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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
 Posted - 09/25/2008 : 09:12:49
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You know, I'm reminded of Dude's post. Debunking something or at least showing how it could be faked doesn't seem to deter the true believers at all. Naples blood debunked.
The Marchese said: "The trouble with scientists is that when they cannot find an explanation they invent one. They simply cannot accept that some things are beyond human understanding."
Marisa Laurito, an actress from Naples, said that Professor Hack "should leave the miracle of San Gennaro well alone. It doesn't do any harm, and prayers to the saint do a lot of good".
She added: "It is hard for outsiders to understand, but he is the very soul of Naples; our symbol."
Rosa Russo Jervolino, the Mayor of Naples, who has led the fight to rid the city of its high crime rate and encourage tourism, said that yesterday's successful liquefaction was "a sign that San Gennaro is still protecting our city, a strong sign of hope and an encouragement for everyone to work for the common good". |
Damn, talk about building your houses on sand.
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>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
Edited by - the_ignored on 09/25/2008 09:20:42
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Zeked
Skeptic Friend
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2008 : 10:45:20 [Permalink]
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Never heard that bullshit story before. I sometimes find myself lacking restraint and express my anger towards these scams. I now feel like critical thinking is under such an incredible attack, the likes of which are unprecedented.
Turn on the boob tube and find Sid Roth "it's supernatural", UFO files, Monster Quest, Ghost Hunters etc..
I'd love to have opposing shows that disect the bullshit; A Myth Busters on steroids that isn't shy about taking on religiosity. Don't know if anyone has noticed, but on Ghost Hunters, the black haired guy is always there when shit moves. He needs to be pulled just to see if such events can be documented without him around. The UFO and Ghost stuff using EM meters that pick up cell phones - ...well all the techniqes should be exposed for the limitations, and the flaws in drawing conclusions.
Sid Roth really needs some serious debunking.
I'm rambling.. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2008 : 12:38:36 [Permalink]
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Zeked, critical thinking and intellectualism have been under attack in this country since the great depression. This crap is nothing new, but it is a battle that must be fought.
We'll probably never win, but at least we can try to keep the other side from winning. I'll settle for a draw, even though I'd like to see superstition and this other pernicious nonsense be laughed at by the large majority....
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2008 : 12:44:00 [Permalink]
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Yeh, that one's been trashed a lot over the last, couple of decades. But really, don't look for a single believer to doubt that it's any substance other than the the blood of some defunct saint (in many cases, a blessing in and of itself). Indeed, you could grab one of the faithful at random, steal the vial take it & him/her to a laboratory, and walk the turkey through an anyalsis of it. And in the end, getting no more than your subject praising the saints that they are so clever as to break down the blood in such a way.
I only do this stuff for the fun of it because I understand that. I doubt if I will ever convince anyone of anything, especally the "spiritually directed."
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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leoofno
Skeptic Friend
USA
346 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2008 : 14:00:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the_ignored
You know, I'm reminded of Dude's post. Debunking something or at least showing how it could be faked doesn't seem to deter the true believers at all. Naples blood debunked.
The Marchese said: "The trouble with scientists is that when they cannot find an explanation they invent one. They simply cannot accept that some things are beyond human understanding."
Marisa Laurito, an actress from Naples, said that Professor Hack "should leave the miracle of San Gennaro well alone. It doesn't do any harm, and prayers to the saint do a lot of good".
She added: "It is hard for outsiders to understand, but he is the very soul of Naples; our symbol."
Rosa Russo Jervolino, the Mayor of Naples, who has led the fight to rid the city of its high crime rate and encourage tourism, said that yesterday's successful liquefaction was "a sign that San Gennaro is still protecting our city, a strong sign of hope and an encouragement for everyone to work for the common good". |
Damn, talk about building your houses on sand.
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Come on, now. Its hardly debunked. Simply showing that it COULD be something other than miraculous blood in no way debunks that it IS miraculous blood. Now, I don't think for a second that the stuff is blood, but it seems to me that to properly debunk it you would have to do some sort of tests on it, either directly or indirectly, and show how those results are inconsistent with blood. Until you do that you are opening yourself up to the charge of making stuff up, as exhibited in the article. "Just so" stories are valid when someone asks "Well, how else could you explain it?", but it doesn't look like that was the context here. |
"If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention." Eric Alterman
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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2008 : 15:34:04 [Permalink]
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There is no chance that the church will let anyone other than them handle the sample. Therefore "showing how it could be faked" is the best that anyone can hope for in such a case. One would hope that doing that would force the church to allow outsiders to test the actual blood sample in order to dispel the "just-so" story and confirm the "miracle".
