A supernatural hand mark?

suren

Thinker
suren
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Armenia, Yerevan
Hi again. I found this miracle story where a man claimed that God or a Lebanese saint left a hand print mark on his arm. According to some sources he was examined by many doctors and they couldn't explain this burn.

http://www.visionsofjesuschrist.com/weeping361.htm
Raymond returned to our world at around 3:35am. He then, tried to comprehend what has happened. Was it a dream? Or hallucination? He remained in this state of mind until he discovered the mark on his arm: a trace of five fingers imprinted by a strange flame of fire. Raymond immediately notified the Father superior of Annaya monastery, Tomas Mehanna, and the Maronite bishop of Beirut Abi Nader, who knew him since his childhood. They both asked Raymond to consult credible physician specialists and obtain from each a medical report that explains the cause of the mark. All reports stated that the cause couldn’t be established, and that the mark looks like a third degree burn without any pain or inflammation. Besides, the color was not typical of any deep burn that is usually gray or black, but instead, was pinkish and red. It was a precisely drawn lesion that healed within 5 days without any treatment.
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This isn't a new story but unfortunately I couldn't find many discussions about this in skeptical circles. I don't know how much is this credible. Although this is similar to stigmata and many stigmatas can be faked, I'm not sure about this one.

Any ideas on how such marks could be formed? You can search Testimony Of Raymond Nader for more sources.
 
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Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

Also, as to this question:
suren said:
Any ideas on how such marks could be formed?
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Does it matter? Say the consensus is that there's not enough information to come up with a good explanation for exactly what happened. So what? The world is full of photographs that can't be explained, not because something inexplicable happened, but because there's not enough information to make explaining it possible, or trying to explain it worthwhile. You want an explanation for these marks? Come up with one yourself.
 
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theprestige said:
Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

Also, as to this question:


Does it matter? Say the consensus is that there's not enough information to come up with a good explanation for exactly what happened. So what? The world is full of photographs that can't be explained, not because something inexplicable happened, but because there's not enough information to make explaining it possible, or trying to explain it worthwhile. You want an explanation for these marks? Come up with one yourself.
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I would like to know about plausible explanations, this images are unlikely to be completely faked, you can also find youtube videos where the marks are exposed.
 
suren said:
Hi again. I found this miracle story where a man claimed that God or a Lebanese saint left a hand print mark on his arm. According to some sources he was examined by many doctors and they couldn't explain this burn.

http://www.visionsofjesuschrist.com/weeping361.htm


This isn't a new story but unfortunately I couldn't find many discussions about this in skeptical circles. I don't know how much is this credible. Although this is similar to stigmata and many stigmatas can be faked, I'm not sure about this one.

Any ideas on how such marks could be formed? You can search Testimony Of Raymond Nader for more sources.
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Why are you tossing out such a stream of absurdities?
 
abaddon said:
Why are you tossing out such a stream of absurdities?
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But isn't the whole point of this forum to find plausible explanations or perhaps debunk extraordinary claims? There are plenty paranormal and miracle claims discussed on this forum. What's wrong with this one?
 
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suren said:
But isn't the whole point of this forum to find plausible explanations or perhaps debunk extraordinary claims? There are plenty paranormal and miracle claims discussed on this forum. What's wrong with this one?
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A man had a pinkish-red mark on his arm which was said to resemble 5 fingers. It didn't hurt and went away in a few days.

There's not much to debunk.
 
I have an interesting intersection of veins on my hand that looks very much like a pi symbol. I also tend to find bruises of various colors and shapes that I have no idea how I got, but being on blood thinners makes that much more likely.
 
suren said:
But isn't the whole point of this forum to find plausible explanations or perhaps debunk extraordinary claims? There are plenty paranormal and miracle claims discussed on this forum. What's wrong with this one?
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You are making the extraordinary claim. Have you any extraordinary evidence?

Of course not.
 
suren said:
But isn't the whole point of this forum to find plausible explanations or perhaps debunk extraordinary claims?
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No. It'd be closer to the truth to say that the point of this forum is to provide skeptics a place to discuss topics of interest around the themes of skepticism and critical thinking.

