miracles!- should we believe?

[Guest guest]

Jesus, it's a chapati!

link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=28281420

 

BANGALORE: "God is dead". This was the famous sentence from the famed German philosopher Nietzsche. Probably he didn't visit India when he gave the famous quote.

 

His theory was proved wrong when thousands of devotees thronged a small suburb in Bangalore to catch the glimpse of their venerable deity, Jesus Christ, on, believe it or not, a chapati.

Strange but this is true. A hazy image of Jesus appeared on a chapati that was partly burnt, a demonstration that faith is rewarded by miracles.

 

Sheela Anthony, a staunch follower of Jesus, came home after offering Friday prayers at a church and prepared chapatis for her kids. The children refused to eat one of them as it was burnt. After looking at it carefully, she found an emblem of Jesus on the burnt part.

 

Overflowing with spiritual emotions at Bangalore's Renewal Retreat Centre, a place of prayer for Christians, she said, "For a moment the burnt part of chapati looked like Christ. I couldn't believe my eyes and kept looking at it. With a lot of hesitation, I showed it to my daughters and neighbours, who confirmed that it was indeed Jesus."

 

Thereafter Sheela Authony took it to Father George Jacob of Renewal Retreat Center, who confirmed that the image was that of Jesus. He firmly believes that it is a miracle.

 

"Being a staunch devotee of Jesus, it was Sheela's great gift to the other followers. From morning till late in the evening, around 20,000 people come in to catch the glimpse of Lord Jesus on the chapati," said Father Jacob.

 

The "holy chapati" has been placed at the central shrine for public viewing. The followers who had came distant places to witness the "presence of Jesus" felt that it was a big miracle.

 

But there were others who felt that it was merely a figment of imagination.

[theist 1]

This happens in America and other countries too. Some light gives a reflection and people see Mother Mary and thousands come to pay homage.

 

Here is another one where Ganesh supposedly incarnated as a potato.Look at the picture and decide if its Ganesh or just an odd shaped spud.

 

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_663962.html

 

And then there is the monkey who took to sitting on the head of a statue of Hanuman.People started worshipping him as Hanuman.

 

[theist 1]

 

Ananova:

 

Clay idol of Hindu goddess 'changes colour'

 

Hundreds of people have flocked to a house in Calcutta to witness what's thought to be the "miracle" of an idol changing its colour.

 

Deep Ghosh says the clay idol of Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of Wealth, recently installed at his house in Chetla, has changed from white to black.

 

He says he bought the pinkish white idol from a local artisan but the morning after the puja (Hindu religious ceremony) he noticed the face, hands and legs were turning black.

 

Neighbours and local residents have since visited the fish trader's house in the belief that the idol of Lakshmi has metamorphosed into the dark-hued Goddess Kali, who represents death and destruction.

 

Rationalist groups have rubbished claims of a change of colour saying that it may be due to a chemical reaction caused by the moisture content in the air around the house.

 

Prabir Ghosh, a spokesman for the Rationalists' Society told the Press Trust of India: "We can prove that a chemical reaction is behind the phenomenon being dubbed a miracle.

 

"But for that we need a portion of the earth, out of which the idol has been made."

 

Mr Ghosh is refusing to allow people to touch the idol before the final immersion ceremony on November 4.

 

A police picket has been posted outside the house, which has been converted into a shrine, to control the surging crowds.

 

[Guest guest]

They are a common occurrence in the lives of the devotees of Kalki Bhagavan. Probably Sai Baba too.

 

Here are pictures of Kalki Bhagavn's miracle in California. It has been published worldwide http://skyboom1.tripod.com/index21.html .

 

When asked about it, the sage said that is was a marriage of science and philosophy-they have been separated much too long. One of his disciples was a nuclear scientist.

 

He teaches that when you realize that the everyday cooincidences in your life are Grace, they soon grow into full blown miracles. It very much seems to be true.

 

So next time you get that close parking spot or the car coming at you head on swerves in the nick of time, or you make that flight against all odds or meet that dream spouse under strange circumsatnces see a miracle and give thanks. Expect miracles. They will come. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Dharma

[Guest guest]

Also there is a miracle occurring right now in Tumkar in the state of Karnataka if anyone would like to see first hand. http://www.muktheswarabhagavan.com/photos_1.html. So many have received tremendous healing and transformed states of consciousness or boons from seeing these miracles.

Dharma

[Manni 0]

Anyone who lives in India will know that 'miracles' are an everyday occurence in every state and almost every ashram! i can't say i doubt any of these miracles - the spiritual power within us far exceeds any power technology/science can offer us or even explain.

