The Process of Justifying One's Beliefs

[shunyadragon]

Which in particular did you find unconvincing? And how do *I* know that your finding them unconvincing is the same thing as their not being true miracles?

I mean, there's a whole bucketload of Catholic miracles. Either God is trying to tell us something, or the Catholic Church is a forger of miracles on a massive scale.

The defining some event as a miracle is an 'interpretation' of an event. If there is a reasonable possible natural interpretation of the event than the basis of calling it a miracle is weak. An institution or an individual that describes an event as miraculous does not imply that it is a forgery, the institution or individual could simply be wrong in the interpretation. Though many claims of the miraculous have been found to be fraudulant.

Whether there are bucket loads, train loads, plane loads or ship loads of claims of miracles makes no difference, claims are claims nothing more, and the evidence remains highly anecdotal and subjectively situational.

I find ALL the claims of the miraculous anecdotal and unconvincing. I can provide reasonable natural explanations, and the limited understanding of fallible humans, for the claims of miracles. Other than that I can do little to convince you as to whether you believe they are miraculous events or not. By far almost all people who believe in certain miracles have an apriori belief in the belief system that is the context of those miracles.

[3abdulmesii7]

Could you give me one incident of a Catholic miracle, which is certified by the authority of the Church as a miracle, that you have looked at and found unconvincing? And could you also tell me why you found it unconvincing?

[3abdulmesii7]

Most Christians have believed historically that orthodoxy is defended by bishops with Apostolic Succession. Most Christians (think Catholics and Orthodox) still believe this. It seems to me that this is a good place to start.

[3abdulmesii7]

Above you said that universality was the mark of a doctrine's divine provenance. Now you said that "from age to age laws change as humans spiritually evolve." Isn't that as much to say as that Baha'i dogma are held to be divine because of their universality except when they are not universal?

[shunyadragon]

Above you said that universality was the mark of a doctrine's divine provenance. Now you said that "from age to age laws change as humans spiritually evolve." Isn't that as much to say as that Baha'i dogma are held to be divine because of their universality except when they are not universal?

No, first your answer is not coherent as to the meaning of universal. Considering that spiritual laws and standards evolve and change with time is accepting the actual evidence in the real world of history of the changes that take place. Second, the revealing of new laws is for them to become universal for the age they are revealed. The examples I gave concerning, the new Baha'i laws for slavery, indentured servitude, role of women in society, and monogamy that are not present in the scripture of older religions are becoming more universal as far as the standards of the modern world.

Another example is the Standard of the doctrine of the harmony of science and religion and the acceptance of science as the standard for the knowledge for our physical existence. There is a great deal of conflict between religion and science in the history of religion. Up until the 19h century conflicts remained largely unresolved. since that time some churches like the Roman Church are coming around to accept this view, but the conflict remains very divisive in the modern world with an increasing hostility toward science.

[shunyadragon]

Could you give me one incident of a Catholic miracle, which is certified by the authority of the Church as a miracle, that you have looked at and found unconvincing? And could you also tell me why you found it unconvincing?

As far as specific miracles, we can start with those events at Lourdes that are considered miracles. There have been several threads in this forum concerning these claims. Modern science has shown that the rate of claimed miracles at Lourdes parallel, the rate of known unexplained healings that are not considered miraculous, which by the way is very rare in both cases. Since new standards have been implemented for miracles at Lourdes in the 1980s there have not been documented claims of the miraculous. An example of natural spontaneous healings are for Leukemia. These examples were covered in detail in previous threads.

A specific claimed miraculous healing from Lourdes is provided here . . .

http://www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/lourdes/miracles4.html

Serge Francois, 56

Paris, France, Mar 30, 2011 / 01:55 pm (CNA).- Bishop Emmanuel Delmas of Angers, France confirmed the healing of a man at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes.

“This healing can be considered as a personal gift of God for this man, as a fact of grace, as a sign of Christ the Savior,” the bishop said March 27.

Serge Francois, 56, had lost almost all mobility in his left leg after complications from two operations left him with a herniated disc. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine on April 13, 2002 to pray for healing.

