¶1All right, ladies and gentlemen, let me get you updated on what's up with uh Joe Schmidt. And uh you know, I want to talk about a particular miracle specifically because capturing Christianity, Cameron Batuzi has brought this up in the past like like no natural explanations u ever can make sense of these miracles and that's what I think tips them over the edge. Um, it's kind of interesting because I've seen him do the Shroud of Tournament before I ever saw him get into Zun and uh I think it's Zon Cairo Ziton in um Egypt. I I hope I'm pronouncing this properly, but you know, it was Shroud of Tur stuff like I've seen him do that with Gary Habermass and others in the past. And it's these things that I think like tip a lot of these believers or you know, these Christians uh as evidence of miracles.
¶2But then I had a long talks with my friend Caleb Jackson. I want to say something up from I I did a post yesterday like if I saw a guy who did not have an arm at all and I knew he had gone to war, didn't have an arm, like a nub on his arm like the Bible describes. That's why I say biblical miracles. I've had everyone under the sun comment different things about every every day is a miracle. The life itself is a miracle.
¶3Okay, I get that. Like I understand what you mean by miracle. I'm trying to define something based on literature that has used these definitions, right? Go read Eskeipius's miracles. You'll know what I mean by miracle and eyeballs missing from the socket.
¶4Eyeball is now there from the god. Okay, that's a miracle defined by ancient literature understanding that kind of stuff. Right now, one can argue, well, modern science itself is filling the gap about loss of sight, loss of hearing, loss of limbs and things like that. Yeah, sure. But when I say miracle, I'm not saying, you know, like for example, I have a wonderful friend and this is public.
¶5Um, they believe that a miracle happened to their daughter. Their daughter had no oxygen for 17 minutes. One of my best friends, Joseé Mahano. He even has a tattoo on his on his leg. 17.
¶6They believe a miracle happened. She had no oxygen for 17 minutes to her brain. Um she survived it. Her his wife survived it giving birth, which is absolutely already just incredible and very very they're blessed for that. Okay, I have no problem with the word there blessed.
¶7That is a very important thing to me. But their child that survived 17 minutes has all sorts of medical conditions. My oldest son, he didn't have oxygen for 6 to 8 minutes and I was losing my mind. It was purple. Finally, they got the airway fixed and my oldest son survived.
¶8But my oldest son has mental health issues. He has other medical conditions conditions and learning disabilities. Right? So when I say a miracle, I'm thinking three days, no oxygen in the brain at all. 100%.
¶9There's no like hiccup. There's no You went from crippled. You absolutely have no legs. Your legs are now there. Okay?
¶10I'm talking about something that I think is impossible. I'm not saying I know it's impossible. I think it's impossible. And so anyway, I've had these conversations. Joe Schmidt and I have had conversation.
¶11This dude is a teddy bear of a human. All right. I just want to tell you right now, like he's just he's just being so kind and gentle and loving and in fact wants to pray for my mother-in-law because she's dying of stage four cancer and we're having to visit her. Me and my wife were crying a little yesterday about it because we love family. Who wants a family member to die of cancer?
¶12Who wants to watch someone pass away? No one. So, this touches everybody. Okay, but I I gotta go I gotta give you a little bit of the background here. So Joe, love you, dude.
¶13Uh, this is just me bringing my honest naturalist mind. And I call it a naturalist mind because I think all of these things are human. All right? I'm just being real where I'm at. And this goes to every person.
¶14This goes to Cameron Bertusi, obviously. Caleb Jackson and me. He knows what my threshold is. He understands where my mind is at. So the other night I was on a live stream with Nilson Lack and Adam Green.
¶15We're talking about this thing and Christianity and and miracles and Joe Schmid uh his conversion to Catholicism as a philosopher, etc., etc. Okay. In the middle of that stream, Neil pulled up this article about one of uh the miracles that Joe cited. And it's not a miracle just Joe cited. I've heard it cited by Caleb Jackson.
¶16I've heard it cited by Cameron Martusi. The article was written by a writer named Arthur T. Uh, it's called, "Did the virgin appear at zyun?" I think it's zon. I want to just say zyun. Forgive me if it's not correct.