 

But if these are indeed supranatural occurrences, it's my personal opinion that we should recognise the origin of that power - God.

 

I'm sure many of you have heard of Sathya Sai Baba and His miracles, but even He says to place NO importance on the actual miracle but to dwell on the causal meaning behind it and therefore improve your life spiritually.

[Pritesh01 0]

does any one remember about 8-9 years ago when ganesh deitys were drinking milk

[Guest guest]

I read about it but did not see it-anyone see first hand. There was an entertaining Christian miracle on sorts on the news one night where a church in California got new stained glass windows.

 

They were having a sunset service when a little boy excitedly cried out something like "Look! He's here! He is here!"

 

The awestruck congregation gasped at the image on the wall. It was clearly that of Bozo the Clown.

 

Alot of people flocked to see Bozo when he appeared at sunset.

 

 

Dharma

[Guest guest]

I think it could be Kalki Bhagavan on the Chapati.

My contacts tell me Jesus no longer sports a beard.

[Manni 0]

i believe there's a jokes forum too! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Guest guest]

LOL. Don't tell the devotees.

 

Did you see the cover of this month's Popular Mechanics where they did some sort of "scientific' recreation of the face of Jesus?

 

Dharma

 

 

[Guest guest]

 

Sydney, April 28

 

The statue of the Virgin Mary near Perth is in news again. And for the same reason. It is weeping again, as it did last year, attracting thousands of pilgrims.

 

The fibreglass statue went on display at Our Lady of Lourdes church at Rockingham in August after reports that it had begun to "cry" during the feast of St Joseph and over Easter, according to a report in The Age.

 

Bought in Thailand by parishioner Patty Powell, it attracted worldwide attention and thousands of worshippers.

 

On Sunday, Powell's niece, Shandale Powell, said that the statue began weeping again on Good Friday. The tears were found to be a mixture of rose oil and vegetable oil.

 

Earlier last year from August 15, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Our Heaven, the statue reportedly wept continuously. But it stopped in mid-January and was withdrawn from public display by Perth Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey who said it was not a miracle. ANI

 

[gHari 0]

<TABLE border=0 width="100%">

<TD width=100%" bgcolor=black><font color="white"><blockquote>

I visited the Toronto ISKCON temple to take pictures for the internet. The Deities literally posed for me.

 

Even Lord Caitanya, when I said in my mind that I wanted to spread His mercy all over the world, got a sparkle in His eye and a most merciful smile embraced the camera lens (as you can see to the left). Some may say it was only the flash of the camera, but I have computed the odds of the angles, and must conclude that it is clearly the causeless mercy of Lord Gauranga!

 

Later Lord Jagannatha, Lady Subhadra and Lord Baladeva kindly posed for this family portrait:</blockquote>

 

 

<center><img src=http://home.primus.ca/~caitanya/jaganath.jpg align=bottom>

 

 

 

 

</center></font></td></table>

Jaya Baladeva. Jaya Subhadra.

 

Jaya Jagannatha. Jaya Jagannatha!

 

[Guest guest]

Hi, I am a Catholic public school teacher who witnessed the occurance in 1995. I live in Nj and say the Hidu Statue consume milk. I am an Educated persom who hold a MA in Technoogy Education. I even examined the statue after the occurance to find not tampering. Good for the Hidu faith , God really shows he exists in many ways. Just realize this was also witnessed by other people who were with me.

[Guest guest]

Ganesh Milk was NO miracle

I saw full documentary on discovery channel.

 

It was simply done by placing spoon close to statue of ganesh and natural physics causes milk to shift onto deity then it runs off.

 

The so called "miracles" all started to occur on the same day.

Which , as the documentary explained was the same day a notorious "guru" in India was to go to trial. He had his cohorts send letters to all nearby temples instructing them to give milk this way to deities on this particular day simply so masees in India would think it was sign from Ganesh the bogus "guru" was innocent.

 

such a scam.

 

 

Just like the "magic coconut ' miracle...

open the cocounut...it's just a mouse inside.

[krsna 3]

 

A miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent" (Hume, 123n).

Theologians of the Old & New Testament religions consider only God-willed contravention of the laws of nature to be true miracles. However, they admit others can do and have done things which contravene the laws of nature; such acts are attributed to diabolical powers and are called "false miracles." Many outside of the Biblical based religions believe in the ability to transgress laws of nature through acts of will in consort with paranormal or occult powers. They generally refer to these transgressions not as miracles, but as magick.

