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AnimalSpirits
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Do you think the only vatican approved miracles are the ones that have taken place at Lourdes? Those are the only ones Ignatius wants to discuss, which is not a valid way too handle this question.
And what’s the threshold for a healing miracle to be disproven? If I have a headache and it goes away, I could call that a miracle and you couldn’t prove me wrong. But you could provide an infinitely more plausible explanation- especially if I had taken Tylenol just before.
So, I put the healing of Monica Besra in that category- her healing was no more miraculous than my car starting when I turn the key.
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AnimalSpirits
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Are you sure he’s been canonized?
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PRmerger
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No. No one here has said that the only Vatican approved miracles are the ones that have taken place at Lourdes.
You mean: what’s the threshold for a Vatican-approved healing miracle to be disproven.
And I think the answer to that is quite obvious: it was approved officially by the Vatican, and then science said, “It wasn’t a miracle because we have a scientific explanation.”
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PRmerger
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AnimalSpirits
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I agree that there has been no direct statement to that effect, but the insistence on working with the 69 lourdes cases is not sensible otherwise.
This whole line of argument has become fairly convoluted, but here’s the point I’ve been aiming to support.
The vatican often recognizes certain events as resulting divine intervention. When it is believed that the intervention was related to the intercession of a certain deceased person, that event can be used to justify the beatification/canonization of said person.
My assertion is that these events constitute Vatican approved miracles and valid targets for discussion for the purposes of this thread. You might say “well duh!”, but somehow it became controversial.
I’d consider that a disproof as well. It doesn’t, strictly speaking, 100% rule out divine intervention, but it does defeat the case for it. There was an objection along those lines earlier.
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AnimalSpirits
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Apparently I’m behind the times. Although or appears he had a second miracle attributed to him, but his predecessor did not. So the point that the two miracles rule isn’t 100 percent binding stands and I was off in stating otherwise.
Even so, what I was getting at is discussed in the previous post.
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PRmerger
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How so?
What’s this controversy?
You’re actually arguing that science disproving a Vatican approved miracle doesn’t rule out divine intervention?
Ok…
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thistle
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YES!
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thistle
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You are saying that divine intervention is not necessarily ruled out even if science can explain a Vatican approved miracle. That is a contradiction. Either a miracle has taken place (divine intervention) or it has not. You can’t have it both ways.
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Ignatius
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Trying to pull a Brian Williams, I see. I addressed the issue directly in terms of the thread title. The title of the thread is " How many Vatican approved miracles has science disproved?" In my post I asked " how many of those Vatican approved miracles in that actual list of official Vatican approved miracles I posted has science disproved?"
The language is directly from the thread title.
You haven’t even presented any scientific evidence against the miracles listed in Post #30… Do you concede that you can’t disprove them? If not, will you present some scientific evidence against them?
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AnimalSpirits
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I’m just saying that you can never really 100% say “there was no divine intervention here”, but you can say “I have a good explanation for this that doesn’t require divine intervention.”You’re actually arguing that science disproving a Vatican approved miracle doesn’t rule out divine intervention?
Ok…
Here’s a case of the latter:
nytimes.com/2003/10/20/world/her-legacy-acceptance-and-doubts-of-a-miracle.html
"The account cited centers on an Indian woman, Monica Besra, who said a beam of light emitted from a picture of Mother Teresa in her home had cured a cancerous tumor. Ms. Besra, who attended the Vatican ceremony, said the cure occurred a year after Mother Teresa’s death.
Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, a doctor who said he had treated Ms. Besra, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that medicines he prescribed had eliminated the tumor. He also said it was a cyst caused by tuberculosis, not a cancerous tumor. The Vatican team that traveled to India and certified Ms. Besra’s account, he added, never made contact with him.
‘‘It was not a miracle,’’ he said. ‘‘She took medicines for nine months to one year.’’"
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AnimalSpirits
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My answer to the question in the thread title is “at least one”, with the Mother Teresa case being the example. Despite your confused efforts to deny that it was even possible for a Vatican approved miracle to be subject to controversy, the fact is that it was approved and that the cure is not even exceptional, let alone miraculous.
It seems you’ve switched the game and are now insisting that the only miracles worth talking about are the ones you’ve handpicked.
I have declined to address your claim, because this is not the “skeptics respond to whatever miracles Ignatius likes” thread. If you don’t want to talk about the supposed miracle I brought up that’s fine- what you can’t do is demand that I cease talking about it and focus on what you want to talk about instead.
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AnimalSpirits
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My only point was that finding a naturalistic explanation does not 100% rule out divine intervention, any more than a lack of naturalistic explanation proves divine intervention.
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PRmerger
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Wait–what?
There was a Vatican approved miracle attributed to Mother Teresa’s intercession, and science has disproved it?
What was the miracle, and how did science provide an explanation for it?
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AnimalSpirits
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nytimes.com/2003/10/20/world/her-legacy-acceptance-and-doubts-of-a-miracle.html
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2593073.stm
The woman received two treatments- a beam of light from a picture and several months of medication. The Vatican apparently believes that the beam of light caused the cure and that it resulted from divine intervention due to the intercession of Mother Teresa. Some doctors disagree.
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CarmelJerome
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The BBC article says that ‘some rations to in India’ disagree with the assessment of the doctors’ commission. Since the BBC is known for its thorough secularity, if there were more than the doubts of some unaffiliated skeptics they’d ’ ve reported them.
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PRmerger
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Ah. I see.
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adamhovey1988
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How would science disprove a miracle? Since God does miracles (although he can do them through people such as we sinful human beings), I would imagine the laws of science would not apply, since the very one that gave those laws would have the right and ability to suspend them. Personally I think the materialism of modern scientism is anti-intellectual to the core. Then again, I am not a scientist, and let the record show that. I think trying to use science to prove everything is kind of illogical. I could go into more detail, but since the original point was about science disproving miracles, it should be admitted that many medical experts, do have no explanation for the incorruptible bodies of certain saints. I remember watching television once, and there was a guy that basically said that Padre Pio’s stigmata was fake. Because you know, somehow he can prove that about a man that died in 1968. People who are critical of religion for being “Anti-Science” (a false claim, by the way), are ironically creating a religion of their own.
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AnimalSpirits
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I’d hardly call the doctors that treated the woman “unaffiliated.” The Times article, which cites the doctor’s disagreement, is nearly a year later- it’s entirely possible that the doubters became aware and started speaking up sometime between dec 2002 and oct 2003.
And, dare I say it, the BBC is know for being relatively even handed- not just secular.
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