http://www.people.com/article/family-pope-francis-kiss-tumor-baby-gianna-
One family believes that the tumor that was in their baby daughter's brain miraculously shrunk significantly after receiving the Pope's kiss (and two months of chemotherapy) last September. I guess the Pope has healing powers now, like that guy who died for our sins 2000 or so years ago, whatever his name is. If only I could just touch the hem of his robe.
I can just imagine The Pope sitting out on Some front lawn with one of those wooden kissingbooths you'd see in comics. 1 dollar 1 Kiss, come and get 'em.
Can we get him to cure testicular cancer too, by The way?
There are aspects of Catholicism that are very fundamentalist in nature: Miracles, demons, exorcism. For such an old institution that has been embarrassed so often by science, they cling to ignorance and superstition and still glorify it.
Used to be, European monarchs were regarded as semi-divine ... as recently as Queen Anne from 300 years ago. The British queen was reputedly able to cure illnesses on touch too. More modern faith healers are a democratization of this.
I wonder why they imagine it was the pope that did it, and not the chemotherapy, or the jar of applesauce she ate for breakfast one morning, or the time her dad accidentally dropped her on her head...
Furthermore, what does it mean that the pope can cure a baby of cancer but doesn't cure other people? If he's magic and can keep people from suffering but chooses not to, fuck him.
We Italians are an extremely superstitious people, what can I say... even immigration and a more modernized homeland didn't get it out of our system.
Wasn't that long ago, there were a whole shitload of Catholics making a big deal over a salt-stain under a highway overpass, that they thought looked like Mary. Superstition will never die.
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on November 24, 2015, 05:26:27 PM
Wasn't that long ago, there were a whole shitload of Catholics making a big deal over a salt-stain under a highway overpass, that they thought looked like Mary. Superstition will never die.
That is why they call it super-stition not ordinary-stition.
Is there even one case of a faith healer fixing a broken leg? How about a tooth ache? Or hemorrhoid by touch? :85:
That's amazing. Imagine how healthy all his altar boys must be!
Quote from: Baruch on November 24, 2015, 01:27:20 PM
The British queen was reputedly able to cure illnesses on touch too.
Wasn't that the disease called Scrofula - the 'King's Evil'?
Given time and half a chance, the Poop would probably 'fix' the kid's virginity too. [/cynic]
Quote from: Blackleaf on November 24, 2015, 11:01:35 AM
http://www.people.com/article/family-pope-francis-kiss-tumor-baby-gianna-
One family believes that the tumor that was in their baby daughter's brain miraculously shrunk significantly after receiving the Pope's kiss (and two months of chemotherapy) last September. I guess the Pope has healing powers now, like that guy who died for our sins 2000 or so years ago, whatever his name is. If only I could just touch the hem of his robe.
Skeptics constantly ask why people are not healed (as if that somehow proves Christianity false), and then when someone appears to be healed, they reject that, too. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Does this healing surprise you?
Acts 5:14-16
14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. 15 As a result,
people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 19:11-13
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that
even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 25, 2015, 05:10:53 PM
Skeptics constantly ask why people are not healed (as if that somehow proves Christianity false), and then when someone appears to be healed, they reject that, too. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Does this healing surprise you?
Acts 5:14-16
14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. 15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 19:11-13
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
We're just questioning if the doctors might not have had more of a hand in this one than the hand of the divine.
Quote from: Youssuf Ramadan on November 25, 2015, 03:55:04 PM
Wasn't that the disease called Scrofula - the 'King's Evil'?
Given time and half a chance, the Poop would probably 'fix' the kid's virginity too. [/cynic]
yes ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculous_cervical_lymphadenitis
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 25, 2015, 05:10:53 PM
Skeptics constantly ask why people are not healed (as if that somehow proves Christianity false), and then when someone appears to be healed, they reject that, too. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Does this healing surprise you?
