OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
If you would like something more like a newspaper article, this is a good summary of several cases: https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Women are more likely to seek treatment, so have a consistent medical record of before their healing which can then be used to judge a healing took place. They are also more likely to seek a faith healing.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
72 cases of miraculous healings that are ruled a such by a board of doctors and other medical experts studying medical records before and after the event is much better evidence of a miraculous healing than a cell phone video. I am responding to your idea that a cell phone video would make belief and religion obsolete.
If there were evidence, anyone could believe it, and the true faithful wouldn't be doing anything very impressive or unique.
Interesting. So for you, the significant part of religion is believing without evidence, and that in and of itself is impressive and unique (and rewarded I guess?)
That's um... not my experience. My experience was basically understanding the philosophy of what is meant by "God" (contrasted against my misconceptions from being a child,) investigating the historicity of the Gospels, and seeing that the beliefs of the Catholic Church aligned the best with all the data I have seen. A skeptic is very limited and is dogmatically constrained to profess things like the Resurrection of Jesus, the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the apparition at Zeitoun, miraculous healings, etc as Hallucinations or Hoaxes, even if those explanations do not comfortably fit the data. A believer, meanwhile, is free to believe these things are hoaxes, hallucinations, or real manifestations of a Supernatural order if the data indicates so.
And then what merit is in practicing religion is obviously to the extent you let it constrain your will and your ruinous desires. Not believing without evidence. That's not a virtue at all.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
So you say. Or it's all a trick like David Blaine. There's always room for doubt. The hundreds of miraculous healings with good medical documentation that occurred at Lourdes and at every saint canonization hasn't convinced you. https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/miraculous-healings/
Not sure what you mean by, "it wouldn't be a religion anymore." Is your definition of religion, "cannot be proven or argued for unless someone already irrationally believes it?"
What I don't understand is why you not only think that ownership is bad but that everyone would agree with you that ownership is bad. The phrase, "legal right to deprive others," might sound scary simply because you put the word "legal" there, but it's incomplete. For example, my kids own things, even if legally I have every right to confiscate their toys. There are some toys which are gifted on birthdays which are theirs for a time, but eventually go into the general toy pile. There are some toys which we would never ever make them share - like the special stuffed animals they have slept with at night since they were infants.
These stuffed animals might be legally "mine," but they are in fact my children's. They have the right to deprive their siblings of these toys, and that is 100% perfect, treasured, lovely. I don't know how to express just how wonderful it is for them to have ownership of these toys, and how much psychological benefit this ownership has generated.
These stuffies are theirs. They smell like their owner. Putting their stuffy in their hands makes them calm down within a minute. Night wakeups are easily managed by reminding my kids of the existence of their stuffed animal.
One day, while driving my oldest to school, she started getting upset. I asked her what was wrong.
She said, "I left Hopper on the floor."
"It's ok, he'll be just fine there."
"No, what if [the toddler] steps on him?"
"Hopper will be just fine, I've stepped on him before and I weigh much more than [toddler]. Hopper will bounce back! He's fluffy."
"No.. What if [the toddler] steps on him... and realizes how soft and wonderful he is?"
"Oh, you're worried about Forbidden Love. I'll call daddy and have him put Hopper on the dresser."
This sounds cute, but it expands further than children in a family. An ideal family holds everything in common, it's as love-oriented over ownership-oriented as you can get. Even in the family, there are different divisions of dominion. Humans need dominion.
We naturally divide up labor and tools according to who has the capacity to use them. Oftentimes divisions become domains - the husband does yard work and bathroom cleaning, the wife does kitchen work, the kids bring the mail in and sweep on weekends. Having dominion gives you authority to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. When a kid is told to clean the counters, the kid will wipe just the visible areas without moving the toaster or spice rack out of the way. This is because the kid does not have dominion over the whole kitchen, doesn't feel pieces of his own awareness/soul/psyche over all the appliances. The adult who has dominion over the kitchen will take everything down, move tables and chairs and appliances, and give everything the maintenance it needs to be clean and functional.
People find dignity in owning things and using them to make other things. My knitting supplies and the kitchen's baking tools, these are mine. I take care of them, I use them to make things for my family. I don't need a lawyer to step in, everyone in the family knows that these are mine and they need to ask my permission to use them. In using these tools I create my identity and dignity.
And if that applies so well in the home, where all is held in legal common and we are constantly working towards the other's good, how much more does that apply in the public world?
I think the only sympathetic thing I find in your comments are what Catholics would call, "The Universal Destination of Goods." Catholics have a concept that the whole world is a gift to all humans from God, and that no one has the right to deprive others of what they need. So that whoever has two shirts should give one to someone without any. And if you have more bread stored up than you can ever eat, you are stealing it from someone without.
However, this concept is tempered by the idea that humans get dignity from work, humans were made to be stewards, and good stewardship depends on having a sense of ownership over the physical world. So you have a world that is truly owned by God, gifted to humanity as a whole, which is divided to everyone as stewards. These stewards have a sense of ownership which is in reality participation in the Divine Ownership of all things. Not everyone has an equal share of stewardship, because there is inequality in people's capacities along with inefficiencies in the allocation methods. But everyone should be using their goods to the glory of God and the well-being of every person.
There you go, I have articulated a positive vision of property and ownership. Now your turn. I'm as tired of everyone else on this forum of how you keep dancing around what you actually believe should happen, rather than just acting negative about a concept that most people actually see the benefits of.
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