Subject of Miracles (for Pon de Replay)

Started by GBoldwater, January 20, 2020, 03:47:46 PM

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GBoldwater

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMScientists are constantly finding new things out about our world, so the probability is quite high compared to your desperate quest to interject things about the lotto and baseball stat probability.

You misread me.  I said that if you're granting a naturalistic explanation, which you apparently are, then the probability is very low of a 12-yr-old peasant girl in 1917 correctly predicting a natural anomaly months in advance.  That's just factual. 

It is indeed comparable to winning a lottery or pitching a perfect game.  But as to what you're claiming, no, there is not a high probability that it was an unknown transparent gas.  For this to work, it would have to be the case that things we don't know about have a high probability of being true.  But that can't be right.  Otherwise anyone could posit anything and say, "we don't know it yet scientifically, but it has a high likelihood of being true."  You can game that out in your head and realize it's absurd.  Start with the healing power of new age crystals.

The only naturalistic aspect would be the idea of some unprecedented formation of some unknown transparent/translucent gas/vapor forming over only one area, churning, swirling, morphing, and then dispersing in 10 minutes, never before seen by man. The miracle would be the creation of it. Probability? Lotto has probability. Man can never label such a thing with probability just because man has not witnessed it "yet". All that matters is testimony. Don't try to create some improbability and then claim since it is improbable then it must be mass hallucination. That really looks nutty because then you can say that to any unprecedented event witnessed by a group of people.

By the way, you appear to not even know the story you are commenting on. You know context is essential if you plan on debating something. The girl was 10 years old. She had two cousins with her, younger than she. They said a beautiful woman told them. The children were arrested, put in jail, interrogated, and even led to believe they would be tortured and even simulated the screams of their kin being tortured in the next room. Probability? they would, at that age, have perfect conformance in the details of the lady and insist it was the truth?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMNo, it is remarkable that thousands of people, strangers and acres away, could describe seeing the same exact thing as others.

But you've just said it could've been a transparent gas having an effect on the appearance of the sun.  This is no different from how clouds and certain weather anomalies can affect the appearance of the sun.  This is a naturalistic explanation, even if the precise natural cause you want to appeal to is, as you concede, "yet unknown."

It is substantially different. The sun rotating, swirling, getting bigger and smaller, and rainbow colors flying around, is not normal any weather anomalies. Don't say it is no different. And the varying testimonies all pertain to LIGHT distorted and refracted in different ways, perfectly compatible with a churning cloud of vapor in front of the sun.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMEven one atheist describing the same thing should impress you.

I'm not sure why you keep repeating this.  Does being an atheist somehow make a person less fallible or more reliable?  Humans are fickle and quirky creatures.  There is a user on this forum, all due respect to him, who by his own admission apostatizes what seems like every other week, and then he has a change of heart and is suddenly back with the faith again.  Just because a person self-identifies as an unbeliever doesn't tell us how committed they are to their unbelief, nor does it mean they're necessarily impervious to religious fervor.  Or being influenced by proximity to a pretty religious girl.  Or feeling guilty that particular day because they scoffed at religion in front of their beloved mother.  The reason to prefer the testimony of multiple atheists is to factor out all these things and others like them.  No political pollster forecasts a national election by taking a poll of ten people.  A small sampling is nearly worthless.

So, an agnostic seeing the same as Christians would still make you claim he was hallucinating the SAME thing?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMI foresee that in this Fatima subject, you will suggest everyone who has an ounce of faith, or desire for religion deep down are not trustworthy witnesses. You will even find an atheist describing the same thing and dismiss his testimony by saying he must have had a hidden desire for religion and the miracle. Because, you will maintain, no valid witness would objectively see just what the Christians saw! It's the logical fallacy of "no true Scot".

That's not my approach at all.  You are the one dismissing things out of hand, like mass suggestion and crowd psychology and confirmation bias.  Those are well-established phenomena.  Ask yourself this: if this same miracle had been reported by 70,000 Hindus on the banks of the Ganges, would you be accepting it?  You can even factor in a secular newspaper and claims of unbelievers having witnessed it.  I think you would be asking the same questions I am.

Let me have a link to something comparable with Hindus, and I will look at it. If you have nothing, what you just said is desperate worthlessness from the start.

