Pope's magic kiss heals baby

[Randy Carson]

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?

[Shiranu]

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.

[Solomon Zorn]

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:

[Blackleaf]

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]

[/quote]

[Randy Carson]

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.

[Randy Carson]

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:

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.

[Solomon Zorn]

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.

Isn't that cute? He calls the Bible, "history." :s_laugh:

[Baruch]

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.

[Randy Carson]

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.

[Baruch]

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.

[facebook164]

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.

[Baruch]

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 ;-)

[TopCat]

Yet she received chemotherapy.  Christians love to pick and choose. God cured them meanwhile it was science that they often deny that did.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

Can the Pope's kiss cure erectile dysfunction? Does he advertise these services on Craigslist?

[GSOgymrat]

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.