¶17And while Neil was reading that article, right, something clicked for me. I'm sitting there listening to this and I'm going, "Oh, you know what? I never thought about that." Cuz I never deeply researched these miracles like exhaustively and really like said, "Oh, I'm going to do videos on this. Maybe I should." And if you're willing to back up a documentary where I exhaustively bring a methodical case where I'm not convinced of these miracles, please hit us up because I'd like to produce a high polish documentary on that. And we're doing those.
¶18If you'd like to make history, let me know. Anyway, it was not simply that Joe and I disagree. People disagree with me all day every day in my comments. Go read them and I'm cool with it. It was realizing how quickly for me how quickly critical thinking can disappear when people start talking about miracles.
¶19This is what the experience has told me like Joe presents Saiton as one serious piece of evidence and in his words right hundreds of thousands of people saw the Virgin Mary. Hundreds of thousands of people. I could hear Cameron Partusi saying the same thing. Okay, that sentence sounds like the case is already closed. Now, I don't know the exhaustive case that Joe's planning on doing and someone actually complained to me.
¶20Why are you making a video? Joe's got to do the exhaustive video. It's like, dude, he did his initial video. I can do a We can do videos, bro. But it was a Christian doing that.
¶21So, they're already butt hurt by me being critical and saying, "Sorry, I'm not convinced." Uh, they made a comment saying something like, "Oh, Matt Dah Hunty, you know, sounded just like him." And it's like, bro, I'm not mimicking Matt Deahanti, bro. Trust me, I'm not. I'm not mimicking him. If there's any overlap, it's simply because me and Matt Deah Hunty probably both find it not convincing. All right.
¶22I'm not saying also, by the way, that claims like a person says they saw some doesn't count as evidence. I am saying though that I don't find it convincing evidence. I don't find it evidence that overweight like is overwhelming for me, persuades me into the threshold of believing it's true. All right. So, I don't know if Matt, you know, has changed his mind since I know Alex Okconor and Joe Schmidt talked about claims counting as evidence.
¶23Um, even if they're not good evidence, uh, they could count as evidence and stuff. I I agree with Joe Schmidt on this this point that he made in this critiques back then, but I don't the needle doesn't move for me on people's testim testimony because I know how common it is for humans to make up stuff to make accidental assertions about things to be motivated into believing things by other pressures. Like all of those factors, humans, anthropologically, just studying that and seeing it in every culture is enough for me to go, sorry, that won't work for me. You're asking me to believe something up here, dude. And if you want me to believe something up here, dude, something up here, dude, needs to happen to Mr.
¶24You know, head honcho here. Something has to happen for me to be overcome by that. Call me doubting Thomas. Say Jesus ridiculed Tom ridiculed Thomas for not believing. Okay, that's okay.
¶25I ridicule me, Lord, if you exist. Okay, I'm cool with that. Just help me cuz I'm sincerely thinking you don't exist and I'm sincerely thinking we live in a natural world. This is Derek Lambert. I'm keeping it 100 with you.
¶26This is me wearing my heart on my sleeve. If a miracle happened to me tomorrow, and I'm talking biblical proportion miracle, I'll say this publicly again. I don't care how many atheists, agnostics, skeptics, people who watch Myth Vision would call me a fool. I don't care what you think of me. I don't give a Okay?
¶27I will believe that something divine is happening. I'm not holding my breath. They're praying for me that it happens, but I'm just keeping it 100 with you. Okay? So, the case sounds like it's close, right?
¶28But I do not hear Joe publicly wrestling with the questions this channel exists to ask on those issues. It doesn't seem like he's wrestling with them. It seems like he's persuaded. He's got a lot of evidence just convincing him. So, where did this this story come from, Zaiton?
¶29Like, what what did different witnesses actually report is a serious question. How many people saw a detailed figure instead of a light? What did the cameras capture? What did the supposed government investigation produce? And what was happening in Egypt when this miracle happened?
¶30This is so important, right? This is what clicked. So today, I want to do one case, just one. I want to take Zaiton apart piece by piece and show why I think Joe fell for it. All right?
¶31And I think others fall for it. I think an uncertain event got covered in religious language and presented as evidence. That is what I mean by superstition here. Something strange happens. Nobody knows exactly what it is and the uncertainty gets filled with supernatural identity.
