Move over Netflix, We've got a live show in a chart. Imagine this,
a stone cold statue of the Virgin Mary is shedding. What local swear
are genuine tears? Yes, a tearful statue. Even religious icons can't resist
their dramatic meltdown. But Professor Luigi Garcelley, the buzzkill expert, insists these
statues are just thirsty. He says, the holy figurines are like leaky sponges,
absorbing water faster than a dehydrated cactus on a spa day. In a
world where even statues can escape drama, who needs reality TV? Is a
divine intervention or just a plumbing issue? One thing's for sure, This tearful
Virgin Mary is the holy hot spot of the year. Move over Miracles.
There's a new show in town, and it's a bigger cry fest than a
soap opera. The story is brought to you from aol by a million eath
on November fifteenth, twenty twenty three. Scott, I'm sure you took a
look at this issue. What did you think about this Virgin Mary? You're
ready to take a trip? I didn't. I'm not familiar with it.
Why do you add? Oh? No, I'm kidding, of course,
yes, I read it, you know one starting at the beginning, right.
So they have this statue, it's supposedly crying. People are calling it
a miracle, et cetera, et cetera. In the article they said this,
hundreds have flocked to the church to witness the inexplicable miracle take place.
I have a little bit of a beef with that. And this is something
that we hear frequently in religious claims, and that it's inexplicable. Now that's
different. That's different than unexplained. Okay, So there's a difference between something
that we don't know the explanation and we know that it can't have an explanation
or at least can't have an explanation of the things that we know. You
know, despite you know, whatever you know saying something is inexplicable, there's
work to be done there. You have a little bit of homework that you
need to do ahead of time if you're going to talk about that. But
having said that, it's not all that surprising that people, even in the
face of this kind of uncertainty, they don't know what the explanation for this
is. They still want to grasp at it. You know, they need
to grab at something. The unknown is very is a very frightening thing,
and it's very human too. It's super easy to jump to a quick and
easy explanation, because, like we said, thinking does require a little bit
of effort. And so I was curious, and so I took a little
bit of a dive into this on why. I found an article called why
We're so Terrified of the unknown, and this was at BBC dot com.
And you know, they talk a little bit about anxiety and that kind of
thing. But here's here's an important part of that article. It says,
in study after study, the reacher the researchers found that any element of unpredictability
significantly increases people's discomfort. And they would test that by having these experiments where
they hook you up to an electric shock and then for some people, they
said we're going to give you a shock, and then they would shock you,
and then for other people they would say, we're gonna flip a coin
and if it comes up heads, we're going to shock you, and if
it comes up tails, we're not. And what the researchers found is that
participants showed greater stress if there's a fifty percent chance that they might receive a
shock, for example, compared to situations in which there's one hundred percent certainty
they will be electrocuted. Okay, so fifty to fifty shot. People were
more nervous about that, and so it's kind of baked into our into our
system, right into being a human. Part of being a human is being
afraid of the unknown. So at least we can have a grasp on,
you know what, what might motivate people to go down this road cross.
What's your take on this? I found I find that it study interesting,
so thanks for bringing that up. When I read this story, I was
reminded of two aspects. There's always a funny and a sad side. The
funny part. I was reminded of multiple pieces of pop culture that have have
done this right, that this is such a common claim, the statue of
Mary is crying, that it's satirized all over the place. I was reminded
if you haven't seen the show Jerry Girls, I highly recommend it. It's
it's about four girls growing up in the eighties in Ireland and they have an
episode where they're praying to marry to try to pass their exams and the statue
crying. I won't spoil it, but it's not a miracle. It's always
in stunny in Philadelphia. Another great show did it in this episode called The
Gang Exploits a miracle where you know, there's a stain on the wall and
it looks like Mary, and they get people to come and give money and
all of that. And I was also reminded of ten Mention's poem, which
I think is going to your point, the Storm poem, where in which
he says, throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be
not magic, And that goes exactly your point. It's not inexplicable, it's
just not explained yet. So on the funny side, we see these sorts
of shows and this sort of treatment because everybody knows that this is not supernatural.
If it were, there would be scientists there, they would be studying
it, they would be cordoning off the area, and they might even win
a Nobel prize and change all of mankind if this really were a supernatural event.
So I know that all of us don't believe that it's supernatural, and
I strongly suspect that of that majority of religious people even those who might be
going there suspect it's not supernatural. So that's sort of the funny side.
But on the sad side, people continue to exploit alleged miracles for gain.
Just a few months ago on my podcast, I did a series on faith
healing and I started with the story you may remember of the church that claimed
to have prayed over a woman's amputated foot and grew back her toes. Well,
they made a huge claim, it got huge international attention. As soon
as they started getting phone calls. What did they do? They pulled all
of their media off social media and stopped answering questions out of concern for the
woman's privacy, even though they had paraded around the stage. So people,
people will do this sort of thing, either fraudulently or opportunistically. So there's
these funny sides and these sad sides. What are your thoughts, Kelly?
