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Another Milk Miracle?

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Bhakta Don Muntean

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LUCKNOW, India (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of Indians thronged temples across India on Monday in the belief that statues of Hindu gods were drinking milk.

 

 

"I put a milk-filled spoon to Ganesha's mouth and he drank it," exclaimed Akhilesh Shukla, a trader in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.

 

He was among thousands of devotees who carried milk in glasses and pitchers to northern Indian temples where Hindus worship Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good fortune and wisdom; Shiva, the destroyer, and Durga, the goddess of strength.

 

"It is a miracle," said Sudhir Mishra, a priest at a Shiva temple in Lucknow. He said that at least 10 litres of milk had been offered at his temple on Monday.

 

"Look at the floor it is fairly dry. Where's the milk gone? It should be visible on floor. Can you see that," he said.

 

But others dismissed the milk-slurping gods as the work of less miraculous

 

forces - surface tension, which pulls the liquid toward the statues, and capillary action, through which the milk is leached into the statues by tiny pores on the surface of the stone.

 

"Milk disappears the same way water reaches the top of a tree through roots," said A. K. Sharma, a professor at Lucknow University.

 

Indian folklore is replete with tales of miracles, and sociologists said the frenzy over the latest such incident should be viewed through sharp contrasts in education among India's billion-plus people.

 

"Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena. And they see no contradiction in this," said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociologist at Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi.

 

The drinking gods craze came after thousands of Muslims flocked to a bay in Mumbai late Friday and early Saturday to drink "sweet water" - ordinarily brackish water that was noticeably less salty than usual.

 

 

Scientists said recent heavy rains had lowered the salinity of the water, and officials urged people not to drink from Mahim Bay where the water is reportedly contaminated by raw sewage and industrial waste.

 

 

Nearly two days later, on Sunday evening, milk was offered to a statue in the town of Bareilly, also in Uttar Pradesh, and the idol absorbed the liquid.

 

 

As the word spread through television reports, crowds swarmed temples in dozens of cities, just as millions did during a similar episode in 1995, when authorities were forced to deploy extra police to control crowds. Some parts of the country also faced a milk shortage.

 

 

At that time, a group of scientists visited a temple in New Delhi and fed a statue milk tinted with dye. The milk was quickly absorbed by the idol, and soon permeated the stone, leaving the statue coated by a coloured, milky film.

 

http://ca.news./s/22082006/2/koddities-crowds-throng-hindu-temples-across-northern-india-statues-drink.html

 

 

 

Tell me how polished marble [or any other stone absorbs that much liquids in that short time frame - i've tested the bogus theory...

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"Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena. And they see no contradiction in this," said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociologist at Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi. "

 

That's an ignorant comment. Belief in miraces doesn't mean one is uneducated. There are plenty of brilliant scientists who still believe in miracles and in God. Education or intelligence do not have that much of a correlation with belief in miracles or divinity.

 

However, I do think this phenomenon needs to be tested. It's possible that once the stones become saturated with milk they stop exhibiting the effect of sucking up milk for a while, and so nobody feeds it the milk, but once the stone is unsaturated with milk again and some devotee thinks to offer it, the phenomenon starts all over again. That is a plausible scientific explanation.

 

I really hope it's a miracle, but I really doubt it.

 

Also, one would need to see if ALL idols no matter what material exhibit this phenomenon. If only idols of a particular type exhibit this phenomenon, then it's probably safe to say that it is a property of the material and not a miracle that is occuring.

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on other Hindu forums, they are speaking about this as well! One devotee has posted that he and his family were offering milk to a Krishna Murti in Canada (yesterday, I believe) and the Murti was accepting the milk, the milk was disappearing. This started happening, once the reports from India came in! Looks like another miracle like in '95! AMAZING! HARE KRISHNA!

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"Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena. And they see no contradiction in this," said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociologist at Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi. "

 

That's an ignorant comment. Belief in miraces doesn't mean one is uneducated. There are plenty of brilliant scientists who still believe in miracles and in God. Education or intelligence do not have that much of a correlation with belief in miracles or divinity.

 

However, I do think this phenomenon needs to be tested. It's possible that once the stones become saturated with milk they stop exhibiting the effect of sucking up milk for a while, and so nobody feeds it the milk, but once the stone is unsaturated with milk again and some devotee thinks to offer it, the phenomenon starts all over again. That is a plausible scientific explanation.

