One question I’d love to see answered is, did she ever need her bed clothes changed? Did she ever, er, soil herself? My guess is the answer to that is ‘yes’, so that begs the question of how that would be possible if she never ate or drank anything. And if she didn’t, why don’t they bring that aspect up? It would be better proof of a miracle than her supposed 6 years without food or drink.
For comparison a supposedly a dude was trapped in Haiti for 27 days with no food:
The real answer is that she was getting food, either in the form of a bunch of bread, or some other type. And the people who said she wasn’t were either liars or stupidly inept in their investigations.
Can we get a firm idea of exactly what claims we’re supposed to be evaluating?
This is known as the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Turd.
The Wikipedia entry says: “According to her Vatican biography, from March 1942, for about 13 years until her death, she received no food except for the Holy Eucharist, and her weight dropped to about 33 kilograms (i.e. approximately 73 pounds). She was examined by medical doctors, with no conclusion.”
Doesn’t exactly sound like highly controlled conditions with continuous observation.
There’s a story today on abcnews.com about a young woman diagnosed with a brain tumor, which ultimately de-differentiated into an even worse tumor (glioblastoma), for which she received chemo and radiation with a typical life expectancy to be measured in months. Instead, she’s survived six years and has no evidence of tumor (she credits God, her doctors and her “powerful” mind). Physicians don’t have reasons why in these rare cases the tumor seems to vanish - since we don’t have an “explanation”, must we assume divine intervention?
That Loreeee is an actual atheist? He/she comes across in the classical vein of “I’m really a skeptic, but this just blew me away…”
The literal interpretation of Christ’s words at the Last Supper comes from St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians:
Whether true or not, it is a very early Christian interpretation of the Last Supper’s meaning. The mid-2nd century writer Justin Martyr confirms this interpretation and hints that the magic is done with the actual “Words of Institution”. i.e. the recitation of Christ’s words by a priest standing in for Jesus.
How this actually worked was a subject for debate up to Thomas Aquinas, who ended up giving the definitive Catholic solution in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Basically Aquinas used the philosophical difference between an object’s species (all the things you can perceive about it with your senses, such as size, color, smell, taste, etc.) and it’s substance (the underlying idea or essence of the object). If you have an object like, say, a chair or a hammer, you don’t really “sense” that the object is a chair or hammer; rather, “chair” or “hammer” is an intellectual conclusion you make about the object’s substance. The distinction is even clearer when you start talking about abstractions like “justice” or “happiness”, which most would agree exist as substances or concepts even if we can’t perfectly pin down their species like we could with material objects. Aquinas claimed that the magic words transform just the substance of the bread and wine into Jesus. This neatly bypasses the problem that, well, there doesn’t seem to be much observable difference between consecrated and unconsecrated bread and wine.
One of the theological pillars of the Reformation was that the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist was incorrect, though different denominations handled it differently. Lutherans pretty much reject any attempt at a philosophical explanation and instead emphasize that the whole ceremony–including the act of consumption–is necessary for the participant to get the full effect of the sacrament, i.e. “receive” the body of Christ. So they consider the question of “exactly when and how” the transformation takes place to be moot, and reject what they consider Catholic idolatry regarding the consecrated bread and wine itself. Reformed churches have a wider range of opinion, but none come close to the Catholic idea of transubstantiation.
The Catholic concern for the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is tied to the Catholic belief that the Mass is a form of sacrifice. Basically, by turning the bread and wine into Jesus himself during the Mass, the priest now has a worthy object to sacrifice at the altar–sacrifice in the old pagan sense of giving up something of value in exchange for receiving something from God, i.e. divine grace. One defining feature of Protestant theology is that grace cannot be earned by human works–you either get it or you don’t, based on God’s decision alone–so you can see where this idea of a sacrifice (and hence the Catholic interpretation of transubstantiation) would be explicitly rejected by Protestant theologians.
I read the same wiki. The two references turned out to be biography at the Vatican website, and the other a book, They bore the wounds of Christ by Michael Freze wrote in 1993, well past Alexandrina’s time.
The wiki article also says that: “One day, she started bleeding from her head, due to a crown of spines, she said. Jesus spoke to her and called her *Alexandrina das Dores *(Alexandrina of Sorrows).” So the same person that tells us this is also telling us she didn’t have anything to eat for 13 years other than the “Holy Eucharist”. If this is so, it might be interesting to know in what proportions of grape juice/wine and bread did she eat? And even during a 40 day observance, I still doubt much of a proper protocol was set up, and even if it was, surely many can make it on grape juice and bread for 40 days. I’d be more interested in those other 13 years.
I think many people probably took pity on her, and figured, hey, what the hell, let her get some attention out of this and not let ourselves get too boggled down with the specific details. That way some can have their miracle.
I can’t check out any of the links from here - is the claim that she didn’t even drink water? Because that’s probably the easiest thing to sneak, unless you give up washing.
The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that Satan kept this poor woman alive and in misery for years beyond her natural life. Why should she suffer? Didn’t Christ’s suffering fulfill God’s requirements for sacrifice? Didn’t any of her doctors or priestly friends think to exorcize her to allow her to pass on in peace? Oh, I grieve for humanity if they are so blind as to accept that God wanted this woman to suffer for years.
Lucifer does some of his most evil work through well-meaning but misguided people of faith. The Deceiver cannot create on his own, but he can pervert that which is created. Sustaining a woman’s physical agony over the course of years is exactly the type of “trick” I would expect from the Adversary, and should be a lesson in what happens when a person substitutes superstition for Faith.
This might be a genuine case of a miracle:
‘Prahlad Jani’ or ‘Prahladbhai Jani’ an indian saint in his 80’s hasn’t eaten food , hasn’t drunk water , hasn’t passed stool and urine for 70 years after he awakened his *kundilini *during his teenage years.