The fact that they won't should, in an ideal world, raise a flag among the faithful. That, sadly, won't happen, given that people seem so happy to be taken in. That's the kind of attitude that con artists love.
All skeptics can do is keep up the pressure in that kind of a case.
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>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
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leoofno
Skeptic Friend
USA
346 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2008 : 04:37:39 [Permalink]
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They have cleverly claimed to have had it tested, and it showed traces of hempglobin. So no "raised flags amoung the faithful" who would never consider that the Church would be dishonest. And so it continues.
I would love to see the who, what, when, where and how of those tests. We already know the why. |
"If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention." Eric Alterman
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/26/2008 : 05:38:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by leoofno
They have cleverly claimed to have had it tested, and it showed traces of hempglobin. So no "raised flags amoung the faithful" who would never consider that the Church would be dishonest. And so it continues.
I would love to see the who, what, when, where and how of those tests. We already know the why.
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Not entirely a lie just almost...
Hemoglobin, or "haemoglobin," if you prefer, contains iron, thus the "hemo" (or "haemo") in the name. So all these pious feather-merchants have to do is find any trace of any ferrous metal in the glop to have their magickal claim supported, sort of. Clever, in a carney midway manner and, like carneys, they attract the suckers with shining lights, spinning wheels, and a good gift of gab. Hemoglobin (also spelled haemoglobin and abbreviated Hb or Hgb) is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of vertebrates. .[1]
In mammals, the protein makes up about 97% of the red cell's dry content, and around 35% of the total content (including water). Hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs or gills to the rest of the body, such as to the muscles, where it releases the oxygen for cell use. It also has a variety of other roles of gas transport and effect-modulation which vary from species to species, and are quite diverse in some invertebrates. |
Organized religions, and even the disorganized kind, are very good at this sort of flummery. I find it vastly amusing when the statue of some chippy or other starts to weep tears of pure olive oil (extra virgin, of course).
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2008 : 09:51:12 [Permalink]
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If it really was blood there would be more than 'traces' of haemoglobin.
Blood is mostly haemoglobin.
Not to mention that the substance is red in colour; hence the 'miracle'. But if it was some kind of blood that only contained 'traces of haemoglobin'; hence imperfectly purified serum; it would be clear; yellowish and not red.
So; there must be something else that give it its red colouration. My bet would on ferric particle.
So; not only does the substance; by their own admission; only contain traces of the blood's most characteristic molecules, it also contain large amount of another molecules that is not present in the blood.
In other word... It's not blood by any stretch of the definition! |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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leoofno
Skeptic Friend
USA
346 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2008 : 10:57:50 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
If it really was blood there would be more than 'traces' of haemoglobin.
Blood is mostly haemoglobin.
Not to mention that the substance is red in colour; hence the 'miracle'. But if it was some kind of blood that only contained 'traces of haemoglobin'; hence imperfectly purified serum; it would be clear; yellowish and not red.
So; there must be something else that give it its red colouration. My bet would on ferric particle.
So; not only does the substance; by their own admission; only contain traces of the blood's most characteristic molecules, it also contain large amount of another molecules that is not present in the blood.
In other word... It's not blood by any stretch of the definition!
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I misquoted the article. I'm afraid. It did not say they found "traces of hemoglobin". Instead it said "that the Church had conducted tests on the phial in the 1980s which showed that its contents included haemoglobin, the key pigment in blood corpuscles." I think I was a bit loose in describing that part of the article because it did not relate to the point I was trying to make.
Edited to remove a sentence that was not necessary. |
"If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention." Eric Alterman
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| Edited by - leoofno on 09/26/2008 11:00:58 |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2008 : 14:22:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Zeked
Never heard that bullshit story before. I sometimes find myself lacking restraint and express my anger towards these scams. I now feel like critical thinking is under such an incredible attack, the likes of which are unprecedented.
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Zeked, go read Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. He described this wretched imposture back in 1869- and couldn't help noticing that the amount of time it took the Holy Bloodclot to melt was in proportion to how crowded the church was and how long it took the priests with the collection plates to make the circuit. |
"The Republican agenda is to turn the United States into a third-world shithole." -P.Z.Myers |
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Blood miracle debunked - for all the good it did