Acts 5:14-16
14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. 15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 19:11-13
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Yes, a kid was healed of something he was already getting treatment for... wow, that is shocking.
An actual miracle would be if the kid was not receiving treatment because they knew he was going to die no matter what, and then was cured. It's like I flipped a coin and claimed I was divine when it landed on heads, and then just said I work in mysterious ways when it lands on tails. It's a scam.
Quote from: Shiranu on November 25, 2015, 08:20:27 PM
Yes, a kid was healed of something he was already getting treatment for... wow, that is shocking.
An actual miracle would be if the kid was not receiving treatment because they knew he was going to die no matter what, and then was cured. It's like I flipped a coin and claimed I was divine when it landed on heads, and then just said I work in mysterious ways when it lands on tails. It's a scam.
I agree with all but the last sentence.
If the child had received NO treatment because the doctors had given up and THEN the pope kissed the kid...that would be interesting. But this is not so clear cut.
But why, specifically, is it a "scam"? Is the family being dishonest for profit? Or are they simply genuinely convinced that the chemotherapy only began to be effective after this happened?
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 25, 2015, 09:12:09 PM
I agree with all but the last sentence.
If the child had received NO treatment because the doctors had given up and THEN the pope kissed the kid...that would be interesting. But this is not so clear cut.
But why, specifically, is it a "scam"? Is the family being dishonest for profit? Or are they simply genuinely convinced that the chemotherapy only began to be effective after this happened?
The family isn't the one peddling faith healing ( the scam)... and they are not crediting the chemo, they are saying the kiss was the cure.
I am all for people being religious and have no problem with it, but you can't peddle stuff like this which leads to people choosing faith over medicine.
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 25, 2015, 05:10:53 PM
Skeptics constantly ask why people are not healed (as if that somehow proves Christianity false), and then when someone appears to be healed, they reject that, too. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Does this healing surprise you?
Acts 5:14-16
14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. 15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 19:11-13
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Oh wise preacher,
TEACH us with your INSIGHT,
given you by the Holy Word,
so that our HEARTS
may be opened to the TRUTH!
:32: :s_bye2:
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 25, 2015, 05:10:53 PM
Skeptics constantly ask why people are not healed (as if that somehow proves Christianity false), and then when someone appears to be healed, they reject that, too. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Does this healing surprise you?
Acts 5:14-16
14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. 15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
Acts 19:11-13
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
So the Bible says that people can be healed by miracles performed by important religious figures? You know what this means to someone who doesn't believe in the Bible?
[spoiler](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--yVyj1LH7--/18nk7rgjg0k6mjpg.jpg)
(http://www.oystermag.com/sites/default/files/cray.gif)[/quote]
Quote from: Shiranu on November 25, 2015, 09:40:10 PM
The family isn't the one peddling faith healing ( the scam)... and they are not crediting the chemo, they are saying the kiss was the cure.
I am all for people being religious and have no problem with it, but you can't peddle stuff like this which leads to people choosing faith over medicine.
So, on a certainty scale, I would place this in the "maybe" category.
The family is closer to the situation than I am, and I have to take both my own understanding of medical science as well as their anecdotal evidence into consideration.
So, maybe. Possible. Not likely, but maybe. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif)
Quote from: Blackleaf on November 26, 2015, 12:16:17 AM
So the Bible says that people can be healed by miracles performed by important religious figures? You know what this means to someone who doesn't believe in the Bible?
Not much. However, in the OP, you wrote:
Quote from: Blackleaf
I guess the Pope has healing powers now, like that guy who died for our sins 2000 or so years ago, whatever his name is. If only I could just touch the hem of his robe.
I'm simply pointing out that you should not be surprised if the pope's touch is able to heal; this is nothing new in the history of the Church...as the verses I provided illustrate. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 26, 2015, 08:44:44 AMI'm simply pointing out that you should not be surprised if the pope's touch is able to heal; this is nothing new in the history of the Church...as the verses I provided illustrate. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Isn't that cute? He calls the Bible, "history." :s_laugh:
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on November 26, 2015, 08:55:48 AM
Isn't that cute? He calls the Bible, "history." :s_laugh:
"Tom Sawyer" is history also. But people don't recognize the fluidity of history's meaning. It is literature, that illustrates a particular time and place of human experience. It is American scripture.
