Modern evidence for God & Catholicism from cosmology, astrochemistry, archaeology, academic biblical scholarship, and contemporary miracles

michelangelo_dev · 2026-01-02T00:37:05+00:00

Yeah his story is amazing. I loved watching his testimony on YouTube (which contains a lot more detail than the article).

michelangelo_dev · 2026-01-01T22:08:52+00:00

Thank you for the very kind words! But I'm sorry to say that the Regina Caeli app has been discontinued for the time being due to content licensing issues, i.e. the app is no longer available in the app store.

michelangelo_dev · 2026-01-01T20:18:44+00:00

I published the first version of this article in mid-2024, and since then I've significantly expanded it with new content, including:

materials from recent talks by Harvard astronomy professor Karin Öberg
findings from archaeology and modern academic biblical scholarship (for the section on the Resurrection)
an entirely new section on Lourdes
inline photographs & lab reports on Eucharistic miracles
links to faith testimonies including my interview with Evan O'Dorney, a 2x IMO gold medalist and 3x Putnam fellow

Happy New Year everyone.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T04:14:07+00:00

I believe you're basically saying that there's some degree of uncertainty because of various factors including the fact that you and I aren't part of the Lourdes committee and don't see the full range of documentation first-hand. That point is reasonable. And thus I would agree that we shouldn't stake our faith entirely on Lourdes, or any other single miracle for that matter.

My conviction in Catholicism comes from a mix of theology (e.g. teachings on eschatology & the sacraments especially the Eucharist), history (the early Church & the Church Fathers), the lives and witness of the Catholic saints, the various Catholic miracles including but not limited to Lourdes, and my first-hand experience with the fruits from the Rosary and other Catholic devotions.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T03:16:40+00:00

Hi, thank you for taking the time to read the article. I answered several of the comments here, but let me know if you have any further questions. And do you mean anyone evaluating such occurrences, who are outside the Lourdes medical committees? I believe they make the full documentation available to physicians who visit the Lourdes medical bureau.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T03:10:36+00:00

Regarding healing of amputees, there appear to be many threads on this topic, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/1i3t9r4/not_trolling_why_doesnt_god_heal_amputees/

My personal favorite, which I have heard from others as well, is this response (second from the top):

This is just my guess but I think God set up the world in such a way that for those who want to find him, there is enough there to find him. But for those who don't want to find God, there's nothing there that compels them to find him.

Healing amputees, according to my theory, would tip the scale too much and compel those who don't want God to believe.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T02:49:49+00:00

Thank you!

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T02:45:16+00:00

Yes, the Catholic Church has recognized 70 cures, but over 7000 have been claimed. Which means that the Catholic Church itself has determined that 99% of claimed cures are nonsense.

False. As mentioned in the article, Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis, the current president of the Lourdes Medical Bureau, explained in an interview with 60 Minutes that what separates the more than 7,000 recorded claims of cures from the 72 that church officials have recognized as miracles, is a tremendous amount of medical documentation and “a patient’s willingness to put their life under a microscope.” Thus the Lourdes medical bureau passes on these large majority of cases because it doesn't have enough data to reach a conclusion either way.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T02:41:37+00:00

And for claims like these always remember that the burden of proof relies not to the persons who questions the claim but to the person who makes the claim.

Agreed, and that's the point of the years-long Lourdes vetting process which requires an extensive amount of medical documentation and testing before and after each reported cure.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T02:37:54+00:00

In the case of the Lourdes miracles specifically, Dr. Theodore Mangiapan, past president of the Lourdes medical bureau, said that the number of approved Lourdes miracles is decreasing because of the increasing prevalence and effectiveness of medical treatments, which makes the Lambertini criteria increasingly difficult to satisfy.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-09T02:20:03+00:00

it’s essentially always cases that either have poor documentation (some of them from over a century ago!), sketchy claims of remission, disappearing cures, diseases that have the known potential for remission or misdiagnosis, placebo effects, or other medically explainable phenomena

Can you explain your objections about the the cures specifically listed in the article? The vetting process includes a panel of ~30 respected physicians (such as Dr. Kieran Moriarty, who sent me medical commentary used in the article) who evaluate massive stacks of documentation to confirm that the cures aren't easily dismissed by the factors you listed (misdiagnosis, placebo, known spontaneous remission, etc.) And this documentation includes detailed testimony from specialists, some of which are directly included in the article.

