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This was not my claim either. I went into lots of paragraphs to be clear on this point, that it was the best account they had at the time as well as being interpreted as an allegory from the beginning, and these two ways of reading the text are not exclusive but are actually part of four modes of reading the Bible that have been encouraged by Christians since the beginning.
I have little hope that you understand me anywhere if you misunderstand this.
Giving a reason for a regulation does not mean it's not a regulation. He certainly didn't make it dogma.
This is not the same as condemning polygenism. Again you are jumping around. "The first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted" is perfectly compatible with an allegorical read of Genesis. The bare bones, what you're required to believe in order to be Catholic is that:
God made a man by giving him a rational soul. This is something extra God had to do of His own choice, it's not something that developed naturally from evolution.
God also made a woman through the first man, man and woman share the same nature despite our differences, and this relates the the way in which God ensouled us.
Originally man's life would have been in perfect happiness with no suffering. Then the first man and woman together sinned against God and messed it up.
All humans inherit the fallen human nature and the fallen world these two blockheads made through their sin. We share a common dignity between sexes and races, we share the same fate.
The interpolations from the extended Acts in Codex Bezae do not match the style of Luke and Acts. Pretty much everyone agrees that they are additions, not that Luke/Acts were redactions.
This is getting too long. Calanda is not like the hadiths, my argument was not that the hadiths were from long ago but rather contradicted testimony written down earlier regarding this event. I feel like you keep missing what I am saying and which point I'm making by what I'm saying. It's an experience not unlike talking to an LLM.
Did you look at the photos and the analysis from Fatima? https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737 Photographs capture a light source from something that could not have been the sun. It also doesn't help that all these explanations for various phenomena contradict each other. The explanation against the colors is that they saw an effect that takes place is that this only happens when there is a specific, non visible cloud cover over the sun. But also the explanation for clothes drying (an effect also captured in photos) within minutes is that the sun was very hot/bright, the kind of hot that only happens when there is no cloud cover. Which is it?
Why am I not a Muslim? Because Catholicism is true. Once I accepted Catholicism as true, everything fit together, everything. All stories, all science, all longings of my heart and all the mental itching that told me I was missing something big, it all fell into place. The closer I grow to God through the practices of Catholicism the more certain I am. But I guess my path leading to it was the philosophical exploration of the uncaused cause, arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, the history of the Church, the witness and example of the saints, the proof present in their lives that a transformative union with God is possible, and not just possible but something with a clear path to those willing to try.
It is true and there is very little anyone can do that will convince me otherwise. I know it is true like I know I breathe air. And because it's exclusive against the strongest Islamic claims, I know that Islam is unfortunately false, and not only false but frightening and sad.
This just looks like something any serious religion that tries to be self-consistent can do. Everything fits together for [sufficiently faithful]Muslims, for Jews, for atheists etc.
Can you not imagine that had you instead accepted Islam as true, you would be saying the same about Islam today? If you can't, why?
What if you hadn't eaten breakfast?If you can, what does that say about your current system of beliefs?Yes I can imagine an alternate world where Islam was true. If it was this world, where Islam is false but I accepted it anyway, I doubt I would experience the same signal graces, miracles, and spiritual experiences that I do now. You are assuming that I would because you are coming from the assumption that neither is true.
Edit: I also think that to be a Muslim you have to ignore a lot of things to get by, while as a Catholic I don't have to ignore anything. Largely how the Quran is actually considered literally the word of God and yet misunderstands Christianity severely, gets events wrong from the Old Testament while claiming that the OT is also simultaneously true. Whereas the Biblical interpretive key has room for individual authors writing in their biases.
I am assuming that you would because I am coming from the assumption that Muslims experience signal graces, miracles and spiritual experiences. And I am not asking you to imagine an alternate world where Islam is true, I am asking you to imagine a world where you accepted it as true.
Why do you assume this? I think, if I accepted Islam as true in a world where it is not true, I would not have made as much spiritual progress.
