Summary of studies: Religiousity and intelligence

[Drachasor]

Elok, repeatable experiments are nice, but not always necessary. Observation is the key thing, repeatable observation can just confirm wether a fluke was happening or not.

The thing about god is that there is nothing observable about him. There is no evidence anything like that exists.

"miracles" in no way show that there exists an infinitely powerful supernatural being. *At best* they indicate that there is something going on that we don't current understand, but to jump from that to saying that God exists is pure fantasy.

That said, miracles, when examined, are nothing all that special. Some are fake, some are myth/urban legend, some are just coincidence, and so forth. Occasionally there might be something scientifically interesting going on, but time and time again they are shown to have explanations quite grounded in reality; as with all things.

As with everything though, the key is that evidence must be presented for something to be rationally accepted as true. There is no evidence for god, there is evidence for many other things. Now, unlike what you said, that doesn't mean everything *currently* has an explanation. As Arrian stated, our understanding has grown and so our ability to explain and comprehend what is going on has grown. That doesn't make past irrational or currently irrational religious theories valid; if anything it should make one even more skeptical of them. Of course the sheer lack of evidence and impossibility of evidence should be sufficient to not accept such things as true, but people are not always rational.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Elok
Repeatable-will generally react more or less the same way to the same stimulus as administered by any scientist who chooses to poke it. These particles tend to react to this exact other combination of particles by doing this, or whatever. We'll leave quantum mechanics out of this, as even the greatest scientists on earth aren't supposed to understand what the devil is going on with QM right now...

Actually, you are wrong. We have a pretty good idea of how almost every aspect of Quantum Physics works, it is just very, very counter-intuitive. Well, it is true we haven't worked out everything that is possible to do with it in practice (quantum computer for one), but we do know a lot of what is theoretically possible. It is the union of Quantum Theory and Relativity that has yet to be done and is poorly understood.

-Drachasor

[Ben Kenobi]

Kenobi, you are not getting off that easy.

There is no evidence for god, and if you think otherwise then PRESENT it. You continued hinting that it exists does not convince.

I have stated it many times in the past, yet I have never seen an atheist, for all their convictions, request the burden.

One way is to consider the requirements for life to form here on Earth, just in terms of the distance from the sun, the temperature required to maintain liquid water, the presence of a powerful, and uncharacteristic magnetic field, reasonable tilt to provide seasonal variations.

The list goes on, and we have only uncovered the smallest portion of these requirements. As our understanding grows, it is likely that we will find many more.

I once believed that given the size of the universe, that there could be many planets with life. I don't believe that anymore, given the sheer difficulty for life to have formed on Earth alone.

By chance, you would not predict any of us to be here, and yet we are.

I could offer other answers, but it really is true that God will not reject the one who earnestly seeks him, and desires to find the truth.

I cannot prove to you that God is there, I can only offer some guidance, and you must find that for yourself, truth that you will find satisfactory.

The default is to not believe something exists, and the more extraordinary or unusual the claim, them more evidence is require to convincingly prove its existence.

Granted. Christian testimony, of the life of Christ is one kind of testimony given in favour of God. Therefore, you are not placed in the position of having no evidence of God, but rather, must decide whether to accept the testimony given. Spock requires a great deal of evidence, but also, must accept the evidence presented in favour of God, as truthful.

Indeed, Spock would probably point out that the existence of unnecessary evils (such as earthquakes and disease) is evidence to the contrary.

Why is there evil in the world? Why are people inclined to evil, and not good?

If God has indeed granted us free will, then evil is evidence that he has done so, not evidence against him.

Secondly, as for natural disasters, look at the people of Israel. Even though they had physical evidence of God, in the form of manna from heaven, did they not chafe under the constraints, and grumble about the quality?

If God were to protect us from all troubles, we would cease to trust in him, but rather, seek troubles for ourselves.

And the burden is on the theist for the same reason the burden of proving invisible, intangible elves is on the elf-believer. Proposing that something exists is something one must necessarily prove. The theist proposes god exists, the elf-believer proposes elves exist; both must prove their claim.

True. But elves do not have the historical account of the man from Galilee who put on the Cross, died, and rose again. Christians do, and are thus, making a far different claim.