¶32It's a common case. This seems to be something humans do all the time. Agency, agency, agency. Remember my history of God video? My history of Satan video.
¶33I plan on doing a history of hell. All of that. I'm not saying everybody in Egypt lied, y'all. I'm not even saying, you know, everybody that nobody saw something, right? That that nobody saw nothing.
¶34I mean, like, I'm not saying that. I am saying that a crowd saw different things and religious interpretation took over. Institutions approved it and decades later, the whole messy event became one clean sentence. Hundreds of thousands saw Mary. So, it's a development.
¶35But did they? That is the question. Did they? The evolution and time and memory and whatnot evolves to make a solid overall image. That's what I think happens.
¶36Okay. April 1968, Zaiton, a district of Cairo, Egypt. Muslim workers at a transit garage look across the street at St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church. They see what they take to be a woman in white on the roof.
¶37One of them thinks she may be about to jump and call out to stop her. They're like, "Yo, stop. Stop." They think she's going to jump off the roof. So, a crowd gathers. Somebody identifies the figure as the Virgin Mary.
¶38Then over roughly 3 years, people report seeing a luminous woman above the church. They say she knelt, she waved, moved around the domes and blessed the crowd. There are reports of glowing doves, incense, unusual lights, healings, and people coming away convents. Copic Christians come, Muslims come, foreigners come, the Coptic Pope approves it, the state promotes it, hundreds of thousands visit the site, and some estimates even go higher than hundreds of thousands. By the way, they also start charging admission.
¶39I'm just throwing it out there. So, all right, that is like the strongest version. I'm not going to pretend nothing happened. Something happened. People are seeing things.
¶40Okay. So, something drew these crowds. People saw lights. People prayed, cried, and had experiences that felt completely real to them. But the headline hides several different claims about this.
¶41Several people saw something. The something looked human. The human figure was a woman. The woman was Mary. Mary was sent by God.
¶42And this somehow supports Christianity. Then eventually Roman Catholicism. Those are not one claim. Each step needs evidence. There's another problem.
¶43A crowd estimate is not a witness count. If hundreds of thousands of people passed through Zun over three years, that does not mean hundreds of thousands independently saw Clear Woman. It does not mean they saw the same thing. It does not mean they were interviewed. It does not even tell us how many saw anything beyond an unusual light.
¶44The number of visitors has just become the number of witnesses for many people. that even just that alone a lot of people aren't parsing out. They're not careful and going well some people witnessed it. No, there were hundreds of thousands and millions of people went to this. Nah, careful, careful.
¶45Then reports of lights have quietly become reports of Mary like a lot of that that is how the case gets its power. It's it grows because of the telling there. All right. All right. All right.
¶46We really need to carefully look at this. put the date the date back into the story. Zaiton began about 10 months after the six- day war of June of 1967. Egypt was devastated. Much of its air force had been destroyed on the ground.
¶47Sinai was lost. Nasser's confident Arab nationalist project had been humiliated in six days. Egyptians called it the Naka, the setback. But this was more than a setback. It was literally a national trauma.
¶48The whole country was in I mean absolute just trauma. People were grieving. They were angry. They were asking why they had lost and whether God had abandoned them. Coptic Christians were in a particularly vulnerable position.
¶49According to the sources discussed by Travis Doomsday, Dums Day du msd a y and later scholars, cops were accused of betrayal strongly enough that Nasser publicly defended the patriotism of Coptic soldiers. There was a lot of accusations flying around. Israel's capture of Jerusalem also disrupted traditional Coptic Easter pilgrimages. One popular way of understanding the apparition fit that loss perfectly. If Egypt's Christians could no longer travel to Mary in Jerusalem, Mary had to come to them.
¶50It's a simple way of making sense of why Mary would appear to them. And Mary was the right figure for that moment. You're going to see. You see, Christians obviously honor Mary. But do you realize Muslims honor her?
¶51A Marian apparition could comfort a frightened Christian minority while giving the Muslim majority a sacred figure they already respected. Both can be happy by the same person. This was exactly the kind of sign a wounded Egypt was ready to see at this moment in history. Then there's the prophecy story. People said Mary had promised decades earlier to return to that location.