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on November 26, 2015, 08:55:48 AM
Isn't that cute? He calls the Bible, "history."
You may not agree with certain aspects of the New Testament, but it IS a historically reliable record of the earliest days of the Church.
If this is something you dispute, please explain why.
Thanks.
Kibitzing ... The NT is a so so reliable POV of the early Church regarding its earliest origins ... the non-orthodox views got written out. Papias was trying to do his own research as early as the early 2nd century. Just as Lenin had a POV of the origins of the Russian Revolution. And the early Church misunderstood it by 135 CE. Once a portion of the Gentile orthodox Church got absorbed by the Constantine takeover ... it was Katy bar the door, but the horse had already left the barn.
The History of the Church ... is the first surviving (complete) history ... and it was written at the behest of Constantine. Again, the non-Constantine church, the gnostic church and the Jewish church were all written out of the story. But keeping old writings around is a two edged sword, as Martin Luther could tell you. Once people start projecting their own situation into it, deconstructing it ... it becomes a psychotherapy tool, not a historical tool.
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 26, 2015, 09:43:35 AM
You may not agree with certain aspects of the New Testament, but it IS a historically reliable record of the earliest days of the Church.
If this is something you dispute, please explain why.
Thanks.
Its a text. Just a text. Nothing is easier to forge than text.
Quote from: facebook164 on November 26, 2015, 11:59:48 PM
Its a text. Just a text. Nothing is easier to forge than text.
A little more subtle. There are surviving more or less complete texts from the 200 - 500 CE period for NT books for instance. Let us say we have a complete text of John's Gospel from 250 CE. That is a fact. The question remains, what to make of that fact. The idea that any of these are eye-witness accounts, rather than literature of some type ... was necessary for Roman policy after Constantine. Even though people then would have known, as we do now, that the original ascriptions of authorship ... are spurious, because we have the texts from that period, that don't say ... Gospel according to Matthew ... and we know that in the time of Papias, early 1st century CE ... this question of authorship was a subject of research ... and that even in the time of Constantine (see Eusebius) the authorship of some books were still disputed, or even considered un-Christian (the Book of Revelation) for instance. Ancient literature is mostly by unknown authors. So given that ... what makes it a forgery or not? In a world where authorship is not important, and where the footnotes of scribes are added in-line with the text, not at the bottom of the page ... the text is in fact fluid, as multiple copies of old manuscripts of the same books demonstrate.
So a text is just a text. But we can put, because of commentary in ancient times on the text, what people back then thought about it, and give a rough date to the manuscript. Of course that doesn't make it a fact that Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him, or that a person like Matthew even existed. The idea of accurate eye-witness reports .. isn't even an idea in the ancient world ... the purpose of history and biography was entertainment and politics. Was it a good story? Did it support our political faction. So in that context, what isn't a forgery. Even today ... the standards of History Channel are way less than I had hoped for ;-)
Yet she received chemotherapy. Christians love to pick and choose. God cured them meanwhile it was science that they often deny that did.
Can the Pope's kiss cure erectile dysfunction? Does he advertise these services on Craigslist?
If there is a clinical trial with two hundred people with stage IV pancreatic cancer where half have chemotherapy and are kissed by the pope, half have the same chemotherapy and are kissed a person they believe is the pope, but is not, and there is a statistically significant difference in outcomes then I would believe kisses by the pope might having a therapeutic benefit.
