suffer getting tortured with needles because they understand the science behind it.

Good father sometimes allow their child to suffer and no explanation will convince the child that there’s a good reason for this.

QED.

 

[Solmyr]

And yet no human father demands anesthesia for his daughter’s kindergarten immunizations.

You keep moving the goalposts. Sometimes it is four nurses holding down the kid to poke her five times with needles, and then it becomes giving them a spoonful of Salk or Sabin vaccine to prevent polio… make up your mind.

But you try to wiggle out from the fundamental question. Who is the placeholder for God? The father? The doctor? Or both?

If the doctor is the equivalent of God, then he is cruel and evil… because God’s omnipotence would allow any healing without pain. If the father is the equivalent of God, then he would not need the doctor to perform the healing, he could do it himself.

You painted yourself into a corner with stipulating the omnimax attributes for God. There are no logically necessary sufferings with an omnipotent God. Of course you will pretend that this post has never been made - as usual.

 

[PRmerger]

You keep moving the goalposts. Sometimes it is four nurses holding down the kid to poke her five times with needles, and then it becomes giving them a spoonful of Salk or Sabin vaccine to prevent polio… make up your mind.

There are many different ways to present this scenario, Sol.

But you try to wiggle out from the fundamental question. Who is the placeholder for God? The father? The doctor? Or both?

Sigh.

The father is a metaphor for The Father.

Sheesh.

If the doctor is the equivalent of God, then he is cruel and evil… because God’s omnipotence would allow any healing without pain. If the father is the equivalent of God, then he would not need the doctor to perform the healing, he could do it himself.

LOL.

You surely can think in the abstract, right?

This is like someone who’s…a prodigal son…reading the story of the Prodigal Son, and saying, “This can’t be a reference to me because I’ve never eaten from the slop of pigs. I’ve only dumpster dived. So…”


But I think despite your protestations you really do get the parallel.

You can see that some times when a father allows suffering in his child, even if he could intervene, he doesn’t…(in fact, he’s actually the one who initiated the events!)

And no explanation to the child is going to make him understand.

And the child can either be bratty and say, “I hate you! And this also means you don’t exist!”

Or he can say, “Daddy, I know you love me. And I don’t understand why you let this happen, but I trust you!”

 

[e_c]

Simple photographic analysis debunks this apparition. Maybe that why it is not an approved apparition according to the Roman Catholic Church.

John

John

Sure…

Maybe it’s a fake. OK, fine. One down, a million to go. Consider the whole, not just the part.

As for the claim it should have been photographed more… What were they supposed to do, take out their cell phones? The middle east fifty years ago… Sheesh. It’s bad now, even in the nice parts. Everything is semi-makeshift, unless you are Mr. Manaseer!

In some sense, I’m with Bishop Morerod: at the end of the day, people will just believe what they want to believe.

Friends, despite my best efforts, this thread is off the rails. Is there nobody who wants to try to tie everything together through a look at the significance of radical primacy?

 

[Solmyr]

There are many different ways to present this scenario, Sol.

Like the idle policemen who observe, but do not interrupt the torture and rape of a kidnapped teenage girl.

The father is a metaphor for The Father.

A totally inept metaphor. Try to explain away the behavior of the policemen. Read it here: infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/five.html

 

[Solmyr]

As for the claim it should have been photographed more… What were they supposed to do, take out their cell phones? The middle east fifty years ago… Sheesh.

Try to call the media. They had all the equipment to record the story - even 50 years ago.

Friends, despite my best efforts, this thread is off the rails. Is there nobody who wants to try to tie everything together through a look at the significance of radical primacy?

It was you who kept promising the analysis, but never delivered.

 

[e_c]

I’m not an apostle of Zeitoun, it was one example. I happen to buy it, but it is not foundational. Disprove Zeitoun, I will sigh and shrug. The Resurrection, on the other hand…

My greater point was that intuition reverses when things are looked at in that way I described.

I will not try to make such a synthesis on my phone. Not sure when I’ll be able to get internet where I need it.

 

[e_c]

Like the idle policemen who observe, but do not interrupt the torture and rape of a kidnapped teenage girl.

A totally inept metaphor. Try to explain away the behavior of the policemen. Read it here: infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/five.html

Look at the state of Judaism in 1st century Israel. What were they waiting for? A Messiah. What was the Messiah supposed to do? Overthrow Rome, usher in an age of worldly peace, make the land flourish in every material way. They wanted a Rome of their own, a “New Rome.”

They got a New Jerusalem instead, where the Messiah refused to turn stones into bread, insisted that he had not come to bring peace but the sword, and intentionally died at the hands of the very people he was supposed to defeat in battle after having called his closest friend “Satan” for having suggested that he not undergo such suffering. The Christ is well acquainted with this problem you are tapping into, and it is a favorite topic of Scripture.