Stigmata

I like Finti........being forced to study Christianity for all those years seems to have led him down the same path as I...........

the more you study...the more you learn.......the more you learn, the more flaws you see.

anyway...

yeah......I believe in the Stigmata. The human body is a wonderous thing. How does the brain know that cells have been damaged......to feel pain? It recieves those messages sent from those cells via nerves. Ever heard of a one way road? Me neither........it goes both ways.........messages can just as easily be sent from the brain down those nerves to those cells telling them to feel pain, bleed, die, etc. Just your basic psycho-symatic illness...........has nothing to do with mythical figures or super-heros with the wolverine like ability to ressurect.

There is not one thing on this earth that cannot be explained with cold, hard science. Granted, some things are still unexplained as we do not know everything about the Universe and how it works...........once we do, all information is ours. I myself hold hope that somebody one day finishes Einstein's unified theory of everything.........which will open the door. Okay, now I'm rambling...........I'll go now.

Eienstien even said in his latter years that there had to be a grand plan behind everything.

Originally posted by ragesRemorse
Eienstien even said in his latter years that there had to be a grand plan behind everything.

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."

- The obituary of Albert Einstein, New York Times, April 19th 1955.

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."

ragesremorse........I completely agree. I believe there has to be some unknown energy/essence driving our universe.......no facts to back that up, but I do believe it. If one wanted to put a name to this energy/essence and call it god........fine by me (although I don't believe it would have any human traits or charicteristics as are put upon god by religions).........still, this energy/essence driving our universe and multiple universes if applicable is behind our natural world.......which is what science explains. Science is by no means a replacement for a "higher power, driving force, god, etc."........if anything science is just the methods we go about finding out exactly how this "higher power, driving force, god, etc." manages to do so.

Hopsidfjahoiaghfkjbdfakdbfuidfgakljf!

That's me being excited because I just realized why stigmata must either be fake or psychosomatic:

Neither Jesus' hands nor the his feet were pierced by nails. Shhh! I'm not going to tell you more right now, but I'll explain later.

(And no, I'm not saying the Bible is full of fecal matter.)

What I know about Stigmata is that occasionally it's self-inflicted... occasionaly.
That is one cool story Ragesremorse.

P.S. Stigmata was a cool film.

If there was some supreme being behind everything, then why would he need to PLAN for something to happen. If he existed, 'he' could just make it happen without the need to make a plan

I want to know why people believe a supreme being would even care about their lives?

Yeah.......I can create a universe at will, but I'm concerned about you jerking off to that porno last night. to hell with you, I say.

FeceMan is right about Jesus's wounds. The picture of a crucifixtion that most people have in their minds is incorrect: the Romans drove nails through the wrists to support the weight of a person.

Evil Dead makes a good point about "God" watching you masturbate........

exactly.......the hands are far to fragile to support the weight of the human body. Gravity would cause the person's weight to pull the tissue clean from the nail drove through it.

One might notice in the film "Passion of the Christ" that Mel Gibson tried to play both sides. He knows that scientificly it is physically impossible for the human hand to support the weight of the human body......but he also adheres strictly to his faith claiming that the nails were indeed drove through the palms, not the wrists. Everybody else notice that he attempted to solve this problem by using ropes tied around Jesus' elbows fastened to the cross to support his weight?........even though the bible nor any known Christian texts mention this.

Gibson ought to have known that the "hands" in Hebrew extended farther down than what we think of when we hear "hand".

That is true. Even today, the wrists are anatomically part of the hand.

Misunderstandings creep into stories over time, that's for certain.....

from the Catholic dictonary

STIGMATA. Phenomenon in which a person bears all or some of the wounds of Christ in his or her own body, i.e., on the feet, hands, side, and brow. The wounds appear spontaneously, from no external source, and periodically there is a flow of fresh blood. The best known stigmatic was St. Francis of Assisi. During an ecstasy on Mount Alvernia on September 17, 1224, he saw a seraph offer him an image of Jesus crucified and imprint upon him the sacred stigmata. Blood used to flow from these wounds until the time of his death two years later. He tried to conceal the phenomenon but not very successfully. Since that time scholarly research has established some three hundred twenty cases of stigmatization, among them more than sixty persons who have been canonized.