Sometimes this involves debunking, but not always, nor necessarily.

I should point out that when good debunking does happen, it's usually the opposite of what you're asking for here. Something like the Apollo Project or the 9/11 attacks have a huge amount of information about what happened. There's plenty of established facts to refute bogus claims about those events. When someone says there were no planes involved, we can point to several major lines of evidence that refute this claim. That's debunking.

There's nothing like that here. We simply do not have enough facts about what really happened to his arm to properly debunk anything. An appropriate skeptical/critical thinking response to this claim is simply, "that which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." And that is exactly what I propose be done with all such vague and poorly-documented cases.

My speculation? It's a henna tattoo or similar shenanigan.
 
alfaniner said:
I have an interesting intersection of veins on my hand that looks very much like a pi symbol. I also tend to find bruises of various colors and shapes that I have no idea how I got, but being on blood thinners makes that much more likely.
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Yeah. Not to long ago I woke in the morning with matted hair and blood all over my pillow. How did that happen? I can only surmise that I did something in my sleep.

What I did not conclude was that magical demons attacked me in the night because they were out to get me for reasons unexplained.
 
abaddon said:
Yeah. Not to long ago I woke in the morning with matted hair and blood all over my pillow. How did that happen? I can only surmise that I did something in my sleep.



What I did not conclude was that magical demons attacked me in the night because they were out to get me for reasons unexplained.
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Don't try that crap on us... YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! [emoji15]

[emoji1]
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
More than you could ever possibly want to know about stigmata here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmata

Enjoy!

:w2:
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Thanks, I know about this, I also mentioned that it was similar to stigmata, but stigmata are typically associated with Jesus' wounds and are much easier to be explained as self inflicted. This one is quite unusual.

Actually I was debating with someone about God's existence (he is a Christian), and he sent me Saint Charbel miracles as a proof of God's existence. I would like to have quite good plausible (not supernatural) explanation, just saying that I don't know the cause of these marks will only make him more convinced that it's a miracle.
 
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There is no independent verification of the claims. Someone will lose big if they are exposed as something natural. It is also religious in nature. So they should be viewed as something very doubtful.
 
I'm just curious if someone else have heard/read about St. Charbel and his supposed miracles. This particular saint is very famous as a "miracle worker" especially in Lebanon. A disproportionate number of miracles/miraculous healings are attributed to him.
 
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theprestige said:
Disproportionate how?
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In the sense that a huge amount of miracles are attributed to him. His miracles outnumber most other saints. He is probably the most famous "miracle worker" in Lebanon. You can search a lot of miracle stories attributed to him. One of the most famous miracles was curing a woman with hemiplegia in her dream and according to the story she woke up with surgical scars on her neck. She claims that the saint (long ago a dead person) performed the surgery.
 
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After my first MI I was started on Clopidogrel, a blood thinner. My son grabbed my arm quite hard when we were goofing around. That night, God placed his clear handmark, in the form of a bruise, in the exact spot my son grabbed me.
 
While as others have said nothing can be concluded, the position of the hand print might suggest what kinds of explanation are more likely. Imagine you wanted to leave a hand-print in that position on someone (and your hand had paint or powder or something on it). You could do it, but you'd have to stand facing their right side and then reach across to their left tricep. Or reach around while hugging them from behind. Standing face to face, you wouldn't be able to leave a print at that angle.

Now suppose you wanted to leave the print on your own arm instead. Easiest thing in the world: just reach your right hand across to place your fingertips on your left tricep.

I don't think it's his own actual handprint, though. Ink or powder or paint would be too obvious. (The lesions are more consistent with a chemical burn.) But more important, the print isn't right to be a real (human) handprint. To be that far away from the fingers, the "thumb" print would be angled more. And the finger lengths and joint positions, and they way they line up at the base, are all a bit wrong. What it looks like is a drawing of a handprint, made with care but without artistic skill.
 
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