He has been kept under surveillance(performed all sorts of tests, mris, ultrasounds, blood tests etc) by physicians for over 10 days.
video: - YouTube
It’s funny how atheists must all be lockstep or they’re no true scotsman, I thought only religious people did that. You can believe all sorts of woo, like it’s possible for people to not eat, as long as you don’t believe in God, and still be an atheist.
This is how it always goes with stories of this type: if someone claims to have done something impossible under controlled conditions, it turns out they either didn’t do it, or the controls were laughable.
Yes, you can, and I’m not going to wade into the argument over whether or not the OP is “really” an atheist - I’d take him at his word. But we’re talking about a Roman Catholic saint with an overtly miraculous and religious story here. It’s difficult to believe in stories like this one while remaining an atheist.
Occam’s razor: What is more likely, another fakir making magical claims is FAKING and sneaking food and water to get money and/or fame, or that his body violates the laws of thermodynamics?
Also, a person can be a theist and not believe every wonder-story that comes down the pike. I get a little resentful when all persons of faith are portrayed as credulous dupes. (Many of us are not.)
Alas, true. Being an atheist is no protection against believing dumb shit. Lots of atheists are in the anti-vaccination camp.
I’ve even met spiritualist atheists. They believe in no gods, but are open to the idea of “spirits.” No true Scotsmen indeed?
Actually, many of his illusions are easily explained. For reasons too long and boring to bother telling the story, my sister once videotaped one of his TV specials and asked me to try to figure out ‘the trick’. I watched them, then asked myself “How would I go about engineering that one?” In most cases, I figured out a way to do it, watched the tape again, ignoring the misdirection, instead watching for ‘tells’ of the method I thought up, and saw good evidence that my method was actually what he did. Admittedly, a few of his illusions stumped me.
James Randi and his foundation are good at doing that same thing, only they concentrate on people who actually claim they are performing miracles, whether through their own power, or as ‘lightning rods for God’. Unfortunately, few actual claims of miracles ever receive that level of scrutiny.
Oh, horseshit. Nobody’s saying that he has to quote Dawkins. But when some guy makes his very first post to the Dope saying “Hi guys, I’m an atheist, but how do you explain THIS,” where “this” is more sad than miraculous except on fanboy sites, then IMO it’s a very short leap to suspect a false flag operation.
I realize people not being militant atheists really gets your goat, but I was responding to XT:
The OP only said he couldn’t find any explanation for this and that he thought it seemed to be medically confirmed, and then was asking for our explanations, and got a bunch of reasonable ones. XT heard the OP asking for explanations about the fakir and somehow jumped to revoking his atheist card, when the OP made no mention at all of believing in God.
I believe it’s possible for it to be a false flag operation, but that has nothing to do with XT’s revoking his atheist card simply by the OP. Which is exactly the same sort of inane judgemental behavior religious people do.
Atheism means you don’t believe in God, no more, no less. It doesn’t make you a knowlegeable super skeptic as much as some of you would like to think it does, there are atheist people who believe in all sorts of hogwash.
Your knee is jerking there rogerbox.
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Atheism means you don’t believe in God, no more, no less. It doesn’t make you a knowlegeable super skeptic as much as some of you would like to think it does, there are atheist people who believe in all sorts of hogwash.
[/QUOTE]
No, being an atheist in no way means you are automatically equipped with a bullshit detection kit, nor does it mean you are a competent skeptic. What it does mean, however, is you don’t believe in God or gods (usually), so when someone comes on claiming to be an atheist yet discussing Catholic Christian myths about miracles and such it should set off YOUR bullshit detection kit.
Horseshit. I expressed my skepticism, but I also said that I think the OP seemed to be mislabeling him or herself…giving them the benefit of the doubt while at the same time expressing said skepticism that the OP was on the up and up. If the OP wants to label themselves as an atheist then my revocation of their ‘atheist card’ is meaningless, as for one thing I’m not even an atheist (by my own self applied labels), and generally no one can revoke your own self applied label if you really believe you are that label.
I went on to give my own take on possible explanations, so you jerking your knee at only part of my post ignores that I didn’t come in here simply to blast the OP or revoke any cards.
That the OP couldn’t find a reasonable explanation says quite a bit about the OPs credulity, which I pointed out, but the fact that this is a thread about a religious topic and miracles certainly brings up the valid point about atheists. Even a completely credulous atheist isn’t going to think something like this is a miracle (the OPs word right from the title), since ‘atheist’ implies rather strongly that the person applying it doesn’t believe in God or the gods…so, you know, no miracles. Could have been space aliens, or some sort of new age mystic crap of course…but then that wouldn’t imply a miracle, but magic pony crystal forces of goodness or something.
There are atheists who believe in the healing powers of homeopathy, which would LITERALLY be a miracle if it worked since there is actually no detectable levels of medicine in it. Which is no more or less plausible than someone being able to survive without food and water. The OP did not attribute the superhuman metabolism to God, the catholic church did.
In fact, he says he found rational explanations for other recent miracles but that one, so he sounds perfectly like an atheist trying to debunk something that sounds ridiculous:
There is also the possibility that English is not his first language if he is Italian, and he sounded more open to the idea of such a ridiculous claim than he probably intended.
edit: To clarify my main point of contention with your original post was how it put atheists on some pedastal. I know plenty of dumb atheists who belive in dumb woo, so the OP, if he believes in dumb woo at all, doesn’t have anything to do with discrediting his atheist credentials. And skeptics talk about miracles all the time, would you like some skeptical podcast links? Skeptics are plenty interested in learning about woo so that they can discredit it when they encounter it, which sounds exactly like what the OP is doing.