The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[Pat Mustard]

So far I've yet to see anyone disprove what has been presented.

You have, you're simply ignoring the posts which offer evidence as to why you should disbelieve.

Oh I find it interesting that you've ignored my two refutations of your unevidenced assertions. Of course, we all know why.

[chimp3]

The Catholics love this kind of shit. Virgin Mary appears..Bones of old priests cure cancer...Statues weep blood...Demons invade unruly teenagers and get exorcised..jesus incarnates on a tortilla. Critical thinking seems to be lacking in their skill sets.

[Cyberman]

You have, you're simply ignoring the posts which offer evidence as to why you should disbelieve.

Oh I find it interesting that you've ignored my two refutations of your unevidenced assertions. Of course, we all know why.

Especially revealing since he started by saying he's really curious as to what we all think.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Undeniable?

Nope.  Definitely denied.

Three kids sharing a story and then mass delusion?

Hardly undeniable.

 
Here are some testimonials from people who saw the miracle from miles away. That rules out mass delusion or mass hysteria [...] [bullshit snipped] [...] believing it to be indeed the end of the world.”

You got any testimonials from astronomers?

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Especially revealing since he started by saying he's really curious as to what we all think.

Were he curious, he would not be religious.

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While we're at it, we might as well pick a few random events in history that have plenty of testimonials, and deny those too. Boston tea party? Sounds fishy to me, therefore it never happened. Abe Lincoln's assassination? I don't believe it could have happened that way, therefore it never happened.

This is why you're unconvincing. Shootings and riots are mundane events, and do not need extraordinary evidence. The Sun and Earth violating the laws of physics, not so much. If you want me to believe the ridiculous, you'd better have ridiculously good evidence. And testimonials gathered years after the fact do not meet that standard.

Had the Sun rapidly moved towards the Earth that day, there would be physical evidence of its motion in the motions of other bodies in the Solar System, and yet there are none. I've no doubt that the changes in tidal forces would have made themselves plain most clearly in Mercury and Venus, though Alex K would probably be able to get more exact with you about that.

I'd suggest you study some critical thinking ... but something tells me that such efforts would be wasted on you.

[Cyberman]

Were he curious, he would not be religious.

Oh, I find him very curious.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Were he curious, he would not be religious.

Oh, I find him very curious.

Really? He strikes me as just another run-of-the-mill religionist anxious to buttress his faith with "evidence", and entirely unaware that once it has evidence, it is no longer faith.

[Mr.wizard]

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 Of course, every rational human being asks themselves the questions you mentioned. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to answer those questions because only God could know the answers. But these questions don't take away from the fact that an incident certainly occurred that was beyond what any human being could do.
[/quote]

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It doesn't matter if an incident occurred that no human being could do, that doesn't mean god did it. "God did it" is not an answer, you haven't even established it as a possibility until you can establish that this god actually exists.  You also must establish the fact that an incident occurred, which in the case of the sun moving around sky you have not done. You keep wanting to use that 70,000 person figure as your evidence, but you ignore the fact that the same sun was visible to millions of people who didn't see anything.

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Man, I really butchered that reply, it was directed at PABSTA.

[brewer]

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Look, I found this picture on the internet of the sun dancing at Fatima. It came from the catholics.



It's just got to be true. All praise be to god.

 
That is a photo created for the movie, "The 13th Day". It is not an actual photo of the miracle in 1917.

And yet the catholics see fit to use it to promote the fraud scam. Wonderful belief ya got there.

http://www.sanclementeparish.org/why-fat...er-matters

[chimp3]

http://www.sanclementeparish.org/why-fat...er-matters



"Third Event: The next year, on Oct. 13, 1917, just 33 years after Leo XIII’s locution, Our Blessed Mother appeared to the three shepherd children of Fatima. The message of Our Lady of Fatima was quite simple. The world must repent of its sins, or God would punish the world. Our Lady asked the children to “Pray the Rosary and do penance for world peace.”5Later when Jacinta lay dying in the hospital in Lisbon, Our Lady told her, that the sins that offended God the most were the “sins of the flesh,” and that “many marriages are not good.”6 So how does a dying pre-pubecent, 10-year-old Jacinta come to know about these things in 1920?"



How does a 10 year old Catholic child know about "sins of the flesh" ? A little private tutoring by priests perhaps?

[Harry Nevis]

Amazing how you all devalue eyewitness testimony as though it has no importance. That's not how society works. Look at our judicial system - if you were accused of robbing a bank in broad daylight and even ONE witness were to come forward saying they saw you do it, that alone could convince a jury to lock you up. Now consider if 2 or 3 witnesses were to come forward - then it's a no-brainer for the jury - they will unanimously vote to lock you up for the rest your life. That's how valuable our society has always looked at eyewitnesses.

