-_- the Holy Trinity did not create cars, even if it created humans. The creation of your creation is not inherently your creation.
-_- 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 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.
-_- 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.
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.
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...
-_- 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.
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?
-_- 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.
I cared enough to find out that you belong to the only Christian denomination that consistently DOESN'T think they are hoaxes.
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.
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.
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.
-_- then god also designs some people to be better at killing and raping than others.
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.