Quote from: Baruch on November 27, 2015, 01:14:11 AM
A little more subtle. There are surviving more or less complete texts from the 200 - 500 CE period for NT books for instance. Let us say we have a complete text of John's Gospel from 250 CE. That is a fact. The question remains, what to make of that fact. The idea that any of these are eye-witness accounts, rather than literature of some type ... was necessary for Roman policy after Constantine. Even though people then would have known, as we do now, that the original ascriptions of authorship ... are spurious, because we have the texts from that period, that don't say ... Gospel according to Matthew ... and we know that in the time of Papias, early 1st century CE ... this question of authorship was a subject of research ... and that even in the time of Constantine (see Eusebius) the authorship of some books were still disputed, or even considered un-Christian (the Book of Revelation) for instance. Ancient literature is mostly by unknown authors. So given that ... what makes it a forgery or not? In a world where authorship is not important, and where the footnotes of scribes are added in-line with the text, not at the bottom of the page ... the text is in fact fluid, as multiple copies of old manuscripts of the same books demonstrate.
So a text is just a text. But we can put, because of commentary in ancient times on the text, what people back then thought about it, and give a rough date to the manuscript. Of course that doesn't make it a fact that Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him, or that a person like Matthew even existed. The idea of accurate eye-witness reports .. isn't even an idea in the ancient world ... the purpose of history and biography was entertainment and politics. Was it a good story? Did it support our political faction. So in that context, what isn't a forgery. Even today ... the standards of History Channel are way less than I had hoped for ;-)
What the ****** does this add to what I said in this context?
Quote from: facebook164 on November 28, 2015, 05:33:21 AM
What the ****** does this add to what I said in this context?
It adds the idea that the text has come about for a reason, and we can learn (if we are so inclined) something by digging around the possible motivations for creating this text, and the contexts in which it was created, regardless of whether the text is a forgery, a bunch of lies or whatever.
At least, that was my understanding of it.... *shrug*
Quote from: Youssuf Ramadan on November 28, 2015, 06:34:35 AM
It adds the idea that the text has come about for a reason, and we can learn (if we are so inclined) something by digging around the possible motivations for creating this text, and the contexts in which it was created, regardless of whether the text is a forgery, a bunch of lies or whatever.
At least, that was my understanding of it.... *shrug*
Yes. But in the context of this thread? Then the fact that it doesnt have to be true enough.
Quote from: facebook164 on November 28, 2015, 07:44:49 AM
Yes. But in the context of this thread? Then the fact that it doesnt have to be true enough.
OK, forgery = falsehood. Not how I use those words. It would be false, to say that Romney won the 2012 election ... but if I had written an essay making that false claim, but admitted I wrote it, it isn't a forgery. But if someone else wrote that essay and claimed I wrote it, then it would be both a falsehood and a forgery.
So are any of the gospel texts true? Of course not, no more than the Odyssey is true. To ascribe an authorship to a gospel, that isn't true, is false ascription .... and that is true.
Quote from: Randy Carson on November 26, 2015, 09:43:35 AM
You may not agree with certain aspects of the New Testament, but it IS a historically reliable record of the earliest days of the Church.
If this is something you dispute, please explain why.
Thanks.
Because Jesus supposedly went all Harry Potter casting magic spells all over the place, healing people, making wine, etc. If you tell me that you just came from the store, I'm likely to believe you. If you tell me you just came from the store via magical teleport it brings suspicion on the entirety of your story.
Quote from: widdershins on December 02, 2015, 12:40:33 PM
Because Jesus supposedly went all Harry Potter casting magic spells all over the place, healing people, making wine, etc. If you tell me that you just came from the store, I'm likely to believe you. If you tell me you just came from the store via magical teleport it brings suspicion on the entirety of your story.
If he came from the store after going there to get wine, you might suspect he had been tippling on the side ;-)
Quote from: Baruch on December 02, 2015, 06:58:55 PM
If he came from the store after going there to get wine, you might suspect he had been tippling on the side ;-)
Tippling? I have never heard that word before. I assume you must be English or something because you can't speak English properly ;) 'Cause we invented English in Amurica!