Now considering there are HUNDREDS of documented eyewitness testimonies for the miracle that took place in Fatima, we're not all going to suddenly pretend eyewitness testimonies have no value. Ask yourself WHY so many unanimous eyewitness testimonies exist, even when all these people didn't know each other. You atheists don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to this argument, and all your bitterness and vulgarities aren't going to make these testimonials go away. Why don't we just start denying random events in history like the Civil War - after all, none of us were there and we don't know anyone who was, and we only rely on testimony passed down to us in books.

Mass delusion.  Anything else?

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Even assuming it's all true, how do you get from "sun flying around the sky" to "therefore god"?

 

1. The lady, according to the children, claimed to be from heaven, and her message was a religious one on the need for prayer etc.
   
2. She predicted a miracle months ahead of time to the exact location and time, and relayed this to the children, and it actually took place. No human could make such a prediction - the weatherman can't even get the weather right the day before!
   

1. OK
2. Bullshit.

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All I keep seeing is responses saying, "Nope, it didn't happen", with nothing else solid to back why you are denying it. You cannot say it didn't happen because it appeared in at least 2 newspapers the following day, and these were anti-religious newspapers. Here is the English translations of the text from each of the newspapers. Something VERY significant happened right where and when the lady and the children said:

After the miracle, the anti-religious newspaper, Diario de Noticias reported:

“At one o’clock the rain stopped. The sky had a certain gray clarity but seemed to suddenly be getting darker. The sun seemed veiled in gauze. We could look at it without strain. The gray tint of mother-of-pearl began changing as if into a silver disc that was growing and growing... until it broke the clouds! Then the silvery sun, still shrouded in that grayish light, began to rotate and wander within the circle of the receded clouds!

“The people cried out with one voice. Thousands, transported by ecstasy fell to their knees upon the muddy ground. Then, as if it were shining through the stained glass windows of a great cathedral, the light became a rare blue, spreading its rays upon the nave... Slowly the blue faded away and now the light seemed to be filtered through yellow. Yellow spots were falling now upon the white kerchiefs and dark shirts of coarse wool. They were spots which repeated themselves indefinitely over the landscape. All the people were weeping and praying bareheaded, weighted down by the greatness of the miracle. These were seconds, moments, that seemed hours...”


O Século, the other skeptical newspaper added:

“From beside the parked carriages and where many thousands stood, afraid to descend into the muddy soil of the Cova da Iria, we saw the immense crowd turn toward the sun at its highest, free of all clouds. The sun seemed to us like a plate of dull silver. It could be seen without the least effort. It did not blind or burn. It seemed as though an eclipse were taking place. All of a sudden a tremendous shout burst forth, ‘Miracle, miracle!’

“Before the astonished eyes of the people, whose attitude carried us back to Biblical times, and who, white with terror, heads uncovered, gazed at the sun which trembled and made brusque and unheard of movement beyond all cosmic laws, the sun seemed literally to dance in the sky.

“Immediately afterward the people asked each other if they saw anything and what they had seen. The greatest number avowed that they saw the sun trembling and dancing; others declared they saw the smiling face of the Blessed Virgin herself. They swore that the sun turned around on itself as if it were a wheel of fireworks and had fallen almost to the point of burning the earth with its rays. Some said they saw it change colors successively.”

Anti-religious newspaper?! Riiiight.

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we know that the sun did not move about the sky because:

A: In no other part of the world where the sun is visible did it appear to shift in any other than its normal route.
B: The solar system wasn't ripped apart in the ensuing gravitational shifts that would follow the sun actually moving like that.

So we are left with:

A: local optical illusion.
B: Mass hallucination.
C: Just a load of bollocks.
D: Some combination of A, B or C

 
There are plenty of eyewitness testimonials that were given from people who were miles away from the incident who attest to seeing it from afar. If you want me to post some of those testimonials I can.


Testimonials have weight in numbers. Bring even 3 eyewitnesses to any court hearing and see how quick a decision is made. And two anti-religious newspapers confirming the miracle the following day is certainly the last thing they wanted to do -- but they did because they became believers after seeing it.

You all clearly cannot explain what has been presented to you. There is a common theme between all of your replies; they are all filled with vulgarities and rude comments with no other intelligent arguments - your frustration is showing. How about some REAL arguments guys?

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Where the two conflict, physical evidence - or lack thereof - eats eyewitnesses and blows them out in bubbles.

 

First of all, not all events in this world leave behind physical evidence. If I shined a bright light in your face yesterday, there is no physical evidence of it today.
 
That point being made, the eyewitness testimonies from thousands of people that didn't know each other unanimously concur that everyone's clothes dried immediately after the incident. There is your physical evidence - though we obviously cannot see that now, so we have the weight of countless testimonials to confirm it, just like we do with any other event handed down to us in history.

You're pretty gullible.

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Also, the wet clothes suddenly drying part... ever been in Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho in the summer?  It gets hot (easily above 90F in some places), but it's also dry.  It doesn't take long for wet clothes to dry, even if they're soaked.

