Seeing Is Not Believing ?

Dear friends:

Seeing is believing, right?  Think again! Don't we see Sun rise, Sun set, everyday? Do we believe the Sun rises in the east everyday? No more, why? (Since Copernicus' discovery of Sun centered solar system, we no longer believe what we see about sunrises, sunsets.)

Can our eyes fool us? You bet! All the optical illusions, stunt magic shows can easily fool us. When we are driving, if we believe what we see, every road disappears at the far end, right? That shows simple limitation of our eyesight. But our brains adjust the perspectives and common sense make us bravely drive further ahead knowing that is continuity of the road. We do believe the road ahead continues though our eyes seem to tell us otherwise, right? That is a very basic faith (seeing is not believing or believing contrary to what we see with our eyes.) we exercise all the time when we drive, right?

Let me recall my first experience of driving through the most crookedest street in SF( or in the world? Owing to the protests of the residents along the Lombard street, ( see the above picture ) non-residents are no longer allowed to drive through that crookedest section on weekends since June 2014.)

That was more than 35 yrs ago when I was still quite young.  One day my cousins and their families from LA visited us. My husband had to work that day, so I had the responsibilities to drive them around for sightseeing in Bay Area. Guess what? They wanted to visit the most crooked street in SF--that is Lombard St. At first, I wanted to let my cousin-in-law drive our full sized Ford station wagon but he, being a quite new driver, shrank from doing so. So the duty fell on my shoulder though I hadn't driven through that section myself up to that time. I gathered all my courage to drive there. It was scary, because the street looked so narrow to me as if I would bump into the curves anytime. However, when I drove into it, to my great relief, it was still wide enough for the full sized wagon to winding around. After we went through the most crooked street, I parked the station wagon down the slope in an area with slanting parallel parking spaces. So we took pictures there for my historical virgin drive. Then I encountered the problem; because of the extreme long hood of the 8 cylinder station wagon, I couldn't see the street under my car when I sat at the driver seat. So I had to drive with faith--believing that down there is a street under my station wagon for me to drive down the sharp hilly slope. Nevertheless, this faith is not a blind faith, because I did check the street down there before entering my station wagon.Likewise, a person shouldn't leap into a dark swimming pool without first checking if the pool has filled with water. Our faith shouldn't be blind and out of checking of reality. Agree?

I'd like to share this link and some of its content with you below for you to think further.

What If You Can't Be Reasonable Without Faith?

...For example, your senses may tell you that the Sun circles the Earth. If we look up, we watch it; we can see it with our eyes. Isn't that enough proof? No, it isn't. Isn't that empirical evidence? Yes, but just a bit of empirical evidence alone may lead you astray. Just because we see something with our eyes it is not necessarily the end of the matter. How do we know that our eyes are not telling us the truth? We have to find new facts and we then use our reason to compare different sets of data.

When Copernicus offered his model of the solar system where the earth circles the sun, part of the driving nature to his belief is that the Creator of the world would prefer simpler and more beautifully designed way to arrange the planets' motion:

For Copernicus as for many ancient philosophers the sky is the visible God; therefore the study of the movement of the celestial bodies is the most excellent way to the invisible God. The Creator is the great architect of all things; in the cognition of the mathematically simple structure of the universe man will become united with Him. It is suggested that these theological ideas gave Copernicus the pertinacity to work out his heliocentric system despite the misgivings of contemporary Aristotelian physicists.2

Copernicus, then, sought to explain the universe that was as satisfying to his faith as it was to his eye. He dedicated the book containing his findings to Pope Paul III and said:

I am not so much in love with my conclusions as not to weigh what others will think about them, and although I know that the meditations of a philosopher are far removed from the judgment of the laity, because his endeavor is to seek out the truth in all things, so far as this is permitted by God to the human reason, I still believe that one must avoid theories altogether foreign to orthodoxy.3

There was no way to deduce Copernicus' view using sense data alone. Copernicus showed mathematically why his model made more sense, and part of the attractiveness of his model was its simplicity and beauty. But Copernicus says that he wished to remain orthodox in his understanding of the world and it was his use of reason as given by God that led him to his view of a sun-centered solar system. Metaphysical faith helped propel the Copernican model forward.

