Why do you believe(or not believe)?

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I certainly don't hate people that are Christian. My daughter likes the youth group at a nearby church so I bring her to it every Sunday night. Her friends hang out there.
However, i do have a problem with using subjective items such as miracles and amazing things as evidence. There have been millions of gods in the history of the planet. Each contradicts the next. Yet each claims personal experience, miracles and amazing things proves theirs right. So either:
1. All these so called experiences, miracles and amazing things have another explanation and they are being interpreted wrongly. Or.
2. God has multiple personality disorder.

It is possible one is right and all the others are wrong, but you'll have to prove this without using those subjective items because everyone has them.

My goodness. Who wrote this?:

"Abortion is sometimes medically, psychologically, and financially necessary, and as long as it's done as early as possible, then there should be nothing immoral about it, especially when we're just talking about a bunch of cells that haven't even developed into a being worthy of some rights."

As early as possible? Why as "early as possible?" Does that matter? When is the "magic day" when abortion is bad? I just assumed that life begins at conception, because that seems to be the most scientifically defensible argument (zygote with DNA programmed to divide and build a human being, etc.).

Is there some other scientifically verifiable moment of which I am unaware? Implantation? Does the foetus have to "look" human? Do we require a human heart beat? Ability to feel pain? Someone tell me because I'm very uncomfortable with the term "as early as possible."

Yes, you can see where my argument is going with this. I'll admit it. S o give me a convincing microbiological argument and I will gladly concede.

Haha. Look up Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano and have fun.

Well I just looked it up. Is this supposed to be some sort of miracle? Some guy who was drunk/hallucinating/a fraud sometime around 700 AD claims to have seen wine turn into blood / flesh? Today, supposedly the same blood/flesh is being stored in a church somewhere. What is the big deal with this supposed miracle - are non-believers supposed to be somehow impressed? I'm not sure if you are poking fun at miracles or if you are serious about this? As supposed "miracles" go it is less than weak.

How about this?

3. God has manifested Himself in many ways among many different peoples and many different times, therefore many different peoples have different stories to tell about their experiences of God.

That's not to say that no one person or group can claim the "right" God and everyone else is wrong. It's just saying we all see different parts of the puzzle and no single view is complete on its own.

I highly respect the wisdom of Buddha. My conclusion is that the Judeo-Christian tradition does not have a monopoly on wisdom. My rationale for that is God gives wisdom to all, and true wisdom can only come from God. It doesn't matter whether others recognize the source of true wisdom.

Well....the flesh is incorrupt and the blood is still alive but ... hey I can go on, because I looked into this on my own. But you know what? If you want to debunk it, do your own research. The internet is as good a source as any.

There are a few hundred Eucharistic miracles around the world, all independently verified (but of course you don't believe that, right? Probably you'll say that the Vatican is behind the scientists' tests etc. etc. Yeah, the Vatican. They're in control of the world, you know.)

For kicks and giggles, look up the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal.

Then there are thousands of cures at the shrine of Lourdes, medically verified. Legs grown back? Stage 4 cancers gone? Face deformities healed? Thousands of these miracles, verified by doctors.

But this is just superstition, right? Mass hysteria; psychoses; parlor tricks; lies; conspiracies. Are you at all interested in examining these miracles scientifically as data? No? Yes?

You see, this is how I know that atheism/agnosticism is actually a religion - and a very unscientific one at that. Because atheists and agnostics WILL NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING THAT GOES AGAINST THEIR WORLD VIEW AS DATA, NOR WILL THEY TAKE THE TIME TO TAKE SUCH DATA SERIOUSLY. Anything that is contrary to your presumption: "Miracles are not possible." But such a dogma doesn't seem to me to be open to scientific method.

And this goes not only for Catholic miracles but for miracles in other faiths. All ought to be tested objectively.

According to what I read, the sample was last looked at forty years ago. If there is any sort of miracle going on here why hasn't it been made available to the huge array of analysis techniques available today? If anything miraculous was happening it would be a world shattering breakthrough. As it is I've never even heard of it before today. Get it into the labs, check the DNA - is it even human? What ethnic origin does it have? If it supposedly survives without rotting what inhibitors are at work against the bacteria? There are a whole raft of modern analysis that could be done and it would be big international news if any of the miraculous claims could be verified. But of course they aren't. All I hear is huff and puff and nothing of any substance. Same with all your other claimed miracles. It is all BS, eagerly gobbled up by the weak minded.

You didn't do a good enough search. Yes, it is human myocardial tissue, which after over 1000 years remains incorrupt. But then you write "There are a whole raft of modern analysis that could be done and it would be big international news if any of the miraculous claims could be verified. But of course they aren't. All I hear is huff and puff and nothing of any substance." You are right that there are wonderful analyses that can be done today. But science was good enough in 1973 to take identify incorrupt myocardial tissue. And that is quite a remarkable conclusion.

Yet despite the above you say "It is all BS, eagerly gobbled up by the weak minded." Does that conclusion follow from the data? Incorruptibility doesn't seem to be explicable according to science, unless you believe that there's a lot of myocardial tissue lying around that hasn't been embalmed, yet is just as alive as yesterday. Maybe it happens all the time -- even stuff over 1000 years old? I mean, I don't even have cheese in my refrigerator that can last 3 months without getting moldy.

If there was any truth to the miracle claim, the tissue should be presented to several major independent analytical laboratories for advanced analysis. If there was any truth to the claim the tissue was living it would be big big international news - in one go you could turn modern science and biology on its head. As it is all you offer is some superficial forty year old analysis of "something" given for the basic analysis available at the time. I'm sure the world would be impressed if it was analysed today and found to be "alive" and to have human male DNA of middle-eastern ethnicity and could be dated to 2000 years ago. Odds are what was presented for analysis forty years ago was bits of pork or bits of a modern human corpse in a preservative that wasn't detectable at the time. What exactly do the claimants mean by "incorruptibility" - are the cells simply pickled and dead retaining their original form or are they really alive respiring and metabolising, what nutrients are present? If they are metabolising what chemical pathways are intact? Are the cells actively dividing? Without detailed modern analysis by reputable independent laboratories the miracle claims are worthless hyperbole.

The likely explanation why the tissue samples haven't been made available for modern analysis is the church knows they will be shown to be a fraud and yet another "miracle" will be discredited making them look silly.

Life began way before the conception of any human child.

If you think a fertilized cell is worthy of the same rights as an actual human being, I would say you're out of your mind. But you're free to your opinion.

Thanks for alerting me to another one of these funny "miracles". I definitely had fun reading about it.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonab ... formation/

Some points to reiterate from the article in the link above.

1. The story originated 1,000 years after the alleged event was said to happen.

2. It's not impossible for someone to insert human flesh and blood and then claim it is from God.

3. It's not unquestionably scientific at all, let alone just scientific, to conclude it must be from God.

4. Necessary links to publications on this matter are very lacking, and I have yet to see any scientific paper on this published in a credible peer-reviewed journal, so we don't even know if they're even human flesh and blood, or even if there is flesh and blood at all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gELzYupzXs[/youtube]