 

I really hope it's a miracle, but I really doubt it.

 

Also, one would need to see if ALL idols no matter what material exhibit this phenomenon. If only idols of a particular type exhibit this phenomenon, then it's probably safe to say that it is a property of the material and not a miracle that is occuring.

 

I agree with you entirely. The capillary action causes fluid to be drawn up in porous materials. try it! even wood will too!

 

However, as you stated "to see if ALL idols no matter what material exhibit this phenomenon" would be interesting to see. Though I personaly do not think this phenomenon is true for all materials..

 

Hare Krishna!

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on other Hindu forums, they are speaking about this as well! One devotee has posted that he and his family were offering milk to a Krishna Murti in Canada (yesterday, I believe) and the Murti was accepting the milk, the milk was disappearing. This started happening, once the reports from India came in! Looks like another miracle like in '95! AMAZING! HARE KRISHNA!

 

That miracle and neither this one are genuine unless they can be proven to have happened.

 

There are probably real miracles out there, but I don't believe they occur worldwide. They occur for each person on an individual basis to establish his relationship with God.

 

By the way, what's the murti made out ouf? If it's clay, like most, of course it's going to drink milk. Try offering milk to a clay model of a Christian figure, or some non-entity. Like a clay model of anything that's not Hindu related or in the figure of a person, and you'll see it's not a miracle, because that object will also start sucking up milk.

 

It's only because people hadn't thought to feed these idols milk, that the milk was able to exit the idols slowly and have room for additional milk deposits. That's why it's happening all over again.

 

Still, at any rate, I don't think it's doing anyone any harm, and I think it strengthens people's faiths. Perhaps God is pleased by people's devotions and their offering of milk.

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It's cool to see, but it still seems like capillary action to me.

 

I don't think this is a once in a lifetime event or any such thing. It really seems to me that the statues are just unsaturated with milk at the beginning and when they are fed the milk, they get saturated after a while, and then they stop "drinking" the milk. After a couple of years, they'll start again, as the milk drains out slowly or something, becoming unsaturated once more.

 

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean God isn't behind this phenomenon through scientific means, unless all statues made of similar material exhibit this phenomenon, God or not. Then it would be officially proven there's nothing special about this.

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"Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena. And they see no contradiction in this,"

I don't think so. If I ask an Indian, "how could you be satisfied", he'll say, "I can't be satisfied even you give me whole universe". But in fact, you can't even extend your power out of earth. This is a typical Indian. You do have contradiction in the mind, but you caprice people isolate the 2 part of a paradox & switch from left to right or from right to left.

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It's cool to see, but it still seems like capillary action to me.

 

I don't think this is a once in a lifetime event or any such thing. It really seems to me that the statues are just unsaturated with milk at the beginning and when they are fed the milk, they get saturated after a while, and then they stop "drinking" the milk. After a couple of years, they'll start again, as the milk drains out slowly or something, becoming unsaturated once more.

 

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean God isn't behind this phenomenon through scientific means, unless all statues made of similar material exhibit this phenomenon, God or not. Then it would be officially proven there's nothing special about this.

 

It's a Shame how the Atheistic skepticism has crept into Hindu thought.

 

Read our Vedic Scriptures, they are filled with the paranormal and stories of the miraculous. So why wouldn't we believe these things are still happening in our day?

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It's a Shame how the Atheistic skepticism has crept into Hindu thought.

 

Read our Vedic Scriptures, they are filled with the paranormal and stories of the miraculous. So why wouldn't we believe these things are still happening in our day?

 

 

I would love it if these were proven to be miraculous. I truly want them to be miraculous. But if there's a scientific explanation for it, and it really is a mundane phenomenon, then it's no miracle, and cannot be accepted as such.

 

The vedas say a lot of things, I don't know if most of the things they say are true or not. I've felt enough disappointment over so-called "miraculous" cases being explained away convincingly by science, that I don't just take any case as "miraculous" unless proven that it is not a mundane phenomena.

 

I'm not even sure there is a God out there to be discovered or if it's possible to even seek experience of the Lord. Or if experience of the Lord is worthwhile, because how can we trust that experience to begin with? How do we evaluate what we see to be not a form of psychosis or psychological manifestation and really a manifestation of the spirit?

 

"Gut" feelings or feelings from the "heart" are not at all reliable for indicating what is genuine or what is not, so I just see no way to really verify whether God really exists, or if God can truly be experienced or seen or understood.

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