[vacri]

> No one has every believed that the eucharist literally turns to blood and flesh. Your taste buds would tell you otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

Plenty of people have believed it historically. Scroll down to the Catholic section and you'll see some of the mental gymnastics I talked about to claim it in modern times.

Protestants don't believe in literal transubstantiation; I'd say they probably trust their taste-buds more, but then again, compare Protestant/Anglo-German food against Catholic/Franco-Italo-Spanish food :)

> "questions that have no answer". They have more perhaps retreated to "god of the gaps"

I don't personally see a difference between these terms - they both mean claiming to have an answer for something that is unanswerable. If you have an answer for which the only proof is basically "just trust me", then it's not much of an answer. Russell's Teapot is a pretty clear example of this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[Gupie]

Where in the link does it say that people thought there is a physical change as opposed to a spiritual one, "The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ."

There is a big difference between something that cannot have an answer and a "gap". We currently do not understand consciousness, which leaves a gap for religions to postulate about souls. But it is very likely that in the future science will be able to answer to question of how consciousnesses arises in the brain. It is not an unanswerable question.

[vacri]

... the very first paragraph after the table of contents?

If you check out the Middle Ages section, it shows that the theological debate that it wasn't physical alteration started... at a date that is closer to us than the birth of jesus.

Check out Stercoranism [1] as well (which contributed to the above debate), whose whole basis is that the doctrine of physical change must lead towards normal digestive processes happening, and wondering if this turns the eucharist into, literally, holy shit.

At the end of that article is a bit of modern apologia stating that christ probably leaves as soon as the cracker hits your stomach ('but nobody knows precisely when'[2]). :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stercoranism

[2] god does, after all, move in mysterious ways...