Every day I see promises of great things in science, from breakthroughs in efficient hydrogen fuel to fusion reactors to proofs of particle entanglement to witness of faster-than-light travel. As far as I know, none of these experiments has led to great practical use, while some – entanglement and greater-than-light travel, have yet to really be understood. Still, I stand in amazement and awe – what brainiacs we have among us! What possibilities await! Through such things it is confirmed that our understanding of the universe is on the brink of expanding to incredible heights, with the possibility of bringing to us unknown wonder and glory.
We could react otherwise; we could simply say, ‘well, these things are the exceptions to the rule and have nothing to do with our lived reality and never will. They are only products of expensive research being done by eggheads who have managed to curry some government funding at our expense. Sure, we got atomic bombs and reactors out of such research, but that was different. This stuff is too weird and is a waste of time.’ To be truthful, we don’t really understand these things, but rather accept them through a belief in our scientists. We could easily throw that trust to the wind and say, “I haven’t seen this or understood this, so I don’t believe it.”
Most of us do not react to new possibilities in science thusly. We have been trained, and properly so, to understand that we do not know everything and that the exception to the rule is often the toenail to the body of an expanded understanding of the universe. That is very wise of us. Our scientists are checked by other scientists as well in this endeavor. Would the whole lot of them lie?
Trouble is, we do not always follow the same logic with knowledge gleaned from outside the laboratory. In fact, if exciting new realities are offered to us, even in real time with real, solid material, we often slough them off. Worse, we are often encouraged to do so.
An example of the latter came to us through a three-part documentary on Netflix about reputed miracles within the Catholic sphere of belief. One case revolved around a mediaeval painting very inexpertly done of Christ that purportedly brought healing. Another circled around a disagreement in Spain as to which monastery had the true Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank on the Last Supper. Another concerned the sociological work that was being done by a priest in Brazil that was helping millions of poor in his city. None of these examples gave any convincing signs of miracles. Instead, we were led to believe that reports of miracles were nothing but fables created to give the poor and ignorant the heart to continue with their insignificant lives. In the entire three hours of presentation, only one true miracle, the Shroud of Turin, was mentioned, and that was quickly blown away. The shroud itself is, by tradition, the cloth in which the corpse of Jesus was wrapped after death, meaning that it had to come from the 1st century. On this we were openly told to disbelieve. To paraphrase the narrator, ‘A carbon 14 test was done on a piece of the fabric in 1987 which, unfortunately, proved that the shroud was a 14th century fake.’ As far as the series was concerned, this was an indisputable fact of hard science supported by the producers of an expensive documentary.
In truth, the fabric tested from the shroud was found to be a patch put in place after this portion of it had been burned in the 14th century. Other tests have revealed its probable provenance from an area in the Mideast somewhere around the 1st century. This has been general knowledge for more than 20 years. Why would the documentary lie?
We have looked into the miracle of the shroud in these essays before, so I will not go into detail showing exactly WHY the shroud is considered a miracle. I must briefly mention, however, that the image on the cloth was made much more explicit by a photographic negative of it made in the 19th century, something inexplicable to this day. Additionally, science has concluded at this point that the image was not made by paint but by an explosion of radiation that put the image on the cloth, much like the silhouettes of victims of Hiroshima cast on walls behind them at the instant that they were incinerated. There is so much more. Whether the image is of Jesus or not, the shroud represents a reality that our science cannot understand.
The same can be said for the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, spoken of in these essays only a few short weeks ago. Unlike the Shroud of Turin, there are no arguments about the date and location of when and where the image of Mary was made: it is a full-color picture present to this day on the cactus-fiber cape (tilma) of Juan Diego from 1531 Mexico. Since the earlier writing, I have learned something else about this miracle, which I will present to the reader in abbreviated form:
In 1996, Ron Tesoriero filmed an interview with Dr. Jorge Escalante, “an ophthalmologist and surgeon who had practiced as a specialist for 42 years.” In the interview the doctor stated, “The eyes [of the image of the Virgen on the cape] have all the characteristics of the human eye…Around the pupil are contraction furrows which operate to contract the pupil in front of light. These furrows were only detected by ophthalmologic science in the twentieth century. You can see the vascular supply in the upper eyelid of the right eye…It is a snapshot of an eye, alive, with all its interior parts, like another human person. We are dealing with a human eye. It is not a painting. It is impossible to have been created by man artificially.” (from Reason to Believe by Ron Tesoriero, pg. 165) But it is artificial, an image on a rough and creased cape of cactus fiber now nearly 500 years old. With the above discovery, along with many others, there can be no doubts about the images supernatural origin. Why, then, was it not mentioned in the documentary? Why, then, do so few people outside of Mexico not know of the miraculous nature of the image on the cape?