Authentic stigmatization occurs only among people favored with ecstasy and is preceded and attended by keen physical and moral sufferings that thus make the subject conformable to the suffering Christ. The absence of suffering would cast serious doubt on the validity of the stigmata, whose assumed purpose is to symbolize union with Christ crucified and participation in his own martyrdom.

Through centuries of canonical processes, the Church has established certain criteria for determining genuine stigmata. Thus the wounds are localized in the very spots where Christ received the five wounds, which does not occur if the bloody sweat is produced by hysteria or hypnotism. Generally the wounds bleed afresh and the pains recur on the days or during the seasons associated with the Savior's passion, such as Fridays or feast days of Our Lord. The wounds do not become festered and the blood flowing from them is pure, whereas the slightest natural lesion in some other part of the body develops an infection. Moreover, the wounds do not yield to the usual medical treatment and may remain for as long as thirty to forty years. The wounds bleed freely and produce a veritable hemorrhage; and this takes place not only at the beginning but again and again. Also the extent of the hemorrhage is phenomenal; the stigmata lie on the surface, removed from the great blood vessels, yet the blood literally streams from them. Finally true stigmata are not found except in persons who practice the most heroic virtues and possess a special love of the Cross. (Etym. Latin stigma; from Greek, tattoo mark; from stizein, to prick tattoo.)

and yes I believe in it.........

In 1902, a German stigmatic known as "Elizabeth K." was reported to develop stigmata in response to the suggestions of her doctor.

Phenomenon in which a person bears all or some of the wounds of Christ in his or her own body, i.e., on the feet, hands, side, and brow

True. I remember reading an article at uni about how Roman Crucifixions were usually carried out and so forth, and it seems more likely they would have been placed in the wrists.

During an ecstasy on Mount Alvernia on September 17, 1224, he saw a seraph offer him an image of Jesus crucified and imprint upon him the sacred stigmata.

In answer to whoever's question at the very beginning, there are two saints (that I know of, anyway) that are known for being stigmatic. The first was St. Francis of Assisi, but he wasn't necessariy known for being stigmatic. He's the patron saint of the animals. There is a candidate (?) for canonization, Padre Pio de Pietrilcina (definite sp) who is known as the Friar of the Stigmata. He bled profusely from his hands every day for 50 years and wore gloves and bandages to cover the wounds. He suffered from other wounds as well, but I think the most famous were the wounds on his hands. After his death in 1973 (i believe...) his body showed no signs of the wound ever happening.

An interesting theory is that there are at least 12 living stigmatics in the world at any given time; to correspond with the twelve apostles.

As to the question of my beliefs on the matter, I am undecided as of yet. I am somewhat convinced about Padre Pio, but as to the theory described above, I think it's an interesting concept, but I don't know if I would necessarily attest to its validity.

Originally posted by Adam_PoE
Stigmata are bodily marks, sores, or sensations of pain corresponding in location to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus, usually occurring during states of religious ecstasy or hysteria.

Scientists can replicate stigmata in controlled settings and psychologists attribute the phenomena to a psychosomatic disorder.

Yes that is true, infact I just read a lot about it today in a book called the Holographic Universe. Some holes in their hands are quite large. Some holes look like they have short dark hard nails in them, but it's really dead, hard skin. The blood on the feet always seems to drip down, like the picture of Jesus on the cross, even if they are in a different position going against gravity. On many people, the wounds close up and heal right away. There was also a man who had been pierced with a sword type thing in his side like Jesus, but it didn't harm him and he didn't bleed. He was used for a scientific study because of this.