¶52But even Dums Day, Dums Day, Doomsday, I'm not sure. I don't want to mispronounce the dude's name, allows that there is no definitive record showing that prediction existed before the appearances began. People say a lot of things, bro. People always after the fact say, "Oh, this is just prophesied." I mean, this happens all the time. Maybe it did exist.
¶53I mean, it's not uncommon. There's a lot of people who believe in Mary and there's a lot of people who visited Mary or Mary visited people prior to Zaiton. There's been people who have said that she's appeared anyway. Maybe it didn't though. Maybe it didn't.
¶54But a prophecy that only becomes visible after the event is not strong evidence of anything. It just isn't. Once the crowds arrived, the state the state becomes involved right now. The state is there. Nearby buildings were removed, including the transit garage from which the first sighting was reported.
¶55Trees were cut down, right? They were cut back. Outdoor seating was organized. A nominal fee was reportedly charged for access to the closest areas. Got to make some money.
¶56Now, that does not prove the government created the apparition. All right. It tells us the event had value. I don't know about you, but ladies and gentlemen, if you have to factor in human, there's got to be some motivation here or you're naive. You have to, y'all.
¶57It comforted the cop the cops. I want to say the cops, but the c the cops, the the Christian cops. It offered national unity after their humiliation. It redirected public attention. It brought visitors in money.
¶58Those spacks do not automatically disprove a miracle. I know, but if you're honestly weighing a possible religious hoax or socially constructed event, you cannot pretend motive and opportunity are absent. You're naive if you do. You literally I'm got a Listen, uh I'm I literally just need $100,000 from you. I'm I'm going to give you a million back in a month.
¶59Okay? Can you loan me $100,000? Um you don't you just shake my hand. We're cool. There doesn't need to be a contract.
¶60You're going to fall for something and you're going to get ripped off. You're going to get there's going to be naivity here. The people are just going to fall for something and be gullible. I really think you need to have your mind open about this kind of thing and study more about this phenomena in other religions. Have that outsider test of faith so you can see, okay, maybe this is just a human thing that humans do.
¶61Not that it's God or this one religion. Humans do this kind of stuff, especially under trauma. Now, look at the evidence itself. Cynthia Nelson was an American anthropologist who went to Zun while the events were still happening. She interviewed people and stood in the crowd.
¶62At one point, people pointed toward a palm tree and said, "The Virgin was there looking like a nun and swaying as she blessed them." Okay, I could just picture some kind of, you know, something like this or something. Nelson saw a light through the branches. When she concentrated and tried to picture the figure people were describing, she could trace the outline. When she stopped trying to see a nun and treated it as a light through branches, the figure disappeared. That matters enormously.
¶63There was a real visual stimulus. Okay. The crowd supplied the interpretation. Her mind could organize the light into that interpretation. And then the figure vanished when she changed how she was looking at it.
¶64Nobody had to hallucinate. Nobody had to lie. Another witness said she saw Mary clearly while people standing beside her did not. The parish priest reportedly explained that some of the later apparitions could be seen only by certain people, especially the morally pure. Come on.
¶65So, it's almost like the more convinced you it is real, you start to believe what you're seeing formulates that thing and then you see it. But now you have people in authority. Think about that. That should set off an alarm. People in authority are now telling you, "Are you really morally pure like these people?" Only the morally pure people are seeing it.
¶66Well, I want to I'm morally pure. You're going to you're going to really see her then. I mean, there's so much human motivation involved in this. I don't know why this is even used as a miracle. I mean, or at least why it's one of the major ones, one of these big ones that I think a lot of the Christians use.
¶67It baffles me that that maybe more studies need to be made on how humans are so perceptible to superstitions and things like that for these people who are using these as miracles. Again, I think this just alarm bells alarm bells. If two people are standing together, right, facing the same church and one sees a detailed woman while the other sees nothing, the evidence is not behaving like a large solid person is really on a roof. And once the failure to see becomes a moral failure in the witness, especially by an authority, the claim has protected itself from being tested. but also encourages people who are in the religious communities to have a fervor to try to see her even more.