As for the surveys, I work on digging up a study. Many of them are a bit old, as you can tell, and are hard to dig up on the net. I have seen the results before and typically they show a greater correlation when the extend of religious practice (how often services are attended, prayer, etc) are taken into account. In other words, the more religious someone is, the more likely they are to be in a lower section of the I.Q. distribution.

Some of the studies cited do claim this, if you read them, but I'll see if I can find the exact methodology used on them. (Clearly you are more interested in bashing potential problems in the studies than looking them up yourself though).

I suggest you employ a different tactic. I am intrigued if what you say is true, that given greater religious involvement, they would score lower on the IQ test. This confirms to me that there is something more going on here, that there seems to be some conflict between the IQ tests given, and religious faith.

Let me tell you a story. When I first took an IQ test, they did not reveal to me my score, but one of the questions was, "how big is a yard."

Now, given that I am a Canadian and have been trained since childhood in the metric system, I did not know what a yard in imperial measurements equated to. So I answered 160 acres.

This, caused some consternation to the tester who had to ask me why I put that.

I told her that this was the size of the acreage in where I lived, and hence, my 'yard'.

Still got points off.

IQ tests are inevitably based on societal norms, and thus, if greater religiousity lowers the scores, this could merely show that they are being pulled further out of the norm.

[Ben Kenobi]

For students of history, it is clear that the clergy of the major faiths spent more time grasping for power than they did pondering the mysteries of the universe.

And scientists are immune?

That's why we are not to build our faith on sand, on other falliable people.

[Elok]

Well, we'll leave the observability, controlled conditions or otherwise, of Kuci's claim that "nothing happens until it is observed," up in the air then, until he chooses to go on with it.

I am aware of prior abuses by religion, or rather by men of religion. Thing is, that's not a characteristic of religion so much as a characteristic of human nature. Most of the "articles of faith" defended by the medieval Catholics were not even remotely doctrinal; if the Earth revolves around the sun, this affects the nature of God how exactly? But a prescribed truth is easier for all brutes as a tool of control, it tends to be used by any authoritarian or totalitarian regime ("Truly, there are no Americans in Baghdad!", the Nazi propaganda, etc.), and throughout most of history theocracies have vastly outnumbered secular states until recently.

Lots of miracles are rather harder to debunk than you say, BTW. I mentioned the church of St. Theodora before, which has spent several centuries holding up a stand of trees on its roof which should crush it like an egg. Every single engineer or physicist who visited it concluded that it was physically impossible. People here told me it was just an unexplained natural phenomenon which just happened to occur at exactly one spot in the world which happened to be holy ground.

St. Spyridon is not mummified, not sealed in an airtight chamber, nor apparently preserved in any way, and his body still hasn't decomposed after centuries. But it's a marvelous, undetectable form of preservation which can't be detected by any means, was available in the middle ages, and was secretly reserved for a handful of renowned ascetics but denied to kings and popes.

The startsi are rare, but they can effectively read minds, answering the questions of visitors before those visitors even open their mouths, and there are a few living on Mt. Athos even today. St. John Maximovitch (d. 1966) was known to visit far-off invalids who wanted to call him but were strictly prevented from doing so to "avoid troubling that busy man."

St. John is among many saints who have cured incurable ailments numerous times. Prayers for his intercession, about thirty years after he died, apparently cured AIDS in one subject. She presumptively is not willing to be injected with HIV so she can prove before witnesses that Vladika John is up to the task.

While we're at it, a man from my church has a brother who was in a car accident about six months ago. Very bad, wound up in a coma, brain damage, basically no hope of full recovery of mental function. We prayed, and now he's walking and talking quite clearly, and getting better every day.

Note that I don't believe in God because of miracles; I'm just saying that for those who do insist on something "observable" the phenomena are there. My belief in God stems more from my awareness of the human race's immense potential for evil and destruction combined with the fact that we haven't killed ourselves off yet.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I have stated it many times in the past, yet I have never seen an atheist, for all their convictions, request the burden.