Bishop Delmas noted that the healing took place after Francois “had finished praying at the grotto and went to the miraculous spring to drink the water and wash his face. A unique gesture of the Virgin Mary can be seen in the healing of this man,” he said.

The Spanish daily La Razon said that after Francois' recovery, he returned to Lourdes in 2003 and reported his case to the medical commission, which began its investigation.

The Lourdes Medical Commission later verified that “the rapid functional healing, unrelated to any form of treatment" was "still present, eight years later.”

Francois made a 975-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain in thanksgiving for his recovery.

Bishop Jacques Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes explained that doctors are “hesitant today to use the term ‘inexplicable,’ unless they qualify it with ‘scientifically'.”

“They prefer to limit themselves to one fact: the healing is inexplicable today. They consider this qualification to be essential so they are not discredited later by colleagues who reject the inexplicable,” he said in a statement published on the Shrine of Lourdes’ website.

“Moreover,” he added, “the doctors at Lourdes always strive to be medically irreproachable. The Church herself encourages them in this.”

To commemorate the latest healing, Bishop Delmas has invited Catholics to a special Mass in Lourdes during a pilgrimage to the shrine May 3-8.

© source where applicable

The concept that it is a miracle, because its inexplicable by the present knowledge of science is weak, because I have already stated is that unexplained rare healings do occur rarely documented in Medicine without any association with miraculous claims.


I also doubt the claimed apparitions that were claimed to occur at this and other sites. I can go into more detail, but for know the claim that a blue eyed Caucasian Mary appeared is real stretch.

[3abdulmesii7]

As far as I can tell, you just said that doctrines don't *really* have to be universal.

The old science vs. religion nonsense is old hat. The whole thing is built upon Galileo and Galileo alone.

[3abdulmesii7]

The article doesn't say anything about a blue-eyed Caucasian Mary!

But even if it did, it is *very* well-documented, in multiple apparitions approved by the Church, that Mary takes on the appearance and speaks the language of the people that she appears to. Thus Guadalupe. Thus China.

How else do you go about proving that an event is miraculous except by proving that it did not occur by natural means?

[shunyadragon]

As far as I can tell, you just said that doctrines don't *really* have to be universal.

No, you are not responding to the post. The concept of the universal in understanding how religions and spiritual law relate to the rest of the world is a broader issue. The Baha'i Faith acknowledges a universal relationship with humanity in Revelation throughout history and world wide. The Baha'i Faith also acknowledges the diversity of religion from the fallible human perspective and the culture of the religion at the time. Ancient religions, like the Christianity and the Roman Church do not. They have fixed doctrines and dogmas of ancient cultures, and preach salvation only by their beliefs.

The Roman Church can hardly be called Catholic except from the egocentric perspective of an ancient world.

The old science vs. religion nonsense is old hat. The whole thing is built upon Galileo and Galileo alone.

No, it is not. First the history of persecution and rejection of science went further than that, and a modern view of the cosmos and evolution be the Roman Church is more recent. Check out the church history in relation to science, and you might look up Giordano Bruno.

[shunyadragon]

The article doesn't say anything about a blue-eyed Caucasian Mary!

The article i cited referred to the healing miracles.

http://www.miraclesceptic.com/apparitionfraud.html

The Catholic Church investigated the apparitions of Mary the Mother of Jesus at Lourdes and Fatima. It accepted them as real apparitions. Medjugorje has been condemned by the Church. The investigation of the apparitions is unscientific in the extreme. No effort is made to show that the lady seen looks the same in the apparitions. Mary is pale in some apparitions. Has rosy cheeks in others. And she has brown skin in others. Her hair colour ranges from light brown to black. The height changes too from apparition to apparition. Mary supposedly left a miracle painting of herself at Guadulupe in Mexico and the Church accepts it as a true miracle. It is never shown to alleged visionaries. They are never queried, "Is this the woman you see?" The Church just assumes that Mary gives herself a head and body transplant every time she appears. The Church never compares the lingo and characteristics of an apparition it is investigating to the lingo and characteristics of accepted apparitions. Yet that is necessary to see if the same person is appearing.