¶68All right, that they want to be moral. If you see Mary, the miracle is confirmed. If you do not see Mary, maybe you were not pure enough. Think about that. That's not how an investigation works.
¶69Witnesses also repeatedly described the figure as a statueike or phosphorescent type of figure. Some said they saw a light that then took the form of Mary. And go back to the first night. The workers reportedly thought a woman might jump. Their first reaction was not, "What is that supernatural light?" It was, "There is a woman up there.
¶70That's it." That does not prove someone was standing on the roof. It does make the possibility a lot less absurd than defenders suggest. Now ask what a repeated public miracle should leave behind. This was not one brief light seen by three people in a field. A visible, luminous, moving figure supposedly appeared over a public building for years while crowds gathered to see her.
¶71That should have been one of the easiest supernatural events in history to document. That should not be a problem at all. Instead, instead Dums Day has acknowledged in his public discussion of the case that only about 10 alleged photographs circulate from the entire period. 10 photographs from 3 years and enormous crowds. Only 10 of three famous photographs analyzed by specialist dumb sites.
¶72One was reportedly judged likely doctorred. They fudged it. They they played with it. The other two were not shown to be altered, but that does not establish what the images contain. Dums Day himself places limited weight on the photographs.
¶73Some people reportedly tried to photograph Mary and found nothing when the film was developed. Defenders sometimes treat that as part of the mystery. just more evidence than I like the lack of evidence is more evidence for them. But think about what that means, y'all. Witnesses saw a detailed woman while the camera recorded nothing.
¶74I mean, how do you how do you help that, right? At what point do you stop and huh? Maybe I'm just seeing something I want to see. Maybe I'm I don't know. I mean, there had to have been some serious pressures and people like telling she's right there.
¶75I remember speaking in tongues. I was telling this to Caleb Jackson. Uh they said that the Holy Spirit was just going to take over. And I sat there as a young 11 or 12 year old kid waiting for it to take over. They're all speaking in tongues of me.
¶76They're trying to get me to get the ghost, the Holy Spirit. Finally, after 10 minutes, I just like almost in a trance at that point. I'm finally hypn they hypnotized [clears throat] me. I finally just started doing a little bit and they rewarded me. I kept going.
¶77So, I could see social pressures easily influencing people to perceive things that they want them to see. So, anyway, uh the fact that the camera doesn't show what they thought they saw after the evidence comes up, that's not good evidence for a woman physically standing in front of them, it is what we would expect if the detail was being supplied by human perception. That should be no-brainer. You cannot make every outcome support the miracle. Mary appears in a photograph.
¶78miracle. Nothing appears in the photograph. Also miracle. At that point, the belief in this cannot lose. Then there's the famous government investigation.
¶79We are told that officials thoroughly searched for equipment and found no natural explanation. But Dunday admits he could not find the basic information needed to evaluate that investigation. Who conducted it? What did they inspect? When did they inspect it?
¶80Did anyone at all examine the roof while an apparition was supposedly happening? What methods were used? Where is the internal report? We do not have it. Red flags, ladies and gentlemen.
¶81The government investigated. Sounds impressive. It gets used by apologists. But until you realize the investigation cannot be inspected, you don't realize how that means nothing. That does not do anything.
¶82No needle is moved in my opinion. If anything, it it makes the needle stay even more. And I realize again my hunch was right. This is human. That's not that's not a cleared case, y'all.
¶83It is a claim about an investigation. It's just not. Now, let us take the hoax possibility seriously. All right, there is a hoax possibility. Not because I can prove exactly who did what on every night.
¶84I cannot prove any of that at all. But let us lay out the case. Believers often make a hoax sound technologically impossible. They say Mary moved. She knelt, waved, and appeared three-dimensional.
¶85Therefore, a hoaxer would have needed a lifelike hologram that did not exist in 1968 Egypt. This makes me think of the Shroud of Tur and all the technology to make that kind of my god. It's like it never freaking ends, right? But that argument assumes the argument specifically about the 3D dimensional holographic [clears throat] Mary. It assumes the most elaborate witness descriptions perfectly match the physically present.