I don't know what Fatima's weather is usually like, but even here in muggy NH we get hot but dry days in late summer/early autumn.  In fact, early-to-mid October is when our 'Indian Summer' (a stretch (4-7) of warm/hot days following the first frost of the year) occurs.

Finally, there's a meteorological phenomenon known as a 'sun dog' (parhelion, which Last Poet referred to... see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog) that very much aligns with the story.

The temperature inside a clothes dryer on high is 135°. Ever put soaking wet clothes in the dryer without wringing them out? It would take over an hour to dry them at a 135°. Testimonials from Fatima state all their clothes were dried within 10 min. So your argument doesn't hold.

Neither does the testimony.

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But we're not talking about having a light shone in my face, are we? You're seriously proposing a star whizzing around off its axis. Whereas the counter-proposal is somewhere between delusion and hoax. Given the known propensity for people to lie, exaggerate and/or simply need to believe, multiplied by the also-known desperation for the church - especially the Catholic church - for a good money-spinning headline grabber in order to appear relevant, and then balanced against the sheer impossibility of the story as related... Well, which is more plausible?

The point is not all events in this world leave behind physical evidence. If the sun did something strange, you're not necessarily going to find
 physical evidence the following day.
 
As for people lying, there were 70,000 people watching there that day, most of did not know each other, and many came to disprove that a miracle would occur. The disbelievers left as believers. So this argument doesn't hold.

No, you'd find the solar system falling apart as it happened.

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You lost me at 3 young children. You know the kind of shit I would say when I was little, especially if I thought it would make my parents happy with me? I had imaginary dogs with their own stories, who lived and died, and once gave such an impassioned speech to the church congregation after their "deaths" that some people actually believed they were real, and prayed for them. If three children think they'll get attention by saying they were visited by an angel with a message, they'd jump on that instantly.

If you read the account of the story, the children were ages 7-10 and were abducted by the police and put in jail, and told they would never see their parents again, and that they would be boiled in hot oil if they didn't say their story was false. All 3 of the children held to their story, even under such pressures. If they were just looking for attention the very first thing they would have done in such a situation would be to fess up. They didn't.

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Look, I found this picture on the internet of the sun dancing at Fatima. It came from the catholics.



It's just got to be true. All praise be to god.

 
That is a photo created for the movie, "The 13th Day". It is not an actual photo of the miracle in 1917.

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I read the news report in Portuguese. The one that came out three next day. Written by a reporter that was present at the site.
He didn't see anything... Except a few idiots claiming they were seeing the sun wobbling.
A few is most definitely not thousands.

And it is common practice, among any assembly of people where differing opinions are to be expected, to have a few agents spread out to incite a particular message on the silent majority, thus making it look like most people share that message.
Testimonies from the 60's come more than 40 years too late to be anything more than anecdotes.

 
Isn't it funny that all the testimonies gathered in 1960 from people all over the world but didn't know each other, all coincided and said the same thing?
 
By the way, after the miracle in 1917, it took the Catholic Church 13 years and thousands of pages of testimonials to investigate the matter. If they were out to just scam the world to somehow draw attention or make a profit, they wouldn't have spent so long looking into it. In the end, in 1930, the Catholic Church made an official pronouncement approving of the authenticity of the miracle.

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Yup but you could shine it again on my face that same day . Can you get god to move the sun and have it not throw the structure of the solar system into chaos that same da.y I think not so the comparison is trivial .

 
Well thousands of people gave testimony that it appeared the sun moved in the sky, and that their clothes and the ground were suddenly instantly dried afterward. Obviously no human can make the sun move, or even pull off a trick to make it appear to move. Since this happened at an exact location and time predicted months beforehand, this is not just a random flareup of the sun. If there is a God capable of such an event, then He is certainly also capable from keeping the solar system from going into chaos.

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Even if you could prove that the sun moved, what evidence would you have that there is a god and he is the one moving it? Also if you are a person who believes that this actually happened and that it was god, don't you have to ask yourself why? Why would god choose to move the sun for a group of people instead of performing a useful miracle, like ending disease, ending evil, ending poverty, or feeding the hungry?

 
Of course, every rational human being asks themselves the questions you mentioned. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to answer those questions because only God could know the answers. But these questions don't take away from the fact that an incident certainly occurred that was beyond what any human being could do.

Yeah, you really NEED for this to be true, don't you?

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So far I've yet to see anyone disprove what has been presented. Instead I'm just reading "I refuse to believe" against thousands of testimonials from people who didn't know each other.

While we're at it, we might as well pick a few random events in history that have plenty of testimonials, and deny those too. Boston tea party? Sounds fishy to me, therefore it never happened. Abe Lincoln's assassination? I don't believe it could have happened that way, therefore it never happened.

Such is the absurd position of atheists who accept history handed down to them only when it suits them, and deny what they don't personally believe. What hypocrisy. Let an atheist write our history books and we will only get part of what really happened.

Lessee....you don't know anything about "disproving", historical research or atheism.

Go away.