When one seeks to be reasonable, it means that he must weigh all the information at his disposal. That may include considering ideas that are not based in empirical observation alone, but ones that have a basis outside of nature. If God's existence makes more sense out of things like the emergence of life from nonlife, the emergence of consciousness and the orderly nature of the universe, then, barring actual evidence to the contrary, it would be unreasonable for us to believe there is no God.

Popes Who Don't Believe Mary Is Sinless

(Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. ) Here is a typical prayer to Mary under the picture in the right!

Dear friends:

Have you ever dug into history and found out the evolution of Mary who became sinless officially in 1854 AD. Then in 1950 AD Pius the 12^th said, “Mary the immaculate perpetual virgin mother of God after the completion of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.”

So her elevation into Goddess has been completed in 1950 AD.

Do you realize there were 7 popes who rejected her sinlessness before 1547 AD.(at the council of Trent that the Catholic Church announced the sinlessness of Mary; the immaculate conception was first presented in the year 1140 AD ) So the elevation of man made goddess and her bodily assumption to heaven are both late developments even in Catholic's church history.

This promotion of Mary is very non-biblical indeed. Are you surprised? (Don't get me wrong, I do respect her a lot as a model of a very faithful and blessed woman, yet she can't never be equal to Trinity God. the so called "Mother" of God. )

If interested, you may also click the link below to "Let Us Reason" website for more information.

Mary's Sinlessness

At the end of the essay of above link,

...The POPES

Philip Schaff lists seven Roman bishops who rejected her sinlessness (The Creeds of Christendom [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998], Vol. I, p. 123).  

Pope Leo 1 (440 a.d.) “The Lord Jesus Christ alone among the sons of men was born immaculate”(sermon 24 in Nativ. Dom.).

“And therefore in the general ruin of the entire human race there was but one remedy in the secret of the Divine plan which could succour the fallen, and that was that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by His example and His merits. Still further, because this was not permitted by natural generation, and because there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed, of which the Scripture saith, '’Who can make a clean thing conceived of an unclean seed? is it not Thou who art alone?’” (Sermon 28:3) The unclean seed includes Mary. The one being from Adam who is sinless is Jesus - Pope Gelasius (492 a.d.) 

“ It belongs alone to the immaculate lamb to have no sin at all.” (Gellasii papae dicta, vol. 4, col 1241, Paris, 1671)

Pope innocent the third (1216 a.d.) “She (Eve) was produced without sin, but she brought forth in sin, she (Mary) was produced in sin, but she brought forth without sin.” ( De festo Assump., sermon 2) When the immaculate conception was first presented in the year 1140 it was opposed by Bernard of Clairvaux also Thomas Aquinas adamantly taught Mary was a sinner. This is something the Catholics need to deal with.

In fact this whole doctrine is fairly new not an apostolic tradition. It was in 1547, at the council of Trent that the Catholic Church announced the sinlessness of Mary enabling her to avoid venial sins. In 1620 Pope Paul the 5^th forbade anything contrary to the teaching of Mary's immaculate conception to be said publicly under threat of excommunication. In 1622 Pope Gregory the 15^th forbade any contradictory statements of her immaculate conception to be made in private. And so began the official elevation of this servant woman the mother of the humanity of the Lord. Until  Pope Pius IX in 1854 “Let all the children of the Catholic Church ... Proceed to worship, invoke, and pray to the most blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God, conceived without original sin"), but that the reason she never sinned at any time during her life was because she was unable to sin.” Then in 1950 Pius the 12^th said, “Mary the immaculate perpetual virgin mother of God after the completion of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.”

For discussions about some Mary Apparitions, please click the following link.

http://www.christian-witness.org/archives/cetf2004/mary_mary30.html

THE MAGIC OF MEDJUGORJE

OF all Marian shrines none is more contentious than Medjugorje

Conclusion:

...The authentic picture of Mary revealed in Scripture is the very antithesis of the elevated presumptuous version worshiped by Rome and those who are gradually being drawn into her corrupt web. The biblical Mary is demonstrably a background figure, a humble quiet Jewish servant of God and genuine follower of Christ. The great tragedy is that one billion Catholics who cling to the exalted Vatican version without biblical discerns...