Quote: So what are we saying happened, here?

Mass delusion.

(November 1, 2016 at 9:15 pm)RozKek Wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of..._the_event

"Auguste Meessen, following the work done before him by the Belgian skeptic Marc Hallet,[21] has stated sun miracles cannot be taken at face value and that the reported observations were optical effects caused by prolonged staring at the sun. Meessen contends that retinal after-images produced after brief periods of sun gazing are a likely cause of the observed dancing effects. Similarly Meessen states that the color changes witnessed were most likely caused by the bleaching of photosensitive retinal cells.[22] Meessen observes that Sun Miracles have been witnessed in many places where religiously charged pilgrims have been encouraged to stare at the sun. He cites the apparitions at Heroldsbach, Germany (1949) as an example, where many people within a crowd of over 10,000 testified to witnessing similar observations as at Fátima"

Maybe the people who didn't see anything at all weren't dumb enough to stare into the sun, lol.

And Meessen's hypothesis is supported by the fact that it had been cloudy and raining, and it was only after the Sun emerged from the cloud deck, along with Lucia's screams that people finally "saw" something.  And, as for the so-called distant witnesses, their accounts were only a handful (likely, due to "social suggestion") and some communities that were close-by saw absolutely nothing.

(November 1, 2016 at 9:19 pm)Jehanne Wrote: It was Lucia herself, upon noticing the Sun emerging, who screamed, "Look at the sun!"  That's what got the crowd's attention, and like, provoked hysteria and panic among them:

Which is frighteningly easy to induce in a group of people prone to superstitious thinking. Again, people from my village at the time "miracles" were happening would claim they saw such things as apparitions of Jesus and Mary, faith healings, icons dripping oil, cross of Jesus shaking, and so on.

For the record, the cross of Jesus was indeed shaking (as me and my friends at the time clearly saw it), but according to some people who went to the back of the room at the church, it was some idiot banging the wall from behind causing the cross attached to the wall from the other side to shake. It didn't stop gullible people from kneeling down before it and praying, though. And insisting to others that it was a miracle, of course.