Apparitions from heaven???

[Minimalist]

I'm trying to compare your picture to that one and it just isn't working for me.

It's because I'm way prettier.  

Possible.... it's also true that I have a piss poor image of nuns to begin with...

[pocaracas]

It's because I'm way prettier.  

Possible.... it's also true that I have a piss poor image of nuns to begin with...

"What do you want, Little Boy?!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4g_OMETzOk

[abaris]

Most serious take on "real" ghost hunting I'm aware of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIhiBrzg60

[Catholic_Lady]

Bahahahaha! Abaris, you're always making fart jokes lol. Do you fart a lot in real life?

[abaris]

Bahahahaha! Abaris, you're always making fart jokes lol. Do you fart a lot in real life?

One thing I love is people misbehaving in a not hurtful way. I love to encourage them to do that, but don't do it a lot myself. Watching is much more fun.

[Jehanne]

I have to say, it is curious that the kids did specify that time and place, if you're saying poca that it was a natural place for something like that to happen... whether they'd seen similar effects there before, or there was otherwise more to this than meets the eye... almost like PR stunt .  It makes me think of the scene in Apocalypto where the Mayan high priest cashes in on an eclipse to wow the ignorant gathered crowd into thinking that the god they're sacrificing to is appeased.

It was Lucia who specified the date & place, but not, apparently, the time.  She was also the one who started screaming, "Look at the Sun, look at the Sun!"

[Jehanne]

As I said, this is very convincing to me that it truly was a miracle that happened that day. But I'm not trying to get you guys to think it's convincing as well. It just simply makes more sense to me that it was a miracle than it does that it was some sort of elaborate coincidence in so many ways.

Elaborate coincidences happen all the time.  Here is a book that told of a ship that would sink in the North Atlantic, written in 1898:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futility,_..._the_Titan

Prophetic?  Or, coincidence?  The author (who died in 1915) never claimed anything but the latter.

[Jehanne]

the fact that it started and ended at the same time for everyone who saw it....

This is just false...some reported a "miracle" lasting a few seconds, others upwards of 10 minutes.

[Jehanne]

It wouldn't take much to make those kids believe in what they were being told... Rural Portugal was pretty much pastoral - no sophistication of any kind... Very religious to begin with, so, by default, gullible.
Curiously, on the day the sun was seen to wobble, there was no apparition... no lady, no angel... just the sun. It's as if it would be impossible to pull such a trick in front of all those people.

Correction -- Lucia, on that day, claimed to have seen Mary, the Infant Jesus, Joseph, and other angels, et al.  No one else, of course, saw these "apparitions".

[Jehanne]

Yeah...I don't believe the kids were lying.
I find it far more likely that they were being deceived by someone else (possibly a team of people).
Someone who knew the land and who had noted consistent atmospheric phenomena throughout the years... There's another well known phenomenon here, the Summer of St. Martin, that happens yearly around November 11th (St. Martin's day, when we traditionally eat roasted chestnuts... global warming must be messing it up, as it seems to have passed by last week), but I remember it working like clockwork,
just last year.

It wouldn't take much to make those kids believe in what they were being told... Rural Portugal was pretty much pastoral - no sophistication of any kind... Very religious to begin with, so, by default, gullible.
Curiously, on the day the sun was seen to wobble, there was no apparition... no lady, no angel... just the sun. It's as if it would be impossible to pull such a trick in front of all those people.

So you think it was some sort of mass conspiracy magic trick by a team of people who got tens of thousands of people to see a sun moving around and changing colors and drying up their wet clothes and puddles in seconds at the exact time predicted??

I dunno... that seems even more far fetched imho lol.

Then you accept the Hindu milk miracle:

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