Uninformed athiests then.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
One way is to consider the requirements for life to form here on Earth, just in terms of the distance from the sun, the temperature required to maintain liquid water, the presence of a powerful, and uncharacteristic magnetic field, reasonable tilt to provide seasonal variations.

True, but if life can't live without those requirements, then we wouldn't be around to ponder the requirements if we didn't have them. Additionally, evolution implies life would evolve to take advantage of whatever natural benefits there are in the environment, so it will look more tailored than life in general needs to be.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
The list goes on, and we have only uncovered the smallest portion of these requirements. As our understanding grows, it is likely that we will find many more.

For life on this planet, but not life in general. Many microbes and the like can survive in space, and there are probably many types of life out there. Additionally, we don't have any even half-decent idea on how common worlds like ours are. They could be a dime a dozen.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
By chance, you would not predict any of us to be here, and yet we are.

There really isn't enough knowledge or theory to predict that chance of life developing somewhere. For one, scientists are not entirely sure how life did develop. There are still numerous theories circulating about, some of which have life developing elsewhere and then coming to earth (microbes on comets, for example).

So, no, I wouldn't predict us to be here, because I don't have enough theory to make decent predictions, so I'd abstain.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I cannot prove to you that God is there, I can only offer some guidance, and you must find that for yourself, truth that you will find satisfactory.

As I said, there is no evidence; it is entirely subjective.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Granted. Christian testimony, of the life of Christ is one kind of testimony given in favour of God. Therefore, you are not placed in the position of having no evidence of God, but rather, must decide whether to accept the testimony given. Spock requires a great deal of evidence, but also, must accept the evidence presented in favour of God, as truthful.

There are many reasons to reject the testimony. Certainly there is no proof in any way of the miracles claimed in it. One might accept it as Jefferson did and remove all references to miracles or the supernatural from the bible. You get a much more plausible work then. People claiming something wonderous happened does not mean that it did happen; people can lie, exaggerate, etc, and there is no corroborating evidence for what the bible says.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Why is there evil in the world? Why are people inclined to evil, and not good?

If God has indeed granted us free will, then evil is evidence that he has done so, not evidence against him.

Secondly, as for natural disasters, look at the people of Israel. Even though they had physical evidence of God, in the form of manna from heaven, did they not chafe under the constraints, and grumble about the quality?

If God were to protect us from all troubles, we would cease to trust in him, but rather, seek troubles for ourselves.

Jobian Satan to God: "Fear will keep them in line, fear of this battlestation"

I purposely avoided the tangle of arguements over free will (which I don't even think exists) because it muddles the issue.

Natural disasters have no good explanation. You seem to claim they are there to inspire fear and uncertainty so people will turn to god. Hardly the benevolent god you espouse. Such horrible practices would be antithetical to an all-good deity, and your arguement is insulting to humanity. I can assure that people would get along just fine without having to bury the dead from natural disasters, people you say god murders just to keep people busy. I can only assume you haven't thought this through.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
True. But elves do not have the historical account of the man from Galilee who put on the Cross, died, and rose again. Christians do, and are thus, making a far different claim.

Semi-historical. The Bible has been edited a lot and the earliest recordings date from 40 years after the supposed crucifixion. There is no direct record by Jesus of anything he said. Additionally, there were so many 'messiahs' around during that time that it was probably almost impossible for at least one of them not to "take off", as it were.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I suggest you employ a different tactic. I am intrigued if what you say is true, that given greater religious involvement, they would score lower on the IQ test. This confirms to me that there is something more going on here, that there seems to be some conflict between the IQ tests given, and religious faith.

It is always easy to deny truths you dislike. It is harder to accept those truths.

Let me tell you a story. When I first took an IQ test, they did not reveal to me my score, but one of the questions was, "how big is a yard."

Now, given that I am a Canadian and have been trained since childhood in the metric system, I did not know what a yard in imperial measurements equated to. So I answered 160 acres.

This, caused some consternation to the tester who had to ask me why I put that.

I told her that this was the size of the acreage in where I lived, and hence, my 'yard'.

While there are societal effects like this, in general when you do a study in the U.S. people that make these sorts of errors are the large minority. The vast majority of the people in the U.S. are familiar with various convetions used and such.

