No kidding? And people continue to be born, grow and develop, etc. But the Holy Trinity is still their Creator.
-_- the Holy Trinity did not create cars, even if it created humans. The creation of your creation is not inherently your creation.
Prove it's a hoax. Prove that any part of it is a hoax:
-_- any time the icons are brought to a different location where the original people that were caring for it aren't, they cease to leak oil or whatever other fluid was claimed to come from them.
Investigative Briefs: Tearful effigies are pious (and not so pious) frauds. - Center for Inquiry
Apparently, going by sources I found through Wikipedia and are linked at the bottom of the article relating to both weeping statues and weeping paintings, none of them are considered legitimate (the wiki article on the general stuff says there is one that's a statue in Japan, but linking to the article specific to it alone says otherwise)
Our Lady of Akita - Wikipedia
Weeping statue - Wikipedia
What do you know, the Eastern Orthodoxy specifically views them as valid miracles. And oh look, what happens to be your denomination? I'd think that if these were legitimate miracles that there'd be some agreement among Christians on the matter, but apparently, you're in the minority on this one.
I'm not even the one making the extraordinary claim here that paintings weep curative oil, you are, yet you don't have any non-anecdotal evidence.
The formation of the myrrh on the surface of the icon, its chemical properties, and the miraculous healings.
-_- the latter two properties you have yet to demonstrate yourself, or provide scientific articles for. Heck, you claimed that someone said that some scientist tried to evaluate the chemical structure, but you have yet to provide evidence that any part of that event actually occurred and the suggestion that the liquid continuously changes chemical structure is a strong indication that the person that claimed this event occurred pulled an anomalous trait out of their butt to try to make the liquid seem more miraculous.
The mere fact that you've done nothing, except to create some weak mechanism of rationalization to debunk any of this phenomena clearly indicates that you don't really care to know the truth of the matter because you don't want to believe -- which is what I stated in the very outset and you denied, basically saying that I didn't know anything about how much you wanted to believe and was out of line by suggesting it.
-_- actually, I just think that Catholic bishops wouldn't hide a legitimate miracle, especially if it was from one of their own statues/paintings, of which plenty are. Both religious and secular sources concur that they are frauds. If you think this assessment is wrong, go ahead and cure a bunch of people with dementia. It shouldn't be hard to volunteer at a nursing home and you already have the liquid in question. You claim it has miraculous healing abilities, so demonstrate it! I cannot travel to the specific ones you attended, so I can only test the ones near me. I need to rely on you to be honest and test the ones you've gathered oil from. There's something very clear you HAVE to follow when testing it, though; you can't tell the people you are giving it to that it's a miraculous liquid at all. The placebo effect can be so powerful that people actually have had symptoms disappear because of sugar pills, so you have to make an effort to avoid that effect as much as possible.
I do take the myrrh to others who are sick or infirm and offer it to them. You are convinced that I don't, without even knowing the truth of the matter you are insisting that I don't do the very thing that I do do.
Offer, being the key word there. Dementia is a great ailment to test this with because practically no one with it recovers. Stage 4 cancer victims are unlikely to recover, but it is not impossible. To perform a proper experiment, you have to cure a large number at once and have actual documentation confirming their diagnosed illness.
So, if there is any fraud being committed, it's becoming painfully obvious to me, and should also be to you, that the fraud is being perpetrated from within your own psyche as fraudulent reasoning about the nature of reality.
Nah, I just think that if a panacea actually existed that once people found out everyone that could get their hands on it would use it. These paintings have existed for decades and yet blindness is still a thing. I wonder why...
Well, you're ignoring a genuine panacea, so I must surmise that you are not in your right mind, because I have clearly testified to the existence of a genuine panacea and you quickly dismiss it as a hoax, without making any effort at all to investigate this for yourself.
