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Myrna Nazzour - Miracle of Damascus
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MagicMarker wrote: »Repeating yourself doesn't make it any truer.
Youtube videos are not evidence, show us evidence, otherwise you're just talking shíte.
You want proof.
Here you go.
Their offices is just down the street from me:
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No it is very relevant. It is about applying critical thinking to extraordinary claims and how easy it is to create illusions in videos.The camera angle is different on David Blaine than on the very amateur video of the guy trying to show how its done. it's a very weak counter argument. Overall I think David Blaines trickery is a distraction from the topic we are discussing.
Here is a better explanation of how it is done in the case of David Blaine as he does a higher "levitation":
If he said yes and if he had people to back up that claim in a video would you automatically believe it?Has anyone visited David Blaines house who had been in a wheelchair all their lives and left walking.0 -
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MagicMarker wrote: »You want us to watch approx 5 hours of lies in youtube videos?
Errrr, na.
FYP
5 hours of christian videos? There is a hell! :eek:
Is this 'evidence' more conclusive than the banana's ergonomic design?
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One shouldn't trust the word of an academic when he/she's investigating a parlor conjurer -- you need another parlor conjurer, and presumably a better one.[...] Psychiatric Department at the University of Lubin with references to Myrna Nazzour. [...]
Her tricks, so far as I can see that there are any, are simplistic in the extreme. She'll never make a pro
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So your arguments were:
Too long don't want to watch.
The stigmata's were in the wrong place -- Incorrect
Francis Of Assisi has a stigmata in the wrist not hand -- Incorrect
David Blain can be disproved by a ridiculous imitation trick
A finger trick anyone can do
Funny picture of National levitation office - I like that
Another guy doing levitation or is it a trick, unclear
A victory banana
My that horse of yours seems awfully high, what with your snide dismissal of people's arguments despite not having read any of them.
As usually happens with religious coming in here thinking they have a bulletproof argument for Jesus, this one falls down in several respects.
Just a couple of points regarding your "miracle"
1. Myrna Nazzour & the phenomenon of stigmata
The first problem with Ms. Nazzour is something shared by all stigmatics, they aren't solely restricted to Catholics or even Christians. Here for example is an infant in Pakistan suffering from dermatographic urticaria in the shape of Quranic scripture.
Similarly there are accounts of stigmata in Buddhism such as those described here:
Essays into Vietnamese pasts
This makes the argument that this is some kind of divine intervention really weak. It is further weakened by other miraculous "signs" from other religions such as the one posted by phutyle here.
What makes Myrna Nazzour's claims any more authentic than a drinking Hindu statue?
However, if you consider these "signs" from a psychological viewpoint the explanation becomes a bit more plausible. Even the link you provided states:
"Their occurrence testifies to the existence of the source of their origin – the vital faith in the passion of Jesus Christ."
We know that psychosomatism in general can cause the body to do all sorts of strange things and in the cases of these mentally unsound people, a psychosomatic cause may be the most reasonable explanation.
However, in the case of Myrna Nazzour, deliberate fraud is far more likely. There are several problems with her claims not least of which are: a) the wounds are in the wrong places, b) the wounds are far more likely to caused by her crucifix than any other explanation and c) no test has yet been conducted whereby the possibility of cheating has been eliminated.
Finally, the wounds of Ms. Nazzour brings up another problem for the divine origin theory, variation.
If these really are divine signs then why is there such variation in wound size, shape, location etc. The divine origin theory also runs into trouble when you consider that a) no documented cases of stigmata exist prior to the 12th century and b) there has been a shift in wound placement since the beginning of the 20th century with a large increase in the number of stigmatics exhibiting wounds in the wrists.
2. St. Francis of Assisi & wound placement
Regarding St. Francis, wounds in both hands and wrists were reported in the biography of St. Francis:
"His wrists and feet seemed to be pierced by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on his wrists and on the upper sides of his feet, the points appearing on the other side. The marks were round on the palm of each hand but elongated on the other side, and small pieces of flesh jutting out from the rest took on the appearance of the nail-ends, bent and driven back."
The story of St. Francis actually raises some important questions about stigmata in general.
Firstly, the debate over wound placement seems to have been theological rather than a debate about what the evidence actually pointed to, with the winning explanation being more to do with theological comfort than sound reasoning. This is exemplified in another passage from the biography of St. Francis:
"Moreover, his right side had a large wound as if it had been pierced with a spear, and it often bled so that his tunic and trousers were soaked with his sacred blood."
For the first thousand years of Christianity there was a schism between those who believed that the spear wound was on the left side or the right side. Triclavianism, for example is a belief that Jesus was crucified with three holy nails and pierced on the left side. This view was eventually declared as heresy by Pope Innocent III who declared that there were four nails and the wounds were on the right hand side. What is interesting though is the spear wound itself. The only reference to the spear wound is John's gospel which was the last to be written and the furthest removed from the events of Jesus' death (not that any of the gospels were eyewitness accounts of course).
This is of course the overarching problem with stigmata, there are no eyewitness accounts of the crucifixion and significant amounts of contradictory evidence in the Bible surrounding the question of the crucifixion itself. What we have been able to establish however, is that, whatever has been shown by Fred Zugibe and others to be possible the archaeological evidence contradicts the traditional crucifixion position and with it the vast majority of stigmata.
The CrucifiedM an fromG iv'at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal
The evidence from the sole crucifixion victim that has been unearthed shows that the actual configuration of crucifixions at the time looked something like this:
Furthermore the configuration shown above is one shared by a Greek execution method of the time known as apotympanismos. This was a death mostly reserved for traitors but is one possible origin for the Roman crucifixion.
Finally, there are a couple of questions that you might answer:
Why was Jesus crucified at all? Why did the Sanhedrin not just stone Jesus to death for blasphemy? How is it that blasphemy was a punishment under Roman laws? Why would the Romans have any interest in executing a Jewish troublemaker when the Sanhedrin were such a thorn in their side anyway?
Surely, as a believer you should be just as skeptical of these claims as any of us. Weeding out false claims from authentic ones (if there were any) should be an important act for believers.0 -
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Hi E,
I have watched all 31 parts on youtube of "the miracle of Damascus" I too am struggling with the question of whether or not this phenomena did/does occur. After closely paying attention to every single video, I came to the conclusion that she is most probably a fraud and a fake. Although there are a lot of footage of Nazzour, NOT ONE sequence shows a wound actually appearing from start to finish. NOT ONE. The wounds always appear after she has been under her blanket. If she truly wanted so desperately for the entire world to know about these spectacular supernatural events, and that she is not a fake, surely SHE would demand and would want the photographers to film the entire sequence of events starting with the beginning of the 'stigmata' (the initial pains BEFORE the wounds open up before the skin has broken) up to and leading to the skin breaking open.
Read this blog too...I found it very helpful.
http://garvarn.blogspot.com/2008/07/holy-crap-or-myrna-nazzour-miracle.html0 -
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Surly Myrna would not go through this for some cash donations. She is an educated woman and her husband has a career. If you offer Myrna cash she will not accept it.
Good woman! I approve of that. I presume 'Surly' is a typo?
But I wonder, are there any other groups collecting when she is in action, even if it be a bashful curate nudging a plate forward as people leave...?0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAcKT4nFR0c
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