Science debunking miracles?

[Evan]

How about some decent miracles for a change. The resurrection of a decomposing corpse, walking on water, bread into wine, causing fig trees to wither with a glance, parting the red sea: that sort of thing. How come all we get are fuzzy photos from old Portuguese newspapers, things that happen anyway like cancers failing to grow and dying because of their poor bioinfrastructure and so on?

The miracles you want to experience were the ones Jesus performed. He said “Even if a man is raised from the dead you would not believe” Then he raised someone from the dead, resurrected himself and had Peter raise someone from the dead. How many times does he need to do this miracle before you believe.

You have the shroud of Turin, the Image of our Lady of Guadalupe, the levitation of St Teresa of Avila, the bilocation of St Padre Pio, the Roses or Scent of Roses from St Therese.

Or does the miracle have to happen in front of you!

Miracles don’t bring faith or replace faith, they assist one in doubt. Go to Lanciano, see the bread that became a physical body. It’s not a fuzzy photo, its right there for all to see.

 

[Sister_Terese]

The miracles you want to experience were the ones Jesus performed. He said “Even if a man is raised from the dead you would not believe” Then he raised someone from the dead, resurrected himself and had Peter raise someone from the dead. How many times does he need to do this miracle before you believe.

You have the shroud of Turin, the Image of our Lady of Guadalupe, the levitation of St Teresa of Avila, the bilocation of St Padre Pio, the Roses or Scent of Roses from St Therese.

Or does the miracle have to happen in front of you!

Miracles don’t bring faith or replace faith, they assist one in doubt. Go to Lanciano, see the bread that became a physical body. It’s not a fuzzy photo, its right there for all to see.

Did you know that when scientists tested the Blood of the Host of Lanciano that it tested out to be human blood? AND…here’s the rub…when they tested the non-bloody area of the Host it turned out to be human tissue…SPECIFICALLY human HEART tissue. Yup. I believe they also found that there was an electrical impulse found in the Host as well, although it has been such a long time since I read about it that I cannot be sure about that part.

“To those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible; to those who do believe in God, no explanation is necessary.”

True miracles occur everyday in everyday life to each of us. We take so many things for granted that we miss what is in front of our faces. Life is a miracle.

 

[Hokomai]

The miracles you want to experience were the ones Jesus performed. He said “Even if a man is raised from the dead you would not believe” Then he raised someone from the dead, resurrected himself and had Peter raise someone from the dead. How many times does he need to do this miracle before you believe.

You have the shroud of Turin, the Image of our Lady of Guadalupe, the levitation of St Teresa of Avila, the bilocation of St Padre Pio, the Roses or Scent of Roses from St Therese.

Or does the miracle have to happen in front of you!

Miracles don’t bring faith or replace faith, they assist one in doubt. Go to Lanciano, see the bread that became a physical body. It’s not a fuzzy photo, its right there for all to see.

So if Jesus can do it, why does he not? Why all these unimpressive, ‘if you have faith you can see it’ miracles?

 

[Hokomai]

Did you know that when scientists tested the Blood of the Host of Lanciano that it tested out to be human blood? AND…here’s the rub…when they tested the non-bloody area of the Host it turned out to be human tissue…SPECIFICALLY human HEART tissue. Yup. I believe they also found that there was an electrical impulse found in the Host as well, although it has been such a long time since I read about it that I cannot be sure about that part.

“To those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible; to those who do believe in God, no explanation is necessary.”

True miracles occur everyday in everyday life to each of us. We take so many things for granted that we miss what is in front of our faces. Life is a miracle.

Assuming your reported scientific investigation to be correct, where can I find a scientific, peer-reviewed account? I will be particularly interested on the controls used to establish that there was a low risk of fraud, and also in the DNA tests of the properly-retained samples which would help establish the identity of the person whose blood and tissue is said to have been found.

 

[Evan]

So if Jesus can do it, **why does he not? **Why all these unimpressive, ‘if you have faith you can see it’ miracles?

He did. They were reported by eyewitnesses. Their accounts were written down and disseminated (we call these the gospels).

