as for whether its real or not. I think the case of St. Bernadette Soubiros still makes a pretty strong argument. the key evidence is that the crucifix and rosary that was burried with her had oxidized when she was exhumed. I dont know if her casket was lead or not. if so that could make evidence for natural mummification. Furthermore their is also the many times when the "odor of sanctity" has been smelled when some of these saints were exhumed. I suppose its possible that some deceitfull believer could have dug up these bodys and sprayed them with a bottle of perfume moments before they were exhumed. but that doesnt seem very likely to me, considering how hard something like that would be to pull off.

Sir Flinders Petrie, a famous archeologist who made some highly exact Pyramid measurements, reports that he once caught a Pyramidologist secretly filing down a projecting stone to make it conform to one of his theories!

Also, why is the Virgin Mary so cagey? Why does she skulk around as if she has something to hide? Why doesn't she come out in the open? And make some special appearances for anti-Catholic bigots like Jack Chick, like:

Jack, Jack, why are you persecuting me?

Explain stigmata then. You guys certainly have a good laugh over incorruptible relics. Have at it.

Gladly. Stigmata are the product of mentally disturbed or deceitful religious believers who intentionally injure themselves.

Odd, but I don't run to your websites discussing your views just to poke at them. In fact, I don't care to even waste my time.

It's unfortunate that you think examining views different than your own is a waste of time. Not all of us share that attitude, however.

It never ceases to amaze me how agnosticism and aetheism, when confronted with evidence, makes a cajoling joke over it. Odd, but I don't run to your websites discussing your views just to poke at them. In fact, I don't care to even waste my time. Perhaps you might ask yourselves why the subject of religion consumes you to the rawest degree.

As for the Church and its own corruption, that was foretold by Our Lady of Fatima to three little children. Had some of you done your homework on the history of the Church, you would have seen that the riches were planned by a vicious group intending to use the Church as nothing more then a cash cow. It was all foretold how evil would infiltrate the Church from within. That doesn't make the primary principle of what the Church stands for bad. It just makes a good excuse for those who CHOOSE not to believe even easier, now doesn't it?

Comment by: OMGF | December 1, 2007, 10:25 pm )

OMGF, Of course converting people is more important when the church gets richer with each new convert! The catholic church is one of the richest organizations in the world and also one of the most wicked. Deception is their stonghold and truth is buried alive. Try to imagine how many hungry people could be fed just with the hundreds of thousands of dollars the vatican has paid out in child rape settlement(cover-up) cases!!!! Something is really wrong with this picture.

The article is about the "Body Farm" in Knoxville, Tennessee, a forensic anthropology research facility where cadavers donated to science are deliberately left to decay in a variety of natural conditions. The process of decomposition is meticulously studied and charted, so that when a body is discovered under other circumstances, criminal investigators have a guide to determining the rough time of death.

The relevance to incorruptibility comes in this excerpt:

...the facility was founded in 1981 by Dr. Bill Bass, a professor of anthropology at the university. Before the Body Farm was established, information on human decay was astonishingly inadequate, leaving criminal investigators poorly equipped for determining abandoned bodies' time of death. On one occasion, Dr. Bass was asked to estimate the post-mortem interval of some human remains, and conventional methods indicated approximately one year given the moist flesh still clinging to the man's bones. When other evidence later revealed that the body had been occupying its coffin since the Civil War, a flummoxed Dr. Bass took it upon himself to finally fill the forensic gap.

How did a body from the American Civil War remain sufficiently intact to be mistaken for a fairly recent death?

...Dr. Bass' underestimated civil War remains... were found to be contaminated with lead from the cast-iron casket. This effectively embalmed the body, making the meat unpalatable to tiny foragers.

Clearly, there's more than one way for a body to remain preserved. In rushing to assume that all post-mortem preservation must be due to divine favor, the apologists for incorruptibility have committed a classic God-of-the-Gaps fallacy.

There is testimony after testimony of people I personally know who have been healed and set-free from all sorts of addictions as God uses men and women who have allowed God to work through them.

I understand that you believe that. But just as an exercise in how others perceive things, can you see that for a non-believer, it seems just as plausible that these people are simply people acting on a belief that motivates them to do good things? After all, people of other religions have been motivated by god beliefs that most people today believe are false. And as a non-believer, the fact that people can do wonderful things for strange reasons is not particularly compelling evidence of anything, nor does it suggest that strange reasons are a good, reliable, or necessary way to encourage people to do good things.

It's also worth noting that many of the incorruptibles shared similar body-types: generally thin and emaciated from fasting or illness and age. They already practically living mummies before they die: with mostly just skin and bones, the bacteria inside their bodies can never really get going fast enough in decaying internal organs to finish by the time the outer skin has dried out and leatherized.

So how do the flaws and utter failures of every institution claiming to have the word of god, whatever religion or pseudo-religion that is, reflect as evidence for the existence of not just a god but your god?

May I second the question that Mrnaglfar asked above? This has yet to be answered. I suspect that the answer will come down to a case of begging the question, so I'd appreciate it if you could answer in such a way that is evidence based. Thank you.