I recommend browsing through these Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ, when you find the time:
http://www.cynet.com/jesus/prophecy/ntquoted.htm
There are many more Old Testament prophecies He fulfilled as well, in addition to these.
Jews would disagree, else they'd be Christians. Besides, there's numerous issues with such an 'argument'.
First and foremost many of the prophecies are extremely vague and can (and have been!) interpreted many different ways. The second problem harkens to something I've already brought up, that the truth of the NT is questionable. Suppose for a moment the stories of Jesus are written by someone around 50AD, someone who believes what he's been told about Jesus's awesomeness. It would be in his interest to modify accounts in order to fit better with the OT, to improve the amazingness of the claims further. The people who wrote the gospels and the NT in general were specifically trying to convert other people and thus they have a vested interest in making things seem as good as possible. Hence why I brought up the requirement for 3rd party accounts, where the person writing about an event has no vested interest in the event itself.
Think of all the religious conmen in history (and even now) who simply make up claims about a god visiting them, so that people will follow them or give them money. Just look at Mormonism or Scientology! If all you have to justify the bible is the bible then you don't have any justification. Yes, the OT said "X will happen" and the NT says "X happened" but is there any evidence X indeed happened?
Besides, if you want to bring in "The OT is the word of god, he passed on his knowledge to prove the divinity of his son" then you get into the issue of how the bible is
wrong, just flat out wrong, about things like the origins of the universe, the origins and development of life on Earth, the claim of a global flood, cures for various illnesses, the workings of certain biological systems (rabbits don't chew the cud for instance), the shape of the Earth and even the value of pi! So a god can predict/know the future but can't draw a circle?
I have a book of them on my religion shelf.
It doesn't matter whether you have a book on the subject, I have some Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books, doesn't make them true. In LoTR Tolkein invented an entire history of the world and numerous working languages. It hangs together a hell of a lot better than the bible does. In fact you can play the same game I've seen some Christians and Muslims play, where they say "There's science in the bible/quran". Tolkein has the world being created from the "music of the Ainur". String theory, the only known viable quantum gravity model of the universe, describes particles as oscillations on strings, like notes on a violin string. Is that evidence/proof Iluvatar exists? Hardly.
What matters is quantifiable, impartial, concrete evidence. Your arguments boil down to "The bible is true because some people believe it is". That works for all religions and thus works for none.
You know, when Christ appeared to five hundred Christians, after His Resurrection, He wasn't the only one from Heaven to appear to so many people at once.
And yet we only have the bible's word for it. I know you've clearly had it drilled into you so much you think of the bible as valid an historical resource as any other, no matter what it claims, but that isn't the case. You reject stories about Greek gods in The Iliad. Try applying that same scepticism to the bible for a while, because then you'll perhaps realise your replies aren't providing evidence, just assertions and circular reasoning.
His Mother was also assumed into Heaven in the body, according to Catholic Tradition, and she has appeared to many more people since.
'Assumed' being the correct word there. Nowhere,
nowhere, in the bible does it say that. It wasn't even Catholic doctrine for many hundreds of years. At some point a pope just decided, after a lot of praying (or just talking to himself), it was true. No evidence, just plucked out of thin air.
And the whole "She's appeared to people!" thing I've already commented on. You can speak to people who've encountered, so they claim, aliens. Plenty of Muslims have seen Mohammed or Hindus have seen Shiva or Native Americans seen their ancestors. I've heard of one American guy starting up a long dead Egyptian religion because an Egyptian cat goddess appeared to him.
Even putting mental illness and drug usage aside the human brain is a complicated thing and its easy to misinterpret what your senses are telling you, incorrectly recall something, your senses to 'glitch' or you to just have a break from reality. Ever gone 3 or 4 days without sleep? You start hearing voices and seeing shadows move in the corner of your eye, despite there being nothing there. It's just your brain misfiring but some people honestly believe in 'shadow people'.
If visions could be repeatable, demonstrable to other people, impartial 3rd parties, or somehow left evidence which couldn't be explained any other way then visions would count. Since they don't a claim "I saw the virgin Mary!!" is no more believable than "I saw Big foot" or "I saw Vishnu" or "I saw someone from Alabama with a high school diploma!".
An even more dramatic apparition of Mary occurred in Cairo, in the 1960's, at a church called Zeitoun. For at least a year, she appeared almost daily to a rapidly growing crowd. In the end, about a million people had seen her, and the international media had photographed her repeatedly, and President Nasser of Egypt also came and saw her. You can read about this event on this link, and see a few of the photos:
And yet there wasn't a mass conversion to Christianity or Catholicism, Egypt, including the person you just mentioned, remains an Islamic country.
A million people cannot have all been hysterical or hallucinating.
Seriously? You don't think it's possible for millions of people to be hysterical and wrong? Hinduism has some of the largest religious festivals in the world, where tens of millions of people will gather for a particular religious event. You don't believe in their gods, so the frenzy they can work themselves into at some of these events you must think is just hysterical nonsense. Many people not in your particular faith will have experienced visions when in some kind of religious frenzy or mindset.