© source where applicable

But even if it did, it is *very* well-documented, in multiple apparitions approved by the Church, that Mary takes on the appearance and speaks the language of the people that she appears to. Thus Guadalupe. Thus China. [/quote]

Absolutely No, the apparitions are personal appearances, quite variable and not documented at all.

How else do you go about proving that an event is miraculous except by proving that it did not occur by natural means?

You cannot 'prove' either way. the question is whether there is sufficient evidence and documentation, and there is not. Apparitions are personal experiences, and common from many different religious perspectives and simply may be hallusinations based on beliefs.

[3abdulmesii7]

No, you're fudging the meaning of the word "universal" in order to make it say whatever you want it say. It's not going to work for you to say "well, it will be universal...one day."

When has the Catholic Church ever condemned evolution?

Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for claiming that Jesus Christ was a magician, which even as a Baha'i you believe is false! His science had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was only executed after he went to the Lutherans, ticked them off, then to the Calvinists, ticked them off, then to the Anglicans, ticking them off. And even after his heretical position was condemned, the Inquisition appealed the death sentence that he had received.

[3abdulmesii7]

Why can't Mary look different to different people? I don't see why this is a criterion that you're using.

Alright, now I'm trying to reconcile the fact that you are saying, down here, that it is impossible to prove or disprove miracle, with the fact that you are trying to disprove a miracle up there. I think that it would be best for you to say "you cannot 'prove' either way to my satisfaction." That would be true.

Is there any other religious figure whose apparitions are as common as Mary's apart from Jesus'?

[shunyadragon]

Why can't Mary look different to different people? I don't see why this is a criterion that you're using.

Because apperitions in different religions and belief systems reflect the religion and the culture the person believes reflects such a wide range that there is no reason to accept one over the other. This is also true of experiences of hallucinations and other dream phenomenon that occur universally, and there is no reason to believe one over the other.

Alright, now I'm trying to reconcile the fact that you are saying, down here, that it is impossible to prove or disprove miracle, with the fact that you are trying to disprove a miracle up there. I think that it would be best for you to say "you cannot 'prove' either way to my satisfaction." That would be true.

Is there any other religious figure whose apparitions are as common as Mary's apart from Jesus'?

I am not talking here about what can be proven, but given the universal nature of mystical experiences and apparitions there is no reason to believe one over the other.

This has been very much a part of the Vedic (Hindu) and Buddhist cultures in history. The Vedic and Buddhist art work for over 2000 years is a product of these visions. Figures like Guan Yin (sp?) in Chinese culture as the goddess foe women are from peoples visions of this figure. Though many Hindus and Buddhists, but not all, consider humans themselves as 'apparitions.' Nonetheless the artwork of these religions often reflect the mystical experiences and apparitions they experience.

There is abundant records of apparitions among Native Americans that reflect their religious and cultural perspective.

There have also been records of apparitions in the Baha'i Faith, some recorded before there was any knowledge of the faith itself, but there is no effort nor claim in the Baha'i Faith that these apparitions were genuinely miracles.

[shunyadragon]

No, you're fudging the meaning of the word "universal" in order to make it say whatever you want it say. It's not going to work for you to say "well, it will be universal...one day."

No, I consider the universal as the universal known human spiritual experience and revelation which the Roman Church and other religions reject based on the belief that their own answer is the universal, which is the least plausible answer.

No, not someday. It is the universal standard of today that many people in the world hope to attain as in modern statements from the UN and others that reflect most closely Baha'i principles and beliefs.

When has the Catholic Church ever condemned evolution?

The view of the Roman Church evolved behind science and did not begin to truly accept it until the 1890s as per this description.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#Early_reaction

Catholic concern about evolution has always been very largely concerned with the implications of evolutionary theory for the origin of the human species; even by 1859, the Church did not insist on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, which had long been undermined by developments in geology and other fields.[6] No high-level Church pronouncement has ever attacked head-on the theory of evolution as applied to non-human species. The early Church Fathers taught creationism—though there was debate being over whether God created the world in six days, as Clement of Alexandria taught, or in a single moment as held by Augustine,[9] and a literal interpretation of Genesis was normally taken for granted in the Middle Ages and later, until it was rejected in favour of uniformitarianism (entailing far greater timeframes) by a majority of geologists in the 19th century. However modern literal creationism has had little support among the higher levels of the Church.

