Miracle?

[Makawe]

Hello,

 

I stumbled upon this scientific article about a eucharistic miracle and I got a little concerned.

 

https://www.gavinpublishers.com/article/view/reality-or-fiction-of-the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ--in-the-holy-eucharist

 

They found lots of fungi etc, and in a way they don't claim that it was a miracle, but they still mention that they found epithelial cells, and apparently columnar epithelial cells (they mention the nuclei is basal), which are found in the stomach and intestines. They took the samples on their own (it was not something sent to them to examine) in the church. And I got worried... How did this cell get their? How did it survive? It's supposed to die fairly rapidly out of the body, plus it was in water, so it would have burst open very quickly.

 

They put a picture of the cell (in the article), but the quality is far from ideal.

 

They seem to be honest in their report, because they clearly say that they saw fungi and bacterias, and they dismiss this event as a miracle though they mention "the presence of epithelial cells should not be neglected", meaning they maybe still mildly believe in the miracle possibility. They seem to be Catholics from the way the article is redacted. I checked their names and they are real people working as pathologist.

 

I don't think they are lying, otherwise they would have claimed something like "a heart beating in front of us!"  , and not "lots of fungi, bacterias that caused the red substance, and the presence of a few mammal cells". 

 

Can anyone have a look and tell me their thoughts? I know it sounds like a very silly miracle, but I keep scratching my head and wonder how this cell got their, and more importantly how it survived. Because to me it seems to be breaking the laws of natural order (that it survived in water)... Thank you!

[Astreja]

First and foremost, Gavin Publishers is not considered to be a reputable publisher of peer-reviewed biological journals. A more credible journal would be something like Cell or Journal of Molecular Biology.

 

Secondly, epithelial cells are very,very common inside the human body. The stomach is literally lined with epithelial cells.

 

This is absolutely not a miracle, not by any stretch of the imagination, and any biological professional who would publish nonsense like this should be fired.

[Makawe]

15 minutes ago, Astreja said:

First and foremost, Gavin Publishers is not considered to be a reputable publisher of peer-reviewed biological journals. A more credible journal would be something like Cell or Journal of Molecular Biology.

 

Secondly, epithelial cells are very,very common inside the human body. The stomach is literally lined with epithelial cells.

 

This is absolutely not a miracle, not by any stretch of the imagination, and any biological professional who would publish nonsense like this should be fired.

Thank you for your answer.

 

I know they are very common cells in the body, though the columnar epithelial cells are inside the body, so harder to drop by simple contamination. If it had been keratinocytes I would have said "contamination for sure", but it's harder with columnar epithelial cells. Plus, they should not have survived once fallen on the host, and in the picture we still see that they have their nucleus (if these actually are epithelial cells, because the picture is of very bad quality). Do you work in that field? Did you look at the picture? If you do, please let me know if you think these are really epithelial cells.

 

Thank you again.

[pantheory]

8 hours ago, Makawe said:

Hello,

 

I stumbled upon this scientific article about a eucharistic miracle and I got a little concerned.

 

https://www.gavinpublishers.com/article/view/reality-or-fiction-of-the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ--in-the-holy-eucharist

 

They found lots of fungi etc, and in a way they don't claim that it was a miracle, but they still mention that they found epithelial cells, and apparently columnar epithelial cells (they mention the nuclei is basal), which are found in the stomach and intestines. They took the samples on their own (it was not something sent to them to examine) in the church. And I got worried... How did this cell get their? How did it survive? It's supposed to die fairly rapidly out of the body, plus it was in water, so it would have burst open very quickly.

 

They put a picture of the cell (in the article), but the quality is far from ideal.

 

They seem to be honest in their report, because they clearly say that they saw fungi and bacterias, and they dismiss this event as a miracle though they mention "the presence of epithelial cells should not be neglected", meaning they maybe still mildly believe in the miracle possibility. They seem to be Catholics from the way the article is redacted. I checked their names and they are real people working as pathologist.

 

I don't think they are lying, otherwise they would have claimed something like "a heart beating in front of us!"  , and not "lots of fungi, bacterias that caused the red substance, and the presence of a few mammal cells". 

 

Can anyone have a look and tell me their thoughts? I know it sounds like a very silly miracle, but I keep scratching my head and wonder how this cell got their, and more importantly how it survived. Because to me it seems to be breaking the laws of natural order (that it survived in water)... Thank you!

 

One should Know that approx. half the scientists and doctors of the world are spriitual or religious, and a certain percentage of them believe in the possibilities of modern-day miracles via Godly intervention. From my experience and studies, a high percentage of such people are MD's. There may be something positive happening regarding these treatments but you can bet your booty that the belief in the miracle-implications of it are based solely upon the vivid imaginations of hopeful God believers,  nothing more than this IMHO,

[◊ Weezer ◊]

If you believe in miracles, anything is possible.   