How impressive does it have to be?

• Blind can see
• Lame can walk
• Dead are raised
• Thousands are fed with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish

 

[tabycat]

Well this would be a comment worthy of delight and applause were it to be true. It is not true. Spontaneous remission is something cancers, for example, do. It is in their nature. It does not require explanation. It is like claiming it is a miracle when the sun comes up (if I can use the old-Church dogma as an expression), or when we wake up after being asleep. Or, to use less usual examples, when a meteorite hits the earth, or an earthquake happens, or any of the other unusual things Christians used to claim as miracles before they gave up in the face of science.

If there is a God, and God does do miracles, why does he not do ones likke e used to do such as those I listed earlier? Or better still, do something really impressive, like resurrecting a cremated person? And if he does only miracles that require faith to accept them, why does he bother, since the faith cannot be strengthened by them?/QUOTE

No expanation is needed for a believer, no expanation is enough for a non-believer. Timeing maybe the difference between a miracle and a non-mircle (like why a cancer go lnto spontaneous remission when it did).

 

[Hokomai]

Hokomai;9599132:

Well this would be a comment worthy of delight and applause were it to be true. It is not true. Spontaneous remission is something cancers, for example, do. It is in their nature. It does not require explanation. It is like claiming it is a miracle when the sun comes up (if I can use the old-Church dogma as an expression), or when we wake up after being asleep. Or, to use less usual examples, when a meteorite hits the earth, or an earthquake happens, or any of the other unusual things Christians used to claim as miracles before they gave up in the face of science.

If there is a God, and God does do miracles, why does he not do ones likke e used to do such as those I listed earlier? Or better still, do something really impressive, like resurrecting a cremated person? And if he does only miracles that require faith to accept them, why does he bother, since the faith cannot be strengthened by them?

Not so. Any reasonable Observation of fact, hypothesis, or theory is enough for me as an unbeliever. But I suppose your point about believers is correct: they need no explanation. I think this is because they decide an explanation without looking objectively at the facts. It is just the same with people who ‘believe’ in homeopathy.

 

[Hokomai]

He did. They were reported by eyewitnesses. Their accounts were written down and disseminated (we call these the gospels).

How impressive does it have to be?

• Blind can see
• Lame can walk
• Dead are raised
• Thousands are fed with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish

So how come all the modern miracles are so unimpressive by comparison?

 

[churchie]

If I remember correctly, Miracles are only considered Miracles by the Catholic Church if science cannot disprove it at all and there is no way to prove any type of medical knowledge could have done this miracle.

An example is when a woman with a large tumor in New Delhi was told that the tumor was terminal and there was no way of curing her. She was then asked to pray to Mother Theresa through the rosary and the next day the tumor disappeared. Doctors could not explain it, there was no evidence of a tumor ever being there, but doctors who diagnosed her have evidence it was there. This was one of the miracles that canonised Mother Theresa.

But the Catholic Church does reject certain miracles such as Mental disabilities, where a British man who had minimal motor functions and cognitive disorders was suddenly cured because he saw Mother Theresa and she told him 'It’s going to be all alright". But since science can explain this, for all we know it could have been all in his head and his brain created the stimuli for the man to break free of his mental condition.

I believe Science and Christianity work together closely as well as fight with each other in all different ways.

Did you know the one who theorised the Big Bang theory was a Catholic Priest and a Physics Professor at the same time?

We must look on both sides of the coin to understand the coin itself

 

[MPat]

How about some decent miracles for a change. The resurrection of a decomposing corpse, walking on water, bread into wine, causing fig trees to wither with a glance, parting the red sea: that sort of thing. How come all we get are fuzzy photos from old Portuguese newspapers, things that happen anyway like cancers failing to grow and dying because of their poor bioinfrastructure and so on?

There are several answers to that.

First, let’s look at something different, for example, the Quantum Mechanics. Is it reasonable to demand “decent” (spectacular) experiments like diffraction of a car, instead of some “fuzzy” experiment with a tunnel diode?