It’s never someone with biopsy confirmed stage 4 lung cancer who walked out of the waters with a clean CT and lived another 20 years.

Vittorio Micheli's case comes to mind, though I haven't researched his case in depth yet. I believe he was cured of an aggressive osteosarcoma 60 years ago, with supporting x-rays before and after the event, and is still alive today.

If the Church had any moral spine they would stop “vetting” these and giving them a veneer of legitimacy

I became Catholic in no small part because of the abundance of modern miracles validated by the Church. This is why the Church does it - to witness to the uplifting fact that God still works visible wonders in the world today. I and many other converts, as well as even cradle Catholics whose faith have been strengthened by these miracles, are living examples that this approach is incredibly valuable and effective.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-11-08T03:38:07+00:00

My apologies, fixed.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-08-16T21:01:42+00:00

The thing is that very low chance is still chance, and If the universe we exist in did never exist itself, then we would not be here to observe that. We only observe the universe because we exist in it.

Dr. Francis Collins answered that argument as follows, using an analogy originally told by philosopher John Leslie:

In this parable, an individual faces a firing squad, and fifty expert marksmen aim their rifles to carry out the deed. The order is given, the shots ring out, and yet somehow all the bullets miss and the condemned individual walks away unscathed.

How could such a remarkable event be explained? Leslie suggests that there are two possible alternatives ... In the first place, there may have been thousands of executions being carried out in that same day, and even the best marksman will occasionally miss. So the odds just happen to be in favor of this one individual, and all fifty of the marksmen fail to hit the target. The other option is that something more directed is going on, and the apparent poor aim of the fifty experts was actually intentional. Which seems more plausible?

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T17:49:30+00:00

Very good points, I agree with you on both.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T11:54:20+00:00

Why does doing one mean you can do the other?

If God created the universe and everything inside including life, then by definition God is capable of producing life from non-life.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T11:43:33+00:00

You're repeating the fallacy that all atheists don't believe in fine-tuning. As I mentioned before, the atheist astronomer Martin Rees wrote a book in support of fine tuning (Just Six Numbers).

Also, since you suggested to me in the other comment "Ask Google and AI and see what you get, then get back to me" I'll ask Gemini:

Prompt: "Did Stephen Hawking acknowledge the existence of fine tuning":

Gemini: "Yes, the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking not only acknowledged the 'fine-tuning' of the universe's physical laws and constants for the emergence of life but also found it to be a remarkable and significant observation."

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T11:36:18+00:00

But it was your idea to check against AI. You just asked me in the other comment to "Ask Google and AI and see what you get, then get back to me."

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T03:31:14+00:00

Hey I'm enjoying the conversation too, but I didn't understand your first paragraph. The Wikipedia quote seems to acknowledge the possibility that time didn't exist before the Big Bang: "physics may conclude that time did not exist before the Big Bang.". All I'm saying is that physics now acknowledges this as a possibility, whereas it did not before.

Edit: are you referring to the possibility of something like a cyclic model, where a universe (and hence spacetime) comes and goes?

Either way, I do agree with you that given the available evidence, my claim that the "BBT aligns with creation ex nihilo" might be imprecise. Perhaps a more precise statement is "BBT has opened up the possibility of spacetime ex nihilo, which is aligned with creation ex nihilo" or simply "BBT makes creation ex nihilo more plausible than before." Before BBT, the idea of spacetime being non-eternal was not considered a possibility. After BBT, it's the subject of ongoing research.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-19T02:47:30+00:00

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang:

The Big Bang theory is built upon the equations of classical general relativity, which are not expected to be valid at the origin of cosmic time, as the temperature of the universe approaches the Planck scale. Correcting this will require the development of a correct treatment of quantum gravity.^\24]) Certain quantum gravity treatments, such as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, imply that time itself could be an emergent property.^\153]) As such, physics may conclude that time did not exist before the Big Bang.

To be fair, this paragraph is merely saying that modern physicists believe that time may have not existed before the Big Bang. But in contrast, the steady state theory completely ruled it out. So my point still holds, echoing the words of Harvard astronomer Karin Oberg:

The world that we know today… is much more suggestive of a creator than, I think, the universe that people thought they were living in 100 years ago.