Let us go back to the discoveries of science. We do not discard anomalies in the material world that have been proven to exist, such as the wave/particle dilemma. We talk with excitement about faster than light travel, or maybe even about the possibility of time travel through black holes. But we already have indisputable supernatural phenomena in our midst, and it barely brings a yawn. The miracle of the Virgen, for instance, should change the skeptic’s whole perspective on the reality of the supernatural and of religious claims. But it doesn’t. What’s up?
Let’s return to the silly documentary. Yes, it is not of great importance and probably has been barely watched, but it is indicative of something going on. In it, we were led to believe at the start that it was an objective look into miracles, but instead we were presented with an attempt to smother the supernatural in a cloak of secular humanism, having sympathy for miracles only because of the possible therapeutic benefits they might have for the great unwashed. Its hiding of the facts of the Shroud of Turin was unacceptable. Why would the makers do this? Why would a mainstream documentary purposefully mislead the public on the reality of the supernatural?
We must also ask why the miracles of the Shroud and the tilma are not known by the greater bulk of world citizens, or at least by the greater bulk of those who study science and physics. Yes, there are no known mathematical formulae to determine or control the supernatural, but its existence is a fact that shines on all of our understandable physics. It is an indisputable part of our realty. Just as the physics of Newton had to be re-written to account for Einstein’s revelations, so, to, does the scientific community have to alter its perspectives on reality in the light of the miraculous. This may never lead to a usable formula (as the sorcerers of old believed themselves to have once had) but the truth of the existence of this dimension should always be in the back of the mind of the experimental researcher. Something else moves our universe. We are not, as the UFO enthusiasts put it, alone. Our world has another great force working on it that we should always consider when contemplating the bigger picture.
While this inclusionary perspective might seem a pipe dream, it actually was the way science was approached until as recently as the 19th century. The greatest minds of the past were the philosophers and theologians, not the mathematics and physics geeks, for it was former who mapped the big picture. What has happened since then? Why has the miraculous element in our reality purposefully been denied? It is not as if, as some say, because it has no practical value in the laboratory. While this might be true for lower-level physics classes, this should not be the case for cutting-edge researchers. It seems clear, then, that the exclusion has been done on purpose, to blind our minds to the existence of the supernatural.
Why this is so is of utmost importance. Why would we, as a culture, want to bury the supernatural? And what does that say about our current world history and our collective destiny in a world united as it never has been?
I leave that question for another time. Right now, however, we are on the cusp of experiencing great changes and surprises. The change is accelerating. It is my hope that we accept the fullest truth that we can know so that the surprises come not from evil, but instead from the good.
Every day I see promises of great things in science, from breakthroughs in efficient hydrogen fuel to fusion reactors to proofs of particle entanglement to witness of faster-than-light travel. As far as I know, none of these experiments has led to great practical use, while some – entanglement and greater-than-light travel, have yet to really be understood. Still, I stand in amazement and awe – what brainiacs we have among us! What possibilities await! Through such things it is confirmed that our understanding of the universe is on the brink of expanding to incredible heights, with the possibility of bringing to us unknown wonder and glory.
We could react otherwise; we could simply say, ‘well, these things are the exceptions to the rule and have nothing to do with our lived reality and never will. They are only products of expensive research being done by eggheads who have managed to curry some government funding at our expense. Sure, we got atomic bombs and reactors out of such research, but that was different. This stuff is too weird and is a waste of time.’ To be truthful, we don’t really understand these things, but rather accept them through a belief in our scientists. We could easily throw that trust to the wind and say, “I haven’t seen this or understood this, so I don’t believe it.”
Most of us do not react to new possibilities in science thusly. We have been trained, and properly so, to understand that we do not know everything and that the exception to the rule is often the toenail to the body of an expanded understanding of the universe. That is very wise of us. Our scientists are checked by other scientists as well in this endeavor. Would the whole lot of them lie?
Trouble is, we do not always follow the same logic with knowledge gleaned from outside the laboratory. In fact, if exciting new realities are offered to us, even in real time with real, solid material, we often slough them off. Worse, we are often encouraged to do so.
An example of the latter came to us through a three-part documentary on Netflix about reputed miracles within the Catholic sphere of belief. One case revolved around a mediaeval painting very inexpertly done of Christ that purportedly brought healing. Another circled around a disagreement in Spain as to which monastery had the true Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank on the Last Supper. Another concerned the sociological work that was being done by a priest in Brazil that was helping millions of poor in his city. None of these examples gave any convincing signs of miracles. Instead, we were led to believe that reports of miracles were nothing but fables created to give the poor and ignorant the heart to continue with their insignificant lives. In the entire three hours of presentation, only one true miracle, the Shroud of Turin, was mentioned, and that was quickly blown away. The shroud itself is, by tradition, the cloth in which the corpse of Jesus was wrapped after death, meaning that it had to come from the 1st century. On this we were openly told to disbelieve. To paraphrase the narrator, ‘A carbon 14 test was done on a piece of the fabric in 1987 which, unfortunately, proved that the shroud was a 14th century fake.’ As far as the series was concerned, this was an indisputable fact of hard science supported by the producers of an expensive documentary.