That leads to a second point: things and theories have no duty to be cheap and easy to research. If Quantum Mechanics doesn’t predict a spectacular diffraction of a car, we shouldn’t expect it and count its lack against Quantum Mechanics. Similarly, if Catholicism doesn’t predict a great number of spectacular miracles, their lack shouldn’t be counted against Catholicism. (By the way, adding, let’s say, something from english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v6_1/wood/ - Wood, Walton. “The Empirical Twilight: A Pony’s Guide to Science & Anarchism.” ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 6.1 (2011) - might make a nice thread for “Philosophy” subforum…)

Now, why doesn’t Catholicism predict those miracles? One possible reason is that God, valuing the human freedom, doesn’t want to put the atheists in position where they would have to become Catholics or lose their sanity.

 

[Sister_Terese]

Assuming your reported scientific investigation to be correct, where can I find a scientific, peer-reviewed account? I will be particularly interested on the controls used to establish that there was a low risk of fraud, and also in the DNA tests of the properly-retained samples which would help establish the identity of the person whose blood and tissue is said to have been found.

I’m sure if you googled it, you can find plenty of scientific evidence to back up what I read. It was a long time ago. If you want to read about a real miracle with plenty of scientifc evidence and controls, read some recent books on the Shroud of Turin.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

Assuming your reported scientific investigation to be correct, where can I find a scientific, peer-reviewed account? I will be particularly interested on the controls used to establish that there was a low risk of fraud, and also in the DNA tests of the properly-retained samples which would help establish the identity of the person whose blood and tissue is said to have been found.

From PubMed

Quad Sclavo Diagn. 1971 Sep;7(3):661-74.
[Histological, immunological and biochemiccal studies on the flesh and blood of the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (8th century)].

[Article in Italian]
Linoli O.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4950729

This guy Linoli does appear to be (or was) a real medical doctor or pathologist, with a good number of mundane publications on your typical pathology blah blah blah for what it’s worth.

Also as an actual practicing scientist I put less faith in peer review than your post would imply we should. Try reproducing half of the stuff you read in “Science” or “Nature”. I wish you luck.

 

[Sister_Terese]

From PubMed

Quad Sclavo Diagn. 1971 Sep;7(3):661-74.
[Histological, immunological and biochemiccal studies on the flesh and blood of the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (8th century)].

[Article in Italian]
Linoli O.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4950729

This guy Linoli does appear to be (or was) a real medical doctor or pathologist, with a good number of mundane publications on your typical pathology blah blah blah for what it’s worth.

Also as an actual practicing scientist I put less faith in peer review than your post would imply we should. Try reproducing half of the stuff you read in “Science” or “Nature”. I wish you luck.

Thanks for the backup! After you mentioned Linoli’s name, I remembered it. I also agree with you regarding “Science” and “Nature”.

 

[Sister_Terese]

Here is the website for the scientific tests done on the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano.

therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html

 

[Bobby_Jim]

Thanks for the backup! After you mentioned Linoli’s name, I remembered it. I also agree with you regarding “Science” and “Nature”.

Sure, no problem. I think the question of asking for a peer-reviewed scientific paper was more of a “gotcha” tactic - would be like asking me to cite a law review or something, when in fact most non-lawyers wouldn’t even have access to a search engine for legal scholarship. As it is if I wanted to read this Linoli article I would probably have to pay like $50 to get an archived copy through some document service, and then pay a couple hundred bucks to get it translated from Italian, only to find that it says pretty much what you came up with in your Google search.

By the way I don’t mean to say peer-reviewed scientific journals are bunk. For the most part what you read is basically reliable. But the actual process of writing a scientific paper is pretty far removed from the myth of the dispassionate observer carefully reporting just the facts, with enough information that another researcher in another lab with access to the same samples & equipment could reproduce the same findings. Besides reporting interesting findings, scientific publications (especially in a “high profile” journal like Science or Nature) also serve the dual purpose of “advertisements” for the principal investigator, meant to bolster his/her credentials & credibility, to help keep the research grants rolling in. In other words there is a rather significant monetary element at work, which tends to, shall we say, influence the way observations are reported and interpreted?