-_- The particular ones you visited are not in close proximity to me, and I don't have the means to travel to them. If I went to another one that is near me and it didn't work, you might agree that particular painting was a hoax, but it'd say nothing about the ones you visited. If you sent me a cotton ball and it still didn't work, you might claim it was because I didn't believe it would, and I can't force myself to believe it does without evidence.
Several samples of the fluid from the Iveron icon were tested and the lab had this to say about them: "The combinations were impossible to replicate in all practicality and at least one part was impossible to identify, with no earthly corollary."
Where. Is. Your. Source. Why aren't you providing a source for your quote? How am I supposed to know you aren't straight up making this up if you don't provide a source?
So, if you're so sure it's a hoax, then like I said: Prove it.
-_- it's such an easy hoax to produce that you can buy a kit for it.
Do It Yourself Weeping Madonna Statue
Apparently, it is so easy to do it with statues in particular that children can accomplish it.
Don't just dismiss it with a wave of your hand because you don't care enough to find out.
I cared enough to find out that you belong to the only Christian denomination that consistently DOESN'T think they are hoaxes.
My view of humanity is not so low as to believe that you're not incapable of deciding that you'll stop calling something a lie without getting for yourself evidence that it's a lie.
I don't think you are a liar at all. I absolutely believe that you believe that these are miracles and that they can heal people. But, we don't ask people to demonstrate that a new drug DOESN'T work after immediately putting it on the shelves with no testing. That the liquid isn't miraculous is the null hypothesis, and you have to demonstrate otherwise.
Is your view of humanity so low that you are going to reject all miracles testified of as lies?
I don't assume all miracles are lies by default, mind you, but this particular one has been known to be a hoax for decades. History shows that humanity is both capable of great kindness and great deception. It's not like I think everyone would be willing to make money off of this hoax, considering that most churches don't have them. Rather, I know some people have good enough hearts that if this were real they'd risk their own lives to spread it to other people, meaning that widespread use would be an inevitability.
I sure hope you didn't pay for the stuff, since Jesus has very negative opinions on people selling wares in churches, and it'd be a huge slap in his face to make a profit off of any miracle in a church, real or not.
I keep a supply of the myrrh in order to offer it to those I encounter as a source of healing of both physical and spiritual infirmities. Sometimes they ask me to anoint them, which I will do, or else they may just want me to give them some to anoint themselves with, so I give it to them. Sometimes I do both things if that is what they ask. The oil doesn't heal. God heals, when He wills. The oil is not a "cure all" (panacea) in any sense, but God, Who gives the oil, is our cure all, because He gives us Eternal Life in His Kingdom.
Yup, if you sent me the oil and it didn't work, you'd assume god willed it. Of course -_-
If you are willing to just hand wave anyone that isn't cured, how can I expect you to be honest in assessing a result that goes against your personal beliefs? I WANT the oil to work because, if nothing else, that would alleviate a great deal of suffering. I WANT to be wrong on this one, because humanity has everything to gain and nothing to lose if it's real. But I am willing to accept that if it doesn't heal people with any consistency whatsoever that it probably doesn't have any curative properties and it certainly doesn't have the ones you claim it does.
God designs some people with the ability to design cars and to also investigate and define the very natural processes that God uses to design themselves.
-_- then god also designs some people to be better at killing and raping than others.
Creation is ongoing and unfathomably diverse, and we get to observe it both in real-time and millions of years past. The big bang, evolution explaining the origin of species, etc... if these are true, then God is their author, because if there wasn't God Who is Father of the Lord Jesus Christ there wouldn't be any miraculous myrrh streaming icons that science is at a total loss to explain. Yet, there are such icons. There are many other miraculous phenomenon too. These become more and more visible and in view with the increase of grace (the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit) in you.
We see no deities involved in any of these processes. Also, your fellow Christians investigated the icons and found them to be fake. The only ones that aren't intentional fakes are ones which happen to collect condensation from water vapor in the air, and evaluations make it very clear that in those cases the liquid is not coming from the statue itself and is mundane in origin.