If this were truly believe by scientists to be mass hallucination, the scientists would LOVE to talk about it and discuss it over and over. They don't. They shove it under the rug. So much for the value they profess to have in empirical evidence.
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

GBoldwater

Looks like the Fatima subject is finished. On to the next.
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

Mono no aware

Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 03:41:20 PM
Looks like the Fatima subject is finished. On to the next.

Do you want to engage with non-Catholics, or do you want us to be banned?  Make up your mind.

GBoldwater

Quote from: Pon de Replay on February 12, 2020, 06:52:09 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 03:41:20 PM
Looks like the Fatima subject is finished. On to the next.

Do you want to engage with non-Catholics, or do you want us to be banned?  Make up your mind.

I want the ban, but while it lasts, I want to engage in the meantime. Not a hard concept.
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

Mono no aware

Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 06:54:05 PMI want the ban, but while it lasts, I want to engage in the meantime. Not a hard concept.

Why would you want to engage?  You're claiming I'm a "de facto troll," "smothering [Catholics'] consciences," and "subtly sowing doubt."  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Just send a PM to the administrator asking for the ban with a link to my acceptance post, and I'm sure he'll take care of it soon enough.

Vetus Ordo

Quote from: Pon de Replay on February 12, 2020, 07:02:34 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 06:54:05 PMI want the ban, but while it lasts, I want to engage in the meantime. Not a hard concept.

Why would you want to engage?  You're claiming I'm a "de facto troll," "smothering [Catholics'] consciences," and "subtly sowing doubt."  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Just send a PM to the administrator asking for the ban with a link to my acceptance post, and I'm sure he'll take care of it soon enough.

It's fairly unlikely that the administrator would cave in to the demands of a troll account.
DISPOSE OUR DAYS IN THY PEACE, AND COMMAND US TO BE DELIVERED FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION, AND TO BE NUMBERED IN THE FLOCK OF THINE ELECT.

GBoldwater

Quote from: Pon de Replay on February 12, 2020, 07:02:34 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 06:54:05 PMI want the ban, but while it lasts, I want to engage in the meantime. Not a hard concept.

Why would you want to engage?  You're claiming I'm a "de facto troll," "smothering [Catholics'] consciences," and "subtly sowing doubt."  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Just send a PM to the administrator asking for the ban with a link to my acceptance post, and I'm sure he'll take care of it soon enough.

I did.
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

GBoldwater

Quote from: Vetus Ordo on February 12, 2020, 07:05:10 PM
Quote from: Pon de Replay on February 12, 2020, 07:02:34 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on February 12, 2020, 06:54:05 PMI want the ban, but while it lasts, I want to engage in the meantime. Not a hard concept.

Why would you want to engage?  You're claiming I'm a "de facto troll," "smothering [Catholics'] consciences," and "subtly sowing doubt."  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Just send a PM to the administrator asking for the ban with a link to my acceptance post, and I'm sure he'll take care of it soon enough.

It's fairly unlikely that the administrator would cave in to the demands of a troll account.

If you look at the quality and content of my posts, it gives the lie to your claim that I am a troll account.
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

red solo cup

Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 03:08:47 PM
Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMScientists are constantly finding new things out about our world, so the probability is quite high compared to your desperate quest to interject things about the lotto and baseball stat probability.

You misread me.  I said that if you're granting a naturalistic explanation, which you apparently are, then the probability is very low of a 12-yr-old peasant girl in 1917 correctly predicting a natural anomaly months in advance.  That's just factual. 

It is indeed comparable to winning a lottery or pitching a perfect game.  But as to what you're claiming, no, there is not a high probability that it was an unknown transparent gas.  For this to work, it would have to be the case that things we don't know about have a high probability of being true.  But that can't be right.  Otherwise anyone could posit anything and say, "we don't know it yet scientifically, but it has a high likelihood of being true."  You can game that out in your head and realize it's absurd.  Start with the healing power of new age crystals.

The only naturalistic aspect would be the idea of some unprecedented formation of some unknown transparent/translucent gas/vapor forming over only one area, churning, swirling, morphing, and then dispersing in 10 minutes, never before seen by man. The miracle would be the creation of it. Probability? Lotto has probability. Man can never label such a thing with probability just because man has not witnessed it "yet". All that matters is testimony. Don't try to create some improbability and then claim since it is improbable then it must be mass hallucination. That really looks nutty because then you can say that to any unprecedented event witnessed by a group of people.