You know it's funny you should say that about fraudulently. I did a deep
dive into weeping statues because that's the kind of guy I am, you know,
I got wow, this is a really cool, weird phenomenon. I
got to check this out some more. And since nineteen fifty three, there
have been twenty highly publicized claims of weeping statues, and surprisingly the United States
has the second largest amount of sightings with five, but with six in Italy.
And like I said, I had to take a deep dive into the
claim see what I could find. Not a single one of the weeping statues
reported in any of those years was actually found to be a true miracle.
One of them was recognized as the Pope as being something. He never actually
called it a miracle, but he recognized the statue's existence. It wasn't easy
to track down, but I found news stories on almost every one of these
twenty statues, and most of them were actually confirmed to be a host.
Many of them were claimed to be weeping blood instead of tears, and every
single one that was weeping blood was shown to be a hoax, though not
all the perpetrators were found. In one instance, for example, the tears
from the Virgin Murray were found to come from a male human who was never
found. In another, the blood was traced by DNA to a custodian that
actually worked in the church and who was alone in the building at night.
So yeah, right, yeah, maybe go there, don't go there,
Most, including the one that was actually recognized by the Pope, were found
to be the blood of animals cows and pigs and chickens, which, interestingly,
all those animals are easily found on a dinner table, so you know,
they're pretty easy to get blood from one of those. And I think
we all heard the rather comical story of the weeping statue of Jesus in India
that turned out, excuse me, turned out to be a leaky toilet above
the statue. So I mean, all I gotta say is watch Dairy Girls.
You know what's really said about that story is that the guy who actually
reported that and figured it out, he was arrested for debunking that statue and
was facing three years in prison. Oh my gosh, he had a fleet
of Finland to avoid going to jail for blasphemy. So that was kind of
a sad end to that. Like I could do a whole episode on that.
Like I said, I did a big, deep div into this because
I thought it was so weird and cool. But you know, I could
sit here and talk all night. I'm gonna go ahead and pass it the
Infidel though before I do, oh, you're on mute. Pulling a Johnny
p. Everybody has to you know, one of these times. If some
next time somebody is on mute, we should all just you know, be
nodding and say, hmm, see how long we keep going before you realize
it. That would make for exciting listening. I guess I was too just
too engrossed and listen to Kelly. I figured I should just stop and pause
and ponder things. But I think that cross Examiner had something really important,
and that is is that there's both sides to it and me as part of
it where you just want to laugh and completely dismiss things because of the sheer
absurdity of it. And what what this points out. You know, God
has time to make statues, we football teams win and find parking spots.
You know, it can show up on toasts and a whole other range of
things, but it can't really do anything significant when we look at that.
You know, the worst part is is I have no doubt that the local
town folk really believe that this is something that's going on. You know,
it sounds like they've had some really rough years. I think the last six
years they've been labeled the most dangerous city in Mexico. I mean, that
kind of thing is going to breed a lot of desperation. And well,
another thing that we touch on here, and here's the part that's not funny
at all, is that religion does have a tendency to take advantage of things
like despair or loss. You know, this is the kind of environment that
it thrives in. You know, isn't it heart You know, we look
at it and say, isn't a heartwarming that God has time to make statues
weak but struggle with the whole ending world. Hunter. You know, these
people are looking for something a little more localized. They're looking at the pain
and the things that they're dealing with right now and and and that's what this
is a representative of, you know. And you know, we could say
it's in the you know, you know, not no mountains being moved,
nothing like that. And it's clearly the witness believe this, you know,
and it goes into their credibility. But they're emotionally invested in this because they
need a change. They they're looking for something to confirm that. But you
know, for me, you know, this is about them and whatever voice
or reason that's within them to listen to it because out of all the things
that God could do, why tears on a statue? Why would a God
seem to be more interested in something that's a parlor trick. That's something that
you know, we could replicate. A God that can do anything chooses to
do almost nothing. I say almost, because well we are talking about you
know, we are talking about tears on a statue, so you know,
even giving that evidence like that, yes, that's pretty bad. But you
know, but a custodian in the church at nine and eleone pretty much good
for nothing. That's all I can say, Scott, I think you had
something that would sum Yeah. I think I can't agree with you more.