I understand that Islam is a totalizing ideology, which seems to be what you are getting at. But the example of the Catholic and Orthodox saints blow the Awliya completely out of the water in terms of life-changing conversions, selfless love, signs and wonders. In fact, while Islam has a concept of miracles, Karamah, their theology says that people should hide their miracles and not flaunt them. This means that unlike Catholic miracles, most Islamic miracles have very little investigation, even from Islam-friendly sources.
Let's put the question to you. If you were in a world where Catholicism was true, would you expect that Catholics would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Muslims? If you were in a world where Islam was true, would you expect that Muslims would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Catholics?
Because I have no reason to believe your inner experiences of faith - you as in the collective Catholic, not you specifically - are significantly more rich than those of the collective Muslim when the outward expression is the same. I have my differences with Islam and believe sincere Islam to be incompatible with the model of society I prefer more so than sincere Christianity, but I wouldn't go so far as to assume they have nothing in their heads.
That seems to support my point - that Catholic experiences of miracles appear to be more popular because they are investigated more, not because Muslims experience significantly fewer miracles. (To be frank, even if they did experience fewer miracles, the appropriate amount of miracles supporting a false religion would be zero, would it not?)
See my reply above - in a supposed thought experiment where Catholicism is objectively true, Muslim miracles do not objectively exist.
Would Catholics think they experience miracles more than Muslims, on levels not explainable by IQ, intensity of religious education, reporting effects - I don't think so.
Of course I would expect the world to look radically different than it looks now if Catholicism was true. I won't bother you with the details, others have listed them, in short I would expect it to look more like something out of Unsong - so obviously Christian that Islam, let alone atheism, would be engaged in only by deliberate contrarians or the mentally ill unable to participate in society.
Vice versa for a world where Islam was true.
And yet, I live in the current world, where you and a Muslim both would tell me I live in one of theirs, using very similar arguments!
There's a difference between paranormal circumstances, miracles, and vindictatory miracles. I'd expect 0 miracles that vindicate distinctively Muslim claims, meaning theological claims that Muslims make that Catholics do not also make. But "God loves us and has a plan for my life so He healed me" is a claim that holds as true in both Christianity and Islam. I'm even open to the possibility that humans have senses that we have yet to study in depth. Parapsychologists study and claim that many humans have an innate talent for water dowsing, remote viewing, telepathy, etc, which might be confused for a miracle in another religion but might actually follow some natural laws that we have yet to unpack.
Catholicism has the best attested vindicatory miracles and there are no real attempts in other religions to claim otherwise. Atheists like to believe that it must all be the same, but I haven't' seen one actually put in the effort to prove that other religions make anything like the claims of Catholicism.
Fair enough. I would like to ask you to put forward what you think would be the most convincing example of a Catholic vindicatory miracle. Up to three examples, even.
I'm aware that Catholics have a trove of many more claims than that, but frankly so do the flat-earthers.
The entire Fatima event, including the sudden change in behavior of the seers and the prediction of the sign ahead of time.
St. Padre Pio's Stigmata and ability to read people's sins, including specific details like date and place.
The incorruptible body of Saint Bernadette Soubirous. When she was exhumed in 1909, three decades after her death, it was noted that her habit was damp and her metal rosary rusted, ruling out typical mummification processes. She shows no signs of adipocere either.
A decade later, she was exhumed again and they found her liver still intact, whereas a liver typically purifies between 24-72 hours. She was enclosed in he coffin three full days (April 16 to April 19, 1879) after her death. She was not embalmed - the doctors who examined her corpse found no evidence of embalming, her body was publicly on display from her death to her burial, and the convent's detailed administrative and financial logs from April 1879 record no expenses or preparations for an embalming procedure. The intactness of her liver cannot be attributed to embalming or to burial conditions.
And as a bonus, the novena to the little flower.. Lots of Catholics report receiving a rose after praying to St. Terese of the Child Jesus. I've received roses after praying for her intersession a few times, one at a time of my life I lived alone, had 0 friends, and it was pretty weird for me to find a rose on my car windshield, for example. Adding this one as a "bonus" because it's not exactly studied/documented like the others, but it's one you can DIY (though I don't think it's like magic and probably wouldn't happen if you aren't sincerely praying for something.)
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