On the Virgin of Guadalupe

This one’s short. In Mexico, there 's a very famous painting called “The Virgin of Guadalupe”. At first it was thought that it was made from natural pigments but some studies have suggested that its materials aren’t. What do you think about the supposed “miracle” of the painting? I’d love to know ypur opinion. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

You undercut your assumption in the formation of your question. “Some studies suggest!” End of discussion.

First of all you are you talking about The Tilma of the Lady of Guadalupe? a simple cloak or outer garment. And not a painting. The tilma is said to be over 500 years old and has never faded. Additionally, the image appears to have been miraculously imprinted on the tilma, as there is no evidence of any pigments or brushstrokes that would have been used to create it.

The ignorant superstitious believers think that the image was created through a supernatural event. Others suggest that it may have been the result of a unique combination of natural factors. Like every other artifact ever found on planet Earth, it was most likely fashioned by humans, and then fantasized to have magical properties.

Madonna of Guadalupe ‘fake’

Rory Carroll in Rome

@rorycarroll72

Tue 21 Dec 1999 01.58 GMT

The Vatican was thrown on to the defensive yesterday after the Virgin of Guadalupe, one of the Roman Catholic church’s most powerful icons, was accused of being a con.

The attack came not from secular scholars, but the very clerics who for decades watched over the Guadalupe shrine, which draws millions of pilgrims each year.

In a letter leaked to the press, the former abbot of the basilica in Mexico City, Guillermo Schulenburg, warned Pope John Paul II not to canonize Juan Diego, a native American whose vision of the Virgin 500 years ago was decisive in converting Latin America to Christianity.

In the face of centuries of devotion, ecclesiastical research, and plans to make him a saint next year, Mr Schulenburg said that Diego had never existed except as a tool to convert Native Americans.

He warned that there was insufficient evidence that the vision of a dark Madonna - adopted as Mexico’s patron saint - appeared on Diego’s cloak in Mexico City in 1531.

Supporters of Diego’s canonisation said the attack was a ludicrous and wilful attempt to deny what was a real event.

“I have spoken with many historians. I examined dozens and dozens of documents in the Vatican, in Spain, in Mexico… to contest the existence of Juan Diego is absurd,” said Fidel Gonzales, of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints.

The Pope has visited the shrine, and in 1990 beatified Diego, the first step to making him a saint. Reports that he would complete the canonisation next year prompted the letter from Mr Schulenburg, 83, and two other Mexican prelates, Carlos Wanholtz and Esteban Martinez.

Margaret Hebblethwaite, a theologist and expert on the Vatican and Latin America, sided with the prelates. “I think that they are almost certainly right, historically. Making Diego a saint is just storing up trouble for the future.”

Diego’s dark skin and humble origins coupled with the Virgin’s image on his cloak was a gift for missionaries. It gave them the blend of Christian and indigenous religious symbolism they needed to convert Latin America.

Mr Schulenburg, who guarded the shrine for 33 years, claimed three years ago that the miracle was symbolic rather than literal.

YOU KNOW: When all the Churches of the world get together and make a final decision on what is real, what is not real, what is from God, what is not from God, what is moral, what is not moral, and everyone is in agreement, get back to me.

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Hi Gale, welcome to AR, you will need to offer citations that support the conclusions, otherwise this is unevidenced hearsay.

I think it is a claim, parenthetically miracles are by definition irrational, as the definition involves an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

“Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”), is a fallacy in informal logic.”

[CITATION](Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia

So prima facie I’d regard miracles as unfalsifiable concepts, and I must remain agnostic about all unfalsifiable concepts, and withhold belief. Though I will of course keep an open mind, and subject any “evidence” presented to due diligence.

All claims will need to be supported by sufficient objective evidence, and rational arguments. So if it’s a claim for a miracle, be warned they usually involve subjective conclusions based on argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies and argumentum a d populum fallacies, and so are also irrational.

Lastly this claim at least prima facie seems falsifiable, so I am left wondering why it hasn’t been submitted for independent scientific analysis?

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I am quite wondering the same.

Something capable of independent analysis that’s still withheld from analysis deserves nothing but withheld judgment, IMHO.

I admit that the Basilica may have been too busy for the last 500 years or so to submit the miraculous item to scientific testing.

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:rofl: Kudos, made me larf there fair play…Too busy selling dodgy relics, and falsifying miracles, and now they want to “fast track” the whole process of beatification to canonise more saints. Bless em, it’s another of their centuries old money making scams, how does anyone not see this?

Scientist says Mexico’s Virgin image isn’t miraculous

It’s just not hard to find this stuff.

But recent studies of the image are feeding centuries-old uncertainty over its origin, says Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes, 61, who in 1999 was part of a team that evaluated the cloth.

“The cloak of Our Lady of Guadalupe is not one painting but three paintings, and one is signed and dated. So this is not a miraculous image; it was created by man,” Garza-Valdes was quoted as saying in Sunday’s editions of the San Antonio Express-News.

Garza-Valdes, a pediatrician and microbiologist, said photographs taken of the image in the basilica vault in February 1999, using various filters that allow the passage of ultraviolet and infrared light, revealed three paintings, each painted over another.

In the earliest painting, Garza-Valdes says, the female figure was quite different and one can see the shadowy presence of a naked baby Jesus, reclining in the Virgin’s left arm.

Garza-Valdes also says microscopic examination of the canvas fibers reveal it to be made of hemp, typical of 17th-century paintings, and not of the Mexican agave cactus.

This conclusion corresponds with those of a church-commissioned study done at the behest of Monsignor Guillermo Schulenberg, the longtime abbot of the Virgin’s basilica in 1982 and only recently made public in Proceso.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP

https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/Scientist-says-Mexico-s-Virgin-image-isn-t-8757544.php

I don’t need to look any further into this bullshit.

2 Corrinthians 11:14

Please explain the relevance of the quote

So you believe in Paul’s version of Satan? Can you elucidate?

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