[Astreja]

12 hours ago, Makawe said:

Thank you for your answer.

 

I know they are very common cells in the body, though the columnar epithelial cells are inside the body, so harder to drop by simple contamination. If it had been keratinocytes I would have said "contamination for sure", but it's harder with columnar epithelial cells. Plus, they should not have survived once fallen on the host, and in the picture we still see that they have their nucleus (if these actually are epithelial cells, because the picture is of very bad quality). Do you work in that field? Did you look at the picture? If you do, please let me know if you think these are really epithelial cells.

 

Thank you again.

 

I am a retired medical professional and I have an above-average knowledge of biology and anatomy.

 

I believe that there is a high probability of the host being contaminated , and an even higher probability that people who promote the doctrine of transubstantiation would deliberately do bad science (or commit actual fraud) in order to prop up their ridiculous doctrine.

 

To make a long story short, I have never believed that transubstantiation is even possible.  In my eyes, there is no miracle and there could never be such a miracle, because it's arrant nonsense.  I believe that there is 0% Jesus in the Jesus cracker.

[Makawe]

37 minutes ago, Astreja said:

 

I am a retired medical professional and I have an above-average knowledge of biology and anatomy.

 

I believe that there is a high probability of the host being contaminated , and an even higher probability that people who promote the doctrine of transubstantiation would deliberately do bad science (or commit actual fraud) in order to prop up their ridiculous doctrine.

 

To make a long story short, I have never believed that transubstantiation is even possible.  In my eyes, there is no miracle and there could never be such a miracle, because it's arrant nonsense.  I believe that there is 0% Jesus in the Jesus cracker.

 

Hello Astreja,

 

 

I hope that's ok with you, but I just have a lot of questions, because this thing really disturbs me.

 

First, you said contamination, which I agree is a possibility, but columnar epithelial cells are inside the body, how could they be dropped accidentally on the host? Secondly, how could they still have their nuclei, meaning still being alive, when they are supposed to die in a matter of hours once outside of the body? That means that the contamination needs to have happened right before the scientists came to collect the samples?...

 

Secondly, did you look at the picture of the cells? Do they look like columnar epithelial cells to you? Do they look healthy? Because I checked columnar epithelial cells, and on the picture there seems to be huge gaps between the nucleus in some places, whereas a healthy epithelium have all the nucleus next to one another. Does that mean that the cells in the sample are dying?

 

 

 

My concern is that they are not lying because they did admit that the host was full of fungi and bacteria, but there was just those epithelial cells that make the author says : "maybe we have a miraculous host too". I think that liars would have been more like the scientists of the sokolka eucharistic miracle, who claimed it was heart tissue, still living, attached to the host inexplicably, but showed no pictures, and we only have their word for it. This case really smells lies to me. But the article I sent you, I have difficulties believing that they are lying. Plus all the eucharistic miracles have seen are about heart tissue, so epithelial cells look like a weird choice of fraud to me...

 

 

 

And last question (I'm so sorry for all the questions), the author says they went themselves to collect the samples in the church, where it was in a bowl of water... Even if the sample had been contaminated, how could the cells not have burst in the water?

 

 

 

Thank you so much for your answer.

[Astreja]

15 minutes ago, Makawe said:

 

Hello Astreja,

 

 

I hope that's ok with you, but I just have a lot of questions, because this thing really disturbs me.

 

Sorry, but I'm not going to delve into this any further.  The whole concept of a "eucharistic miracle" is utterly ridiculous and the paper falls fall short of my minimum standard for scientific evidence.  It's unwise to draw conclusions from experiments unless there are multiple samples that can be re-tested in different laboratories by different people, obtaining similar results.

 

I say again:  In my eyes, there is no miracle and there could never be such a miracle.  I'm a non-believer, and the idea of a cracker turning into human flesh and blood is just plain silly.

[Makawe]

13 minutes ago, Astreja said:

 

Sorry, but I'm not going to delve into this any further.  The whole concept of a "eucharistic miracle" is utterly ridiculous and the paper falls fall short of my minimum standard for scientific evidence.  It's unwise to draw conclusions from experiments unless there are multiple samples that can be re-tested in different laboratories by different people, obtaining similar results.

 

I say again:  In my eyes, there is no miracle and there could never be such a miracle.  I'm a non-believer, and the idea of a cracker turning into human flesh and blood is just plain silly.

 

Oh I'm sorry if I upsetted you, that was not my intent. I am not a believer either, but just had questions. I'm very sorry. 

[Astreja]

You didn't upset me, Makawe.  I'm just puzzled as to why you're asking ex-Christians about Christian miracles.  When someone leaves a viewpoint behind (or in my case, never believed it at all because my nominally Christian parents didn't indoctrinate me), they also leave behind the things that believers find convincing.