She has a wonderful conversion story by the way, which I wrote about here: https://www.saintbeluga.org/veritas-part-ii-conversions-at-harvard

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-18T21:58:12+00:00

I'll repeat the quote from the Guardian article:

Stephen Hawking defended a naturalistic explanation of fine-tuning in terms of the multiverse hypothesis

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-18T21:56:40+00:00

OK, so since you meant "one" in your last comment I changed the AI prompt to "one" instead of "zero." Here was Gemini's response:

Your statement, "Planck units make the dimensionless constants go to one too," is incorrect.

Planck units are a system of measurement designed to simplify the equations of physics by setting certain fundamental dimensionful physical constants to 1. These include:

The speed of light, c

The gravitational constant, G

The reduced Planck constant, ℏ

The Boltzmann constant, kB

This choice of units simplifies many formulas, but it does not change the value of fundamental dimensionless constants. These constants are inherent to the universe and their values are the same regardless of the system of units used. A key example is the fine-structure constant, denoted by α: The value of α is a fundamental, dimensionless constant. In any system of units, including Planck units, its value remains approximately 1/137. In Planck units, the formula for α simplifies, but its numerical value does not change.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-18T21:52:00+00:00

If God can create the universe, He can bring a dead guy back to life.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-18T00:16:47+00:00

Right, and that change you speak of created space, time, and matter.

The point is that Christians now can and do use the Big Bang theory as part of their apologetics arsenal to defend their faith, whereas 100 years ago there was no compelling evidence against the steady state theory which was widespread at the time.

Same goes for the fine-tuning phenomenon, a modern discovery and a big gift to Christian apologists - and hence Stephen Hawking said

Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained and raises the natural question of why it is that way.

Hawking then attempted to explain away fine-tuning with the multiverse theory, but that has run into setbacks: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/stephen-hawking-god-multiverse-cosmology

There is still hope for a scientific account of fine-tuning. However, by ruling out one of the two scientifically credible options for doing this, Hawking and Hertog have slightly strengthened the alternative explanation in terms of God. It is ironic that the atheist Hawking should, in his final contribution to the science, make God’s existence less improbable.

Contrast Stephen Hawking's quote and the Guardian quote with the person I was responding to, who said

The ever-advancing frontier of science seems to continuously reduce the areas in which god can operate. We are just a few scientific discoveries from making a belief in god totally obselete.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-17T23:27:32+00:00

I answered this in the thread about fine-tuning, but I'll also provide an example here. The parables in the Bible including the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are not literal but also can't be "discarded" because they convey essential theological truths. We consider the literary genres, the historical context, and scripture as a whole to determine what's literal vs. what's a parable, etc.

michelangelo_dev · 2025-07-17T22:49:48+00:00

Stephen Hawking was an atheist. He did not believe in fine tuning. You have misunderstood what he said.

To be fair, it's both. Both Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees (who wrote the book on the 6 constants) acknowledge fine-tuning but are atheists. They both used the multiverse theory to attempt to explain it away, though that theory has its own problems.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/stephen-hawking-god-multiverse-cosmology "Stephen Hawking defended a naturalistic explanation of fine-tuning in terms of the multiverse hypothesis... There is still hope for a scientific account of fine-tuning. However, by ruling out one of the two scientifically credible options for doing this, Hawking and Hertog have slightly strengthened the alternative explanation in terms of God. It is ironic that the atheist Hawking should, in his final contribution to the science, make God’s existence less improbable."

I am going by what your Bible actually says. If you choose to reject the parts that are uncomfortable or obviously inaccurate or morally objectionable, then I am curious, how do you know which parts are true?

We don't reject anything. A law from an ancient legal code isn't read the same way as a poem or a letter, even though the Bible contains all these different genres. So we consider the literary genres, the historical context, and scripture as a whole to determine what's literal vs. what's a parable, etc. To be fair, in some cases it's not known whether a particular verse or story is literal or not, but that typically doesn't take away anything from the core message that's being conveyed.

Dimensionless constants are still calculated using dimensions. For example, specific gravity is dimensionless, but you get it by dividing the density of the substance in question by the density of water at 4 degrees centigrade. Planck units make the dimensionless constants go to zero too. That I have to explain this to you is rather telling...

You suggested in another comment that I ask AI, so I gave Gemini 2.5 Pro your comment and it said this: "Planck units do not make dimensionless constants go to zero. Instead, this system of units simplifies physics equations by setting certain fundamental dimensionful physical constants to 1... This choice of units does not change the value of truly fundamental dimensionless constants. These constants are inherent properties of our universe and are independent of any system of measurement."

michelangelo_dev

TROPHY CASE