-Drachasor

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

And scientists are immune?

That's why we are not to build our faith on sand, on other falliable people.

No, of course scientists aren't immune. No one is.

All I'm saying is that Religion has lost its street cred, so-to-speak. The burden of proof is now on the religionistas, after millenia of being the accepted TRUTH. I outlined some reasons for that. It's not that science is immune to such things (though I think it's less vulnerable to them), because people are people.

In other words, don't be surprised that your beliefs are met with skepticism. Those who've peddled religion in the past have put you at somewhat of a disadvantage.

-Arrian

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm not surprised that they are skeptical. What surprises me is the lack of depth of that skepticism.

It reinforces my decision.

[Arrian]

And the "lack of logic" of your arguments reinforces mine. Yay!

-Arrian

[Ben Kenobi]

Uninformed athiests then.

I suppose you count yourself among their members, given your earlier reticence?

True, but if life can't live without those requirements, then we wouldn't be around to ponder the requirements if we didn't have them. Additionally, evolution implies life would evolve to take advantage of whatever natural benefits there are in the environment, so it will look more tailored than life in general needs to be.

This is all stuff that needs to be there first. We haven't even gotten to evolution, and the chances for an organism to develop from loose chemicals.

For life on this planet, but not life in general. Many microbes and the like can survive in space,

Some, but you still have a problem of getting from microbes, and how do the microbes form in the first place?

Additionally, we don't have any even half-decent idea on how common worlds like ours are. They could be a dime a dozen.

How many stable main sequence stars like the sun without significant companions?

There really isn't enough knowledge or theory to predict that chance of life developing somewhere. For one, scientists are not entirely sure how life did develop. There are still numerous theories circulating about, some of which have life developing elsewhere and then coming to earth (microbes on comets, for example).

So, no, I wouldn't predict us to be here, because I don't have enough theory to make decent predictions, so I'd abstain.

I say given the chances, they are drastically unlikely. Water may come from comets.

As I said, there is no evidence; it is entirely subjective.

It's like playing poker against an opponent who draws many royal flushes in a row. How many do you let him play before you accuse him of cheating?

That's the difference between those who believe chance is responsible for these things, and those who believe in God. The theists are saying that they have a cheat, rather than accepting chance to be responsible, that someone is acting outside of the natural order.

There are many reasons to reject the testimony. Certainly there is no proof in any way of the miracles claimed in it.

Empirical proof? Again, science cannot assess miracles empirically.

If you force the supernatural to accept the constraints of the natural, than you don't have a supernatural world anymore.

Do you believe that the testimony was the truth?

One might accept it as Jefferson did and remove all references to miracles or the supernatural from the bible.

Obviously, the account of the Gospels would be false, if you did this. You cannot remove the miracles, any more than you can remove Trotsky, as Stalin did from the pictures of Lenin. Have some respect for the historical testimony of these men, by refusing to tamper with what they say in order to fit what you believe to be more plausible.

People claiming something wonderous happened does not mean that it did happen; people can lie, exaggerate, etc, and there is no corroborating evidence for what the bible says.

What would the motivation be for the people who wrote the bible to lie, and to exaggerate? Remember, given a testimony, unless given evidence to the contrary, you are to accept that testimony as truthful.

Are there other sources that do not corroborate with the events described by the Gospel writers?

Natural disasters have no good explanation. You seem to claim they are there to inspire fear and uncertainty so people will turn to god. Hardly the benevolent god you espouse.

No, I didn't say that. I said that God allows us to suffer, because the alternative of preventing all suffering is worse.

I can assure that people would get along just fine without having to bury the dead from natural disasters,

We had all this in the Garden, yet we rebelled. We chafed under the protection, and sought difficulties for ourselves. God, in his mercy, has allowed us the freedom, rather than keeping us cooped in cages.

If I am given a choice between my freedom, I will gladly accept it, even if it means that I may die from a natural disaster.

people you say god murders just to keep people busy. I can only assume you haven't thought this through.

Do you believe evil comes only from God?

Semi-historical. The Bible has been edited a lot and the earliest recordings date from 40 years after the supposed crucifixion.

Can you show me another historical source that was written so soon after the date?