And the idea that peer review sorts out the facts from the spin is also rather laughable. I think I’m a fairly careful reviewer myself, and I spend maybe 2 hours when I’m invited to peer-review a manuscript. No way I go into the lab and try to reproduce any of it - first of all where would the money come from to do anything other than the most trivial experiment. Science ain’t cheap. When I get reviews back on my own manuscripts, I tend to see one of two things (a) what looks like a hasty read-through where they say “generally looks good, there’s a few typos”, and then ask for clarification on this or that detail that jumped out on their skim-through, or (b) a busy professor hands the paper off to an eager young graduate student who pores over it in great detail and tries their best to rip it apart, often making overblown claims about peer review and the necessity for independent researchers to reproduce the work.

 

[Sister_Terese]

Bobby Jim: I used to work for a clinical psychologist who was the director of clinical training (second in command after the Chair of the department) at a university. In addition to taking care of his academic responsibilities, I also took care of his “professional” articles which he submitte to the APA Journal. Every single article that he wrote was bogus. His research, his data, his methodology was all a lie. Yet, he enjoyed a position of prestige, money and admiration. What galled me even more was that he wasn’t even American–he was Australian–and he would brag to the peons (anyone who wasn’t either a doctoral student or a psychologist/professor) how he didn’t have to pay any taxes. He would also periodically loot the office supplies cabinets to supply his private practice. Sigh

 

[Bobby_Jim]

Bobby Jim: I used to work for a clinical psychologist who was the director of clinical training (second in command after the Chair of the department) at a university. In addition to taking care of his academic responsibilities, I also took care of his “professional” articles which he submitte to the APA Journal. Every single article that he wrote was bogus. His research, his data, his methodology was all a lie. Yet, he enjoyed a position of prestige, money and admiration. What galled me even more was that he wasn’t even American–he was Australian–and he would brag to the peons (anyone who wasn’t either a doctoral student or a psychologist/professor) how he didn’t have to pay any taxes. He would also periodically loot the office supplies cabinets to supply his private practice. Sigh

Wow, that’s quite blatant. I really do feel like the more prestigious the position, and the more influence the professor has, the greater tendency and motivation for this type of dishonesty.

 

[Evan]

He did. They were reported by eyewitnesses. Their accounts were written down and disseminated (we call these the gospels).

If the miracles were worked once, to convince people of God’s authority over the universe, why would he need to work them over and over. If he has the authority, there is no need to do it again. Ever. Just once is enough.

If I can count to 100, and I do it once, I don’t need to keep doing it over and over. I can do it. It’s not important.

Just like it’s not important to God that he can work these miracles. He can, so there is nothing more to prove. Once he raises someone from the dead, he has shown authority over death.

If he did them every 100 years, you might then be asking, yeah but why doesn’t he do them every year and tell me where they are going to happen so I can go see them myself, and even then I don’t want to believe them because there is no God.

 

[Sister_Terese]

If the miracles were worked once, to convince people of God’s authority over the universe, why would he need to work them over and over. If he has the authority, there is no need to do it again. Ever. Just once is enough.

If I can count to 100, and I do it once, I don’t need to keep doing it over and over. I can do it. It’s not important.

Just like it’s not important to God that he can work these miracles. He can, so there is nothing more to prove. Once he raises someone from the dead, he has shown authority over death.

If he did them every 100 years, you might then be asking, yeah but why doesn’t he do them every year and tell me where they are going to happen so I can go see them myself, and even then I don’t want to believe them because there is no God.

St. John’s Gospel specifically centers on the miracles of Jesus to prove His Divine Nature. He is God. “For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible.”

 

[HisIsTheCrown]

St. John’s Gospel specifically centers on the miracles of Jesus to prove His Divine Nature. He is God. “For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible.”

Simple things in life are a miracle and we do not see them.
A flower is a miracle or reproduction. The plant dies and seeds bring a new plant, months later, similar to her mother and father.
Sex is a miracle. Animals reproduce (how did they learn that) and the offspring are born from a little celule invisible to the eye and has got all the appearances of their mother and fathers. No engineer can create a robot that reproduces…