J, I'm not trying to prove anything. Nor do I think I have to prove anything. I've always said the burden of proof is on the atheist anyway.D1B wrote:Joe, it's faith. That's all it is. You ignore common sense rational explanations of things and focus on what you percieve to be miraculous, fine, but you are indeed delusional. Kolbe may or may not be delusional, I don't know him, nor will I , because I don't give a **** - there are millions of Kolbes out there who don't get any recognition for their work.JoltinJoe wrote:
Look, you started this thread by mocking a simple nun who reported that she had an apparition of Mary 150 years ago. Everyone chimed in and called her mentally ill.
So I linked to a miraculous event reported by nearly all of perhaps 70,000 people (including numerous skepcts who had come to gloat) gathered at Fatima on October 13, 1917 at noon. You can't dismiss 70,000 people as delusional or mentally ill. Now I know you are not a person of faith, so I don't expect you to leap to the conclusion that God, at the request of Mary, performed a great miracle by creating the appearance of the sun gyrating in the sky. But I do find it amazing that you and others were so quickly to embrace the idea that this was caused by almost 70,000 people simultaneously experiencing retinal distortion, an explanation which is, quite frankly, ridiculous (especially since no one was "on notice" to stare at the sun before this happened).
I then brought up Maximilian Kolbe, an extraordinary man who, at great personal risk, housed and sheltered Jews in Poland from Nazi occupiers, and was sent to Auschwitz for his actions. The authorities were convinced that a a period at Auschwitz was enough to cure this delusional priest of his desire to help Jews, and then they free him. But he goes right back to assisting Jews and blasting Nazis in his publications. So he gets sent to Auschwitz again, where he ultimately volunteers his life for another, and goes to his death with so much courage that even his jailers marvel. Some even grow sympathetic and smuggle him bread and wine so he can perform Communion.
You can call him delusional. I say he had an extraordinary faith-based courage. Whatever he had, I wish I had, and if that makes me delusional, then I want to be delusional.
That his friary in Nagasaki survived intact when nothing else around it for nearly a mile did, is perhaps coincidence, but I see something more at work
Quit trying to prove **** like this Joe, you aint in court and you just end up looking like a madman.
It's easy for a "rational" person to call a long-dead nun in Wisconsin mentally ill because she said Mary visited her. Fine.
But what does a "rational" person say when nearly 70,000 people report seeing something miraculous at the date, place and time predicted by a child who said she saw Mary. Is the child mentally ill? How about the 70,000 people?
So the "rational" person comes up with something -- which is an irrational claim that all of them suffered from retinal delusion simultaneously.
There are genuine mysteries and inexplicable events in life and sometimes there is no apparently rational explanation.
I'm not saying that you must believe; what I'm saying is your explanation of why all these people reported seeing the same miraculous event at the same place and time simply isn't credible. Whatever else that might imply is left to the individual, I suppose.
And what about people like Maximillian Kolbe, who himself reported having discussions with Mary (including about where to build his friary. When someone is as courageous as Fr. Kolbe, how can you say he acted out of a delusion?
I'm not a madman. I am simply drawn to people like Kolbe. I want to be more like him. And I am not.
. So go fuck yourself , no wait, who cares what you do, no one pays attention to you.
Heaven is when he's on CS vacation.