¶86Okay. What was physically present? That is the whole question. If a simple light, an illuminated object, a person in white or different stimuli on different nights were interpreted by a crowd as merry, then nobody needed to manufacture every movement later described by every witness. The light could be simple.
¶87The crowd supplies the identity. Expectation supplies some of the detail. Retelling makes the story cleaner. It it's really simple to me, but a limited hoax could begin with one person or a few people. It could create the first excitement without anyone anticipating that the story would become a national event.
¶88After that, after that initial, you know, whatever happened, an act of hoax might not even be necessary every night. Ordinary lights, rumors, religious expectation, and enormous crowds could carry the story forward. the church and state could approve and promote the event without having invented it. That does not require thousands of people secretly agreeing to lie for 3 years. It requires a small stimulus and a great deal of normal human behavior.
¶89What about the fact that no one confessed? That matters, but it does not settle the question. If only a few people created or encouraged in early display and later sightings were largely carried by expectation, there may never have been a giant conspiracy to confess to. Am I certain it was a hoax? Absolutely not.
¶90No. Here's the honest fork. As I see it like you can take whatever path and it still is human. Either somebody occasionally helped the lights along or ordinary lights and uncertain lights were turned into Mary by expectation and crowd interpretation. Both are natural explanations and neither requires a hologram and neither requires us to accuse every witness of dishonesty.
¶91This is where the later Coptic apparition cases became become important. This is where we need to pay attention. Mary reportedly appeared again at Autark in 2009. Both are in Egypt. These are not laboratory controls.
¶92The places and circumstances were different, but they are extremely useful comparisons because we have the same general apparition tradition in the age of consumer cameras. People again reported a woman in detailed clothing. They said she moved between domes, extended her hands, appeared in full form, and was accompanied by lights or doves. What does the recording show, you might ask? Vague lights, flashes, glowing patches, camera movement, distant structures.
¶93They do not show the clear moving woman described by the witnesses. In one widely circulated Alwart clip, a skeptic compared the geometry and argued that the crowned figure was the illuminated top of a structure or marinette behind the church. In that clip, the figure does not move between the domes. It stays with the building while the cameras move. At the end, the lights turn off.
¶94Keep the claim precise. That may explain that clip. It does not prove every report from every night was a minouette, but it proves something important for Zetune. A crowd can sincerely describe a detailed moving Mary, the Virgin, while the camera records a stationary or ambiguous light. Once we know that happens in the same religious tradition, the lifelike details in the Ziton testimony cannot simply be treated as a physical description of what was on the roof.
¶95We have modern cameras for a similar situation. So, the words literally outrun the footage here, y'all. And the later recordings show us how easily [clears throat] how easily that can happen. It's now now go back further where we don't have as much ways to prove, right, and more evidence to show like I think I think we're on to something here. And I don't think many of the people who are believers in this are sincerely letting the weight of that weigh in.
¶96So here's the part that everyone staring at Zun seems to ignore. The exact same war produced miracle claims on the other side. This is important. Many Israelis, especially religious Zionists, interpreted the six- day war itself as a miracle. I know when I went to Israel on tour, we stopped at one of these spots that was up near Syria on a mountain.
¶97Ask Neil from uh Gnostic Informant. We went on a mountain. We got to see the field in which the battle took place. Israel had faced weeks of fear. Then it defeated several Arab armies in 6 days, captured East Jerusalem, reached the Western Wall, and took territory filled with the biblical geography.
¶98As we were walking through the streets, we saw the bullet marks on the on the stone walls from Herod's the the building of Herod's uh you know temple, we saw bullet marks. I think it was part of Herod's temple. It might have been later construction, but either way, there were bullet marks still from that war. For many religious believers, this was not simply a military victory. It was the hand of God and a sign that redemption was unfolding for the Israelis.
¶99Military historians can describe the same victory using ordinary causes. Israel had carefully rehearsed Operation Focus. It launched a surprise air attack. Egyptian aircraft were caught on the ground. Israeli crews turned their planes around quickly.
¶100Egyptian command and communication broke down. Early air superiority shaped everything that followed in that war. No law of nature had to be suspended. Now, put both of the stories on the same table. On the Israeli side, God miraculously delivered Israel and returned Jerusalem.
