Miracles! A subject as controversial as God and religion. Either you believe in them or you don't - there are no grey areas. But are there more aspects to it than just walking on water or miraculous cures? This episode of the series did a good job of finding that out.
500 Feet is a lot of distance - especially if that is the height from which you are plunging to your certain death. And yet, there is a man who survived such a fall after the repair trolley that he was into fell apart. He broke 10 bones, his lungs collapsed and he was in coma for 3 weeks. In fact when he came out of the coma, the doctors themselves said that it was a miracle. He can hardly believe it even now. But how is he making sense of it all - given that his brother passed away in the same accident? It is difficult at best, well neigh impossible at the worst. But he said that he is sure that God has some purpose for him here on earth and he is determined to find it. There is really no other way to make sense of it all - except that maybe it was just a chance. And that is a very very scary thought. I hope that the man finds what he is looking for.
The city of Jerusalem is covered in almost all the episodes of this series - given the fact that it is connected to three of the major world religions. This time it was a lady rabbi who explained the concept of the Passover Meal - it expresses gratitude to God for sparing Jewish children when Death "passed over" Jewish homes and took life of only the children of the Egyptians. I am ashamed to admit that my knowledge of this story is from the movie Exodus. :-( Even after watching the movie I had found it very hard to get reconciled to the concept of God who allows innocent children to be killed. I had wondered why didn't Moses tell Ramses to use the lamb blood to protect other children as well? The Jewish gesture of putting drops of wine on the plate to express sorrow for the loss of innocent lives is perhaps symbolic of this. The parting of the Red Sea was mentioned. But in general, I am not very sold on the idea of a particular community being God's chosen or favorite.
The viewers were yanked, sort of, from the land of the messiahs to the world of Statistics when a professor talked about the possibility of the miracles being just events of pure chance - using a coin tossing experiment. Like I said before, a very practical, but a very scary thought. I hope if this is all pure chance, then at least the universe is conducting a random experiment where the probability of anything happening is same for each of us :-) Probably the expression 'There but for the grace of God' originated from there.
It was the turn of the Romans next - from the Circus Maximus where chariot races and other tournaments were conducted to entertain people to the Mithraeum, a 3rd century temple where rituals were conducted to make sure that God intervened to help you win.
Daoism which talks of Dao, the creating energy of universe, was described next. Freeman visited a lady, who was what is called a Fate Calculator. Based on his date of birth and time, she created a map of what his life would have been and would be like - I wonder how much Wikipedia and Internet helped her. The whole thing sounded very much like the astrology and horoscope making that is so common in India. My experience with the astrologers so far hasn't been anything to write home about. So I wasn't much impressed till the lady said that what she prepared based on his birthdate was like a map, a navigation system but he was still fully in charge, capable of changing the course of his life. Could this be true?
There is a hospital in Cairo which combines belief or faith and medicine. The concept is that we fall sick by God's will and get cured by His will through medicines. As if to emphasize this thought, the episode featured a man who was suffering from Mantle Cell Lymphoma and doctors had given him at the most a few months to live. But people prayed for him as he underwent Chemo and supposedly within 48 hours the tumors in his body disappeared. And that was about 18 years ago. Of course we can say that he believed in his mind that he will be cured and mind, so they tell us, is a very powerful thing. I was surprised they didn't talk about the Placebo effect in this episode.
Lastly, Gautam Buddha's story of being shielded from grief all his life and then getting exposed to disease, old age and death was discussed - thought I am not sure how this related to the episode's topic of miracles. Oh, and I was more relieved than saddened that Hinduism wasn't covered. I would have been horrified by people talking about how the Ganesh idol drank milk :-(
500 Feet is a lot of distance - especially if that is the height from which you are plunging to your certain death. And yet, there is a man who survived such a fall after the repair trolley that he was into fell apart. He broke 10 bones, his lungs collapsed and he was in coma for 3 weeks. In fact when he came out of the coma, the doctors themselves said that it was a miracle. He can hardly believe it even now. But how is he making sense of it all - given that his brother passed away in the same accident? It is difficult at best, well neigh impossible at the worst. But he said that he is sure that God has some purpose for him here on earth and he is determined to find it. There is really no other way to make sense of it all - except that maybe it was just a chance. And that is a very very scary thought. I hope that the man finds what he is looking for.
The city of Jerusalem is covered in almost all the episodes of this series - given the fact that it is connected to three of the major world religions. This time it was a lady rabbi who explained the concept of the Passover Meal - it expresses gratitude to God for sparing Jewish children when Death "passed over" Jewish homes and took life of only the children of the Egyptians. I am ashamed to admit that my knowledge of this story is from the movie Exodus. :-( Even after watching the movie I had found it very hard to get reconciled to the concept of God who allows innocent children to be killed. I had wondered why didn't Moses tell Ramses to use the lamb blood to protect other children as well? The Jewish gesture of putting drops of wine on the plate to express sorrow for the loss of innocent lives is perhaps symbolic of this. The parting of the Red Sea was mentioned. But in general, I am not very sold on the idea of a particular community being God's chosen or favorite.
The viewers were yanked, sort of, from the land of the messiahs to the world of Statistics when a professor talked about the possibility of the miracles being just events of pure chance - using a coin tossing experiment. Like I said before, a very practical, but a very scary thought. I hope if this is all pure chance, then at least the universe is conducting a random experiment where the probability of anything happening is same for each of us :-) Probably the expression 'There but for the grace of God' originated from there.
It was the turn of the Romans next - from the Circus Maximus where chariot races and other tournaments were conducted to entertain people to the Mithraeum, a 3rd century temple where rituals were conducted to make sure that God intervened to help you win.
Daoism which talks of Dao, the creating energy of universe, was described next. Freeman visited a lady, who was what is called a Fate Calculator. Based on his date of birth and time, she created a map of what his life would have been and would be like - I wonder how much Wikipedia and Internet helped her. The whole thing sounded very much like the astrology and horoscope making that is so common in India. My experience with the astrologers so far hasn't been anything to write home about. So I wasn't much impressed till the lady said that what she prepared based on his birthdate was like a map, a navigation system but he was still fully in charge, capable of changing the course of his life. Could this be true?
There is a hospital in Cairo which combines belief or faith and medicine. The concept is that we fall sick by God's will and get cured by His will through medicines. As if to emphasize this thought, the episode featured a man who was suffering from Mantle Cell Lymphoma and doctors had given him at the most a few months to live. But people prayed for him as he underwent Chemo and supposedly within 48 hours the tumors in his body disappeared. And that was about 18 years ago. Of course we can say that he believed in his mind that he will be cured and mind, so they tell us, is a very powerful thing. I was surprised they didn't talk about the Placebo effect in this episode.
Lastly, Gautam Buddha's story of being shielded from grief all his life and then getting exposed to disease, old age and death was discussed - thought I am not sure how this related to the episode's topic of miracles. Oh, and I was more relieved than saddened that Hinduism wasn't covered. I would have been horrified by people talking about how the Ganesh idol drank milk :-(
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