The event you link to (which doesn't work by the say) sounds pretty underwhelming. It wasn't like a literal apparition of Mary appeared but instead somewhat unexplained lights. People then coloured their interpretation of those events with their religious beliefs. This harkens back to the comments I just made, how people put a spin on their recollection of events or bias it with preconceptions. A similar thing happens to near death experiences. Christians always experience Christian related imagery, Jesus, St Peter, etc, while Hindus see things relating to their religion and likewise for Muslims or other religions. You never get a Buddhist seeing Jesus or a Catholic seeing Joseph Smith. This illustrates how people's preconceptions taint their interpretation of the world, which in the case of near death experiences is their brain shutting down due to lack of oxygen.
Mary definitely, verifiably
It isn't 'verifiable' any more than alien encounters are verifiable. You have extremely low standards of evidence. Actually, you have
no standard of evidence.
Sometimes she appears to hundreds of people, in one case to a million
Your somewhat misrepresenting the incident there. For a while odd optical phenomena were seen in a region of Cairo, which is a long way from unequivocally the Virgin Mary appearing and every single one of the people saying "There is absolutely definitely the Virgin Mary spoken of in the bible!". Some people see Jesus
in the hair of a dog. In regards to
Our Lady of Zeitoun I can't help but notice in the article how the priests just concluded, without evidence, that it
was Mary. And if there were miracles where's the evidence for them? Miracle curs always seem to be "My cancer went away", which sometimes happens to people of all religious faith (including us atheists) and never "My leg grew back".
Why won't god heal amputees?
, but usually to small groups or individuals. Apparitions of Jesus, Mary and other saints are very common in the lives of the canonized Catholic saints.
Yes, funny how those people who utterly immerse themselves in Catholicism end up seeing Catholic imagery everywhere, isn't it? Just like those Muslims who spend decades doing nothing but studying the quran see the hand of Allah everywhere or people obsessed with conspiracies see conspiracies everywhere.
Our brains have evolved to be pattern recognition machines and when you spend all day thinking about certain things you'll start seeing connections to those things all over the place. If I have a day where I spend 10 hours doing algebra (I'm a mathematician by profession) then I can't sleep properly at night because the equations keep running through my head. If I spend all that time playing a particular computer game then that'll be running through my head at night. If I were religious and read the bible was 10 hours then it'd run through my head. It's human nature. It's the same thing as the near death experiences, people see what they've been taught to expect. Hence Catholics seeing catholic imagery doesn't count as evidence because
all religions have such examples.
Another very important apparition of Mary in the 20th century is Our Lady of Fatima. She appeared repeatedly to three very young children, all of whom suffered enormously for their conviction that she truly was appearing to them (they suffered for their testimony through very painful penances they practiced of their own accord, and through persecution by local villagers and public officials, and even persecution by some clergy). Mary also made several prophecies in the presence of the children, about the future, foretelling many events, such as the coming of World War 2, the rise of Communist Russia, the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, and several other important events of the 20th century. She finally proved she was appearing to the children and that her words were true by performing a dramatic miracle in front of 70,000 people, who observed it and were astonished and terrified at the sight. You can read about the events at Fatima through the following link:
http://marypages.com/fatimaEng1.htm
Are you just on autopilot? I already addressed in my previous post how it's possible for people to be utterly convinced that what they are saying is true, even when they are tortured or punished, and still be wrong. There are examples of Islamic children willing to be suicide bombers because they believe the teachings they've received so much. Does that make Islam true? I don't think you'd say 'yes'. By
exactly the same reasoning Catholics really believing Catholicism doesn't count as evidence.
You don't seem to realise you're presenting 'arguments' which
every religion presents. You dismiss these arguments when a jew or muslim or hindu or Native American or whatever says them. I apply the same to you, because from my point of view there's no reason to accept the claims of any one religion over another, they are all based on unjustified "I'm right because I say I'm right and I say I'm right because this book is right, it says so right in it!".
Can you present an argument which cannot be applied for any other religion? Your "These Catholic people believed Catholicism, even when punished" can be converted into "These Islamic people believed Islam, even when punished" with just a find/replace. You need to provide physical, quantifiable evidence there's something more to your claims. Something unique to your beliefs.
Mary confirms the Catholic faith through her messages and encourages the Catholics to persevere, grow in righteousness and turn away from sin.
So how does Mary feel about the systematic, long term covering up of violence, both physical and sexual, perpetrated by members of the Catholic church on tens of thousands of children, male and female? If Mary is in the business of appearing to pass on messages from your god and is all about turning away from sin why didn't any of these appearances lead to the sin being exposed and stopped?
This is just like the "There's science in the bible/quran!" thing. The science is never found because of the bible, it is found by scientists and then some Christian twists an interpretation of a passage to claim the result science has just found through hard work where in the bible all along. Funny how the bible never comes forward with this information first..... In this case all these appearances of Mary never lead to the revelation of information which couldn't have been obtained any other way. Why didn't she uncover this massive amount of paedophilia and abuse? Why was it left to law enforcement to investigate?
I'll continue this in another post, a bit later.
If you're going to do nothing more than provide further circular arguments about "This story says that story is true" then don't bother. You seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of what constitutes evidence. All of your claims are made by other religions too and they have plenty of 'eye witness accounts' and claims of miracles etc. If you believe the claims of the Catholic doctrine then by those same standards of evidence you should believe in every other religion, the claims about alien abduction and the existence of Big-foot, yetis, elves and Santa.