There is none. Tacitus wrote after the Gospels, about events of the Roman age before Christ, yet we gratefully accept his accounts as a valuable part of the historical record.

Secondly, do you have evidence that the Gospel has been edited in substantial portions?

There is no direct record by Jesus of anything he said. Additionally, there were so many 'messiahs' around during that time that it was probably almost impossible for at least one of them not to "take off", as it were.

There is no direct record by Socrates of anything he said, yet we accept Plato's accounts of Socrates. Why should we reject the testimony of Christ's apostles, and accept those of Socrates' disciples?

It is always easy to deny truths you dislike. It is harder to accept those truths.

Then why do you reject Christ?

While there are societal effects like this, in general when you do a study in the U.S. people that make these sorts of errors are the large minority. The vast majority of the people in the U.S. are familiar with various convetions used and such.

And that is all that I am looking for. I do not believe that the vast majority of those who claim to believe in God do so. The fact that you are willing to concede that the IQ test will produce serious errors among a large minority, is all that I ask.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Elok
Well, we'll leave the observability, controlled conditions or otherwise, of Kuci's claim that "nothing happens until it is observed," up in the air then, until he chooses to go on with it.

Lots of miracles are rather harder to debunk than you say, BTW. I mentioned the church of St. Theodora before, which has spent several centuries holding up a stand of trees on its roof which should crush it like an egg. Every single engineer or physicist who visited it concluded that it was physically impossible. People here told me it was just an unexplained natural phenomenon which just happened to occur at exactly one spot in the world which happened to be holy ground.

http://www.skepticreport.com/mystics/hvidtmiracle.htm

The site has never been really examined, and the structure is quite sturdily built. The trees are rather thin, and there is a ready supply of water to them. I can find no evidence any serious thought that it should collapse.

St. Spyridon is not mummified, not sealed in an airtight chamber, nor apparently preserved in any way, and his body still hasn't decomposed after centuries. But it's a marvelous, undetectable form of preservation which can't be detected by any means, was available in the middle ages, and was secretly reserved for a handful of renowned ascetics but denied to kings and popes.

He was entombed in the Church of Holy Apostles in Constantinople for over one thousand years. More than enough time for mummification to occur.

The startsi are rare, but they can effectively read minds, answering the questions of visitors before those visitors even open their mouths, and there are a few living on Mt. Athos even today. St. John Maximovitch (d. 1966) was known to visit far-off invalids who wanted to call him but were strictly prevented from doing so to "avoid troubling that busy man."

Generally speaking only the most famous one, St. Seraphim of Sarov was attributed by RUMOR with the ability to answer questions before they were asked. Good advice and perception can lend that impression however.

St. John is among many saints who have cured incurable ailments numerous times. Prayers for his intercession, about thirty years after he died, apparently cured AIDS in one subject. She presumptively is not willing to be injected with HIV so she can prove before witnesses that Vladika John is up to the task.

Nothing incurable, and there are always times when people recover from a disease that normally or often kills on their own. Also, about 1/100 people are immune to AIDS (their immune system can *fight* it effectively, that is), so the fact that one subject was found that was 'cured' does not mean anything even if true.

While we're at it, a man from my church has a brother who was in a car accident about six months ago. Very bad, wound up in a coma, brain damage, basically no hope of full recovery of mental function. We prayed, and now he's walking and talking quite clearly, and getting better every day.

There was a small chance he'd recover, and he ws lucky enough to. There are many in similar situations that do not recover; that's why they can tell you there is only a small chance, because most don't recover.

Anything else?

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
This is all stuff that needs to be there first. We haven't even gotten to evolution, and the chances for an organism to develop from loose chemicals.

The origin of life is different from evolution. Evolution is well proven, but the origin of life is still to be fully understood. Lack of knowledge does not imply god.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
No, they can't, Drachosaur. Microbes cannot survive in a vacuum.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993186

Microbes can survive in space.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
How many stable main sequence stars like the sun without significant companions?