 

All religions report numerous and equally credible miracles. Hume compares deciding amongst religions on the basis of their miracles to the task of a judge who must evaluate contradictory, but equally reliable, testimonies. Each religion establishes itself as solidly as the next, thereby overthrowing and destroying its rivals. Furthermore, the more ancient and barbarous a people is, the greater the tendency for miracles and prodigies of all kinds to flourish.

 

...it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority which always attend received opinions (Hume, 126).

 

While there are still many people today who believe in miracles, no modern historian fills his or her books with accounts of miraculous events. It is improbable that the report of even a single miracle would find its way into such texts today. Indeed, only those who cater to the superstitious and credulous, such as the National Enquirer and a good portion of the rest of the mass media, would even think of reporting an alleged miracle without taking a very skeptical attitude towards it. No scholarly journal today would consider an author rational if he or she were to sprinkle reports of miracles throughout a treatise. The modern scholar dismisses all such reports as either lies or cases of collective hallucination.

 

Hume was aware that no matter how scientific or rational a civilization became, belief in miracles would never be eradicated. Human nature is such that we love the marvelous and the wondrous. Human nature is also such that we love even more to be the bearer of a story of the marvelous and the wondrous. The more wondrous our story, the more merit both we and it attain. Vanity, delusion and zealotry have led to more than one pious fraud supporting a holy and meritorious cause with gross embellishments and outright lies about witnessing miraculous events (Hume, 136).

 

Hume's greatest argument against belief in miracles, however, was modeled after an argument made by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury. Tillotson and others, such as William Chillingworth before him and his contemporary Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, had argued for what they called a "commonsense" defense of Christianity, i.e., Anglicanism. Tillotson's argument against the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation or "the real presence" was simple and direct. The idea contradicts common sense, he said. The doctrine claims that the bread and wine used in the communion ceremony is changed in substance so that what is bread and wine to all the senses is in fact the body and blood of Christ. If it looks like bread, smells like bread, tastes like bread, then it is bread. To believe otherwise is to give up the basis for all knowledge based on sense experience. Anything could be other than it appears to the senses. This argument has nothing to do with the skeptical argument about the uncertainty of sense knowledge. This is an argument not about certainty but about reasonable belief. If the Catholics are right about transubstantiation, then a book might really be a bishop, for example, or a pear might actually be Westminster Cathedral. The accidents of a thing would be no clue as to its substance. Everything we perceive could be completely unrelated to what it appears to be. Such a world would be unreasonable and unworthy of God. If the senses can't be trusted in this one case, they can't be trusted in any. To believe in transubstantiation is to abandon the basis of all knowledge: sense experience.

 

Hume begins his essay on miracles by praising Tillotson's argument as being "as concise and elegant and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little worthy of a serious refutation." He then goes on to say that he fancies that he has (118)

 

discovered an argument of a like nature which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures; for so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

 

His argument is a paradigm of simplicity and elegance (122):

 

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

 

Or put even more succinctly (122):

 

There must...be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.

 

The logical implication of this argument is that (123)

 

no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

 

What Hume has done is to take the commonsense Anglican argument against the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and applied it to miracles, the basis of all religious sects. The laws of nature have not been established by occasional or frequent experiences of a similar kind, but of uniform experience. It is "more than probable," says Hume, that all men must die, that lead can't remain suspended in air by itself and that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water. If someone were to report to Hume that a man could suspend lead in the air by an act of will, Hume would ask himself if "the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates." If so, then he would believe the testimony. However, he does not believe there ever was a miraculous event established "on so full an evidence."

 

Consider the fact that the uniformity of experience of people around the world has been that once a human limb has been amputated, it does not grow back. What would you think if a friend of yours, a scientist of the highest integrity with a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, were to tell you that she was off in Spain last summer and met a man who used to have no legs but now walks on two fine, healthy limbs. She tells you that a holy man rubbed oil on his stumps and his legs grew back. He lives in a small village and all the villagers attest to this "miracle." Your friend is convinced a miracle occurred. What would you believe? To believe in this miracle would be to reject the principle of the uniformity of experience, upon which laws of nature are based. It would be to reject a fundamental assumption of all science, that the laws of nature are inviolate. The miracle cannot be believed without abandoning a basic principle of empirical knowledge: that like things under like circumstances produce like results.

