Is Mise

Thanks you for the story about the Miracle of Calanda (a young Spanish man's leg miraculously restored to him in 1640 after having been amputated) that I did not know about. However,1640 is two centuries before the Lourdes apparitions.

As you can read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Calanda the claim (that the leg was actually amputated) is being contested, although apparently not by the young man’s contemporaries, most of them a priori disposed to accepting all sorts of events as “miraculous”, i.e. against the laws of nature, whatever they understood by that.

Perhaps this might help to see what I mean:

In a German commercial a do-gooder felt sorry for a group of Indian women laboriously washing their clothes in the river, so he donated them a washing machine forgetting that it was useless to them since there was nothing to plug it in, no electricity. Some Christian apologists are like that do-gooder, offering arguments (even disguised as “evidence”) not realising that they are useless, meaningless to an atheist who does not have anything “to plug them in”, no faith.

If you have faith, you will concentrate on those who came home from Lourdes feeling healed (certainly many more than the 7000 who asked the Church to investigate their claim) at least mentally/spiritually; if you are an unbeliever you will, of course, concentrate on those who came home disappointed in their naive expectations.

Oneundergod "your/missing;..something..we are sent here;to learn..not to suffer".

I admire your faith OUG, but I don't share it....any more.

What decent god would send a baby to it's parents, only to take it away with some terrible illness a few days or weeks after birth?
What does that baby or it's parents 'learn', other than suffering?

Religion is not tolerated nearly as often as it used to be....

Susieonline, your posts are excellent, I have visited some of these grotto's of miracles in Europe, but all I could see was a lot of commercial junk to be bought, what I do find so hard to believe is that people like Abbott do not question the absolute nonsense that has been pushed down their throat while in nappies, after the last election I find Abbott is far from being a Christian person, a war mongeri looks after the rich, creates titles etc, I am sure if such a person as JC ever existed Abbott would not be on his list to enter his so called kingdom of heaven, people believe in rubbish, don't have some one else's blood, seriously there is nothing after we jump off the planet, it will be the same as before we came,missing no one, likewise the already dead will not miss you or have ever known you, and you them, the gullible believe they will meet up with family and friends but not their enemies somewhere in rainbow land, when will they learn.

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Is Mise wrote :

« You really need to read up on miracles, the Church and Lourdes. Miracles do happen; there are reports of them on the net. »

You are right, Is Mise. I typed « miracles, the Church and Lourdes» on my Google browser and obtained 909,000 results.

I did not read them all but noticed that there appear to be just about as many which assumed that the so-called “miracles” were due to “divine intervention” or “faith” as there were which contest such an interpretation.

According to my Oxford English Dictionary the word “miracle” has a primary definition and a secondary definition. The primary definition is “an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency”. The secondary definition is “a remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences”.

In order to avoid any confusion please understand the secondary definition whenever I employ the word “miracle”.

About 6 million people go to Lourdes each year, some of whom as part of organised tours by clinics and hospices. A visit to Lourdes is often a last resort before the grave. They are mostly French and Italians (roughly 45% and 30% respectively), though people come from all over the world. Their visit produces an income of about $ 45 million a year.

As George indicated in his post to you on page 10 of this thread, the Vatican officially recognizes 67 miracles at Lourdes since 1858. Even if we don’t go back that far, considering that there has been at least 100 million visitors at Lourdes since the year 1990, the percentage of “miracles” is infinitesimal. Conversely, the percentage of failures is overwhelming.

According to George, « miraculous healing always involves some willpower, some faith in the source of healing (c.f. Jesus’ “your faith has healed you”) ». This seems to imply that the overwhelming majority of visitors were lacking in willpower or faith or both.

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That may be true but I suspect that faith is not dependent on a visit to Lourdes and that the same infinitesimal percentage of “miracles” would occur even if Lourdes did not exist – and even if nobody had any faith.

Thanks to your suggestion, Dear Is Mise, I came across an interesting observation on the web by a Catholic priest called James Keller, as well as two web sites which I thought might be of interest to both you and George.

James Keller :

«The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair”. An example would be "If God intervenes to save your life in a car crash, then what was he doing in Auschwitz?". Thus an all-powerful, all-knowing and just God, predicated in Christianity, would not perform miracles. »

Here are the links to the two web sites:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26334964

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znkibtJOQgQ

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>>an interesting observation on the web by a Catholic priest called James Keller …

«The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair”, etc <<

The only interesting thing about this might be that this standard and very old objection - based on the naive understanding of God as a person just like you or I, hence to be judged by the standards applicable and comprehensible to us two - comes from a priest, who should know better.