¶101On the Egyptian side, defeat created the setting for another miracle. Mary appeared to console Egypt, restore faith, protect the cops, and give hope after humiliation. Which people I want to lay this out. I want to ask Joe Schmidt. I want to ask uh Cameron Bertusi.
¶102I want to ask all the Christians who believe this miracle. Which people receive the miracle? Which one? Did the Israelis receive the miracle? Did the cops receive the miracle?
¶103Both of them received the miracle. H Did God miraculously help Israel defeat Egypt and then send Mary to comfort the people who lost? A believer can say, "Yes, God could logically do both." Okay, but notice how little look at how silly in my opinion, but also little that answer allows us to test. It doesn't. Victory confirms God.
¶104Defeat confirms God. A successful military plan becomes divine intervention. The religious consolation after the loss becomes divine intervention, too. There's no outcome left that counts against the religious story. You've just made it all work.
¶105It It'll work no matter what. That is why I think the natural explanation fits better for it all. The winners found God in the victory. The losers found Mary over a church. Both communities took an overwhelming event and turned it into a sacred story their people could live with.
¶106That is something human beings do everywhere. Everywhere. Okay. So, Zaiton does not prove the resurrection of Jesus did not happen. I want to bring this up.
¶107These are not identical events. What it does show is how easily we exaggerate the value of religious testimony. You could put it back on a Jesus. You could put it back there if you want. It doesn't prove it.
¶108All right? Because people say hundreds of thousands saw Mary. When we look closer, hundreds of thousands may have visited the site. We do not know how many saw a detailed figure. Some saw lights, some saw Mary, some saw nothing.
¶109the negative cases largely vanished from the story. They don't really focus on those negative cases. Now, think about Paul's statement that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at once. We do not have 500 testimonies at all. We have one source reporting a tradition about 500 people, no names, no location, no independent interviews, no way to compare what those people experienced at all.
¶110A large number inside one report is still one report. Zaiton also shows how religious certainty can form around trauma. A community is devastated. Its sacred hopes are in danger. People have unusual experiences.
¶111The experiences are interpreted through symbols and the community will already know those symbols. They they they interpret those symbols through that already cultural framework. Stories spread. Authorities approve certain visions. People who saw nothing disappear from the record.
¶112Later generations inherit a much cleaner story than the one that happened on the ground. Grief experiences matter here, too. Researchers have documented for decades that berieved people sometimes sense, hear, or see a deceased loved one. Those in those experiences can be sincere, powerful, and life-changing without showing that a dead body returned to life at all. Keep it at 100.
¶113Now move from the 20th century Cairo to the first century apocalyptic movement whose messiah has just been publicly executed. Remove the cameras. Remove the journalist. Remove the anthropologist standing in the crowd. Give the tradition years of oral retelling before the gospel narratives appear.
¶114I'm not saying the disciples staged a light show. I'm saying the human processes we can watch at Zyun have to be considered when we evaluate ancient resurrection claims. If it is difficult to determine what happened during a public event in modern capital cities with photographs, newspapers, government institutions, and living witnesses, then we should be extremely careful with ancient reports. The story does not become more reliable simply because it's older and more important to us. And look, Joe may say his conversion video was a personal story, not a full academic defense.
¶115That's fair. All right. But once a miracle claim is doing real work in changing your worldview, it deserves more than the strongest devotional summary. And once you repeat that hundreds of thousands saw Mary, which is what he did, you have made a public evidential claim. He may say Zaiton is only part of a cumulative case.
¶116And I know that's the case after listening to his report, but a collection of weak cases does not automatically become a strong case. If several miracle stories depend on selective testimony, poor documentation, devotional retelling, institutional approval, and missing negative evidence, the cumulative case may be the same problem repeated several times. He may say, "I have not experienced every light seen across three years." I agree. I do not know what produced every light, but I do not know is not evidence that the light was Mary. It certainly does not establish the resurrection, biblical inherency, the eukarist, papal authority or Roman Catholicism.
¶117It does not do that. He may say God chose this social context because Egypt needed consolation. That is logically possible. But if every feature that looks human is absorbed into providence, the context stops functioning as evidence, at some point we have to ask what would count against the claim. Joe Cameron, everybody, here's where I stand.