 

This is an ongoing phenomenon here - someone comes to Ex-Christian.net and asks us what we think about a particular miracle.  The consensus has always been "We don't believe," so I'm not entirely sure what people are looking for when they ask us such questions.  

 

[pantheory]

16 hours ago, Weezer said:

If you believe in miracles, anything is possible.

Yes, if you believe in miracles anything can be imaged as possible concerning one's mistaken beliefs in a non-tangible invisible world of a non-existent God, gods, angels, with ghosts, demons, devil(s) etc. -- instead of the tangible, observable, evidentiary, and often provable assertions of science and math often resulting in amazing technologies.

 

It's like comparing an approximation of reality (science) to provably wrong stories such as the first and last chapters (referred to as testaments) named Genesis and Revelation, chapters of one of many provably fictional,  inconsistent, contradictory religious collections of stories such as a Bible -- "only believed by the ignorant and naive" like Greek and Roman mythology. Both groups of believers and non-believers, however, can have equal amounts of "nice" people within them performing "valuable and honorable" deeds IMHO.

[Makawe]

4 hours ago, Astreja said:

You didn't upset me, Makawe.  I'm just puzzled as to why you're asking ex-Christians about Christian miracles.  When someone leaves a viewpoint behind (or in my case, never believed it at all because my nominally Christian parents didn't indoctrinate me), they also leave behind the things that believers find convincing.

 

This is an ongoing phenomenon here - someone comes to Ex-Christian.net and asks us what we think about a particular miracle.  The consensus has always been "We don't believe," so I'm not entirely sure what people are looking for when they ask us such questions.  

 

 

I understand your point of view. My goal was to get some help from ex Christians to rationalize this "miracle". I believe people who come to the forum with questions about miracles are probably looking for help in rationalizing them, or debunking them, so that they can feel at peace and move on. Like for me, if an exchristian with more knowledge in biology had told me about this thing "these are not epithelial cells" or "these cells are very obviously dying" that would have helped me see that this is not a miracle, I would have felt relieved and I would have moved on. I really did not mean to anger or frustrate you, and again I am really very sorry.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Let me make another suggestion.  Do you understand what a delusion is?  We normally think delusional people are "mentally ill".  But at times there are seemingly "normal" people who have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy.  And at times it can be in only one area of life.  These people are often seen as "odd" or "eccentric".  They aren't lying.  They for some reason have a very strong need to believe what they they are saying, so their fantasy becomes reality (to them).  

 

People in general tend to believe what they want to beieve. In a sense I believe many christians fit in this catagory.  They do not want to see evidence for anything else.

[Wertbag]

33 minutes ago, Makawe said:

 

I understand your point of view. My goal was to get some help from ex Christians to rationalize this "miracle". I believe people who come to the forum with questions about miracles are probably looking for help in rationalizing them, or debunking them, so that they can feel at peace and move on. Like for me, if an exchristian with more knowledge in biology had told me about this thing "these are not epithelial cells" or "these cells are very obviously dying" that would have helped me see that this is not a miracle, I would have felt relieved and I would have moved on. I really did not mean to anger or frustrate you, and again I am really very sorry.

From what I read the investigators have a strong Catholic bias, and even with that they couldn't get to claiming this was even likely to be a miracle.  The epithelial cells are incredibly common, both internal and external to everyone, and the internal cells are commonly found in contamination due to being in urine, so anyone who doesn't wash their hands will have such cells on them.  The sample was destroyed before further testing could be done and the DNA test they did do failed.

The data they have points to a moldy cracker that a friar handled.  Nothing usual could be found by the bias researchers who really wanted it to be something more.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Let's pretend this thing is actually, completely, 100% true and real.  Is this the best an omnipotent and omniscient god can do?  A couple of epithelial cells amid a clutter of fungus and bacteria?  Really?

[Makawe]

50 minutes ago, Wertbag said:

From what I read the investigators have a strong Catholic bias, and even with that they couldn't get to claiming this was even likely to be a miracle.  The epithelial cells are incredibly common, both internal and external to everyone, and the internal cells are commonly found in contamination due to being in urine, so anyone who doesn't wash their hands will have such cells on them.  The sample was destroyed before further testing could be done and the DNA test they did do failed.

The data they have points to a moldy cracker that a friar handled.  Nothing usual could be found by the bias researchers who really wanted it to be something more.

 

Thank you so much for that answer! That helps a lot.

 

Just one more question, they mention finding epithelial cell streams, can that happen in urine too? 

 

Thank you again, that really helped.

[◊ Krowb ◊]

@Makawe,

 

Epithelial cells in urine are expected and an elevated number is a sign of inflammation.  https://www.google.com/search?q=epithelial+cells+urine&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1102US1103&oq=epithelial+cells+urine&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgBEAAYgAQyBwgCEAAYgAQyBwgDEAAYgAQyBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQg1NjI4ajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8