Atheist Debates - The OTHER Empty Tomb

Beggars pretending to be crippled is, unfortunately, a common occurrence.

Any mundane explanation, regardless of how unlikely, is infinitely better than a supernatural one.

1 case of a regrown limb miracle before photography, 0 since. Huh, that’s a head-scratcher.

It's also interesting that, at that moment, the Catholic Spanish Empire was losing the Thirty Years War against protestants (and against France). The Thirty Years War was mainly a war between Catholics and Protestants, so a Catholic miracle could be useful for the Monarch Philip IV (the one who kissed the leg) to convince his people (and maybe also his enemies) that God was on the Catholic side. I'm not saying necessariy that Philip IV was lying, I'm just saying that they probably weren't too motivated to investigate (and try to deny) a miracle claim at that moment.

The mundane explanation that first came to my mind was that this story would've been a good cover for the soldier to get out of the army and start a new life. The original son was already dead, they buried him on the farm or whatever, not sure if leaving the spanish military was allowed at this specific time period, but armies often prevent any form of desertion. The farmer family would go along with it to get the help on the farm that the injured son hadn't been providing.

The part that is a tip off to me is that the mom accudentally came across the second leg at night. Sounds like someone unbound his leg to go to bed and thought he could get up and bind it before his parents saw him in the morning. Then the rest of the story plays out like a comedy trope of a man getting swept away in miraculous story and fanfare, just going along with it so no one finds out he was lying all along.

"Sounds to me like somebody got drunk and fell asleep on his mom's floor" We've all been there 😂

The part that stands out to me is that the "new" leg had his old scars still on it. Obviously if miraculous amputation healing were possible, we dont know exactly how it would work, but the detail that his regrown leg has the old scars on it makes it clear he never lost the leg. Otherwise to me, it seems like the new leg would be free from scars and blemishes that are not from birth. Maybe birth marks would regrow, but scars?? What god would regrow your leg, but to the condition right before it was amputated?? Like why not regrow the leg, but its still broken lol. Why regrow it but include the scars? Seems like the most sus detail to me.

"Looking good, Billie Ray!" "Feeling good, Winthorpe!"

I mean, even something as outlandish as "he had a genetic mutation that reactivated limb regeneration genes from way back in our prehuman, premammal ancestry" is more plausible than MAGIC, so...

Why didn't the leg reappear in front of a crowd instead of in such a hidden fashion?

I looked into this story a few years ago at the request of a believer who cited it a s a verified miracle. It barely deserves a second look as there's almost nothing to investigate yet believers are sure it's a miracle. The desperation to believe is stronger than reason 😞

Even if humans all of a sudden developed the ability to regrow limbs, I wouldn't think it's a god doing it.

Yea... First thing I thought of was the limb binding scam beggers have used in the past.

Out of curiosity, why would it take 30 months to have the missing leg reappear? This what I call the "Divine Delay" for some reason whenever god interferes, directly or indirectly it's always after an unspecified amount of time, rarely immediately. For example, the flood took more then a century, jesus was supposed to come back later ™ and criminals are punished after death, not before

Oddly enough, limbs amputated with Ockham's razor never regrow. Hmm...🤔

Thank you, I had similar opinions, when reading the criticism, I was also reminded of the Eddie Murphy scene. I kinda assumed the soldier could’ve been a reason his ruse would’ve been uncovered and his mother played along to protect her son

He got drunk and forgot to hide his amputated foot... so now he had to work on the farm 🙄

Did the story ever have a leg to stand on?

A true believer prays every day for years and the best he can get is a used leg?