The Catholic Church delayed official pronouncements on Darwin's Origin of Species for many decades. While many hostile comments were made by local clergy, Origin of Species was never placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; in contrast, Henri Bergson's non-Darwinian Creative Evolution (1907), was on the Index from 1948 until it was abolished in 1966. However, a number of Catholic writers who published works specifying how evolutionary theory and Catholic theology might be reconciled ran into trouble of some sort with the Vatican authorities.

The first notable statement after Darwin published his theory appeared in 1860 from a council of the German bishops, who pronounced:
Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that the opinion of those who do not fear to assert that this human being, man as regards his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.[14]
No Vatican response was made to this, which some have taken to imply agreement.[15] In the following decades, a consistently and aggressively anti-evolution position was taken by the influential Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, which, though unofficial, was generally believed to have accurate information about the views and actions of the Vatican authorities.[16] The opening in 1998 of the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (in the 19th century called the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index) has revealed that on many crucial points this belief was mistaken, and the journal's accounts of specific cases, often the only ones made public, were not accurate. The original documents show the Vatican's attitude was much less fixed than appeared to be the case at the time.

In 1868, the Blessed John Henry Newman corresponded with a fellow priest regarding Darwin's theory and made the following comments:
As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr. Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design—It is accidental to us, not to God.

In 1894 a letter was received by the Holy Office, asking for confirmation of the Church's position on a theological book of generally Darwinist cast by a French Dominican theologian, L’évolution restreinte aux espèces organiques, par le père Léroy dominicain. The records of the Holy Office document lengthy debates, with a number of experts consulted, whose views varied considerably. In 1895 the Congregation decided against the book, and Fr. Léroy was summoned to Rome, where it was explained that his views were unacceptable, and he agreed to withdraw the book, which was placed on the Index. Again, the concerns of the experts had concentrated entirely on human evolution.

To reconcile general evolutionary theory with the origin of the human species, with a soul, the concept of "special transformism" was developed, according to which the first humans had evolved by Darwinist processes, up to the point where a soul was added by God to "pre-existent and living matter" (in the words of Pius XII's Humani Generis) to form the first fully human individuals; this would normally be considered to be at the point of conception.[20] Léroy's book endorsed this concept; what led to its rejection by the Congregation appears to have been his view that the human species was able to evolve without divine intervention to a fully human state, but lacking only a soul. The theologians felt that some immediate and particular divine intervention was also required to form the physical nature of humans, before the addition of a soul, even if this was worked on near-human hominids produced by evolutionary processes.

The following year, 1896, John Augustine Zahm, a well-known American Holy Cross priest who had been a professor of physics and chemistry at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and was then Procurator General of his Order in Rome, published Evolution and Dogma, arguing that Church teaching, the Bible, and evolution did not conflict. By 1898 it had been placed on the Index and Zahm forced to recant his views, though he remained sufficiently well thought of to return to the United States as Provincial superior of his Order. In the meantime his book (in an Italian translation with the imprimatur of Siena[24]) had had a great impact on Geremia Bonomelli, the Bishop of Cremona in Italy, who added an appendix to a book of his own, summarizing and recommending Zahn's views. Bonomelli too was pressured, and retracted his views in a public letter, also in 1898.

© source where applicable

Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for claiming that Jesus Christ was a magician, which even as a Baha'i you believe is false! His science had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was only executed after he went to the Lutherans, ticked them off, then to the Calvinists, ticked them off, then to the Anglicans, ticking them off. And even after his heretical position was condemned, the Inquisition appealed the death sentence that he had received.

Actually the issue was Pantheism and his cosmological views. The Lutherans, Calvinists and Anglicans were also living in the past scientifically and embraced the heliocentric strict Biblical Creationism. The fact that he was burned at the stake like others for holding divergent views from the churches presents a problem in Roman Church history. The Roman church and other churches clung to Heliocentrism long after it was demonstrated scientifically.