# St. Januarius, Miracles, and the Proof of God. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 20, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639 "2018-09-20T16:27:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/241 "2018-09-28T19:54:48Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Believers do not arrive at their faith through careful thought. This is incredibly condescending and demonstrably false. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/242 "2018-09-28T20:07:53Z")
I have **first person** experience that counters your “demonstrably false” claim. While feelings are not easy to present as evidence, I can attest directly to my statement, and I would be surprised to find no one else who could back me up. Go ahead, call me a liar again. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/243 "2018-09-28T20:11:36Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I have **first person** experience that counters your “demonstrably false” claim. While feelings are not easy to present as evidence, I can attest directly to my statement, and I would be surprised to find no one else who could back me up. > > Go ahead, call me a liar again. Let me just clarify what you meant so that there is no misunderstanding. By your statement “Believers do not arrive at their faith through careful thought”, are you saying that no religious convert thought their decision through carefully? Or are you saying something else? ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/244 "2018-09-28T20:15:48Z")
For the record, I have been falsely accused of calling another poster a liar twice now in this thread. Telling someone that their assertion is wrong is not the same thing as accusing them of intentional deception. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/245 "2018-09-28T20:25:50Z")
I thought of this thread the other day when listening to the radio in the car, and there was a [half-hour interview](https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1326345283670) [audio only] with a writer, columnist, and commentator named Mary Elizabeth Williams. She was a life-long Catholic until the day she walked out of the Church. Her position today is that you don’t have to belong to the Church to believe in God, and though she still has great admiration for the traditions of the Catholic Church as cultural icons, she rejects its dogmatism and legacy of abuses. It struck me as being very much the way many people I know feel about their formal organized religion, especially Catholics, who tend to become CINOs (Catholics in Name Only). A good example of that dogmatism was a few years ago in this area when students in public schools (mostly high schools, I think) were setting up clubs called “gay-straight alliances” whose purpose was to counter the bullying of LGBT students (particularly the bullying of gays) by creating a welcoming non-disriminatory social environment and trying to eliminate the stigma associated with this community. The idea was particularly incentivized by a number of tragedies where bullied gay students had been driven to suicide. The idea took off except in the separate Catholic school system, which banned any such student clubs on the grounds that homosexuality was a horrific sin, the work of the devil! The worst of this was close to a decade ago and while I don’t have the articles at hand any more, I remember that not only did the school board issue an outright ban, but a number of local Catholic bishops wrote an editorial supporting the ban and railing about the evils of homosexuality. [Here’s one article](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/halton-catholic-school-board-under-fire-for-banning-gay-straight-alliances/article1864793/) in which a Catholic school board official is quoted as saying, "“We don’t have Nazi groups either. Gay-straight alliances are banned because they are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.” That article was from around the time when the school boards were just on the cusp of changing this policy, being forced by public outcry and changes in the laws to modify their dogmatic positions. Today they’ve have to totally reverse themselves for those reasons, not the least of which is that such a ban is now illegal. But this is a good example of why people get fed up and leave this sort of dogmatic organized religion. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/246 "2018-09-28T21:05:05Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Let me just clarify what you meant so that there is no misunderstanding. > > By your statement “Believers do not arrive at their faith through careful thought”, are you saying that no religious convert thought their decision through carefully? Or are you saying something else? Basically, I am saying rational thought is not the foundation of belief. Belief is a feeling. Any careful thought put to the question, such as supports it, is _post hoc_ rationalization. > [@EscAlaMike](#): > > For the record, I have been falsely accused of calling another poster a liar twice now in this thread. Telling someone that their assertion is wrong is not the same thing as accusing them of intentional deception. You said “demonstrably false”. You offered nothing else in support of that. “ **Demonstrably** false” should be accompanied by a **demonstration** of how my assertion is invalid and counter to my own personal experiences. If you can convince me that I misunderstood what I experienced, I will concede that you did not call me a liar. Good luck with that. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/247 "2018-09-28T21:09:59Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > You said “demonstrably false”. You offered nothing else in support of that. “ **Demonstrably** false” should be accompanied by a **demonstration** of how my assertion is invalid and counter to my own personal experiences. If you can convince me that I misunderstood what I experienced, I will concede that you did not call me a liar. Good luck with that. You made a sweeping generalization. All it would take to disprove your claim is to find one religous convert who came to his belief after careful thought. I submit G.K. Chesterton. That you may have used careful thought to come to a different conclusion does not make your assertion correct in an absolute sense. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/248 "2018-09-28T21:25:19Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > You made a sweeping generalization. All it would take to disprove your claim is to find one religous convert who came to his belief after careful thought. I submit G.K. Chesterton. > > That you may have used careful thought to come to a different conclusion does not make your assertion correct in an absolute sense. Mr. Chesterton was baptized into the Church of England at the age of one month and was raised Anglican. When did he become “a convert after careful thought”? ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/249 "2018-09-28T21:34:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Mr. Chesterton was baptized into the Church of England at the age of one month and was raised Anglican. When did he become “a convert after careful thought”? It’s quite a stretch to say that he was raised Anglican. His upbringing was not religious and he practiced neo-paganism as a young man. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/250 "2018-09-28T21:41:16Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > It’s quite a stretch to say that he was raised Anglican. His upbringing was not religious and he practiced neo-paganism as a young man. Baptized and raised in the faith, strayed a bit, then went back to the faith. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/251 "2018-09-28T21:43:12Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Baptized and raised in the faith, strayed a bit, then went back to the faith. I disagree that he was “raised in the faith”, but no matter. If you won’t accept Chesterton, then St. Augustine is another. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/252 "2018-09-28T22:30:37Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > I disagree that he was “raised in the faith”, but no matter. If you won’t accept Chesterton, then St. Augustine is another. Please. From Wiki: > [@](#): > > According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine “established anew the ancient Faith”. In his youth he was drawn to Manichaeism and later to neo-Platonism. **After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386** , Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. (bolding mine) Baptism and conversion first, _then_ development of philosophy and theology. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/253 "2018-09-28T22:48:58Z")
My apologies for setting you on a fool’s errand, but the standards (my standards, at least) for your success are almost impossibly high. Augustine of Hippo does not appear to be a useful example, as the mother he adored was a christian already – in most cases of conversion through ministerial influence, controlling for emotional factors (feelings) presents all but insurmountable difficulties. _Post hoc_ rationalization presents a serious problem. Converts may describe what it was that made them believers, but they can only describe it after the fact, which means that their memory becomes confounded by their faith. Perhaps you might submit William J. Murray, son of the famous activist atheist. [Unfortunately](http://associate.com/testimonies/billmurr.html), _On January 25, 1980, as I slept in my apartment in San Francisco, the Holy Spirit came upon me and directed me to seek the truth in the Holy Bible. This was the one place I had never looked for the nature of God, for it was this very book that my mother had removed from our nationís schools by her lawsuit in 1963._ that one comes up short. I recall the day that Tom Swanson stood before the class and explained how to apply lim[sub]h-\>0/sub/h and the understanding washed over us like an epiphany. That is a case of rational thought precipitating a (quasi-) religious experience. Basically, you have to provide a solid, repeatable example that will convince us in a sensible way, like differentiation. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/254 "2018-09-29T00:32:15Z")
Eschereal, thanks for clarifying. I guess we’ve reached an impasse, since faith, by its very nature, is belief in something that cannot be empirically proven. If it could, it would no longer be faith but knowledge or fact. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/255 "2018-09-29T01:03:11Z")
“Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don’t have evidence.” ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/256 "2018-09-29T01:26:01Z")
At least he admits there’s no rational thought behind the belief in fairy tales. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/257 "2018-09-29T02:01:09Z")
“Impasse”. Says the guy who called my assertion “demonstrably false” and cannot support that claim to any reasonable extent. I will be charitable. We do not agree and probably never will. Maybe my standards are too strict. Or, just maybe, there is nothing there. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/258 "2018-09-29T20:54:27Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > At least he admits there’s no rational thought behind the belief in fairy tales. One does not always need empirical proof in order to rationally assent to a belief. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/259 "2018-09-29T21:01:41Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > “Impasse”. Says the guy who called my assertion “demonstrably false” and cannot support that claim to any reasonable extent. > > I will be charitable. We do not agree and probably never will. Maybe my standards are too strict. Or, just maybe, there is nothing there. Yes, an impasse. You have made the absurd claim that every single religious convert in the history of the world did so without “careful thought”. You have not backed off this claim, but have admitted that your standards for being persuaded otherwise are “impossibly high”. Given that, what is the point of further discussion? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639/260 "2018-09-29T21:11:01Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > One does not always need empirical proof in order to rationally assent to a belief. Kind of a stretch on “rationally”, there, especially since it’s not even at the level of empirical _proof_, since we have a distinct lack of even empirical _evidence_. I could suggest “provisionally” as a substitute, though “lazily” might do as well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-januarius-miracles-and-the-proof-of-god/821639.md?page=14)