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Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

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Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#171

Post by 082349872349872 »

neaden wrote: post #130
deepsun wrote: post #105

> Did the builders knew the earth was round? Long before St. Michael was born, yes.

St. Michael is an Angel, so either has existed since before the Earth was made or if you want the earliest literary reference from the Book of Enoch which dates to around 300 BCE but might have existed in an oral tradition before that. Earth being round dates to around 500 BCE so depending on how old the oral tradition of the angel Michael were around was probably earlier but maybe contemporary.

> "Once upon a time, there were four little angels who went to the police academy and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that and now they work for me. My name is YHWH." —not Aaron Spelling

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#172

Post by seanhunter »

mrbonner wrote: post #123
karaterobot wrote: post #98

Are any of these actually cathedrals? I see some monasteries and sacred sites, I don't see any cathedrals in that list. The difference is that 7 cathedrals, all named after St. Michael, found in a basically straight line would certainly not be a coincidence. It would be like there being 7 Google complexes in a straight line spread around the world: something's going on here. But 7 random religious sites named after o…

A cathedral has nothing to do with size of the church. If a church has a bishop resides, it's a cathedral.

Yes, but a bishop is not ever going to (and could not ever) reside at a monastery because it would be incompatible with their job as a bishop to do what monks do (retire to a life of prayer and contemplation). A bishop is the boss of all the diocesan priests, so needs to be a secular priest not a religious.

Source: not religious at all but my brother is a dominican friar so has explained this stuff to me. Also confirmed by this for example https://catholicsay.com/differences-between-a-bishop-archbis...

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#173

Post by seanhunter »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #87
wolframhempel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded t…

Humans sacrificed animals when relations between abstract numbers and reality were discovered: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism The practice of wonder surrounding numbers and their role in existence has been practiced by nearly every ancient civilization for many millennia. Definitely not unique to Christianity. Definitely as natural as religious practice itself.

Humans may have done that, but not the Pythagoreans, who were vegetarians. From that wiki page:

> The Pythagoreans also thought that animals were sentient and minimally rational. The arguments advanced by Pythagoreans convinced numerous of their philosopher contemporaries to adopt a vegetarian diet. The Pythagorean sense of kinship with non-humans positioned them as a counterculture in the dominant meat-eating culture.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#174

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

addaon wrote: post #128
seanhunter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'll give you one I know: St Michael's mount in Cornwall (second in his list) is definitely not a cathedral. There is a stately home and smallish castle on a small tidal island on the site of an old monastery but I'm pretty sure it has never been a cathedral. It's not in or near a city for starters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael's_Mount p.s. It's a cool place to visit btw. You can walk over to the hou…

> smallish castle This makes more sense, as castles tend to move in straight lines. As another comment mentions, if these were cathedrals that would mean a bishop in residence, and we all know bishops prefer to move diagonally.

Not Howl's.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#175

Post by pclmulqdq »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #163
pclmulqdq wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put another way, if there are 10,000 shrines to this one saint around Europe, the probability that 7 will randomly be in a straight line on the Mercator projection is a lot higher than if there are <10.

10^-8 compared to -16?

I don't think it's that low. The number of coincidences will rise exponentially with the number of churches. You also have to account for the fact that there are something like 1000 prominent Catholic saints, and 10's of usable map projections, etc.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#176

Post by tutuca »

gravescale wrote: post #49
arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

The Ancient Aliens discovered the same laws of engineering: 5. (Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve. 6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker. https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

I yell Akin's laws to any new coworker like a drill sargent.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#177

Post by svieira »

empath75 wrote: post #166
svieira wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extra interesting wrinkle here is that each of the Burger Kings in the straight line are associated with an appearance of the Burger King himself explicitly asking for a shrine in the location, while the others are mostly random franchises stuck up by someone who decided they would like a fast food restaurant here and it might as well be a Burger King. (i. e. Mont Saint Michele the bishop who saw St. Michael orig…

The level of credulity displayed here is pretty amusing. but just to back that up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skellig_Michael#History Not a cathedral, No mention of an appearance of St Michael, and the monastery predates the dedication to him (it?) by several centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael%27s_Mount Not a cathedral, site predates dedication to michael. No mention of an appearance of michael. h…

1. Shrines, not cathedrals.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael%27s_Mount#Folklore - "There are popular claims of a tradition that the Archangel Michael appeared before local fishermen on the mount in the 5th century AD.[44] But in fact this is a modern myth. The earliest appearance of it is in a version by John Mirk, copying details of the medieval legend for Mont-Saint-Michel from the Golden Legend.[45] The folk-story was examined and found to be based on a 15th-century misunderstanding by Max Muller."

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#178

Post by hef19898 »

seanhunter wrote: post #167
hef19898 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, spherical geometry exists. But using various projections makes for better click bait.

In TFA he tries the geodesic line first before trying the various projections. It doesnt' really fit any of them because even with these extremely cherry-picked seven points, you can't retcon them into having been designed to be in a line when they weren't.

Take a small enough map or globe and a big enough sharpy anf everything is on a line.

Agree so, there is no line besides the one people make up.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#179

Post by smeej »

buildsjets wrote: post #151
smeej wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren't experts. If I'm setting up a bunch of churches in a line to make a point, I'm doing it to make a point to the vast swath of common people in them, not the handful of experts.

You have made the assumption that the line-up was done for the sake of human people, whether common or expert. When choosing the site to build a religious facility, would not the sake of the deity(s) being worshiped be a primary consideration?

Honestly? No, not usually, or at least not when the deity has made it clear that He can be worshiped anywhere.

Locations are chosen for the sake of the people who are expected to come to them.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#180

Post by verandaguy »

svieira wrote: post #121
karaterobot wrote: post #98

Are any of these actually cathedrals? I see some monasteries and sacred sites, I don't see any cathedrals in that list. The difference is that 7 cathedrals, all named after St. Michael, found in a basically straight line would certainly not be a coincidence. It would be like there being 7 Google complexes in a straight line spread around the world: something's going on here. But 7 random religious sites named after o…

The extra interesting wrinkle here is that each of the Burger Kings in the straight line are associated with an appearance of the Burger King himself explicitly asking for a shrine in the location, while the others are mostly random franchises stuck up by someone who decided they would like a fast food restaurant here and it might as well be a Burger King. (i. e. Mont Saint Michele the bishop who saw St. Michael orig…

    > an appearance of the Burger King himself explicitly asking for a shrine in the location
Is this canonically BK lore?
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