I mean two things you said, the parlor tricks parts reminds me of an
old joke. I don't know if anybody I may be aging myself here,
but Father Guido Sarducci, a comedian from the seventies, dressed up as a
Roman Catholic priest. He had a joke that he would tell this is a
short version of it. He would say, you know, to be made
a saint in the Catholic Church, you have to have four documented miracles,
and only two of them can be card tricks, So you know, that's
what we're talking about here, the same thing, this parlor tricks, this
cheapness, making their God seem so small type of thing. But another thing
I wanted to pick up on was the sadness, the desperation that you're talking
about. And I've been on this kick lately of these little things this and
like you said, praying to find my parking spot, and I'm doing an
episode on homeopathy and faith healing, all these little things that if people choose
to believe them, it primes their brain to believe that there's little bit of
evidence of magic throughout the world. And I think that makes you a little
more vulnerable. It it weakens your bullshit detector a little bit just to have
these stories out there. So the headline that this is an inexplicable miracle is
contributing to a real problem. Now, I'm, you know, maybe making
a mountain out of a molehill here, but I do genuinely believe that when
people are inundated with these stories about you know, homeopathy works and the lockness
monster and crying statues, there's a lot of people out there who might be
primed to think, you know, magic is real. Some of this has
got to be true. I don't know where to go with this other than
to say it's again sad and funny, but we do have to watch out
that that people don't take it to heart. So thanks for passing it off
me, Scott. Did you have something to wrap up with? No,
but I think Kelly does. Okay. He tried to give it to Scott
and he's drinking. Yeah, he's not wanting it. I just I was
doing my deep dive and one of the things that I was really surprised about
is that this is a phenomenon that goes way back. It was first reported
in one hundred in the first century a d by Plutarch, and I have
a great quote here from him, if let me pull it up here,
because I thought it was a pretty good one. The statues have appeared to
sweat and shed tears and exude something like drops of blood. It is not
impossible, since wood and stone often contract the mold, which is productive of
moisture, and cover themselves with many colors and received tints from the atmosphere.
And there is nothing in the way of believing that the deity uses these phenomenas,
sometimes as signs importance, and I thought it was funny that here he
found this natural explanation for it and still connected that to a god. So
I thought that was pretty incredible, thousands of years before the Enlightenment and the
formalization of the scientific method. Yep, yeah, so I know that Scott
did do it. You do? Yeah? I did have a followed him
to go last, and so what do you, Scot? I do have
a little bit more to say. I wanted to go last because it's the
spoiler, right, So if you don't want the spoiler, and here's your
chance to change a channel or whatever. So we're talking about all, you
know, people of this unknown thing. We don't have an explanation. We
do we have an explanation. We know what happened with this statue. This
is from the Catholic News Agency. They published a fact check on this.
The father Gerardo Lopez Herrera, communications director for the Diocese of Kalima, which
is where this church was. So the person in charge of that area said
a priest went and examined the statue and determined that no miracle was involved.
They said that image is a representation of the sorrowful Virgin. The artist placed
some silicone tears on it. Okay, it was an piece of artwork intended
to look like a woman crying. The parishioners talk about the eyes are red,
just like when we're really crying. Yeah, they painted the eyes red.
It's the sorrowful Virgin. But there's tears coming. Yeah, they put
tears on there. It's the Sorrowful Virgin piece of art. If you look
at the different if you see different photos of it, you'll notice that the
tear is always in the same spot and in both eyes it's coming down.
There's no tears flowing. They even showed video of it and the tears were
perfectly motionless. And so I don't know, you know, this is like
the worst miracle ever in my book. And that's all I had to say.
Where did this follow up come from? Scott? The follow up was
from Catholicnewsagency dot com. And in the in the show notes, I mean,
how you can't make this up if you did, like even it's always
sunny, didn't think that that would be a believable storyline, right, And
one other one other note, like they're doing these fact checks and Kelly mentioned
all these other stories, how many wasted hundreds and thousands of man hours were
spent just trying to debunk, slash verify all of this, right exactly,
it's crazy people with too much free time and too much disposable income. I
suppose a lot of desperation. Yeah, that's about it people. And why
why to do it? Why do it? Are they really trying to prove
that there's a god or they just trying to pull the wool over everybody's eyes.
Well, because they would rather have the you know, they they rather
have the one hundred percent shock than the fifty to fifty maybe get to shock,
right, So they'd rather it's it's more comfortable to have this than than
to think that there's an unknown. Maybe this, maybe this is we're getting
a little meta here. Maybe the whole idea of these statues is to address
the unknown of the universe. And they can say, well, if we
have these statues, then that shows that we know something about the universe.
I don't know, I'm getting a little off track here, So no,
I think you're right. I think know we know the Catholic Church is nothing
more than a criminal, criminal syndicate. They operate no other way. So
for them to take advantage in a local area of people's gullibility. I have
no problem at all that it was. But they haven't. Though they were
telling people, they were saying no, no, no, ye has actually
been still in almost every one of these cases that I that I looked at
too, it was the Catholic Church that was that was part of debunking these
miracles. So and no means yes to some people, and that quarter they
have to say they can't let go of it. They really can't. That's
strange. I don't, Yeah, it's it's It is pretty strange, the
whole thing. But what's not strange is you can get a lot of really
cool merchandise from A the A C A at tiny dot C C slash a
C A merch