¶118All right, this is where I stand. I cannot prove who produced every light as Zun. I cannot prove someone stood on the roof or placed a lamp near a dome, but I do not need a complete hoax reconstruction before rejecting the miracle claim. Look at the record we have. The first witness may have seen an ordinary woman.
¶119People standing together reported different things. An anthropologist could see a nunlike figure when she tried and lose it when she stopped. Those who saw nothing were filtered out or told that only the morally pure could see. The photographic record is tiny and disputed. The government investigation cannot be audited.
¶120Later apparition reports contain far more detail than their recordings. and the event appeared in a wounded society where Mary had enormous religious and political value. That is not a pile of excuses. That is a serious human explanation. It explains why the figure was Mary.
¶121It explains why Christians and Muslims could rally around her. It explains why the story appeared when it did, why testimony varied, and why the physical evidence is so poor. If this case helped move Joe from philosophy toward Christianity, I think he skipped the most important part of the investigation. He moved from unexplained to supernatural, from supernatural to Mary, from Mary to Christianity, and from Christianity to Catholicism. The evidence cannot carry all of that.
¶122And even if I granted a genuinely unexplained light, what would approve? The figure never spoke, it taught no doctrine. It appeared over a Coptic Orthodox church that has been separate from Rome for centuries. The Coptic hierarchy approved it. If Mary wanted to prove Roman Catholicism, Zaiton is a strange way to do it if you ask myself.
¶123I mean, really, really strange. Different apparition traditions also follow different cultural scripts. Catholic apparitions tend to involve selected visionaries and Catholic messages. Coptic apparitions tend to involve public lights over churches, luminous doves, and a silent Mary. The reports look like the cultures producing them.
¶124That should matter to anybody investigating whether these stories came from heaven or from human beings. Joe is welcome to respond. Obviously, Caleb Jack Jackson is welcome to bring the strongest evidence he has, and I'm certain they have much to say, as usual, when it comes to miracles. I mean, this is like a very, very important part of why they believe that this is the strongest evidence for Christianity. Caleb Jackson specifically would.
¶125So, show me the government report. Show me the clear photographs. Show me the raw contemporary witness sampling. Show me the medical files for the healings. Show me something that distinguishes Mary from an ambiguous stimulus interpreted inside a religious crowd.
¶126And until then, I do not see a miracle. But even then, you should be very cautious about people's testimonies because if I do go to miracles from other religions, well, your religion can still allow those because demons did it. Or your religion can find some way to absorb the other traditions and other cultures claims of miracles. or you'll be like me, a rational skeptic and go, "Nah, that's natural. That wasn't miraculous." So, I see people trying to survive history.
¶127That's what I see in this. And a supernatural story growing around something they did not understand. Period. If you enjoyed this video, like the video, share the video. Zaiton, it could probably deserve a much better polished documentary version where we exhaust the evidence and we can show you why it just doesn't work.
¶128And go into other examples, too. Um, if you want to fund any documentary of your choice, reach out, please. Mythvvisionodcast@gmail.com. I'm creating documentaries. People are getting them made as we speak.
¶129I hope you'll reach out. You might have a book. You might have a paper. You might have an argument. You might have an idea.
¶130You might want to fund something like the whole miracles thing. We've never dealt with the miracles on this level. I know Cameron Matusi was begging me a long time ago to say, "Hey, get your ass in gear and start doing docu, you know, do something on the the miracles here." Because to these guys, specifically Cameron Batusi, Caleb Jackson, the strongest evidence for Christianity is not the Bible. It's not the Christian claims of the New Testament. It's more modern miracle cases that open the door for them.
¶131Now, they're not discounting the old material like but Caleb and I have spoken and he's made it very clear the the Bible. No, that's probably not going to be persuasive. an ancient text of people writing, you need people in the modern period who witnessed and say that they had experiences of actual miracles. That's a stronger case. I agree that more modern stuff would be way better than an ancient book.
¶132Okay, we could probably do some polished stuff on that. Whatever you want to do, reach out. Like the video, share the video, comment down below, subscribe, and never forget. Love y'all. Don't take offense.
¶133Joe, Caleb, Cameron, etc. We are myth vision.