 

Of course there is another constant, another product of uniform experience which should not be forgotten: the tendency of people at all times in all ages to desire wondrous events, to be deluded about them, to fabricate them, create them, embellish them, enhance them, and come to believe in the absolute truth of the creations of their own passions and heated imaginations. Does this mean that miracles cannot occur? Of course not. It means, however, that when a miracle is reported the probability will always be greater that the person doing the reporting is mistaken, deluded or a fraud than that the miracle really occurred. To believe in a miracle, as Hume said, is not an act of reason but of faith.

 

[Guest guest]

What value is any of this magic?

A real miracle is a sadhu sacrificing his life to journey to a foreign land and change thousands of materialists and impersonalists hearts and habits from gross sense enjoyers to lovers and servants of a blue tinged beautiful personal God.

This is a miracle!

That is truly amazing I saw it with my very own eyes, and I'm still seeing it, but why arn't millions flocking to experience this miracle?

If we fine tune the retinas of our spiritual vision we will see images of our Ishta Dev in every atom. Just look.

[Guest guest]

"What value is any of this magic?

A real miracle is a sadhu sacrificing his life to journey to a foreign land and change thousands of materialists and impersonalists hearts and habits from gross sense enjoyers to lovers and servants of a blue tinged beautiful personal God.

This is a miracle!

That is truly amazing I saw it with my very own eyes, and I'm still seeing it, but why arn't millions flocking to experience this miracle?

If we fine tune the retinas of our spiritual vision we will see images of our Ishta Dev in every atom. Just look. "

 

And that is no miracle by any stretch of the imagination. You prefer to satisfy yourself by saying that the most mundane of things are miracles. Perhaps you don't have much faith, and are masking it with the supposition that there are no miracles and thus no true intervention by God. If so, why do you even believe in God?

 

Why care if God exists, why even think there is such a thing as God? If you don't believe in miracles, you don't believe in the texts, and you just believe in the lessons with a rationalist twist to them. But as far as I'm concerned, spirituality isn't rational, it doesn't belong in the rational level, and those who try to impose logic upon spirituality limit themselves, their thoughts about life, and their thoughts about God.

 

It's not that I'm an irrational person, but I choose to believe in miracles, in the texts, in God and in the ideals and practicality of a spiritual life.

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

"What value is any of this magic?

A real miracle is a sadhu sacrificing his life to journey to a foreign land and change thousands of materialists and impersonalists hearts and habits from gross sense enjoyers to lovers and servants of a blue tinged beautiful personal God.

This is a miracle!

That is truly amazing I saw it with my very own eyes, and I'm still seeing it, but why arn't millions flocking to experience this miracle?

If we fine tune the retinas of our spiritual vision we will see images of our Ishta Dev in every atom. Just look. "

 

And that is no miracle by any stretch of the imagination. You prefer to satisfy yourself by saying that the most mundane of things are miracles. Perhaps you don't have much faith, and are masking it with the supposition that there are no miracles and thus no true intervention by God. If so, why do you even believe in God?

 

Why care if God exists, why even think there is such a thing as God? If you don't believe in miracles, you don't believe in the texts, and you just believe in the lessons with a rationalist twist to them. But as far as I'm concerned, spirituality isn't rational, it doesn't belong in the rational level, and those who try to impose logic upon spirituality limit themselves, their thoughts about life, and their thoughts about God.

 

It's not that I'm an irrational person, but I choose to believe in miracles, in the texts, in God and in the ideals and practicality of a spiritual life.

 

 

Following blindly is not a miracle. Yes there are miracles out there but that doesnt mean everything is a miracle. Such as Sai afro baba(as Haridham would put it) producing ash or gold. Krsna states these siddhis is not what devotees want.

 

Surrendering to Krsna is a miracle.

[Guest guest]

A miracle is a change of heart to truly love God. Not just to marvel at honey dripping from a picture or a person. When a soul becomes a devotee and engages in devotional service after lifetimes of serving material energy, that is miraculous. THERE is the presence and Grace of God in a most wondrous form.... usually the sadhu. Blessed are those who receive that dharsan.

It's not that we don't believe in miracles they are everyday events to a God realized soul. We just don't need miracles to confirm our faith that God is evrywhere working thru this whole animation.

 

Some whose faith is weak need outward signs to convince them that there are other realities beyond their two dimentional vision of this physical phantasmogoria, and that's alright but when you see your miracle what are you going to do with it?

 

Ask not what God can do for you, but what you can do for God.

 

 

 

"You prefer to satisfy yourself by saying that the most mundane of things are miracles."

 

May I ask what is mundane about a sadhu distributing Krishna consciousness to this suffering world?