It is possible there are earth-like planets in Binary systems, it is possible that almost every single star like the Sun has a planet capable of supporting life. We simply do not know. It's a very interested area that will be explored, but we are ignorant in this area.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I say given the chances, they are drastically unlikely. Water may come from comets, but not microbes.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/space_bugs_021217.html

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/biology/bdol98/updates/archives.php?iRef=13

It is pretty clear they can survive and travel through space via comets, and they might not even need them.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
It's like playing poker against an opponent who draws many royal flushes in a row. How many do you let him play before you accuse him of cheating?

No. You have only said that we couldn't survive on another planet. If anything that would mean it would be a miracle if we actually were on another planet, but we are not. Just because our life has evolved to survive and be well-adapted to earth doesn't mean that it is a miracle.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
That's the difference between those who believe chance is responsible for these things, and those who believe in God. The theists are saying that they have a cheat, rather than accepting chance to be responsible, that someone is acting outside of the natural order.

A lot of cases are sheer inevitability or quite possible so. For all we know life inevitable evolves on planets that can support it, given enough time (and a few billion years is certainly enough time). You are giving your own view of chances to things that we have no reliable data on; we simply don't know the chance of life appearing in a particular situation. We have a poor idea of what the minimum requirements for carbon-based life are, even less for it to come from raw materials, and no idea for other types of life.

The "small chances" you give are simply your opinion.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Empirical proof? Again, science cannot assess miracles empirically.

Probably because Science, when it examines 'miracles', finds there are not any.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
If you force the supernatural to accept the constraints of the natural, than you don't have a supernatural world anymore.

You define something out of the natural world, then you can't observe it anymore.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Obviously, the account of the Gospels would be false, if you did this. You cannot remove the miracles, any more than you can remove Trotsky, as Stalin did from the pictures of Lenin. Have some respect for the historical testimony of these men, by refusing to tamper with what they say in order to fit what you believe to be more plausible.

My point is there no reason to believe they are true. Every religion claims to have miracles supporting it. There is no reason to blindly belief any of them, let alone one particular one. Claiming a miracle happened is not the same as a miracle happening. You can even claim one happened and believe it did through ignorance, bad memory, exaggeration, etc.

And there record has already been altered, by early Christians and the Catholic Church. The earliest known paper accounts were already 40 years after the incident, a lot of misconceptions and falsehoods can be honestly believed after that amount of time. Especially in a world where superstition is seriously believed in because the world is so poorly understood.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
What would the motivation be for the people who wrote the bible to lie, and to exaggerate? Remember, given a testimony, unless given evidence to the contrary, you are to accept that testimony as truthful.

They wanted their religion to grow, they wanted people to believe them, they wanted people to belive Jesus was the son of god, etc, etc. They had many motivations. I am not saying they did it on purpose, it could have been well-meaning exaggerations or poorly remembered items. It could even have been edits to the original work to make them sound better.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Are there other sources that do not corroborate with the events described by the Gospel writers?

For the miracles? Sure, all of our knowledge of nature. They certainly provide nothing that refutes that; they provide no evidence at all and their testimony clearly has a bias. Remember, they are making the claims, so they must prove their claims. I don't have to go around and disprove every book. That sort of reasoning could be used to say Star Wars must be true because you can't disprove it.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
No, I didn't say that. I said that God allows us to suffer, because the alternative of preventing all suffering is worse.

No, you said god made a world that produced natural events that kill and maim people, because busy people apparently kill each other. What a negative view of humanity. God still produced a world that, by itself, kills people, even if there is world peace.




If I am given a choice between my freedom, I will gladly accept it, even if it means that I may die from a natural disaster.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Do you believe evil comes only from God?

I don't think anything comes from god, I don't think he exists.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Can you show me another historical source that was written so soon after the date?

Sure, the Federalist Papers were about the constitution and the bill of rights. They were written about the same time.

As for the Bible, there are no Roman accounts of anything that special happening. Best thing you have is an account of sentencing a guy named Jesus to crucificy, about the same time. Even though it was a common name, it is possible it was the person the Gospels speak of. That only corroborates that he was killed by the Romans though.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Secondly, do you have evidence that the Gospel has been edited in substantial portions?

If there were only Oral accounts around for 40 years, then it almost undoubtable was change. That's how oral accounts work.