By the way, you appear to not even know the story you are commenting on. You know context is essential if you plan on debating something. The girl was 10 years old. She had two cousins with her, younger than she. They said a beautiful woman told them. The children were arrested, put in jail, interrogated, and even led to believe they would be tortured and even simulated the screams of their kin being tortured in the next room. Probability? they would, at that age, have perfect conformance in the details of the lady and insist it was the truth?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMNo, it is remarkable that thousands of people, strangers and acres away, could describe seeing the same exact thing as others.

But you've just said it could've been a transparent gas having an effect on the appearance of the sun.  This is no different from how clouds and certain weather anomalies can affect the appearance of the sun.  This is a naturalistic explanation, even if the precise natural cause you want to appeal to is, as you concede, "yet unknown."

It is substantially different. The sun rotating, swirling, getting bigger and smaller, and rainbow colors flying around, is not normal any weather anomalies. Don't say it is no different. And the varying testimonies all pertain to LIGHT distorted and refracted in different ways, perfectly compatible with a churning cloud of vapor in front of the sun.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMEven one atheist describing the same thing should impress you.

I'm not sure why you keep repeating this.  Does being an atheist somehow make a person less fallible or more reliable?  Humans are fickle and quirky creatures.  There is a user on this forum, all due respect to him, who by his own admission apostatizes what seems like every other week, and then he has a change of heart and is suddenly back with the faith again.  Just because a person self-identifies as an unbeliever doesn't tell us how committed they are to their unbelief, nor does it mean they're necessarily impervious to religious fervor.  Or being influenced by proximity to a pretty religious girl.  Or feeling guilty that particular day because they scoffed at religion in front of their beloved mother.  The reason to prefer the testimony of multiple atheists is to factor out all these things and others like them.  No political pollster forecasts a national election by taking a poll of ten people.  A small sampling is nearly worthless.

So, an agnostic seeing the same as Christians would still make you claim he was hallucinating the SAME thing?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 26, 2020, 02:11:08 PM
Quote from: GBoldwater on January 26, 2020, 10:17:24 AMI foresee that in this Fatima subject, you will suggest everyone who has an ounce of faith, or desire for religion deep down are not trustworthy witnesses. You will even find an atheist describing the same thing and dismiss his testimony by saying he must have had a hidden desire for religion and the miracle. Because, you will maintain, no valid witness would objectively see just what the Christians saw! It's the logical fallacy of "no true Scot".

That's not my approach at all.  You are the one dismissing things out of hand, like mass suggestion and crowd psychology and confirmation bias.  Those are well-established phenomena.  Ask yourself this: if this same miracle had been reported by 70,000 Hindus on the banks of the Ganges, would you be accepting it?  You can even factor in a secular newspaper and claims of unbelievers having witnessed it.  I think you would be asking the same questions I am.

Let me have a link to something comparable with Hindus, and I will look at it. If you have nothing, what you just said is desperate worthlessness from the start.

If this were truly believe by scientists to be mass hallucination, the scientists would LOVE to talk about it and discuss it over and over. They don't. They shove it under the rug. So much for the value they profess to have in empirical evidence.
GB, have you checked out the phenomenon known as parhelion?
non impediti ratione cogitationis

GBoldwater

Quote from: red solo cup on February 13, 2020, 05:48:26 AM
GB, have you checked out the phenomenon known as parhelion?

Is that what you would like the Fatima 1917 event to be?
My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.

Kreuzritter

Quoteif this same miracle had been reported by 70,000 Hindus on the banks of the Ganges, would you be accepting it

Yes.

Kreuzritter

Quote from: red solo cup on February 13, 2020, 05:48:26 AM
GB, have you checked out the phenomenon known as parhelion?

Are parhelions predictable? Otherwise it's still bizarre. And what about other people allegedly seeing nothign out fo the ordinary?

Kreuzritter


GBoldwater

Quote from: Kreuzritter on February 13, 2020, 01:06:15 PM
Quote from: red solo cup on February 13, 2020, 05:48:26 AM
GB, have you checked out the phenomenon known as parhelion?

Are parhelions predictable? Otherwise it's still bizarre. And what about other people allegedly seeing nothign out fo the ordinary?

It was noon at Fatima. Parhelions occur when the sun is near the horizon. They also don't have the character of what was seen at Fatima. For the answer to your question, read this thread.

My posting in the non-Catholic sub-forum does not imply that I condone the decision to allow non-Catholics here. I consider non-Catholics here to be de facto "trolls" against the Catholic Faith that should be banned. I believe this is traditional Catholic moral procedure.