In truth, the fabric tested from the shroud was found to be a patch put in place after this portion of it had been burned in the 14th century. Other tests have revealed its probable provenance from an area in the Mideast somewhere around the 1st century. This has been general knowledge for more than 20 years. Why would the documentary lie?
We have looked into the miracle of the shroud in these essays before, so I will not go into detail showing exactly WHY the shroud is considered a miracle. I must briefly mention, however, that the image on the cloth was made much more explicit by a photographic negative of it made in the 19th century, something inexplicable to this day. Additionally, science has concluded at this point that the image was not made by paint but by an explosion of radiation that put the image on the cloth, much like the silhouettes of victims of Hiroshima cast on walls behind them at the instant that they were incinerated. There is so much more. Whether the image is of Jesus or not, the shroud represents a reality that our science cannot understand.
The same can be said for the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, spoken of in these essays only a few short weeks ago. Unlike the Shroud of Turin, there are no arguments about the date and location of when and where the image of Mary was made: it is a full-color picture present to this day on the cactus-fiber cape (tilma) of Juan Diego from 1531 Mexico. Since the earlier writing, I have learned something else about this miracle, which I will present to the reader in abbreviated form:
In 1996, Ron Tesoriero filmed an interview with Dr. Jorge Escalante, “an ophthalmologist and surgeon who had practiced as a specialist for 42 years.” In the interview the doctor stated, “The eyes [of the image of the Virgen on the cape] have all the characteristics of the human eye…Around the pupil are contraction furrows which operate to contract the pupil in front of light. These furrows were only detected by ophthalmologic science in the twentieth century. You can see the vascular supply in the upper eyelid of the right eye…It is a snapshot of an eye, alive, with all its interior parts, like another human person. We are dealing with a human eye. It is not a painting. It is impossible to have been created by man artificially.” (from Reason to Believe by Ron Tesoriero, pg. 165) But it is artificial, an image on a rough and creased cape of cactus fiber now nearly 500 years old. With the above discovery, along with many others, there can be no doubts about the images supernatural origin. Why, then, was it not mentioned in the documentary? Why, then, do so few people outside of Mexico not know of the miraculous nature of the image on the cape?
Let us go back to the discoveries of science. We do not discard anomalies in the material world that have been proven to exist, such as the wave/particle dilemma. We talk with excitement about faster than light travel, or maybe even about the possibility of time travel through black holes. But we already have indisputable supernatural phenomena in our midst, and it barely brings a yawn. The miracle of the Virgen, for instance, should change the skeptic’s whole perspective on the reality of the supernatural and of religious claims. But it doesn’t. What’s up?
Let’s return to the silly documentary. Yes, it is not of great importance and probably has been barely watched, but it is indicative of something going on. In it, we were led to believe at the start that it was an objective look into miracles, but instead we were presented with an attempt to smother the supernatural in a cloak of secular humanism, having sympathy for miracles only because of the possible therapeutic benefits they might have for the great unwashed. Its hiding of the facts of the Shroud of Turin was unacceptable. Why would the makers do this? Why would a mainstream documentary purposefully mislead the public on the reality of the supernatural?
We must also ask why the miracles of the Shroud and the tilma are not known by the greater bulk of world citizens, or at least by the greater bulk of those who study science and physics. Yes, there are no known mathematical formulae to determine or control the supernatural, but its existence is a fact that shines on all of our understandable physics. It is an indisputable part of our realty. Just as the physics of Newton had to be re-written to account for Einstein’s revelations, so, to, does the scientific community have to alter its perspectives on reality in the light of the miraculous. This may never lead to a usable formula (as the sorcerers of old believed themselves to have once had) but the truth of the existence of this dimension should always be in the back of the mind of the experimental researcher. Something else moves our universe. We are not, as the UFO enthusiasts put it, alone. Our world has another great force working on it that we should always consider when contemplating the bigger picture.
While this inclusionary perspective might seem a pipe dream, it actually was the way science was approached until as recently as the 19th century. The greatest minds of the past were the philosophers and theologians, not the mathematics and physics geeks, for it was former who mapped the big picture. What has happened since then? Why has the miraculous element in our reality purposefully been denied? It is not as if, as some say, because it has no practical value in the laboratory. While this might be true for lower-level physics classes, this should not be the case for cutting-edge researchers. It seems clear, then, that the exclusion has been done on purpose, to blind our minds to the existence of the supernatural.
Why this is so is of utmost importance. Why would we, as a culture, want to bury the supernatural? And what does that say about our current world history and our collective destiny in a world united as it never has been?
I leave that question for another time. Right now, however, we are on the cusp of experiencing great changes and surprises. The change is accelerating. It is my hope that we accept the fullest truth that we can know so that the surprises come not from evil, but instead from the good.
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