The book the Five Gospels goes over how references to hell and suffering do not generally fit in with everything Jesus said, and were very, very likely added later. Additionally, when the Bible was assembled, some accounts they didn't care for and left out.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
There is no direct record by Socrates of anything he said, yet we accept Plato's accounts of Socrates. Why should we reject the testimony of Christ's apostles, and accept those of Socrates' disciples?

Heck, and maybe Socrates didn't exist, but there are no incredible claims about him. Sure, he was a very intelligent fellow, accounts to be believed, but he didn't do any miracles or anything else a smart fellow couldn't have done. The extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claims that some old smart guy once lived somewhere do not. If Plato had made claims of miracles, I wouldn't accept them either.

-Drachasor

[Elok]

Okay.

The link doesn't work for me. No formal study, fair enough. I'm told that engineers who visited were boggled though. I didn't bother to investigate because I believe anyway. We'll see.

St. Spyridon's coffin is regularly opened and the body handled to replace the sandals, which appear to wear themselves out every few months, so complete dessication would not have lasted. I wasn't aware that he was left in a desert for months to naturally dehydrate in the first place, if that's what you mean by mummification. I'm not well versed in biology but it was my impression that dead bodies normally decompose considerably unless dehydrated or chemically preserved. If it comes to that, St. Raphael's been dead for about a century, not mummified, and he's fine too. Isn't JFK a pile of moldy bones by now?

Do some research; dozens of saints are reputed to have the ascetic gift of discernment. Seraphim is only the most famous, as you said. St. John is credited with hundreds of instances of the gift from many different individuals, including several cases of the prescience I mentioned. I've spoken to a guy whose brother went to Mt. Athos, and got very specific answers to very personal questions from a man he'd never met, without saying a thing. Yes, it's a rumor, but it's the best I can do. What do you want me to do, go on a fact-finding mission to pester holy men in Greece?

Immunity to AIDS (yes, I've heard of it) supposedly comes from defective cell membranes that the virus can't permeate. The body still can't kill the virus, it just can't be hurt by it. The curing miracle was such that the woman got a positive test, prayed, and had two subsequent negative follow-up tests. It's not irrefutable but it's certainly very weird. Cancer *is* incurable, Leukemia doesn't "just go away," but both have, as have third-degree burns which spontaneously changed to mild blisters during the patient's ambulance ride to the hospital. The sheer number of these cases (the book on St. John I have lists close to a hundred for him alone, most of them personal testimony) makes a coincidence ridiculously improbable by my reckoning.

Actually, there was no real chance to speak of that Martin would recover. Certain parts of his brain were damaged. The man is way too old for his brain to adapt like a child's might. I don't know if they suddenly grew back or if he adapted against all odds, but he shouldn't be able to even speak at all. It's also strange that he began to recover rapidly only after intercessions began, when he'd been steadily declining for months beforehand.

The reason all these things are "hearsay" is because God was inconsiderate and did not have them happen in a lab with six doubtful witnesses and an MRI available. They are only doubtful because of their sheer spontaneity. But let's go on just to jump you through the hoops.

The weeping icons. Dissecting them is a little too disrespectful for most, but presumptively there are no hidden tear-makers that suddenly generate and ooze oil from invisible ducts for months at a time?

St. John also has been reported glowing brilliantly during liturgy, in front of hundreds of witnesses. I have seen two photos of this, and while I don't know what a fake would look like, they look pretty genuine to me, and the technology to fake pictures well didn't exist in the early sixties. This has happened in processions, when he was surrounded by people on all sides, the closest only a few feet away. No mirrors, no extension cord and christmas lights. David Copperfield couldn't fool that many people from that distance.

I haven't done research, this is just stuff off the top of my head. If you insist I'll start digging, but I don't see the point as miracles typically don't happen in a research facility you would trust.

[Sava]

Until I see one, I don't think I believe in miracles.

[Elok]

http://members.tripod.com/~shtyetz_john/life-of-st-john-sanfran.html

First pic on the page. Looks fakeable by modern technology, but the fade effect would be tricky and the photograph was taken in 1952. You could argue that the image was edited recently and there's a massive coverup, but that's stretching it AFAIC.